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Nicolás Cristóbal Guillén Batista (10 July 1902 – 16 July 1989) was a
Cuba Cuba, officially the Republic of Cuba, is an island country, comprising the island of Cuba (largest island), Isla de la Juventud, and List of islands of Cuba, 4,195 islands, islets and cays surrounding the main island. It is located where the ...
n poet, journalist and political activist. He is best remembered as the national poet of
Cuba Cuba, officially the Republic of Cuba, is an island country, comprising the island of Cuba (largest island), Isla de la Juventud, and List of islands of Cuba, 4,195 islands, islets and cays surrounding the main island. It is located where the ...
.Associated Press, "Nicolas Guillen, 87, National Poet of Cuba"
''The New York Times'', 18 July 1990: A19.
Born in
Camagüey Camagüey () is a city and municipality in central Cuba and is the nation's third-largest city with more than 333,000 inhabitants. It is the capital of the Camagüey Province. It was founded as Santa María del Puerto del Príncipe in 1514, by Sp ...
, Cuba, he studied law at the
University of Havana The University of Havana (UH; ) is a public university located in the Vedado district of Havana, the capital of Cuba. Founded on 5 January 1728, the university is the oldest in Cuba, and one of the first to be founded in the Americas. Originall ...
, but abandoned a legal career and worked as both a typographer and journalist. His poetry was published in various magazines from the early 1920s; his first collection, ''Motivos de son'' (1930) was strongly influenced by his meeting that year with the
African-American African Americans, also known as Black Americans and formerly also called Afro-Americans, are an American racial and ethnic group that consists of Americans who have total or partial ancestry from any of the Black racial groups of Africa. ...
poet, Langston Hughes. He drew from '' son'' music in his poetry. ''West Indies, Ltd.'', published in 1934, was Guillén's first collection with political implications."Nicolás Guillén 1902–1989"
''Enotes.com''. ''Poetry Criticism''. Retrieved 9 March 2009.
Cuba's dictatorial Gerardo Machado regime was overthrown in 1933, but political repression intensified. After being jailed in 1936, Guillén joined the Communist Party the next year, traveling to Spain for a Congress of Writers and Artists, and covering the
Spanish Civil War The Spanish Civil War () was a military conflict fought from 1936 to 1939 between the Republican faction (Spanish Civil War), Republicans and the Nationalist faction (Spanish Civil War), Nationalists. Republicans were loyal to the Left-wing p ...
as a magazine reporter. After returning to Cuba, he stood as a Communist in the local elections of 1940. This caused him to be refused a visa to enter the United States the following year, but he traveled widely during the next decades in South America, China and Europe. In 1953, after being in Chile, he was refused re-entry to Cuba and spent five years in exile. He returned after the successful
Cuban revolution The Cuban Revolution () was the military and political movement that overthrew the dictatorship of Fulgencio Batista, who had ruled Cuba from 1952 to 1959. The revolution began after the 1952 Cuban coup d'état, in which Batista overthrew ...
of 1959. From 1961, he served more than 30 years as president of the ''Unión Nacional de Escritores de Cuba,'' the National Cuban Writers' Union. His awards included the Stalin Peace Prize in 1954, the 1976 International Botev Prize, and in 1983 he was the inaugural winner of Cuba's National Prize for Literature. His great grandson Manuel de Jesús Guillén Esplugas who protested the Cuban regime during the 11th of July protests was murdered in police custody during his 6 year sentence at 29 years old.


Early life

Nicolás Guillén Batista was born July 10, 1902, in Camagüey, Cuba, the eldest of six children (three boys and three girls) of Argelia Batista y Arrieta and Nicolás Guillén y Urra, both of whom were of mixed-race, African-European descent. His father had fought for independence as a lieutenant. When his first son Nicolás was born, the father worked as a journalist for one of the new local papers. He introduced his son to Afro-Cuban music when he was very young. Guillén y Urra belonged to the ''Partido Libertad'' and founded the daily newspaper, ''La Libertad,'' to express its views. Government forces assassinated Guillén's father for protesting against electoral fraud and destroyed his printing press, where Nicolás and a brother were already working. Argelia and her children struggled financially. Nicolás and his siblings encountered discriminatory racism in Cuba similar to that suffered by
African Americans African Americans, also known as Black Americans and formerly also called Afro-Americans, are an American racial and ethnic group that consists of Americans who have total or partial ancestry from any of the Black racial groups of Africa ...
in the United States.


Literary works

Guillén drew from his mixed African and Spanish ancestry and education to combine his knowledge of traditional literary form with firsthand experience of the speech, legends, songs, and songs of Afro-Cubans in his first volume of poetry, ''Motivos de son.'' It was soon acclaimed as a masterpiece and widely imitated. In the 1920s, when Afro-Cuban sounds and instruments were changing the world of Cuban music, Afro-Cuban culture began to be expressed in art and literature as well. Initially, Afro-Cuban poetry, or "''negrista" ''poetry, was mainly published by European Cubans such as Emilio Ballagas, Alejo Carpentier, and José Tallet. It was not until the 1930s that Guillén would appeal in literary terms by expressing a personal account of the struggles, dreams, and mannerisms of Afro-Cubans.Benítez-Rojo, Antonio. "The role of music in the emergence of Afro-Cuban culture," ''Research in African Literatures'' 29. (1998) : 1.179–189 Guillén became outspoken politically, and dissatisfied with picturesque portrayal of the daily life of the poor. He began to decry their oppression in his poetry volumes ''Sóngoro cosongo'' and ''West Indies Ltd.'' Guillen also wrote ''Cantos para soldados y sones para turistas,'' which reflected his growing political commitment. Guillén is probably the best-known representative of the "'' poesía negra''" (" black poetry"), which tried to create a synthesis between
black Black is a color that results from the absence or complete absorption of visible light. It is an achromatic color, without chroma, like white and grey. It is often used symbolically or figuratively to represent darkness.Eva Heller, ''P ...
and white cultural elements, a "poetic
mestizaje ( , ; fem. , literally 'mixed person') is a term primarily used to denote people of mixed Ethnic groups in Europe, European and Indigenous ancestry in the former Spanish Empire. In certain regions such as Latin America, it may also refer to ...
". Characteristic for his poems is the use of onomatopoetic words ("Sóngoro Cosongo", "Mayombe-bombe") that try to imitate the sound of
drums The drum is a member of the percussion instrument, percussion group of musical instruments. In the Hornbostel–Sachs classification system, it is a membranophones, membranophone. Drums consist of at least one Acoustic membrane, membrane, c ...
or the
rhythm Rhythm (from Greek , ''rhythmos'', "any regular recurring motion, symmetry") generally means a " movement marked by the regulated succession of strong and weak elements, or of opposite or different conditions". This general meaning of regular r ...
of the ''son''.
Silvestre Revueltas Silvestre Revueltas Sánchez (December 31, 1899 – October 5, 1940) was a Mexican classical music composer, a violinist, and conductor. Life Revueltas was born in Santiago Papasquiaro in Durango, and studied at the National Conservatory of Mu ...
's symphonic composition '' Sensemayá'' was based on Guillén's poem of the same name, and became that composer's best-known work, followed by José Limantour's suite from his film score for '' La noche de los mayas''. Guillén later became acknowledged by many critics as the most influential of those Latin American poets who dealt with African themes and re-created African song and dance rhythms in literary form. Guillen made an international mark with the publication of ''Motivos de son'' (1930). The work was inspired by the living conditions of Afro-Cubans and the popular ''son'' music. The work consists of eight short poems 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. 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."
This quote establishes how the ''son'', such a profound musical genre of that time, initiated the fusion of black and white Cuban culture. 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 using the ''son'' in his poetry is expressed in his book ''Sóngoro consongo'' (1931). In this work, he included poems that depicted the lives of Cubans and emphasized the importance of Afro-Cuban culture in Cuban history. ''Sóngoro consongo'' captures the essence of the Afro-Cuban culture and ways that the people deal with their personal situations. Guillén's poem, "Motivos de son", from ''Sóngoro consongo'', is a fusion of West African and Hispanic literary styles, contributing to his unique literary vision. "La canción del bongó", like many poems in ''Sóngoro consongo'', incorporates the rhythmic sounds of son. The poem has a rhythm that uses the marking of stressed and unstressed syllables in strong and weak beats, rather than simply the number of syllables. Dellita L. Martin says that "La canción del bongó" stands out as a poem because "it is the only one to indicate Guillén's painfully increasing awareness of racial conflicts in Cuba".


Langston Hughes and Nicolás Guillén

In 1930, José Antonio Fernández de Castro, publisher of the
Havana Havana (; ) is the capital and largest city of Cuba. The heart of La Habana Province, Havana is the country's main port and commercial center.Langston Hughes’s poetry to Spanish, arranged for the two poets to meet. He was a white Cuban from an aristocratic family who loved black Cuba. He was a newspaperman, a diplomat, and a friend to Cuba’s artists. In February 1930, Langston Hughes traveled to Cuba for the second time, on a two-week mission to find a black composer to collaborate on a folk opera. He had been given a letter of introduction to José Antonio Fernández de Castro, his door to Cuba’s artistic world. At this time Hughes’ poetry was better known to Cubans than that of Guillén, so the American's arrival created a stir in the artistic community. The next month, on 9 March 1930, Guillén published “Conversación con Langston Hughes”, an article describing his experience of meeting Hughes in Havana. The Cubans expected a nearly white, tall and heavyset man in his forties with thin lips and an even thinner English-style mustache. Instead they saw a twenty-seven-year-old, slight brown man without a mustache. Guillén wrote that Mr. Hughes ''"parece justamente un mulatico cubano”'' – looks just like a Cuban mulatto. Guillén was especially taken with Hughes' warm personality and enthusiasm for the "''son''" music, which he heard on the nightly forays into Cuba's Marinao district organized by Fernandez de Castro. Hughes was said to be a hit with the ''soneros.'' His enthusiasm for Cuban music inspired Guillén. Hughes immediately saw the similarities between ''son'' and the blues, as folk music traditions whose form was based on the call-and-response structure of African music. Additionally, he was excited about its possibilities as an organic base for formal poetry. According to biographer Arnold Rampersad, Hughes suggested to Guillén that he make the rhythms of the ''son'' central to his poetry, as the American had used elements of blues and jazz. Hughes drew not only rhythmic innovation from these folk music traditions, but used them as a means to express his protest against racial inequality. Both poets shared anger against racism, but Hughes impressed Guillén with his particular kind of racial consciousness. Although the Cuban poet had expressed outrage against racism and economic imperialism, he had not yet done so in language inspired by Afro-Cuban speech, song, and dance. He had been more concerned with protest than with celebrating the power and beauty of Afro Cubans. Within weeks of meeting Hughes, Guillén quickly wrote eight poems that were markedly different from his previous work. His new poems generated controversy and established Guillén's fame as one of the premier poets of the
Négritude ''Négritude'' (from French "nègre" and "-itude" to denote a condition that can be translated as "Blackness") is a framework of critique and literary theory, mainly developed by francophone intellectuals, writers, and politicians in the Africa ...
movement, which spanned the Americas. On 21 April 1930, Guillén sent Hughes the result of his inspiration, his book of poetry ''Motivos de Son.'' The author wrote on the inside cover, “Al poeta Langston Hughes, querido amigo mío. Afectuosamente, Nicolás Guillén”. Although Hughes did not find an Afro-Cuban composer to work with, he created a lasting friendship with Guillén; it was based on their mutual respect and convictions about racial inequality.Gray, Kathryn, "The Influence of Musical Folk Traditions in the Poetry of Langston Hughes and Nicolas Guillen"
Yale-New Haven Teachers Institute (1997)


Poetry and politics

Cuba's dictatorial Gerardo Machado regime was 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 and made his first trip abroad in July 1937 to attend the Second International Writers' Congress, the purpose of which was to discuss the attitude of intellectuals to the war in Spain, held in
Valencia Valencia ( , ), formally València (), is the capital of the Province of Valencia, province and Autonomous communities of Spain, autonomous community of Valencian Community, the same name in Spain. It is located on the banks of the Turia (r ...
,
Barcelona Barcelona ( ; ; ) is a city on the northeastern coast of Spain. It is the capital and largest city of the autonomous community of Catalonia, as well as the second-most populous municipality of Spain. With a population of 1.6 million within c ...
and
Madrid Madrid ( ; ) is the capital and List of largest cities in Spain, most populous municipality of Spain. It has almost 3.5 million inhabitants and a Madrid metropolitan area, metropolitan area population of approximately 7 million. It i ...
and attended by many writers including
André Malraux Georges André Malraux ( ; ; 3 November 1901 – 23 November 1976) was a French novelist, art theorist, and minister of cultural affairs. Malraux's novel ''La Condition Humaine'' (''Man's Fate'') (1933) won the Prix Goncourt. He was appointed ...
,
Ernest Hemingway Ernest Miller Hemingway ( ; July 21, 1899 – July 2, 1961) was an American novelist, short-story writer and journalist. Known for an economical, understated style that influenced later 20th-century writers, he has been romanticized fo ...
,
Stephen Spender Sir Stephen Harold Spender (28 February 1909 – 16 July 1995) was an English poet, novelist and essayist whose work concentrated on themes of social injustice and the class struggle. He was appointed U.S. Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry ...
and Pablo Neruda. During his travels in the country, he covered Spain's Civil War as a magazine reporter. Guillén returned to Cuba via
Guadeloupe Guadeloupe is an Overseas departments and regions of France, overseas department and region of France in the Caribbean. It consists of six inhabited islands—Basse-Terre Island, Basse-Terre, Grande-Terre, Guadeloupe, Grande-Terre, Marie-Galant ...
. 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 during the next two decades in South America, China and Europe. Guillén's poetry was increasingly becoming imbued with issues of cross-cultural
Marxist Marxism is a political philosophy and method of socioeconomic analysis. It uses a dialectical and materialist interpretation of historical development, better known as historical materialism, to analyse class relations, social conflic ...
dialectic. In 1953, he was prevented by the
Fulgencio Batista Fulgencio Batista y Zaldívar (born Rubén Zaldívar; January 16, 1901 – August 6, 1973) was a Cuban military officer and politician who played a dominant role in Cuban politics from his initial rise to power as part of the 1933 Revolt of t ...
government from re-entering Cuba after a trip to Chile and had to spend five years in exile. After the
Cuban revolution The Cuban Revolution () was the military and political movement that overthrew the dictatorship of Fulgencio Batista, who had ruled Cuba from 1952 to 1959. The revolution began after the 1952 Cuban coup d'état, in which Batista overthrew ...
of 1959, Guillen was welcomed back by
Fidel Castro Fidel Alejandro Castro Ruz (13 August 1926 – 25 November 2016) was a Cuban politician and revolutionary who was the leader of Cuba from 1959 to 2008, serving as the prime minister of Cuba from 1959 to 1976 and President of Cuba, president ...
, the new president. In 1961 he was appointed as president of the ''Unión Nacional de Escritores de Cuba,'' the National Cuban Writers' Union, serving for more than 25 years. He continued to write evocative and poignant poetry highlighting social conditions, such as "Problemas de Subdesarrollo" and "Dos Niños" (Two Children). He was considered the national poet of Cuba, who drew from its multicultural history and population for inspiration. Nicolás Guillén died in 1989, aged 87, of
Parkinson's disease Parkinson's disease (PD), or simply Parkinson's, is a neurodegenerative disease primarily of the central nervous system, affecting both motor system, motor and non-motor systems. Symptoms typically develop gradually and non-motor issues become ...
. He was buried in the Colon Cemetery, Havana.


Legacy and honors

*In 1954, Guillén was awarded the Stalin Peace Prize (it was later renamed for
Lenin Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov ( 187021 January 1924), better known as Vladimir Lenin, was a Russian revolutionary, politician and political theorist. He was the first head of government of Soviet Russia from 1917 until Death and state funeral of ...
under
de-Stalinization De-Stalinization () comprised a series of political reforms in the Soviet Union after Death and state funeral of Joseph Stalin, the death of long-time leader Joseph Stalin in 1953, and Khrushchev Thaw, the thaw brought about by ascension of Nik ...
). * In 1974, the Institute of Jamaica awarded Guillén the Musgrave Medal, literature. *1976, he was awarded the International Botev Prize. *In 1983, he was the inaugural winner of Cuba's National Prize for Literature. *His nephew was experimental Cuban filmmaker Nicolás Guillén Landrián (1938–2003).


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) * ''Cuba libré'' (1948), in English, poetry collection, tr. Langston Hughes, Ben Frederic Carruthers * ''Elegías'' (1948–1958) * ''Tengo'' (1964) * ''Poemas de amor'' (1964) * ''El gran zoo'' (1967) * ''La rueda dentada'' (1972) * ''El diario que a diario'' (1972) * ''Man-making words'' (1972) Selected poems of Nicolás Guillén. Translated, annotated ... by Robert Márquez and David Arthur McMurray. * ''Por el mar de las Antillas anda un barco de papel. Poemas para niños y mayores de edad'' (1977) * ''Yoruba from Cuba: Selected Poems of Nicolas Guillen'' (trans. Salvador Ortiz-Carboneres; Peepal Tree Press, 2005) * ''Libre estoy, vine de lejos, soy un negro. Antología poética'' (2019) (selección y prólogo de Nicolás Guillén Hernández


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

*
Négritude ''Négritude'' (from French "nègre" and "-itude" to denote a condition that can be translated as "Blackness") is a framework of critique and literary theory, mainly developed by francophone intellectuals, writers, and politicians in the Africa ...
* Nicolás Guillén Landrián * Cuban literature * Caribbean poetry


Further reading

*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. * Pérez Firmat, Gustavo. ''The Cuban Condition: Translation and Identity in Modern Cuban Literature''. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989. Rpt. 1997, 2006.
"Nicolás Guillén 1902–1989"
''Enotes.com. Poetry Criticism''. 7 March 2010.

''Books on Cuba''. 7 March 2010.


References


External links


Nicolás Guillén from Cervantes VirtualGuillén, Nicolás from Enotes.comGuillén Discography
at Smithsonian Folkways
The Cuban Condition
*Th
Nicolás Guillén Papers
are held at the Cuban Heritage Collection, University of Miami Libraries,
University of Miami The University of Miami (UM, UMiami, Miami, U of M, and The U) is a private university, private research university in Coral Gables, Florida, United States. , the university enrolled 19,852 students in two colleges and ten schools across over ...
. {{DEFAULTSORT:Guillen, Nicolas 1902 births 1989 deaths 20th-century Cuban poets 20th-century Cuban journalists Communist poets Cuban communists Cuban exiles Cuban male journalists Cuban male poets Cuban people of Spanish descent Cuban revolutionaries Marxist journalists People from Camagüey Popular Socialist Party (Cuba) politicians Recipients of the Musgrave Medal Recipients of the Order of Friendship of Peoples Recipients of the Order of the Red Banner of Labour Stalin Peace Prize recipients University of Havana alumni