At the same time that Lorca was writing his Romancero, his
friend, Rafael Alberti, wrote Sobre los Angeles, which for
originality, sustained and concentrated power, and masterly
handling of a modern technique is worthy of comparison with
Lorca's book. Published in 1929, Sobre los Angeles is the
work of a young man who was born in 1902 and proved in
early manhood his ability in more than one kind of poetry.
At first sight Alberti presents certain obvious points of simi-
larity to Lorca. He too was an Andalusian who studied the
ways and songs of his own country; he too had a gift for
painting and trained his eye through it; he too began by
writing songs, not indeed so delicate or diaphanous as Lorca's
but composed with a sure insight into the use of traditional
measures for a modern sensibility. But these similarities are
much less than the differences, mainly of temperament, which
distinguish the two men. Alberti was from the start more
intellectual than Lorca. Even his charming songs about the
sea and sailors, with which he made his name in 1924, lack
Lorca's effortless flight and suggest a background of intenser
thought. And with the years this element asserted itself and
became more emphatic. While Lorca was content to live on
his sensibility and to lose himself in the lives of other men,
Alberti found his subjects more and more in himself, in his
own struggles and contradictions and problems. With his
keen intellect he watched and analysed his emotions, tried to
find what they meant, and adapted his technique to his dis-
coveries. He lacked Lorca's instinctive joy and instinctive
melancholy: his gifts were more varied and more conflicting.
He wrote with apparent ease, and his production in his twenties
was abundant and well sustained, but his complex, self-
analytical character was soon to create for him difficulties such
as Lorca never knew.

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