NICOLÁS GUILLEN, PROCONSUL OF CUBAN POETRY

by

Ben Frederic Carruthers

CUBA LIBRE was originally a cry for freedom and in these poems it
still is. Since the days of the Cuban struggle for independence, however,
we yanquis have come to know it as a delightful drink concocted from the
best of light Cuban rum, a dash of limón (lime to you) and cola poured over
lots of ice. Cuba's rum is the symbol of its fiery passions, its lifeblood,
its livelihood. In these poems it must represent the white blood in the veins
of our mulatto poet, Nicolás Guillén. As in the perfect CUBA LIBRE it is fus-
ed with the dark cola which for us is the symbol of his African heritage. The
limón is the bitterness of frustration lending piquancy and genius to the
verse as the sour juice does to the drink.

Strangely enough, Nicolás Guillén's favorite drink is not the CUBA
LIBRE. He prefers the exquisite _mojito_ (literally "little moisture") which
is the ingenious combination of light rum, lime and mint with a dash of sugar.

On one occasion in Havana my young son and I heard Nicolás protest
when the café waiter served a _mojito_ which had a pink color.

"Don't you know how to make a _mojito_?" Nicolás demanded curtly.

"Well," replied the waiter, "that's the only _mojito_ we know about."

"One side, old boy," said Nicolas with finality, and with that he

3.

poet is confident that once the soldier does this he will aim his rifle
at his real enemies and not at the masses from which he came, the masses
who strike at a sugar mill because they cannot accept starvation and work
at the same time.

Guillén is, like the soldier in one of his verses, a man who comes
from the earth, is of the earth, and to the earth will give his last em-
brace. In the opinions of many critics of the front rank he is the most
gifted living Cuban poet, el consul de los poetas. But he is more than
a Cuban, he is a citizen of the world and the champion of its inarticulate
masses.

More than any other Latin poet of these days, Nicolás Guillén should
be accorded the honor of having brought about the first great revolution in
West Indies verse since the modernist innovations of Julián del Casal fifty
years ago. Casal and his contemporaries on the eve of Cuban independence
succeeded in vitalizing not only the palid, decadent verses of their day
but their influence spilled over into the literature of Mother Spain as
well. As yet, Guillén has not achieved the triumphs of a Rubén Darío, but
his work has created a sensation wherever it has been read and especially
where it has been re-created by the high priestless of poetry recitals,
Eusebia Cosme.

No less an authority than the late great Miguel de Unamuno, dean
of Spanish letters, paid his tribute to Nicolás Guillén in a statement
that his poetry is the "spirit of the flesh, the sentiment of direct life,
immediate and terrestial. It is, in sum, an entire philosophy and an en-
tire religion". The great Unamuno wrote a poem in tribute to the Negro's
great gift. This poem is quoted elsewhere in this volume. In conclusion
the Spanish philosopher also expressed the belief that we are approaching

5.

Afro-Cuban music including the rumba, the conga, the son, have swept
not only the Spanish-speaking world but the aristocratic salons of Europe
and the United States as well. Cuba, whose population is only one-thirtieth
that of all Latin America, enjoys a leadership in the field of popular
music out of all proportion to its size or population. As the music of the
popular Cuban song does not need much interpretation to the foreign listener,
so the untranslated verses of Guillén with their popular refrains and their
irresistible melodies captivate the non-Spanish speaking listener.

Nicolas Guillén was born in 1904, virtually with the republic itself.
He came of mestizo parentage in the provincial capital of Camagüey, birth-
place of Gertrudis Gómez de Avellaneda, Cuba's great nineteenth century gift
to Spain and to the Castillian language. His father, Nicolas pere, was
a journalist and political figure who rose to a seat in the national Senate.
He died while Nicolas fils was quite young and the boy was forced to seek
employment as a typesetter. This was in 1917 and, although times were indeed
difficult, Nicolas managed to continue his studies in the Institute of Camagüey
where he graduated in 1920 with a Bachiller en Letras y Ciencias. The next
year he entered the University of Havana's School of Law but soon discovered
that law was not his calling. Forthwith he turned to journalism, politics, and
Havana's bohemian literary life.

As we have already noted, 1930 saw the appearance of the slender volume
of verse, "Motivos de Son" which was to cause such a furore. A year later
"Sóngoro Cosongo" was printed, and in 1934 "West Indies, Ltd." made its em-
phatic protest against the poverty-stricken fate of the West Indian wards
of the great powers. In 1937, "Cantos para Soldados y Sones para Turistas",
a collection of protest poems against military dictatorship, imperialist war
and the exploitation of the Cuban peasant by the one-crop economy of the

## INTRODUCTION

CUBA LIBRE was originally a cry for freedom and in these poems it still is. Since the days of the Cuban struggle for independence, however, we *vanquis* have come to know it as a delightful drink concocted from the best of light Cuban rum, a dash of *limon* (lime to you) and cola poured over a glass of ice. Cuba's rum is the symbol of its fiery passions, its lifeblood, its livelihood. In these poems it must represent the white blood in the veins of our mulatto poet, Nicolas Guillen. As in the perfect CUBA LIBRE, it is fused with the dark cola which for us is the symbol of his African heritage. The *limon* is the bitterness of frustration lending piquancy and genius to the verse as the sour juice does to the drink.

Guillen is, in the opinions of many critics of the front rank, the most gifted living Cuban poet, *el consul de los poetas*. But he is more than a Cuban, he is a citizen of the world and the champion of its inarticulate masses. Combining as he does the classic traditions of part of his ancestry, with the pronounced rhythms of Africa, Guillen is the spokesman for the mulatto millions of the New World. Did not the great martyr-poet Garcia Lorca announce that he was leaving Spain to visit Cuba "the land of Nicolas Guillen"?

Realizing that the peculiar dialect of the Cuban Negro lends itself readily to poetic rhythm and image, the poet, without knowing it, started a movement known as Afro-Cuban poetry. Its authors include a number of white, mulatto and black poets.

Nicolas Guillen was born in 1904, virtually with the republic itself. He came of mestizo parentage in the provincial capital of Camagay. His father, Nicolas *pere*, was a journalist and political figure who rose to a seat in the national Senate. He died while Nicolas *fils* was quite young and the boy was forced to seek employment as a typesetter. This was in 1917 and, although times were indeed difficult, Nicolas managed to continue his studies in the Institute of Camagay where he graduated in 1920 with a *Bachiller en Letras y Ciencias*. The next year he entered the University of Havana's School of Law

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but soon discovered that it was not his calling. Forthwith he turned to journalism, politics, and Havana's bohemian literary life. Today, Nicolas Guillen is the recognized leader of the bohemian literary group of Havana, holding tertulias in waterfront cafes, writing for newspapers, working in the congressional library, dabbling in politics, and giving voice to the anguish and the hope of the underdog.

having recently returned from a long and highly acclaimed tour of South America,

Ben F. Carruthers
as revised

by
Langston Hughes

8/8/48