Mar 20 at 10:30 AM - Sale 2697 -

Sale 2697 - Lot 267

Estimate: $ 1,500 - $ 2,500
(LITERATURE.) Langston Hughes. "Gypsy Ballads," his signed translation of Federico García Lorca's poetry collection "Romancero Gitano." [4], 18 typescript carbon pages, 11 x 8½ inches, bound with 6 brads; minor wear and toning; signed and inscribed on blank following the title page: "To Harry, with memories of Madrid, Langston." Madrid, 1937
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In June 1937, Langston Hughes went to report on the Spanish Civil War for the Baltimore Afro-American, and particularly on the dozens of African-American volunteers who had enlisted in the Abraham Lincoln Brigade to help the Spanish Republicans stave off fascism. His interest in the war was partially inspired by his love of the work of the Spanish poet Federico García Lorca, who had recently been assassinated for his leftist politics and/or his sexuality (see the Daily Worker, 29 March 1937). While in Madrid, Hughes translated most of García Lorca's 1928 collection of poetry "Romancero Gitano," which addressed the oppression of Spain's Gypsy population in ways that resonated with the ongoing civil rights struggles in the United States.

Hughes mentioned Lorca in one of his dispatches to the Afro-American: "The Fascists, who bomb women and children, who have put to death Spain's greatest poet, Garcia Lorca . . . cannot win" (20 November 1937). Hughes published five of the translated García Lorca ballads in the 11 January 1938 issue of "New Masses." He returned to America on 28 January 1938, and his translation project was mentioned in the next day's Afro-American: "Hughes, who speaks excellent Spanish, has translated some of the works of García Lorca, greatest modern Spanish poet, who was killed in the war last July."

The translation offered here includes 15 of the 18 poems in Romancero Gitano. It is signed 3 times in type and once in manuscript by Hughes, with "Madrid, 1937" on the final page. It is inscribed "To Harry, with memories of Madrid." Harry Hickenlooper Dunham (1910-1943) shared an apartment with Hughes in Madrid; he was a cinematographer who later worked with Orson Welles. Hughes discussed their friendship in his 1956 memoir "I Wonder as I Wander," page 324. He also mentioned the translation project: "I was busy translating, with the aid of Rafael Alberti and Manuel Altolaguirre, the Gypsy Ballads of Federico García Lorca, and his play Bodas de Sangre. Alberti, Altolaguirre, and Arturo Barea had known Lorca well and still grieved for his execution at the hands of the Fascists" (page 370).

One other character which makes repeated appearances in "I Wonder as I Wander" is the typewriter Hughes brought from America; he insisted on carrying it from Madrid as the city's defenses were collapsing (page 377). This typescript, with numerous cross-outs, was likely created by Hughes on his trusted typewriter. It was given to Dunham at some point after January 1938 and before Dunham's 1943 death in a plane crash while serving as a lieutenant in the United States Army.

Hughes did not publish all 15 poems in the translation until 1951, through the Beloit Poetry Journal. The present typescript, with numerous typed cross-throughs, represents an earlier draft of the 1951 publication with some textual variants. For example, in the poem "Preciosa and the Air," the first line of this unpublished translation reads "Playing on a parchment moon," and the 1951 publication reads "Playing on her parchment moon."

We trace no other examples of this typescript carbon in OCLC or at auction. It likely represents the first complete draft of this translation, which was not published in its entirety for several more years. Beyond that, it is a significant artifact of the Spanish Civil War--a creative endeavor launched in Madrid in reaction to fascist atrocities, and then presented as a gift from one survivor to another.

Provenance: purchased from the estate of Harry Dunham's descendants at a New Hampshire estate auction.

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