words music images

home / music / theatre, film & radio / lorca / un chien andalou

Un chien andalou
words: Robert Campbell
music: Theo Jaskolkowski
images: Robert Campbell

MARGARITA is approaching from outside in rhythm with the Flamenco Tiento, BUNUEL walking to meet her. MARGARITA also has the volume of FEDERICO's poems - from which she now reads:

MARGARITA
Didn't you used to be a taller man?
And dress in a suit of white?


BUNUEL
No.

MARGARITA
Did you not have a violent smile that made me think of a heron in flight?

BUNUEL
No.

MARGARITA
And didn't you use to play rugby?
And make all the girls turn and look your way?

BUNUEL
No!

MARGARITA
Didn't you once pull a horse by its mane
And kill three thousand pheasants in one day?

BUNUEL
Never!

MARGARITA
In that case why
Have you come back for me?
When you're not the man
That you used to be?

FEDERICO
Thin lizard and thick snake starve
Worn to dust too soon
Their bones side-winding through the sand
Their blood draped on the moon
The serpent flies without wings
In order to thrust his flood
At the horse in the moon who drinks and sings
For the man's lost blood!

MARGARITA
In that case - why
Have you come back for me?
When you're not the man
That you used to be?

BUNUEL
In that case why
Did I wait here for you?
Vous etes et serez toujours
Un chien Andalou

DALI/MARGARITA/BUNUEL/FEDERICO
In that case - why
Have you come back for me?
When you're not the man
That you used to be?

In that case why
Did I wait here for you?
Vous etes et serez toujours
Un chien Andalou!

In that case why
Did I wait here for you?
Vous etes et serez toujours
Un chien Andalou!

 

Some of the lyrics in this song are based on Lorca's lines from the play Así que pasen cinco años (When Five Years Pass). In the musical, this song comes when Lorca is with two friends who will share much of his life: Salvador Dalí and Luís Buñuel. Together with the actress Margarita Xirgu they perform this song. Later, Dalí and Buñuel would mock Lorca in the film they made together - Un Chien Andalou. The photos were taken in Granada's Plaza Nueva when a dance started in the square.