Dulce María Loynaz

Monument to Loynaz in Puerto de la Cruz

Daughter of the famous General Enrique Loynaz del Castillo, a hero of the Cuban Liberation Army and author of Cuban National Anthem lyrics; and sister of poet Enrique Loynaz Muñoz. Dulce María was born in Havana City, on December 10, 1902, in a family of great sensibility towards artistic and cultural manifestations and deep patriotic feelings, home schooled, she grew up in a familiar environment highly propitious for poetry.

Biography

Although Dulce María lived a sheltered life during her childhood, in her early adulthood her life was much more adventurous, including experiences available at that time only to wealthy young women, even outside of Cuba. She published a number of poems in her teens and twenties. She completed the Doctorate of Civil Law at the University of Havana in 1927, although she practiced law rarely. She was able to travel widely. In addition, her talents and her family’s social position brought her into personal contact with some of the major Spanish-language authors of the century, including ill-fated Spanish author Federico García Lorca and Chilean poet Gabriela Mistral (Mistral won the Nobel Prize in 1945), Cuban author Alejo Carpentier and the Spanish writer Juan Ramón Jiménez, who won the Nobel Prize.

She published her first poems in La Nación, on 1920. Around those years, she travelled to North American, Europe and some other countries highlighting, Turkey, Syria, Libya, Palestine and Egypt (1929), Mexico (1937), South America (1946-1947) and Canarias Islands (1947-1951) where she was declared adoptive daughter. She achieved her Doctorade in Civil Law at Havana University. She was a practicing lawyer even though she disliked it, but stopped practicing in 1961.

In 1950, she published weekly chronics at different publications of the epoch such as El País, Excélsior, Social, Grafos, Diario de la Marina, El Mundo, Revista Cubana, Revista Bimestre Cubana and Orígenes. In 1953, she attended, as guest of Salamanca University, to V anniversary celebration of Catholic King and Queen's birth.

Her book Poemas sin nombre (Untitled Poems) was translated to Italian on 1955. She offered conferences and readings, not only in Cuba but also in Spain and Latin America. She was elected as member of Arts and Literature National Academy on 1951, of the Cuban Academy of Language on 1959 and the Spanish Real Academy of Language on 1968.

Real academy of Spanish Language nominated her to Miguel de Cervantes Prize in 1984. In 1985, Poesías Escogidas (Selected Poems) was published in Havana and her poems book Bestiarium (written before 1959). During these years, she gave conferences, speeches, received prizes and condecorations and was bestowed for different Cuban cultural institutions.

The sobriety of her lyric expression, her exquisite handling of language and master use of Castilian Language were the main reasons to take into account to confer her The King Alphonse the Wise Order (Spain) and on November 5, 1992, the Miguel de Cervantes y Saavedra Literature Prize, honorable distinction she received in Spain in 1993 from King Juan Carlos I's hands. This is considered like the Nobel prize in the world of the Spanish Literature.

In 1959 she voluntarily stopped writing and publishing in Cuba. In a situation such as the Cuba of the past 40 years, it is not surprising that a person as private in temperament as Dulce María Loynaz would seclude herself, or that her public statements have always been extremely discreet, patriotic and yet non-political. More perplexing is the fact that, according to all her closest friends, she entirely stopped writing poetry when the Revolution triumphed in 1959. Although her work was characterized by so many of her friends as a private vocation, perhaps the total disappearance of the social world which fostered it, silenced her.

The discovery of her work by a large and enthusiastic audience in her home country when she was in her 80’s, really for the first time and after more than 25 years of internal exile, must have been like the return of the dove in her poem, “Noah,” carrying the green branch that signifies a safe harbor. Fe de vida (Life's Faith) her last work, saw the light on 1993, while celebrating in Pinar del Río, the First Ibero American Meeting about her work and life. Furthermore, some texts from her delicate creation have been musicalized by different singers/writers.

She received several awards among them: National Order Orden Carlos Manuel de Céspedes, Order Félix Varela of the Culture, National Culture Distinctive Award, and the Alejo Carpentier Medal (Cuba). She was awarded the Cuban National Award of Literature (1987).

Dulce María Loynaz died in 1997 and was interred in the Colon Cemetery, Havana.

Some of her published work includes

Versos (Verses). Madrid,1950.
Poemas sin nombre (Nameless Poems). Aguilar.
Bestiarium (Bestiary). Poems
Poemas naúfragos (Shipwrecked poems). Editorial Letras Cubanas, 1991.
Jardín (Garden). Lyric novel. Aguilar, Madrid, 1951.
Un verano en Tenerife (A summer in Tenerife). Memoir. Aguilar, Madrid, 1958.
Carta de Amor al Rey Tut-Ank-Amen (Love Letter to King Tutankhamen).
Poems Without Name. Bilingual: English translations by Harriet de Onís. Editorial José Martí, 1993.
A woman in her garden : selected poems of Dulce Maria Loynaz. Dulce María Loynaz; Judith Kerman, 2002.

Further reading

English

• Modern Spanish American poets. First series / María Antonia Salgado., 2003
• A place in the sun? : women writers in Twentieth-century Cuba / Catherine Davies., 1997
• Tropics of history : Cuba imagined / Alan West., 1997
• Feminist readings on Spanish and Latin-American literature / Lisa P Condé., 1991

Spanish

• La música del agua : poesía y referencia en la obra de Dulce María Loynaz / María Lucía Puppo., 2006
• Contra el silencio : otra lectura de la obra de Dulce María Loynaz / Zaida Capote., 2005
• Jardín, Tenerife y poesía : fe de vida de Dulce María Loynaz / Virgilio López Lemus., 2005
• Dulce María Loynaz cien años después / Humberto López Cruz., 2004
• Dulce María Loynaz : estudios de la obra de una cubana universal / Virgilio López Lemus., 2000
• Escrituras poéticas de una nación : Dulce María Loynaz, Juana Rosa Pita y Carlota Caulfield / Jesús J Barquet., 1999
• Margen acuático : poesía de Dulce María Loynaz / Asunción Horno Delgado., 1998
• Un encuentro con Dulce María Loynaz / Vicente González Castro., 1994
• Homenaje a Dulce María Loynaz : obra literaria, poesía y prosa, estudios y comentarios / Ana Rosa Núñez., 1993
• Dulce María Loynaz / Pedro Simón., 1991
• Tres poetas hispanoamericanos : Dulce María Loynaz, Jaime Torres Bodet, José Martí / Alicia G R Aldaya., 1978

External links

• Website about Dulce María Includes pictures, poems in English and in Spanish by Dulce María.
• Poems by Dulce María in Spanish.
• The Poets.
• Dulce

Persondata
Name	Loynaz
Alternative names
Short description
Date of birth	1902
Place of birth
Date of death	1997
Place of death