Two months ago, I had a dream. I was on a platform waiting for Martin Luther King Junior to begin a speech. He was in front of the microphone and slowly turned to look at me. Then he smiled. A long golden chain appeared between us at that moment, and on the end of this chain was a gold crucifix. Then I awoke.
I reflect on that dream now as this is the day when we commemorate Martin Luther King and his undying passion to correct injustice, inequality and racism in America. He personally experienced the obscenity that racism is, and he gave his life believing in the fundamental and total equality of all, but with the admonition that, "we must rise to the majestic heights of meeting physical force with soul force."
I am struck by how much that message was Lorca's as well. In fact, Lorca was in New York in 1929-1930, and his insightful and scathing denunciations of capitalism and materialism, along with racism, is something that binds these men together.
In his poem , The King of Harlem, he writes of the cruelty of a society that divides its people based upon the color of their skin, a cruelty that he witnessed in Granada where those who were "different" or of different color, "the Moor, the Jew, the Gypsy, the Black", whose genetic material was imbued into the heart of every citizen, was ostracized and cast aside as well. He was sickened by what he saw in New York:
"Oh Harlem! Harlem!
There is no anguish compared to your oppressed reds,
to your blood shaken inside the dark eclipse
to your garnet violence, deaf and mute in the shadows,
to your great prisoner king in his janitor's uniform."
He saw America, with its greed and capitalism, as being soulless and bereft of human kindness and concern. New York epitomized this for him.
For this and for their beliefs, both men were murdered. Federico was murdered, some would say, because he was a "red" which in the days before the gulag and the torture chambers stood for caring for those who were oppressed and disenfranchised in a society that supported the "vested" interests: the church, the state, the landowners, and in the US, the capitalists.
Ultimately, however, both men died for living out the dream and the admonition of one who inspired them greatly, the first great "revolutionary" of social justice, Jesus Christ himself. He saw neither black nor white, slave nor free, male nor female, and he spoke out with great effectiveness against the powers and the principalities of his day and by extension, ours.
David versus Goliath.
But his admonishments were also pacific in nature and he never advocated the violence that was later turned upon him, and his followers.
The thread that binds them is that they believed, strongly, that we are all one before God. There are no exceptions to this. And that heaven cannot be stormed by wealth, by might or indulgences, and certainly not by false piety.
This is the message that I've tried to convey in the Magdalene novel as well.
I reflect on that dream now as this is the day when we commemorate Martin Luther King and his undying passion to correct injustice, inequality and racism in America. He personally experienced the obscenity that racism is, and he gave his life believing in the fundamental and total equality of all, but with the admonition that, "we must rise to the majestic heights of meeting physical force with soul force."
I am struck by how much that message was Lorca's as well. In fact, Lorca was in New York in 1929-1930, and his insightful and scathing denunciations of capitalism and materialism, along with racism, is something that binds these men together.
In his poem , The King of Harlem, he writes of the cruelty of a society that divides its people based upon the color of their skin, a cruelty that he witnessed in Granada where those who were "different" or of different color, "the Moor, the Jew, the Gypsy, the Black", whose genetic material was imbued into the heart of every citizen, was ostracized and cast aside as well. He was sickened by what he saw in New York:
"Oh Harlem! Harlem!
There is no anguish compared to your oppressed reds,
to your blood shaken inside the dark eclipse
to your garnet violence, deaf and mute in the shadows,
to your great prisoner king in his janitor's uniform."
He saw America, with its greed and capitalism, as being soulless and bereft of human kindness and concern. New York epitomized this for him.
For this and for their beliefs, both men were murdered. Federico was murdered, some would say, because he was a "red" which in the days before the gulag and the torture chambers stood for caring for those who were oppressed and disenfranchised in a society that supported the "vested" interests: the church, the state, the landowners, and in the US, the capitalists.
Ultimately, however, both men died for living out the dream and the admonition of one who inspired them greatly, the first great "revolutionary" of social justice, Jesus Christ himself. He saw neither black nor white, slave nor free, male nor female, and he spoke out with great effectiveness against the powers and the principalities of his day and by extension, ours.
David versus Goliath.
But his admonishments were also pacific in nature and he never advocated the violence that was later turned upon him, and his followers.
The thread that binds them is that they believed, strongly, that we are all one before God. There are no exceptions to this. And that heaven cannot be stormed by wealth, by might or indulgences, and certainly not by false piety.
This is the message that I've tried to convey in the Magdalene novel as well.