Lorca's Floating Images

As in the surrealist art of Miró and others, objects and persons seem to be floating—in air or water—in the poems of Lorca's Canciones, and also in the Romancero gitano and Poeta en Nueva York. Among the many "floating images" in Lorca's poetry, there is one that Bachelard has discussed under the heading of the complexe d'Ophélie: the motif of a girl, floating and dead on the water's surface, that gives rise to a dream of water. The girl also becomes united with the moon, in Bachelard and in Lorca. This motif reaches its most striking realization in the "Romance sonámbulo", and in Poeta en Nueva York Lorca once again returns to this vision in "Niña ahogada en el pozo." It appears to be a real memory that persisted in the poet's imagination, although in the case of this last poem it may have a symbolic or allegorical character.