Resumen de Essentially translatable poetry – the case of Lorca’s Poet in New York
Poet in New York by Federico García Lorca represents a paradigm of translatable poetry as it possesses certain textual characteristics which have facilitated its translation into English on several occasions since its first publication in 1940. Indeed, despite belonging to the category of his ‘difficult’ poetry, it has proven to be one of the most translatable of Lorca’s works and, paradoxically, one of the least problematic for English language translators. There have currently been five complete translations of the book in addition to numerous partial translations and this article seeks to examine the inherent facilities that it offers to English language translators and readers by highlighting the salient characteristics of the original text which have allowed it to be so successfully translated. These poems were based on Lorca’s visions of the great American metropolis during his residence there from 1929 to 1930 and the English versions of the text have exerted a considerable influence on the poetic vision of the city of New York due to the extraordinarily fertile reception of retranslations of this poetry in the English-speaking world, a reception that is in no small measure due to the textual qualities that make PENY essentially translatable.
