Death and Love

The elemental forces of death and love are inseparable throughout The Diván at Tamarit, and in "Gacela of the Dark Death" this is a particularly well-developed theme. As mentioned above, the title itself is careful to draw attention to their intersection—a ghazal, or Persian love poem, about "dark death"—and Lorca considers the interplay of these ideas throughout the poem.

He begins by challenging the reader's understanding of death, drawing on many of death's traditional associations. In the refrain "dormir el sueño" (sleep the sleep), Lorca explores death's connection with the "sleep of apples" while also considering death and sleep as distinct forces. By the final refrain, the boundaries of dormir (sleep), morir (death), and vivir (life) are, in one sense, much clearer to the speaker and to the reader in terms of what they truly signify; death is a soulless...