Arts and Literature of Cuba

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.