Arts and Literature of Cuba
12
memorably expressed the pain he felt at Cuba’s subjugation by
Spain in one of his most famous poems, “Dos patrias” (“Two
Homelands”). The Nobel Prize–winning Mexican poet and
critic Octavio Paz said that poem “condenses [the] whole move-
ment [of
modernismo
] and announces, too, the arrival of con-
temporary poetry” (the excerpt here is translated by William
Little of Santa Fe College in Gainesville, Florida):
I have two lands: Cuba and the night.
Or are they only one? No sooner
Does the long-veiled majestic sun set
Holding a carnation in one hand than
Does Cuba, like a widow, appear to me.
I know what that blood-red carnation is
That’s trembling in its hand. It is empty,
My chest is destroyed, and empty too
Where my heart used to be. It’s time
To begin dying. The night is good
For saying good-bye.
Nicolás Guillén:
Champion of Afro-Cubanism
One of the foremost representatives of a literary and cultural
movement known as
Afrocubanismo
, or Afro-Cubanism,
Nicolás Guillén would come to be regarded as the national poet
of Cuba. He ranks among Latin America’s most celebrated
writers.