Love-death-honor

Bernarda Alba, mourning the recent death of her husband, closes her house to life with almost fanatical strictness. Her five daughters, under this pressing constraint, engage in a ruthless war among themselves for their love for Pepe Romano, in a depressing atmosphere of confinement due to their unfulfilled sensuality. The discovery of a photograph of Pepe in the hands of a younger daughter, who is considered a suitor of the eldest daughter, shakes the regime, and the explosion is imminent. Bernarda, wanting to impose order, lies in wait and shoots the man who tempts her with his horse. The youngest daughter, believing she has been killed, is driven to suicide. However, the mother, remaining faithful to her relentless duty, gives the ascetic command that nothing should be known by anyone, closing with the phrase: "the youngest daughter of Bernarda Alba died a virgin. [...] Silence!”

This statement captures the terms of acceptance of female sexuality by the society of the time and probably constitutes the core of the play's writing. Bernarda, more or less a symbol of matriarchy, defines the order of things with the unyielding rules of centuries, making her house a grave for the living.

Having translated Blood Wedding and Yerma, the friction with the lyrical voice of Federico García Lorca led to the translation of Bernarda Alba. Despite the stricter theatrical structure, the presentation proves that it is a poetic, covert, theatrical text. Poetry pierces its "cold" structure and charges it with passion and emotion. The translational challenges multiply as the presentation attempts to convey the existential agony of the poet beyond the customary background of the text without neglecting its social critique. The poetic violence of dark life and the passion of the flesh characterize Lorca here and in his other texts.

The endeavor is to convey the specific dimensions that lie beneath the verse, in the silences and pauses, with a gaze that uncovers the particulars, approaching the aim, the symbols, and their dynamics.

Panos Kyparissis