They are short poems written between 1920 and 1923 at the Residencia de Estudiantes in Madrid or at Asquerosa (Disgusting), during the summer. They are thematically linked and constructed by analogy with the musical suite of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.
The themes dealt with are not different from those of his earlier poetry, although their structure or poetic expression is. These poems are characterized by their subjection to a uniform rhythm and tone, by restraint or the attempt at objectification, the use of the symbol and, at some point, they even express the influence of the avant-garde.
In addition to the theme of lost childhood, there is the frustration of love, what could have been and was not, sterility (unborn children), death, uprooting, identity, the comfort of the contemplation of nature, cosmicity, there are even poems influenced by science (undoubtedly the result of what he experienced and learned at the Residencia de Estudiantes (Students’ Residence)).
Although García Lorca had announced many times the imminent appearance of Suites, the poet would not get to see the book during his lifetime. And although he said he had the volume ready (at some point he gave the manuscripts for publication) the book presents many textual problems. Starting with the index, which does not exist.
Until the 1980s, Suites appeared as single poems in Lorca’s complete works (in Losada’s or Aguilar’s). In 1981, André Belamich published a French version of the poems as a book. To do so, he reconstructed them in chronological order. In 1983, the same editor was to publish them in Spain, in Ariel. Belamich added more than 2,000 verses that had been published by the author before.
Maurer has corrected Belamich’s arrangement and some texts, although it has not been possible to date some suites and there are still textual problems.
García Posada follows the two editors and includes some novelties in his Complete Works (in Galaxia Gutenberg, 1996) and separates the mutilated suites (in an appendix) or the texts not revised or discarded by the author (in Different Poems).
Eutimio Martín finally edited them in 2017 under the title Low sky. Suites, in Debolsillo. There were few suites that the author published during his lifetime. Some appeared in magazines (in Index, by Juan Ramón Jiménez, in Verse and prose, in Lola, Carmen’s supplement). First songs (1936), is a selection published on January 28, 1936 by Manuel Altolaguirre in the magazine Hero.
Suites was the definitive title of the book, although Federico once considered Cielo bajo (Low Sky) (possibly alluding to the landscape of the Albaicín seen from the Alhambra). Lorca also considered the possibility of calling it Libro de las diferencias (Book of Differences) because of the musical variations or “differences” similar to those of vihuelists such as Antonio Cabezón, Luis Milán and Alfonso Mudarra (thus appearing in Gerardo Diego’s 1932 anthology).
It contains poems written in Asquerosa (Disgusting) and at the Students’ Residence. In July 1920, in Asquerosa, he writes several suites whose subject matter is again the loss and ultimate frustration of lost love or childhood. In Momentos de canción (Moments of Song), for example, we see the same elements and the same theme of Libro de poemas (Book of Poems), but its poetic expression is totally different.
In 1926 Lorca gave Emilio Prados three manuscripts for publication: Suites, Canciones (Songs) and Poema del cante jondo (Poem of the Deep Song). Mistakes made in the previous publication of some gypsy romances in the Litoral magazine frustrated the plans. Federico got angry and Emilio Prados returned the texts to him.
Bajo el sol de la tuba
[Under the tuba’s sun]
Pasa la Feria
[Pass the Fair]
Suspirando a los viejos
[Sighing to the old]
Pegasos cautivos.
[Captive Pegasus.]
La feria
[The fair]
Es una rueda.
[It is a wheel.]
Una rueda de luces
[A wheel of lights]
Sobre la noche.
[On the night.]
Los círculos concéntricos
[The concentric circles]
Del “tio vivo” llegan,
[Arrive from the “carousel”,]
Ondulando la atmósfera
[Undulating the atmosphere]
Hasta la luna.
[Up to the moon.]
Y hay un niño que pierden
[And there is a child]
Todos los poetas
[All poets lose]
Y una caja de música
[And a music box]
Sobre la brisa
[Over the breeze]