Arts and Literature of Cuba

liked best. “Those I still haven’t written,” he replied. He died in 1989 at the age of 87.

Dulce María Loynaz: Late-Arriving Acclaim

The literary career of Dulce María Loynaz followed an unusu- al trajectory. She was a relatively obscure, if not completely for- gotten, poet throughout most of her life. In her eighties—a cou- ple decades after she’d stopped writing poetry—she suddenly won fame and accolades. Born in Havana in 1902, Dulce María Loynaz grew up amid wealth and privilege. Her mother came from one of Cuba’s richest families. Her father was a famous general in Cuba’s war for independence from Spain. While her childhood could best be described as sheltered, Loynaz traveled widely from her early adult years. She also obtained a law degree—something that was unusual for a woman of her era. However, she practiced only sporadically. Loynaz had a passion for writing poetry, but she was an intensely private person and wasn’t interested in promoting her work. Some of her poems were published in literary jour- nals during her late teens and twenties. A volume of her col- lected works appeared in 1938. Loynaz’s style was formal and classical. Her major themes included desire, love, time, and loss. Her perspective, though, was often strikingly fresh. For example, the long poem “La novia de Lázaro” (“The Bride of Lazarus”)—which draws on the biblical story of the man raised from the dead by Jesus—is told from the point of view of Lazarus’s beloved. At the sight of

18

Arts and Literature of Cuba