Today brings us together the presentation of the volume Ask for his Mystery of Life, the conception of which would be motivated by the celebration of the centenary of Cintio Vitier, one of the most prominent figures in Cuban literature, and the group of intellectuals that formed the group. and the magazine Orígenes, widely known as a storyteller, poet, researcher, and self-confessed supporter of the character and work of Martí. His versatility in the field of literary studies and criticism has led to this obligatory revival of his texts, in particular a selection of ten essays published by the magazine Casa de las Américas since 1977, a reflection of thirty years of intellectual work and that , are representative of his taste and admiration for figures of Cuban and Latin American culture, symbolic works that draw us in an eternal journey his particular vision of Juan Marinello, José Lezama Lima, Alfonso Reyes, César Vallejo and Simón Bolívar return, the Martí and focuses on the history of Cuba, as the culmination of his interpretation of the reality in each of these figures and in their corresponding historical moments.
The essays “Marinello in two books”, “Hallazgo de una profecía”, “Regalo de Reyes” and “Notas en el centenario de Vallejo” represent approaches to the authors that are suggested in almost all titles: to honor Marinello in the multiple Valuation, to which Vitier was invited, evokes memories of a reading youth, in which two titles—Poética, Essays in Enthusiasm (1933) and Hispano-American Literature: Men, Meditations (1937)—reveal the writer’s essence in style and thought . The first, by the decidedly normative character he imposes, establishing, in his own words, “the duty of poetry at a crucial moment in our history: the 1930s, in the midst of the struggle against the Machadists”, and his critical look focuses on the Cuban poetic avant-garde exemplified in the voices of Eugenio Florit, Emilio Vallagas, Manuel Navarro Luna and Nicolás Guillén. On the other hand, Hispano-American Literature…, a volume in which his first three essays stand out, one dedicated to Gabriela Mistral and two to José Martí, the latter of crucial importance since in it “the criteria that guided It already appear successive reviews of Martí, essentially focused on calibrating him as a literary creator».
Martí will also be the pillar on which he bases the discovery and interpretation of an unpublished poem by Lezama Lima around 1985, thirty-two after its writing, the central motif of the article “Hallazgo de una profecía” and the verse that Vitier with « La casa del alibi», the Sibylline sense of which he insists when he summarizes: «The period beginning with the frustration of the Martí Republic is interpreted by Lezama in this poem as a march through the desert, similar to the one brought about by the book of Exodus in the Old Testament […]», and when he mentions on his last page: «If this poem was written before the attack on the Moncada Barracks, it is almost unbelievably clairvoyant; If it was written later, when the revolutionary momentum seemed to have failed again, it is a prophetic testimony even in the realm of symbols.
Editor Claudia Torras Mendoza of the Casa de las Américas Editorial Fund.
“Regalo de Reyes” and “Notas en el centenario de Vallejo” are a clear homage by Cintio to both authors from their respective geographical and stylistic realities. De Alfonso Reyes, because of his personal approach and the “grace” he discovers in him, sums up its relevance by saying: “What would Mexico be without Reyes, without what Reyes means within the Mexican that is under the auspices of Sor Juana began?” . For its part, his centenary of Vallejo implies a journey through his work that involves the rediscovery of tone in the poetics that characterizes each of his books. The individual perceptions of «The Black Heralds», «Trilce», «Human Poems» and «Spain, take this chalice from me», according to the reasons they bring to light, are combined and summed up by Vitier when he says: “We cannot take Vallejo’s own dualities, fought as unruly as they are […]. We cannot take Vallejo’s Christianity or his Marxism […]. We cannot take away the modernism of its avant-garde […]. We cannot take away a single particle of what it was, because in it we begin to be, or rather to speak, to say what we are. […]».It is undeniable that Martí’s presence is central in this volume, and the articles “Challenging Life, Its Mystery”, “Martí’s Vision of Haiti”, “Martí in Cuba’s Contemporary Period”, “Spain in Martí”, “Our Man of 98” and “Martí, Bolívar and the Cuban Education”, texts which, although representing different facets and studies of the Master’s life and work, form an organic whole in which all his visions come together and update our perception of history: that of a Martí who appropriates the word, enriches it, exalts it in his love for Bolívar and for the champions of the freedom struggles in America, whose “greatest influences were not received from him”. […] the heroes of word and thought, but the heroes and martyrs of our independence […] not only the ethical and political legacy, but also the greatest stylistic impetus […]»; that of the chronicler Martí, in whom the love for the beautiful Haitian land grows with each stay, for its people, its nature, its customs, stories of brotherly love that Cintio sums up when he tells us: “So he was like an unknown brother Martí to his black brothers from Haiti, from Santo Domingo, from Jamaica, from the United States, from Cuba. The iron ring of the political prisoner’s shackle was not just an alliance with Cuba, it was an alliance with all of them”; that of a Martí, which today is necessary for the ideological formation of a country that is losing its children, which risks deviating from the required quality of education, which is why Vitier warns us: “[…] Let’s try hope; Without pedagogical bureaucracy, let’s systematize the invincible hope; Let’s make the experiment of a Martí formation that goes from the children’s circle to the university specialties and ends only with life»; that of a Martí who knows deep pain, exile, oppression, but respects the Spanish people, his people, his artists, who nostalgically returns to Spain as his first love; that of a prophetic Martí, «[…] the only Cuban willing to face the historic turning point of 1998 politically and culturally […] the same whose death in battle three years earlier had involuntarily and tragically facilitated this turning point»; and finally that of a Martí that makes Simón Bolívar a teacher, a role model for youth, and both in turn pedagogical guides for this author who summarizes essential pedagogical principles and objectives such as the study of the history of the homeland, “of our specific”, that is “our way of thinking and acting, which gives people character and is concentrated and generalized in their greatest heroes and creators”, the “common man”, the “the intimate-ethical heritage and aesthetics – of every human being» and finally as the nucleus the critical and creative exercise of this poet whose work calls us this afternoon, «life as service and as poetry».
Cover Photo: Presentation of electronic books published by the Casa de las Américas Editorial Fund in 2022. From left to right: from the Casa de las Américas Editorial Fund, Natalie Roque Vega; Claudia Torras Mendoza, Nisleidys Flores Carmona and Amanda Sánchez Vega from the study program Original Cultures of the Casa de las Americas.
(taken from the window)