UP’s Filipino translation of Lorca’s earliest work was entitled Ang Malupit na Encanto ng Mariposa. I found it puzzling that the actors delivered English lines when the ticket said that the play was a Filipino rendition. Besides, the title was in Filipino. My puzzlement is not over the fact that it was translated at all. The original, after all, would have been impossible for us to comprehend since it was in Spanish. But why not in Filipino? Either way, it was translated. Therefore, some of the scathingly disturbing images of Lorca’s dialogs may have been lost.
However, I do not think the play was in such a serious tone -sad, yes, but not too high-brow and tight-lipped. It is amazing to think of how a man like Lorca, who troubles himself with the endeavors and tragedies of bugs and insects can be considered one of the greatest poets of the 21st century. The play had the makings of a fairy tale –what with animals thinking and contriving, a beetle obsessing over love, and a beautiful butterfly collapsing into their care. It was enough to make the little girl in me swoon with memories of childhood dreams, and hope that the beetle, with his troubadourian serenades, and the butterfly end up together. To add to this effect, the production was very pretty. Seeing the play through the artistry of Dulaang UP was a visual delight. The dainty lights overhead the audience brought us into the enchantment of the beetles over finding a butterfly in their midst. The choreography, too, moved the fantastic mood along. I didn’t know one could create a whole routine out of beetles’ and scorpions’ scamperings.
But amid the loveliness of the set and choreography, I found a terror in a tragedy that was still beautifully distressing. Here came out the pain of a longing frustrated by conventions in the young boy beetle’s pining for a love he cannot have. Here is the brilliance of Lorca’s poetry, the way he combines fear (in the scorpions’ menacing advances) and pain (in the love that cannot be reciprocated) with beauty. That was where my confusion comes in, where I appealed to symbolism to make sense of actions onstage that my sensibilities cannot fathom. This is probably where the critics found the genius in Lorca’s work for I have learned that genius is in the things of which full comprehension is hard to come by. I had so many questions. For one, what did the death of both butterfly and beetle mean? It could not be just a story of star-crossed lovers like Romeo and Juliet? It had to mean something more. I left the theatre that night with my heart enchanted and my mind stirred.
In hopes of having even an acute sense of Lorca’s brilliance in his works, I tried to let go of all rigid reasoning and go back to feeling like a child. In this way, one is able to empathize with his fanciful tragedies and not worry about how it relates to the wars, or other worldly concerns. With El Maleficio De La Mariposa, Lorca was able to portray love and longing for what it is: a conundrum of whims and tragedies.
