II - Mariana Pineda: Iconic Martyr to Love

Summary

Which Mariana?

At a banquet given in May 1929 in honour of the Granada première of Mariana Pineda, García Lorca described the second of his plays to be produced as ‘[una] obra débil de principiante’. The poet's admission of the weakness of this early work sets the tone for subsequent critical evaluation of the piece. In her detailed study of Mariana Pineda, Concha Zardoya attributes ‘las debilidades y flaquezas de la obra’ to ‘la brevedad del tema’. Her proposition is that García Lorca's piece depends on a structure that is too simplistic to be able to sustain the dramatic tension. The play does indeed rely entirely on clear-cut themes of love, liberty and death, as Zardoya asserts. What's more, the argument of the play fans out from a single historical event: Mariana de Pineda's execution for her activities in support of the liberal opposition to the regime of Fernando VII. It is my intention in this chapter, however, to demonstrate that García Lorca's Mariana Pineda is deliberately narrow in its themes and therefore successful in communicating the author's intention. It is a highly focused poetic vision of a woman who transmutes her material desires into a spiritual Love for all humanity. Mariana frees her soul from her physical self and, ascending through virtuous martyrdom to the ranks of the saints, becomes patron to all those who sacrifice themselves for love.

In the context of García Lorca's other theatre works, Mariana Pineda stands a little in relief, as it recalls superficially, in terms of its verse dialogue, period setting and melodramatic plot, a Romantic play. The work is also distinct in that it is anchored to a particular historical moment, place and personage. But the historicity of the work does not represent the poet's intentions for his play. The Mariana that García Lorca wished to bring to the stage was quite different from the historical figure who died in 1831.