“The Faithless Wife” (“La casada infiel”) is part of Gypsy Ballads (Romancero gitano), Federico García Lorca’s most famous poetry cycle (1921–27), which pays tribute to the verve of Spain’s legendary outsiders whose freedom-loving spirit, wild passions, and uncompromising ways had always fascinated the poet.

In this ballad, a Gypsy narrator tells the story of his love affair with a married woman who had deceived him by claiming she was a maiden, a fact the speaker discloses in the very beginning:
“Y que yo me la llevé al río / creyendo que era mozuela, / pero tenía marido”
(So I took her to the river / believing she was a maiden, / but she already had a husband).

What follows is the Gypsy’s memory of the lovers’ first night (the trip to the riverbank, the undressing, and his taking the mistress back home)—their passionate first and last tryst. Having uncovered his mistress’s deceit, the narrator, following a Gypsy tradition, presented the woman with a sewing basket, but decided not to fall in love:

“because having a husband / she told me she was a maiden / when I was taking her to the river”
(“porque teniendo marido / me dijo que era mozuela / cuando la llevaba al río.”).

In one of his lectures dedicated to the Flamenco art of the “deep song” (cante hondo), García Lorca remarked that “it is admirable how through lyric designs, a feeling slowly attains form and how it finally attains the precision of something almost material”
(Es admirable cómo a través de los diseños líricos, un sentimiento va tomando forma y cómo llega a concrecionarse en una cosa casi material).

“The Faithless Wife” is another example of the poet’s fascination with the different ways in which the tension between the infinite and the finite manifests itself in life and art. Driven by pride, the Gypsy narrator chose to tame his feelings, but his understated “I decided not to fall in love” stands in sharp contrast with

“that night I ran / on the best of roads”
(aquella noche corrí / el mejor de los caminos),

an image that, regardless, betrays the intensity of his passion. The tension between the suggested expanse of this passion and the restrained words that cannot do it full justice gives dramatic energy to his story and also to García Lorca’s poem. The ballad reenacts the Gypsy drama and provides a key to the poet’s own creative drama: his constant effort to compress the immeasurable emotion in the minimalist lyric space.

Bibliography
“The Faithless Wife.” In The Selected Poems of Federico García Lorca. Edited by Francisco García Lorca and Donald M. Allen, translated by Stephen Spender and J. L. Gili. New York: New Directions, 2005.

García Lorca, Federico. “Arquitectura del cante-jondo.” In Poetas del 27: la generación y su entorno. Antología comentada. Introduction by Víctor García de la Concha. Madrid: Colección Austral, 1998, 73.

Categories: British Literature, Literature, Spanish Literature

Tags: 20th century Spanish literature, cante jondo Lorca, deep song Lorca, Federico García Lorca analysis, Federico García Lorca biography, Federico García Lorca character study, Federico García Lorca criticism, Federico García Lorca poetry, Federico García Lorca style, Federico García Lorca symbolism, Federico García Lorca themes, Gypsy Ballads interpretation, literary analysis of The Faithless Wife, Lorca’s Gypsy poetry, Lorca’s lyrical expression, passion and restraint in Lorca, Romancero gitano summary, Spanish poetry analysis, The Faithless Wife analysis, The Faithless Wife character analysis, The Faithless Wife criticism, The Faithless Wife feminist reading, The Faithless Wife literary themes, The Faithless Wife plot, The Faithless Wife poetic devices, The Faithless Wife summary, The Faithless Wife themes