A mixed identity
Let's allow ourselves a few lines, like a short respite, to remember that before the arrival of the Europeans, Cuba was inhabited on the one hand by the Cyboneys Indians, and on the other hand by the Tainos, an ethnic group whose language and rich mythology confirm their link with the South American continent, although we don't know precisely to which people they were related, the Mayans of the Yucatán or the Yanomamis of Amazonia. Living from culture and hunting, organized in society without the question of private property, believing in the god of good and evil, playing pelota, a game as much as a ritual, no one can estimate how long this enchanted interlude lasted before Christopher Columbus landed on October 28, 1492. One thing is certain: it took less than 50 years for the entire indigenous population to be decimated, despite rumors taken up by oral tradition encouraging the hope that Cyboneys would have survived in the mountains. The massacre of Caonao - perpetrated by the conquistador Pánfilo de Narváez and his men in 1513 - had an indirect impact on the literature when it became philosophy. Indeed, the Dominican Bartolomé de las Casas witnessed, powerless, this tragic episode that forged his conviction of the necessity of a pacifist conquest. This is the point of view he supported in the "Controversy of Valladolid" - a debate organized by Charles V in 1550 - during which he opposed Juan Ginés de Sepúlveda, also a man of the Church, who affirmed that the Indians did not belong to the human species, and therefore there was no reason to spare them or to hesitate to enslave them. The French writer Jean-Claude Carrière (1931-2021) will seize this story and his name, in a text that has become a classic, now available in the collection Papiers of Actes Sud.
Literature flourished on the bereaved island, first under the pen of Silvestre de Balboa Troya Quesada, who was born in the Canary Islands in 1563 but died in Cuba in 1640, and who is said to be the author of the first work written there, Espejo de paciencia, which was inspired by a real event: the kidnapping of a bishop by a privateer (French!) who demanded a ransom. In the following century, in 1730, the Havanese Santiago Pita y Borroto (1694-1755) published a play in Seville, Príncipe jardinero y fingido Cloridano
, which recounted the attempted seduction of a prince who pretended to be a gardener in order to better conquer his lady. This chivalrous comedy gave a spicy image of a royal court that, however, was not inscribed in a particular territory. Intellectual life gradually began to flourish locally, thanks to the creation of the University of Havana in 1728 and the appearance of newspapers in which poets such as Manuel de Zequeira y Arango (1764-1846), the first director of the Papel Periódico de La Habana and future governor of New Granada, and Manuel Justo de Rubalcava, his friend, a soldier who also worked as a sculptor, published. Together with another poet, Manuel María Pérez y Ramírez, who founded several literary magazines, they formed a trio that came to be known as "los tres Manueles". To conclude this century and begin the new one, it is necessary to mention two men who would open a path that would unfortunately be taken by many of their peers in the future, that of political exile. The first, the priest Félix Varela (1788-1853), had to rush to the United States because of his opinions and the publication of an essay in which he defended the abolition of slavery. The second, José María Heredia y Campuzano (1803-1839), also had to leave for New York in a hurry because he was involved in the so-called "de los soles de Bolívar" affair, a secret conspiracy to rid the island of Spanish settlers. He published his first verses - forerunners of his later success Himno del desterrado(Hymn of theExile) - in the American metropolis, from where he kept up an abundant correspondence with Domingo del Monte, a prominent literary critic of his time and a prolific letter writer.From romanticism to modernism
Another affair shook Cuba in the first half of the 19th century, the "conspiración de la escalera", in which two poets were associated who certainly had nothing to blame but the color of their skin. Indeed, slave uprisings had been going on on the island for several decades and the alleged conspiracy of 1844 led to numerous prosecutions, especially against Juan Francisco Manzano, a poet born a slave in 1797, he was able to buy his freedom only in 1837, and was the future author of the tragedy Zafira. Gabriel de la Concepción Valdes, a mestizo poet who used the pseudonym "Plácido" and was a singer of the Romantic movement (La Flor de caña, A una ingrata, Al Yumurí
). The latter, who was very famous in his time and also considered the father of the "criollismo" movement, was shot on June 28, 1844 in Matanzas, when he was only 35 years old.In that same year, another figure of the Romantic movement thought his life was over. The Cuban Gertrudis Gómez de Avellaneda had been living in Madrid for four years and had just had her first success with her play Munio Alfonso. Unfortunately, passion led her to the arms of the poet Gabriel García Tassara, who soon abandoned her, pregnant, in this foreign city. The playwright said goodbye to her career in Adiós a la lira. However, her destiny did not end there: the child did not live, she got married, was widowed twice, but continued to publish and accumulate honors. As a woman, she was not accepted as a candidate for the Real Academia Española, but this did not prevent her from being proclaimed national poetess on her native island. Gertrudis Gómez de Avellaneda was also the author of the first abolitionist novel, Sab (1841), which can be compared with the work Cecilia Valdés by Cirilo Villarde (1812-1894), who explored racism through a tragic love story. He was also a staunch defender of independence and had to go into exile, but never stopped fighting. His remains were brought back to Cuba after his death and placed in an anonymous grave. If this 19th century was already the century of all struggles, it was also the century of the forging of a national identity, hence the rise of the so-called "costumbrismo" (customs) and "siboneyismo" (close to Indianism) movements, in which José María de Cardenas y Rodríguez (Colección de artículos satíricos y de costumbres, 1847) and Juan Cristóbal Nápoles Fajardo (Rumores del hórmigo
, 1856) participated. Romanticism probably ended with the death of Juan Clemente Zenéa, who was shot in 1871 because of his commitment to independence. The modernism movement, on the other hand, was intimately linked to another politician: José Martí (1853-1895), "martyr of the struggle" and theorist of Castro's thought. His Vers livres are published by L'Harmattan, but it is also possible to read his 1895 "campaign diary" published in 2021 by CIDIHCA under the title Seule la lumière est comparable à mon bonheur. Modernism is also embodied by the dazzling Juana Borrero, who died of tuberculosis at the age of 18 in 1896, and who had just enough time to publish her poems in literary magazines(La Habana Elegante or Gris y Azul) and to receive the encouragement of an eminent poet, a friend of Rubén Darío: Julián del Casal (1863-1893), the author of Hojas al viento (1890) and Bustos y rimas (1893).A twentieth century always agitated
The new century opened in 1902 with the joy of the first declaration of independence, which was quickly stifled by a complicated political climate and a rapidly growing American protectorate. The time was not really propitious for culture, although new aspirations could be discerned. Thus, the mestizo Nicolás Guillén was inspired by the effervescence of Afro-American literature that was emerging in the United States ( Harlem Renaissance movement) and initiated the "negrismo" in his collections Motivis de Son and Songoro Cosongo, although his poetry was also based on other themes, such as his love for Cuba (Tengo), despite the exile to which he was forced. In the 1940s, magazines served as a mouthpiece for poets, such as Orígenes, which was co-founded by José Lezama Lima (1910-1976), who was no stranger to poetry, and in which he published excerpts from his most famous work, Paradiso, which can be found in translation in Points. This novel offers various entries, but above all it offers a rich picture of Havana at the dawn of the revolution. The relationship between Lima and the government will be complicated, but even with many obstacles, his influence on the Spanish-speaking writers of his time is undeniable. Similarly, Virgilio Piñera (1912-1979) was censored and condemned for his homosexuality, and for a time he chose to live in Argentina, where he wrote La Chair de René (available in French from Calmann-Lévy), published in 1952. This first novel is still an unclassifiable but now a classic, which will not let us forget that its author was forbidden for a long time to publish and to represent his theatrical work. Alejo Carpentier, a great traveler who was born in Lausanne in 1904 and died in Paris in 1980, is undoubtedly the Cuban writer with the greatest international reputation. He too was imprisoned for his commitments, but returned to the island where he grew up after the revolution, having taken advantage of his Parisian exile to befriend the French Surrealists. His work - multiple but willingly political, which is even tinged sometimes with a touch of magic realism - is published by Gallimard: Le Partage des eaux, Chasse à l'homme, Le Recours de la méthode
... Despite the sometimes poisonous atmosphere, a new generation born in the second half of the twentieth century is echoed beyond borders. It is worth mentioning Pedro Juan Gutiérrez, who was born in Matanzas in 1950 and who, in Trilogie sale de La Havane (Albin Michel), did not mince his words to describe the other side of the postcard, inviting the reader to follow him to the underbelly of his country where, despite everything, sometimes a glimmer of joy illuminates the despair. Leonardo Padura, his younger brother by 5 years, left journalism to become a screenwriter and writer, especially of detective novels. His best-known title is, however, of historical inspiration, since in The Man Who Loved Dogs he is interested in Ramón Mercader, the assassin of Trotsky. Let's also mention Poussière dans le vent (Métailié, 2021), which received the Transfuge Prize for best Latin American novel. Finally, Zoé Valdés' career suggests that perhaps not everything is settled, since the publication of her book Le Néant quotidien (Babel) cost her an exile in Paris in 1995, where she still remains, for what she told about the Castro period. The list of her novels - and her successes - has since continued to grow: Danse avec la vie, La Femme qui pleure, Les Muses ne dorment pas..
