- Nicolás Guillén
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This article is about the Cuban poet. For the documentarian filmmaker (his nephew), see Nicolás Guillén Landrián.
Nicolás Guillén 
Born July 10, 1902
CamagüeyDied July 16, 1989
HavanaGenres Poetry Subjects Black poetry (poesía negra) Nicolás Cristóbal Guillén Batista (10 July 1902 – 16 July 1989) was a Cuban poet, journalist, political activist, and writer. He is best remembered as the national poet of Cuba.[1]
Guillén was born in Camagüey, Cuba. He studied law at the University of Havana, but he soon abandoned a legal career and worked as a typographer and journalist.
His poetry was published in various magazines from the early 1920s and his first collection, Motivos de son, appeared in 1930. West Indies, Ltd., published in 1934, was Guillén's first collection of poetry with political implications.[2] Cuba's dictatorial Machado regime had been overthrown in 1933, but political repression in the following years intensified. In 1936, with other editors of Mediodía, Guillén was arrested on trumped-up charges, and spent some time in jail. In 1937 he joined the Communist Party[2] and made his first trip abroad–to attend a Congress of Writers and Artists in Spain. During his travels in the country he covered Spain's Civil War as a magazine reporter.[1]
Guillén returned to Cuba via Guadeloupe. He stood as a Communist in the local elections of 1940. The following year he was refused a visa to enter the United States, but he travelled widely over the next twenty years – in South America, China and Europe. Guillén's poetry was increasingly becoming imbued with issues of cross-cultural Marxist dialectic.[3] He was prevented by the Batista government from entering Cuba in 1953,[1] but was welcomed back by Fidel Castro after the revolution, becoming appointed president of the Unión Nacional de Escritores de Cuba–the National Cuban Writers' Union–in 1961.[2] He also wrote some evocative and poignant poetry highlighting social conditions, such as "Problemas de Subdesarrollo" and "Dos Niños". He was awarded the Stalin Peace Prize in 1954, which was later renamed for Lenin under de-Stalinization and also the Laureate Of The International Botev Prize in 1976.
Nicolás Guillén died in 1989 at age 87 and was buried in the Colon Cemetery, Havana. His nephew was experimental Cuban filmmaker Nicolás Guillén Landrián (1938–2003).
Contents
Literary works
In the 1920s, when Afro-Cuban sounds and instruments were changing the world of Cuban music, Afro-Cuban culture began to spread to the realms of art and literature. Initially, Afro-Cuban poetry, or "negrista" poetry, was mainly published by white Cubans such as Emilio Ballagas, Alejo Capentier, and José Tallet. It wasn’t until the 1930s when Guillén would appeal to the literary society by giving an accurate personal account of the struggles, dreams, and mannerisms in the Afro-Cuban.[4]
Guillén is probably the best-known representative of the "poesía negra" ("black poetry") that tried to create a synthesis between black and white cultural elements, a "poetic mestizaje".[5] Characteristic for his poems is the use of onomatopoetic words ("Sóngoro Cosongo", "Mayombe-bombe") that try to imitate the sound of drums or the rhythm of the son. Silvestre Revueltas's symphonic composition Sensemayá was based on Guillén's poem of the same name, and became that composer's best known work.
Guillen made an international mark for himself with the publication of Motivos de son. The work was inspired by the living conditions of Afro-Cubans and the popular music of son. The publication consisted of eight short poems that were composed using the everyday language of the Afro Cubans. The collection stood out in the literary world because it emphasized and established the importance of Afro-Cuban culture as a valid genre in Cuban literature.[6]
In Man-Making words: Selected Poems of Nicolás Guillén, Angel Aguier, in reference to Motivos de son, wrote that "the son, a passionate dance born of the Negro-white encounter under Caribbean skies in which the words and music of the people culminate in song, is the basic substance of the elemental poetry which Guillen intuitively felt as the expression of the Cuban spirit.… He specifically chose the son as the mixed artistic creation of the two races that make up the Cuban population; for the son, in form and content, runs the full gamut of every aspect of our national character." [7] This quote establishes how the son, such a profound musical genre of that time, initiated the fusion of black and white Cuban culture, which, with Guillén's incorporation of the genre into his writings, symbolized and created a pathway for the same cultural fusion in Cuban literature.
Guillén's unique approach of incorporating the son into poetry was one the aspects his literary volume Sóngoro consongo (1931). In this literary work, Guillén included poems that depicted the lives of Cubans and emphasized the importance of Afro-Cuban culture in Cuban history. Sóngoro consongo authentically captures the realistic essence of the Afro-Cuban lifestyle and the ways in which they deal with their personal situations.[8]
One of Guillén's works, "La canción del bongó", from Sóngoro consongo is a fusion of West African and Hispanic literary styles, contributing to the uniqueness of Guillén's literary vision.
Esta es la canción del bongó:
—Aquí el que más fino sea,
responde, si llamo yo.
Unos dicen: Ahora mismo,
otros dicen: Allá voy.
Pero mi repique bronco,
pero mi profunda voz,
convoca al negro y al blanco,
que bailan el mismo son,
cueripardos y almiprietos
más de sangre que de sol,
pues quien por fuera no es de noche,
por dentro ya oscureció.
Aquí el que más fino sea,
responde, si llamo yo.En esta tierra, mulata
de africano y español
(Santa Bárbara de un lado,
del otro lado, Changó),
siempre falta algún abuelo,
cuando no sobra algún Don
y hay títulos de Castilla
con parientes en Bondó:
Vale más callarse, amigos,
y no menear la cuestión,
porque venimos de lejos,
y andamos de dos en dos.
Aquí el que más fino sea,
responde si llamo yo.Habrá quién llegue a insultarme,
pero no de corazón;
habrá quién me escupa en público,
cuando a solas me besó...
A ése, le digo:
—Compadre,
ya me pedirás perdón,
ya comerás de mi ajiaco,
ya me darás la razón,
ya me golpearás el cuero,
ya bailarás a mi voz,
ya pasearemos del brazo,
ya estarás donde yo estoy:
ya vendrás de abajo arriba,
¡que aquí el más alto soy yo!This poem, like many in Sóngoro consongo, incorporates the rhythmic sounds of son. The poem has a rhythm, unlike most poems that focus on the number of syllables, which focuses on the marking of stressed and unstressed syllables in strong and weak beats. "La canción del bongó" is one of Guillén's poems that truly stand out, according to Dellita L. Martin, because "it is the only one to indicate Guillén's painfully increasing awareness of racial conflicts in Cuba".[9]
Major works
- Motivos de son (1930)
- Sóngoro cosongo (1931)
- West Indies Ltd. (1934)
- España: poema en cuatro angustias y una esperanza (1937)
- Cantos para soldados y sones para turistas (1937)
- El son entero (1947)
- Elegías (1948–1958)
- Tengo (1964)
- Poemas de amor (1964)
- El gran zoo (1967)
- La rueda dentada (1972)
- El diario que a diario (1972)
- Por el mar de las Antillas anda un barco de papel. Poemas para niños y mayores de edad (1977)
Discography
- Antologia Oral: Poesia Hispanoamericana del Siglo XX / Oral Anthology: Spanish-American Poetry of the 20th Century (Folkways Records, 1960)
- Nicolás Guillén: Poet Laureate of Revolutionary Cuba (Folkways, 1982)
See also
References
- ^ a b c "Nicolas Guillen, 87, National Poet of Cuba". Associated Press. The New York Times. 18 July 1989: A19. http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=950DEED61E3AF93BA25754C0A96F948260
- ^ a b c "Nicolás Guillén 1902–1989". Enotes.com. Poetry Criticism. Retrieved 9 March 2009. http://www.enotes.com/poetry-criticism/guillen-nicolas
- ^ Tapscott, Stephen. Twentieth-Century Latin American Poetry: A Bilingual Anthology. Austin, Texas: University of Texas Press, 1996. ISBN 0292781407, ISBN 9780292781405. P. 176.
- ^ Benítez-Rojo, Antonio. The role of music in the emergence of afro-cuban culture. Research in African Literatures 29. (1998) : 1.179-189
- ^ Duno Gottberg, Luis, Solventando las diferencias: la ideología del mestizaje en Cuba. Madrid, Iberoamericana – Frankfurt am Main, Vervuert, 2003
- ^ Nicholas Guillén, Cuban Poet.Books on Cuba. 7 March 2010: http://www.nathanielturner.com/nicolasguillen.htm
- ^ Auguier, Angel, and J.M. Bernstein. The Cuban Poetry of Nicolas Guillen. Phylon 12. (1951): 1. 29-36. 5 March 2010: http://www.jstor.org/stable/272318
- ^ "Nicolás Guillén 1902–1989" Enotes.com. Poetry Criticism. 7 March 2010: http://www.enotes.com/poetry-criticism/guillen-nicolas
- ^ Matin, Dellita L."West African and Hispanic Elements in Nicolás Guillén's ‘La canción del bongó’" South Atlantic Bulletin. 45.1 (1980): 47-53. JSTOR
- Hernández, Consuelo. "Por las rutas del Caribe: Nicolás Guillén, Nancy Morejón y otras voces." Voces y perspectivas en la poesía latinoamericana del siglo XX. Madrid: Visor libros y Agencia Española de Cooperación Internacional, 2009
- Auguier, Angel, and J.M. Bernstein. The Cuban Poetry of Nicolas Guillen. Phylon 12. (1951): 1. 29-36. 5 March 2010: http://www.jstor.org/stable/272318
- "Nicolás Guillén 1902–1989" Enotes.com. Poetry Criticism. 7 March 2010: http://www.enotes.com/poetry-criticism/guillen-nicolas
- "Nicolas Guillen, Cuban Poet" Books on Cuba. 7 March 2010: http://www.nathanielturner.com/nicolasguillen.htm
External links
Categories:- 1902 births
- 1989 deaths
- Cuban communists
- Cuban journalists
- Cuban poets
- Cuban people of Black African descent
- Marxist journalists
- Marxist writers
- People from Camagüey
- Stalin Peace Prize recipients
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