English Translations of Cubans Writing From the Island
14ymedio, Xavier Carbonell, Salamanca, 2 January 2022 — In a calm voice, Ernesto Hernández Busto (Havana, 1968) says that, at the funeral of José Lezama Lima, an alleged spy filmed everything with a camera. The video, which no one has seen, must have been hidden in the secret archives of ICAIC [Cuban Institute of Cinematographic … Continue reading “‘To Write the Biography of Lezama is to Write a History of Cuban Culture’”
14ymedio, Xavier Carbonell, Salamanca, 21 August 2022 — In order to “stir up the anthill,” on the 45th anniversary of the death of Cuban writer José Lezama Lima (1910-1976), last Sunday the filmmaker Ernesto Fundora, at the Rosario Castellanos Bookstore of the Fund for Economic Culture, in Mexico City, screened his documentary “Lezama Lima: Soltar la … Continue reading “A Documentary Rescues the Writer Lezama Lima from the Clutches of the Cuban Regime”
Luis Felipe Rojas, 9 August 2016 — He was the son of a colonel in the army, but was born to be the literary father to several generations. José Lezama Lima departed this life on 9 August 1976, and left a vast canon of work in which he wanted to embrace literary criticism, poetry, and narrative (stories … Continue reading “40 Years Without Lezama Lima / Luis Felipe Rojas”
14ymedio, Jose Gabriel Barrenchea, Santa Clara, 24 August 2015 –One morning, I had just arrived at the Cabaña Fort during the days of the 2014 Havana International Book Fair, and on consulting the daily program discovered that at this very moment the Bolivian vice president Alvara Garcia Linera was offering a videoconference in the Lezama … Continue reading “Leftist Imperialism In Latin America / 14ymedio, Jose Gabriel Barrenchea”
Almost thirty years after the fall of the communist bloc, the Cuban writer José Lezama Lima is still dealing with “Moscow” through the ongoing influence of the Soviet Union, to which he himself fell victim, dying after having been ostracized after the principles of dialectical materialism were brought to bear on him. Though long dead and … Continue reading “Lezama Lima vs. Moscow / Francis Sanchez”
Dear Desideri, Receive once more a warm embrace from this friend “beyond the capital.” I welcome your fair challenge to the title of “GROUP” being applied to the large and diverse number of participants in the current debate, and the last paragraphs, about our “culture of spectacle” (and their “controls”), motivate me even more. But … Continue reading “Messages from José Rojas Bez / POLEMICA: The 2007 Intellectual Debate”
FROM “THE FLIGHT OF THE CAT”* TO YOUR MOTHER’S TWAT** Orlando Luis Pardo Lazo There’s the lyrical Lezama Lima, of unintelligible flight, before whose spirals we bow because to read them would be in vain, and a pain. And good for us. That Lezamian lyricism never had much success, except for quoting and thus accumulating … Continue reading “A LEZAMA FOR MOPPING (DUPING) / Orlando Luis Pardo Lazo”
I still remember my first encounter with Lezama. In 1973, a bookshelf in my first office called my attention (another bookshelf, not one I already I mentioned) packed with a single book. The same book from the collection Cuban Letters filled three shelves. In the time I worked there, no one took a single one … Continue reading “Lezama’s Hundredth Birthday / Regina Coyula”
14ymedio, Yaiza Santos, Madrid, 8 March 2023 – Xavier Carbonell (born in Camajuaní, Villa Clara, Cuba in 1995) is spurred on by the desire to distance himself from the most common themes of other living Cuban writers (the pain of being exiled from a place, the misery of being in another place) and aims, above … Continue reading “Cuban Writer Xavier Carbonell Presents His Novel ‘Time’s Castaway’ in Madrid”
14ymedio, Havana, 1 January 2022 — The return of Detective Mario Conde, the adventures of Federico García Lorca in Havana and a fast-paced essay on the concentration camps on the Island marked the route of the Cuban book in 2022. 14ymedio proposes an account of the best titles from authors residing inside and outside the … Continue reading “2022, a Fertile Year Outside the Island for Books Linked to Cuba”
More than two decades after the postmortem repair of the literary legacy of Virgilio Piñera (Cardenas-Havana, August 4, 1912 – October 18, 1979), most people who speak of the author have barely read his stories, poems, essays, dramas and tragedies. What are they talking about then? His homosexuality and aspects of his personality such as … Continue reading “Theatrical Virgilio / Miguel Iturria Savón”
Although the organizers of The Book Fair of Havana, held from February 9 to 19 in the old fortress of La Cabaña, sent the texts to the provincial bookstores where they will continue the sales and presentations, the event is now part of the past because the capital’s publishers finalized their rituals of promotion and … Continue reading “Goodbye to the 2012 Book Fair / Miguel Iturria Savón”
From very young age I liked to read novels of manners. The genre, of one form or another, most intellectual or popular, in the eighteenth century was seen in the work of the historian José Martín Félix de Arrate, in the nineteenth century of Luis Victorian Betancourt and in the twentieth century in the work … Continue reading “Chronicles of Customs / Fernando Dámaso”
With the Gala of the National Ballet of Cuba for the 80th anniversary of Alicia Alonso’s stage debut on Thursday, December 29, and the presentation of the Nutcracker on Sunday, December 1, the Gran Teatro of Havana closed its 2011 season and inaugurated its 2012 programming. The super spectacle of Thursday was the touchstone of … Continue reading “The Celebration of Alicia / Miguel Iturria Savón”
It’s beautiful to sit in front of the TV and contemplate the end of the Revolution. “Cuba’s Reasons,” they call it on Monday nights, this material clearly anonymous. My blog, which appeared for the first time on the small screen, is also called Monday. Post-Revolution Mondays. A slightly obsolete title. The Revolution is no longer … Continue reading “WEBDITORIAL / Orlando Luis Pardo Lazo”
