Book Description
“Let us agree,” Federico Garcia Lorca wrote, “that one of man’s most beautiful postures is that of St. Sebastian.”

“In my ‘Saint Sebastian’ I remember you,” Salvador Dali replied to Garcia Lorca, referring to the essay on aesthetics that Dali had just written, “. . . and sometimes I think he is you. Let’s see whether Saint Sebastian turns out to be you.”

This exchange is but a glimpse into the complex relationship between two renowned and highly influential twentieth-century artists. On the centennial of Dali's birth, Sebastian’s Arrows presents a never-before-published collection of their letters, lectures, and mementos.

Written between 1925 and 1936, the letters and lectures bring to life a passionate friendship marked by a thoughtful dialogue on aesthetics and the constant interaction between poetry and painting. From their student days in Madrid's Residencia de Estudiantes, where the two waged war against cultural “putrefaction” and mocked the sacred cows of Spanish art, Dali and Garcia Lorca exchanged thoughts on the act of creation, modernity, and the meaning of their art. The volume chronicles how in their poetic skirmishes they sharpened and shaped each other’s work--Garcia Lorca defending his verses of absence and elegy and his love of tradition while Dali argued for his theories of “Clarity” and “Holy Objectivity” and the unsettling logic of Surrealism.

Christopher Maurer’s masterful prologue and selection of letters, texts, and images (many generously provided by the Fundacion Gala-Salvador Dali and Fundacion Federico Garcia Lorca), offer compelling and intimate insights into the lives and work of two iconic artists. The two men had a “tragic, passionate relationship,” Dali once wrote—a friendship pierced by the arrows of Saint Sebastian.


About the Author
Christopher Maurer, Professor of Spanish literature at Boston University, is the editor of García Lorca’s Collected Poems, his letters and lectures, and the author of Fortune’s Favorite Child: The Uneasy Life of Walter Anderson, winner of the 2003 Eudora Welty Prize.

FROM THE PUBLISHER

"Let us agree," Federico Garc￯﾿ﾽa Lorca wrote, "that one of man's most beautiful postures is that of St. Sebastian."

"In my 'Saint Sebastian' I remember you," Salvador Dal￯﾿ﾽ replied to Lorca, referring to an essay he had just written, "and sometime I think he is you."

This lively, often funny exchange offers an unforgettable look at the complex relations between two renowned, highly influential 20th-century artists. Sebastian's Arrows presents a vibrant collection of their letters, lectures, and mementos, on the centennial of Dal￯﾿ﾽ's birth.

Written between 1925 and 1936, letters and lectures bring to life a passionate friendship, a thoughtful dialogue on aesthetics, and the constant interaction of poetry and painting. From their student days in the Residencia de Estudiantes, Madrid, where the two waged war on cultural "putrefaction" and joked about the sacred cows of Spanish art, Dal￯﾿ﾽ and Garc￯﾿ﾽa Lorca shared their thoughts on creation, modernity, and the meaning of their own art. In poetic skirmishes, they sharpened and shaped each others' work. As Lorca defended his verses of absence and elegy and his love of tradition, Dal￯﾿ﾽ argued for "Clarity" and "Holy Objectivity" and, later, for the poetics of collage and the unsettling logic of Surrealism.