''Paradiso'' is a novel by

Cuba Cuba ( , ), officially the Republic of Cuba ( es, República de Cuba, links=no ), is an island country comprising the island of Cuba, as well as Isla de la Juventud and several minor archipelagos. Cuba is located where the northern Caribbea ...

n writer

José Lezama Lima José María Andrés Fernando Lezama Lima (December 19, 1910 – August 9, 1976) was a Cuban writer, poet and essayist. He is considered one of the most influential figures in Cuban and Latin American literature. His novel ''Paradiso'' is one of ...

, the only one completed and published during his lifetime. Written in an elaborately

baroque The Baroque (, ; ) is a style of architecture, music, dance, painting, sculpture, poetry, and other arts that flourished in Europe from the early 17th century until the 1750s. In the territories of the Spanish and Portuguese empires including t ...

style, the narrative follows the childhood and youth of José Cemí, and depicts many scenes which resonate with Lezama's own life as a young poet in

Havana Havana (; Spanish: ''La Habana'' ) is the capital and largest city of Cuba. The heart of the La Habana Province, Havana is the country's main port and commercial center.

. Many of the characters reappear in Lezama's posthumous novel ''Oppiano Licario'', which was published in

Mexico Mexico (Spanish: México), officially the United Mexican States, is a country in the southern portion of North America. It is bordered to the north by the United States; to the south and west by the Pacific Ocean; to the southeast by Guatema ...

in 1977.

Background

The novel was originally published in Cuba in an edition regarded by the Argentine writer

Julio Cortázar Julio Florencio Cortázar (26 August 1914 – 12 February 1984; ) was an Argentine, nationalized French novelist, short story writer, essayist, and translator. Known as one of the founders of the Latin American Boom, Cortázar influenced an ent ...

as being highly unsatisfactory, in part because of Lezama's poor punctuation and stylistic errors. With Lezama's blessing, Cortázar personally edited the text for a subsequent Mexican edition, correcting "thousands of errors and ambiguities." Despite having written one of the most accomplished novels in Cuba's history, Lezama said he never considered himself a novelist, but rather a poet who wrote a poem that became a novel. ''Paradiso'' can thus be considered a kind of long poem, just as well as a neo-baroque novel.

Plot

The novel relates Cemí's struggles with a mysterious childhood illness, describes the death of his father, and explores his

homosexuality Homosexuality is romantic attraction, sexual attraction, or sexual behavior between members of the same sex or gender. As a sexual orientation, homosexuality is "an enduring pattern of emotional, romantic, and/or sexual attractions" to peop ...

and literary sensibilities. He lives in the world of pre-Castro Havana, and the

Cuban Revolution The Cuban Revolution ( es, Revolución Cubana) was carried out after the 1952 Cuban coup d'état which placed Fulgencio Batista as head of state and the failed mass strike in opposition that followed. After failing to contest Batista in cou ...

only appears as a secondary plot. Some of the later chapters incorporate narrative experiments in which several alternating stories, set during widely divergent eras and having no immediately apparent connection with José Cemí, are interwoven and eventually merged. (In a letter to

, Lezama explained that these chapters represent Cemí's dreams after the death of his father.Letter dated October 21, 1966, reproduced in Aurora Bernárdez, et al., ''Cortázar de la A a la Z''. Alfaguara 2014.)

Controversy

Because of the graphic homosexual scenes and the novel's ambivalence towards the political situation of the day, ''Paradiso'' encountered controversy and publication problems. Today it is widely read in the Spanish-speaking world but has not achieved the same fame in English-speaking countries despite a translation by the American translator

Gregory Rabassa Gregory Rabassa, Order of Merit (Portugal), ComM (March 9, 1922 – June 13, 2016), was an American literature, literary translation, translator from Spanish and Portuguese to English. He taught for many years at Columbia University and Queens Co ...

References

''Interrogando a Lezama Lima.'' Recopilación de textos sobre José Lezama Lima. Ed. Pedro Simon Martinez. La Habana: Ediciones

Casa de las Américas Casa de las Américas is an organization that was founded by the Cuban Government in April 1959, four months after the Cuban Revolution, for the purpose of developing and extending the socio-cultural relations with the countries of Latin America, ...

: 1970. 1966 novels Spanish-language books Cuban novels Novels set in Cuba Novels with gay themes 1960s LGBT novels Philosophical novels {{1960s-philos-novel-stub