Ignacio Sánchez Mejías was an extraordinarily lucid man and was also, to a large extent, the glue that united his friends at the university. Generation of 27. This was explained by the professor of Spanish literature and biographer of the bullfighter, Andrés Amorós, in … the framework of the days dedicated to the figure of Sánchez Mejías at the Real Academia Sevillana de Buenas Letras, which started this Tuesday.
On the first of two days of this cycle entitled “Sánchez Mejías, Illustrated Bullfighter of the Silver Age”, Amorós moderated the session entitled “Ignatius, the one who cries” dedicated to deepening the famous verses that Federico García Lorca dedicated to right-handers Sevillians after his death by goring a bull, their meaning and the whole context in which they were written.
Among the details of the personality and life of Ignacio Sánchez Mejías highlighted by his biographer are his strong character and his ambition: “He didn’t let himself win the fight with anyone, he fought with everyone”. He went so far as to publicly declare: “I am better than Gaona and I have only been a banderillero of Joselito,” prompting Gaona’s supporters to pepper his car with bullets. His humor and his moving personality went far, as he expressed on numerous occasions, as he said during a bullfight in Madrid: “I offer this task to the Virgin, but not that of the Paloma, but the real one, mine, the Blanca Paloma”.
Sánchez Mejías played a decisive role in the arrival of the 27 generation in Sevilleas Amorós stated, and he was also one of those who contributed to flamenco has gained international recognition. In this context of great personalities brought together for the first time at the initiative of this bullfighter passionate about literature, his role was also to be “the one who is the friend of all, the one who fought with no one”. Generation 27, in fact, was a gathering of friends, but not free from friction and anger, because “in the end, they were poets”. Ignacio, among them, served as union link of all: “He was everyone’s friend, very attractive, very friendly with everyone, with men and women.”
“Ignacio would have liked to be a hero, and in the 20th century, he had no other choice but to be a bullfighter”
Andres Amoros
Biographer of Sánchez Mejías
The constant search for experiences and trials of Sánchez Mejías, interested in different arts, was due to the fact that “was not satisfied with anything“, but “what he ultimately was was a bullfighter.” Amorós highlighted the reason why he took this as his profession and not as another of the branches that interested him: “Ignacio would have liked to be a hero. In the Golden Age, he would have fought in the Tercios of Flanders, but in the 20th century, he had no choice but to become a bullfighter.
Immortalized by Lorca’s “Llanto”
Without a doubt, the fact that the bullfighter, an important character in popular culture from the first third of the 20th century, has transcended and reached our days, is largely responsible for this phenomenon. Federico Garcia Lorca. Although he was not the only poet to honor him with his words after his death from a goring in the Manzanares bullringsince Cossio, Alberti and Miguel Hernández also did it, Federico immortalized it forever in his famous elegy, the “Crying for Ignacio Sánchez Mejías”. Well structured and faithful to reality, the man from Granada reproduces the events without giving bullfighting details. Amorós thus underlines that Lorca sings of a man who is a bullfighter, but fundamentally a human being, who faces death with lucidity. This contributes to give universality to the poem. “Ignacio becomes a paradigm of being human, of being Andalusian and of being lucid.”
The literature teacher analyzed the work in depth and each of its four parts. The first, “Fuck and Death,” in the third person, is an exposition of the events that have permeated the collective imagination with that oft-repeated refrain of “at five in the afternoon” – a license to understand time as something beyond the physical, since neither the beating nor the death occurred at that moment. The second part, “Spilled Blood”, in the first person, involves the reader and serves to exalt Sánchez Mejías as a hero and as a man through emotions. The third, ‘Present Body’, is more repetitive and goes from the second’s inner cry to more melancholy meditation.
Finally, the fourth part, “Absent Alma”, is shorter and completes the previous one. In it he refers to his deceased friend in the second person in the near future, in which he laments that in addition to death, oblivion has begun. Amorós emphasized that the line “He doesn’t know you. No. But I sing to you” justifies the whole elegy. In the groans of the poem, Federico makes a sort of identification with Ignacio in the tragic context of his joy. “He does not sing a bullfighter, but a model of an exemplary Andalusian man, sincere, authentic, unsatisfied and always looking for new horizons”, which many have highlighted as a self-portrait after the death of the poet. The ending has no fireworks and does not seek easy applause, but rather shows modesty and respect for the deceased friend. A few timeless verses that dispel any doubt in Amorós about the fact that “thanks to Federico García Lorca, Ignacio is not completely dead”.
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