Sebastian's Arrows: Letters and Mementos of Salvador Dali and Federico Garcia Lorca, edited by Christopher Maurer (hardcover)

“Let us agree,” Federico Garcia Lorca wrote, “that one of man’s most beautiful postures is that of St. Sebastian.”

“In my ‘Saint Sebastian’ I remember you,” Salvador Dali replied to Garcia Lorca, referring to the essay on aesthetics that Dali had just written, “. . . and sometimes I think he is you. Let’s see whether Saint Sebastian turns out to be you.”

Sebastian's Arrows is an intelligent selection and translation of letters, texts (some previously unpublished), and images, including an introduction and notes, by Christopher Maurer, giving the general reader, student, and scholar insight into the lives of two exceptional artists.

Written between 1925 and 1936, the letters tell of a friendship that began in the Residencia de Estudiantes, Madrid, where the two waged war against cultural “putrefaction" and the sacred cows of Spanish art. Distinct portraits emerge. The letters–some never before published in

English–reveal the intimacies of friendship and the skirmishes and "crossed swords" of poetry and art. Little escapes the two friends' critical gaze as they comment on other artists, modernity, and the world around them. Lorca is defining his own poetics of absence and elegy and Dalí moves relentlessly toward Surrealism, each sharpening his vision against the challenge of the other. It was a "tragic, passionate relationship," Dali once wrote–one pierced by the arrows of St. Sebastian and the wounds of love.

In his sensitive prologue, Christopher Maurer explores the intense friendship and aesthetic vision of two of the twentieth century’s most influential artists through letters and “mementos.”

 This edition includes Lorca's "Ode to Salvador Dali," both in the original Spanish and in English translation, two García Lorca lectures previously unavailable in English, archival photographs, drawings and paintings of both Dali and Lorca.