A mixed identity
Let's take a moment to remember that, before the arrival of the Europeans, Cuba was inhabited by Cyboneys and 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 Mayas of Yucatán or the Yanomamis of Amazonia. Living by cultivation and hunting, organized in a society with no question of private property, believing in the gods 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 in oral tradition that Cyboneys may have survived in the mountains. The Caonao massacre - perpetrated by the conquistador Pánfilo de Narváez and his men in 1513 - had an indirect impact on literature when it became philosophy. The Dominican Bartolomé de las Casas watched helplessly as this tragic episode forged his conviction in the need for pacifist conquest. It was this point of view that he supported at 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 asserted that the Indians did not belong to the human species, and that there was therefore no reason to spare them or hesitate to enslave them. French writer Jean-Claude Carrière (1931-2021) seized on this story and his name in a text that has become a classic, now available in the Papiers collection from Actes Sud.
Nevertheless, literature flourished on the bereaved island, first under the pen of Silvestre de Balboa Troya Quesada, who was born in the Canaries in 1563 but died in Cuba in 1640. He is said to be the author of the first work written on the island, Espejo de paciencia, inspired by a real event: the kidnapping of a bishop by a (French!) privateer 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, recounting the attempted seduction of a prince who pretended to be a gardener in order to win over his beloved. Above all, this chivalrous comedy gave a spicy image of a royal court that, however, was not rooted in any particular territory.
Intellectual life gradually began to take off locally, with the creation of the University of Havana in 1728 and the appearance of journals featuring 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 his friend Manuel Justo de Rubalcava, a soldier who also dabbled in sculpture. Together with another poet - Manuel Maria Pérez y Ramírez, who founded several literary journals - they formed a trio that came to be known as "los tres Manueles". To conclude this century and begin the new one, we must finally mention two men who were to pave a path unfortunately 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 advocated the abolition of slavery. The second, José María Heredia y Campuzano (1803-1839), also had to make a hasty departure for New York because of his involvement in the "de los soles de Bolívar" affair, a secret conspiracy to rid the island of Spanish colonists. He published his first verses - foreshadowing 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, an eminent literary critic of his day and a prolific letter writer.
From romanticism to modernism
In the first half of the 19th century, another affair shook Cuba: the "conspiración de la escalera", involving two poets who certainly had nothing to be ashamed of other than the color of their skin. Indeed, slave uprisings had been going on on the island for several decades, and the alleged plot of 1844 led to numerous prosecutions, notably against Juan Francisco Manzano - a poet born into slavery in 1797, able to buy his freedom only in 1837, and future author of the tragedy Zafira, - and Gabriel de la Concepción Valdes, a half-breed using the pseudonym "Plácido" and a singer of the Romantic movement(La Flor de caña, A une ingrata, Al Yumurí). Plácido, also considered the father of the "criollismo" movement, was shot on June 28, 1844 in Matanzas, aged just 35.
In the same year, another figure of the Romantic movement saw his life come to an end. It had been four years since the Cuban Gertrudis Gómez de Avellaneda had settled in Madrid, where she had just achieved her first success with her play Munio Alfonso. Alas, passion led her into the arms of the poet Gabriel García Tassara, who soon abandoned her, pregnant, in this foreign city. The playwright bid farewell to her career with Adiós a la lira. Yet her destiny did not end there: the child did not live, she married, was twice widowed, but continued to publish and accumulate honors. As a woman, she was unsuccessful in her application to the Real Academia Española, but this did not prevent her from being proclaimed national poetess on her native island. Gertrudis Gómez de Avellaneda also wrote the first abolitionist novel, Sab (1841), which resonates with the work of Cecilia Valdés by Cirilo Villarde (1812-1894), who explored racism through a tragic love story. A staunch defender of independence, he was forced into exile, but never gave up the fight. His remains were brought back to Cuba after his death and placed in an anonymous grave. If the 19th century was already the century of struggle, it was also the century of the forging of a national identity, hence the rise of the "costumbrismo" ("customs") and "siboneyismo" ("Indianism") movements, in which José Maria de Cardenas y Rodríguez(Colección de artículos satíricos y de costumbres, 1847) and Juan Cristóbal Nápoles Fajardo(Rumores del hórmigo, 1856) took part.
Romanticism probably ended with the death of Juan Clemente Zenéa, shot in 1871 for his commitment to independence. The modernism movement, meanwhile, was closely linked to another politician: José Martí (1853-1895), "martyr of the struggle" and theorist of Castro 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 barely had time to publish her poems in literary magazines(La Habana Elegante or Gris y Azul) and receive encouragement from an eminent poet and friend of Rubén Darío: Julián del Casal (1863-1893), 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, but was soon stifled by a complicated political climate and a rapidly burdensome American protectorate. This was not exactly a propitious time for culture, although some new aspirations could be discerned. The mestizo Nicolás Guillén, for example, was inspired by the effervescence of Afro-American literature emerging in the United States (the 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, notably his love for Cuba(Tengo) despite the exile to which he was forced. In the 1940s, the poets' voices were heard in magazines such as Orígenes, co-founded by José Lezama Lima (1910-1976), who was no novice at this and published excerpts from his best-known work, Paradiso, in translation published by Points. This novel offers a variety of entries, but above all provides a rich picture of Havana at the dawn of the revolution. Lima's relationship with the government was complicated, but even in the face of many obstacles, his influence on the Spanish-speaking writers of his time is undeniable. In the same way, Virgilio Piñera (1912-1979) was censored and condemned for his homosexuality, and for a time chose to live in Argentina, where he wrote La Chair de René (available in French from Calmann-Lévy), self-published in 1952. This first novel is still unclassifiable, but is now a classic, notwithstanding the fact that its author was banned for a long time from publishing and performing his theatrical work. Alejo Carpentier, an avid 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. Gallimard published his work, which was multi-faceted but deliberately political, with occasional touches of magic realism: 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 found an echo beyond France's borders. Pedro Juan Gutiérrez, for example, was born in Matanzas in 1950, and in Trilogie sale de La Havane (Albin Michel), he does not mince his words when describing the other side of the postcard, inviting the reader to follow him into the underbelly of his country, where, despite everything, sometimes a glimmer of joy lights up the despair. Leonardo Padura, 5 years his junior, left journalism to become a screenwriter and writer, notably of detective novels. His best-known title, however, is rather historically inspired: in The Man Who Loved Dogs, he focuses on Ramón Mercader, Trotsky's assassin. Other titles include Poussière dans le vent (éditions Métailié, 2021), which won the Transfuge prize for best Latin American novel, and Ouragans Tropicaux (éditions Métailié, 2023). Finally, Zoé Valdés' career suggests that all may not be over yet, since the publication of her book Le Néant quotidien (Babel) cost her exile in Paris in 1995, where she remains to this day, for her account of the Castro period. Since then, her list of novels - and successes - has continued to grow: Danse avec la vie, La Femme qui pleure, Les Muses ne dorment pas..
