Caballo azul de mi locura: Lorca y el mundo gay (review)

The 2009 Caballo azul de mi locura: Lorca y el mundo gay is Ian Gibson's most recent book about Federico García Lorca and forms part of Planeta's España Escrita series, which seeks to rewrite the past through alternative perspectives that can lead to a more complete understanding of Spanish history. Gibson examines Lorca's homosexuality by analyzing biographical information, criticism, and excerpts from his writing so that readers can more fully appreciate his significance as an extraordinarily gifted man and artist. For Gibson, the themes of marginalization, suffering, and frustrated desire evident in so much of Lorca's work are inseparable from his personal experience of having to conceal his sexual orientation throughout his life, and he thus believes that we might better understand his literature if we take allusions to homoerotic desire into account. In the prologue, Gibson justifies his purpose, details studies by Paul Binding and Ángel Sahuquillo that explicitly examine Lorca's sexuality, and then briefly addresses the 1983 publication of the potentially homoerotic Sonetos del amor oscuro. Lamenting the fact that many of Lorca's friends, family members, and colleagues have refused to acknowledge his homosexuality over the years, Gibson argues that scholars should honor his legacy by appreciating his true identity, especially now that gay rights have attained such an unprecedented height in contemporary Spain.

Chapter 1 examines Lorca's early life to show how experiences related to his hometown, schooling, friends, travels, and religious upbringing often manifest themselves in his writing. Of particular interest is Gibson's commentary on various poems from la juvenilia, Lorca's early poetry; as Gibson points out, the themes of repressed desire and alienation already appear and thereby forecast the development of Lorca's subsequent work. Chapter 2 describes Lorca's experiences in Madrid from 1919–1929 and traces his relationships with many people who probably were aware of his homosexuality, including Luis Buñuel, Emilio Prados, Gustavo Durán, Adolfo Salazar, Salvador Dalí, Margarita Manso, Emilio Aladrén, Rafael Martínez Nadal, Jorge Guillén, and Carlos Morla Lynch. Gibson also addresses the possible manifestation of homoerotic desire in selected passages from El maleficio de la mariposa, Libro de poemas, Canciones, Suites, Oda a Salvador Dalí, Don Perlimplín, Dos normas, and the Romancero Gitano. Chapter 3 investigates Lorca's first trip to the New World in 1929–1930, and focuses on his contact with the gay community in New York, his fascination with Harlem, his trip to Vermont, and his various encounters in La Habana, Cuba, during a formative year in which Lorca seems to have come to terms with the nature of his sexual identity. The literary component of this chapter discusses some poems from Poeta en Nueva York, his surrealistic movie script Viaje a la luna, and his avant-garde drama El público.

In chapter 4, Gibson follows Lorca's return to Spain (1930–35) and examines his relationships with a banker from Granada (Eduardo Rodríguez Valdivieso), a medical doctor who published a book about homosexuality (Gregorio Marañón), an openly gay journalist (Eduardo Blanco-Amor), a Sevillian poet (Luis Cernuda), his close friend and confidant Rafael Martínez Nadal, and with the secretary of La Barraca, Rafael Rodríguez Rapún. He then discusses some of the homoerotic elements of Así que pasen cinco años and of the "complete" manuscript of El público. Gibson also highlights the fictitious homosexual club of el epentismo, Lorca's plans to compose a play about incest (La destrucción de Sodoma), the composition of the Sonetos del amor oscuro, and alludes to several of his erotic nocturnal adventures in Madrid, Seville, and Granada. He closes by retelling the anecdote of how Lorca, in a state of emotional crisis, allegedly told theater director and friend Cipriano Rivas Cherif that he was indeed a homosexual in November of 1935.

The concluding chapter reviews Lorca's last days in Madrid, his final compositions...