Grammatical Gender as a Vehicle of Symbolism in the Poetic Translation of Federico García Lorca's Romance de la luna, luna and Muerto de amor

Abstract

The article analyzes Italian translations of Federico García Lorca’s “Romancero gitano”, focusing on how linguistic and cultural proximity between Spanish and Italian allows translators to preserve the symbolic organization of Lorca’s poetry more directly than in many Polish translations. The study emphasizes the importance of grammatical gender, particularly the feminine form “la luna”, which in Spanish and Italian carries associations with femininity, desire, and death. In Polish, however, the masculine noun “księżyc” disrupts this symbolic structure, forcing translators to use compensatory strategies that weaken the original imagery. Through analyses of “Romance de la luna, luna” and “Muerto de amor”, the article demonstrates that successful poetic translation depends not only on lexical similarity but also on shared symbolic and cultural frameworks.