Rafael Rodríguez Rapún was a 22 year old Mining Engineering student when he joined La Barraca in the summer of 1933 and became the troupe's secretary. He was a ruggedly handsome young man, very athletic, and a passionate socialist. He was not homosexual, but a committed womanizer. However, he fell deeply and passionately in love with Lorca, and the two soon became inseparable. He would go on to become Lorca's personal secretary, which afforded them the freedom to live and travel together without undue scrutiny. In fact, when Lorca received an invitation to a prestigious literary conference in Rome instructing him that he was welcome to bring "Mrs. García Lorca" along for the trip, Lorca brazenly replied, "I am afraid there is no Mrs. García Lorca. Would it be all right for me to bring Mr. Rodríguez Rapún instead?" Permission granted!
Though it is believed they wrote to one another frequently when they were unavoidably separated, only one letter from Rapún to Lorca (who was then in transit to Buenos Aires to stage Yerma with Margarita Xirgu in the lead) has survived:
I remember you constantly. Not to be able to see a person with whom you have been every hour of the day for months is too much to be forgotten. Especially if towards the person in question you feel yourself drawn as strongly as I do towards you. But since you're going to return I console myself with the thought that these hours will be repeated. And there's another consolation: to know that you have gone on a mission. This consolation is reserved for those of us who have a sense of duty - and we're fewer all the time ... Since at least I've written something to you, although you deserve more, I'm going to stop here. I'll write to you often. A big hug from your friend who never forgets you.
The relationship was not without its difficulties, however. Rapún continued his compulsive womanizing, and many times would leave Lorca hanging, waiting for days for him to return from a tryst with some waitress or other he'd picked up. Lorca appears to have suffered greatly from these lapses, and the pain of the separations and jealousy suffuse what is frequently cited as the most beautiful collection of love poems ever written in the Spanish language, the long-suppressed and openly homoerotic Sonnets of Dark Love.
Soneto Gongorino en que el Poeta Manda a su Amor una Paloma
Este pichón del Turia que te mando,
de dulces ojos y de blanca pluma,
sobre laurel de Grecia vierte y suma
llama lenta de amor do estoy parando.
Su cándida virtud, su cuello blando,
en limo doble de caliente espuma,
con un temblor de escarcha, perla y bruma
la ausencia de tu boca está marcando.
Pasa la mano sobre su blancura
y verás qué nevada melodía
esparce en copos sobre tu hermosura.
Así mi corazón de noche y día,
preso en la cárcel del amor oscura,
llora sin verte su melancolía.
Gongoran Sonnet in which the Poet Sends a Dove to His Beloved
This Turian pigeon that I send to you,
with sweet eyes and whitest feathers,
over Grecian laurel spills and ‘sumes,
calls slow of love from where I'm going.
Its candid virtue, its supple throat,
Twice with lime of scalding spume,
a tremor of frost, pearl and brume
marks the absence of your mouth.
Pass your hand over its whitness
and you'll see what snowy melody
spreads in flakes over your beauty.
So my heart by night and day,
captive in the prison of dark love,
not seeing you, cries its melancholy.
Lorca recited these sonnets to close friends during his lifetime, including fellow poet Pablo Neruda, who recalled having heard a group of eleven sonnets of unsurpassed beauty. They were never published during his lifetime, and after his death, his family flatly denied their existence until 1983, when a friend of Lorca's published an unauthorized edition based on an early draft he had in his possession. Thus cornered, Lorca's family were forced to admit that they did in fact have a completed manuscript, and published it themselves under the title Sonnets of Love, the word oscuro, "dark," being omitted because of its homosexual overtones.
Lorca and Rapún lived together for two years before his assassination. Although Rapún had always been highly active as a socialist, he had also always been a pacifist. However, shortly after Lorca's disappearance, he joined the Republican army to fight the fascists whom he was convinced were behind his lover's death. After taking an artillery course in (of all places) the village of Lorca, Murcía, Rapún attained the rank of Lieutenant, and was put in charge of a batallion in the north of Spain. On the morning of 10 August 1937, his unit was attacked by air. His troops all hit the ground, and begged him to do the same, but he refused, and was overheard to say, "I want to die!" Within moments, a bomb exploded nearby and he was mortally wounded, eventually dying in a nearby military hospital.
Rapún's death certificate states that he died on 18 August 1937 from shrapnel wounds to the back and lumbar regions, exactly one year to the day after Lorca had died.
He was twenty-five years old.
Though it is believed they wrote to one another frequently when they were unavoidably separated, only one letter from Rapún to Lorca (who was then in transit to Buenos Aires to stage Yerma with Margarita Xirgu in the lead) has survived:
I remember you constantly. Not to be able to see a person with whom you have been every hour of the day for months is too much to be forgotten. Especially if towards the person in question you feel yourself drawn as strongly as I do towards you. But since you're going to return I console myself with the thought that these hours will be repeated. And there's another consolation: to know that you have gone on a mission. This consolation is reserved for those of us who have a sense of duty - and we're fewer all the time ... Since at least I've written something to you, although you deserve more, I'm going to stop here. I'll write to you often. A big hug from your friend who never forgets you.
The relationship was not without its difficulties, however. Rapún continued his compulsive womanizing, and many times would leave Lorca hanging, waiting for days for him to return from a tryst with some waitress or other he'd picked up. Lorca appears to have suffered greatly from these lapses, and the pain of the separations and jealousy suffuse what is frequently cited as the most beautiful collection of love poems ever written in the Spanish language, the long-suppressed and openly homoerotic Sonnets of Dark Love.
Soneto Gongorino en que el Poeta Manda a su Amor una Paloma
Este pichón del Turia que te mando,
de dulces ojos y de blanca pluma,
sobre laurel de Grecia vierte y suma
llama lenta de amor do estoy parando.
Su cándida virtud, su cuello blando,
en limo doble de caliente espuma,
con un temblor de escarcha, perla y bruma
la ausencia de tu boca está marcando.
Pasa la mano sobre su blancura
y verás qué nevada melodía
esparce en copos sobre tu hermosura.
Así mi corazón de noche y día,
preso en la cárcel del amor oscura,
llora sin verte su melancolía.
Gongoran Sonnet in which the Poet Sends a Dove to His Beloved
This Turian pigeon that I send to you,
with sweet eyes and whitest feathers,
over Grecian laurel spills and ‘sumes,
calls slow of love from where I'm going.
Its candid virtue, its supple throat,
Twice with lime of scalding spume,
a tremor of frost, pearl and brume
marks the absence of your mouth.
Pass your hand over its whitness
and you'll see what snowy melody
spreads in flakes over your beauty.
So my heart by night and day,
captive in the prison of dark love,
not seeing you, cries its melancholy.
Lorca recited these sonnets to close friends during his lifetime, including fellow poet Pablo Neruda, who recalled having heard a group of eleven sonnets of unsurpassed beauty. They were never published during his lifetime, and after his death, his family flatly denied their existence until 1983, when a friend of Lorca's published an unauthorized edition based on an early draft he had in his possession. Thus cornered, Lorca's family were forced to admit that they did in fact have a completed manuscript, and published it themselves under the title Sonnets of Love, the word oscuro, "dark," being omitted because of its homosexual overtones.
Lorca and Rapún lived together for two years before his assassination. Although Rapún had always been highly active as a socialist, he had also always been a pacifist. However, shortly after Lorca's disappearance, he joined the Republican army to fight the fascists whom he was convinced were behind his lover's death. After taking an artillery course in (of all places) the village of Lorca, Murcía, Rapún attained the rank of Lieutenant, and was put in charge of a batallion in the north of Spain. On the morning of 10 August 1937, his unit was attacked by air. His troops all hit the ground, and begged him to do the same, but he refused, and was overheard to say, "I want to die!" Within moments, a bomb exploded nearby and he was mortally wounded, eventually dying in a nearby military hospital.
Rapún's death certificate states that he died on 18 August 1937 from shrapnel wounds to the back and lumbar regions, exactly one year to the day after Lorca had died.
He was twenty-five years old.
Victor Marzowicz-Velasquez (themovie-fanatic.com)
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