An island called Virgilio
(on Virgilio Piñera)
Alfredo Alonso Estenoz, Thomas F. Anderson, Odette Casamayor-Cisneros, Abilio Estévez, Jesús Jambrina, Alen Lauzán, José Lezama Lima, Pedro Marqués de Armas, Lucila Navarrete Turrent, Enrique Del Risco Arrocha, Severo Sarduy, José Triana, Alan West-Durán
this book is available in print, as well as online reading
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An island called Virgilio
This book celebrates the 100 years of Cuban writer Virgilio Piñera (1912-1979) through several studies that explore his poetry and narrative.
The book also includes testimonies and literary pieces dedicated to the author, who is considered one of the most influential Cuban and Latin American writers of the late 20th and early 21st century.
Piñera is internationally known as a playwright, however his poetry and narrative have not received the same attention from the critics and public, partly due to the manner in which his writings have circulated –most of his books were published late and in small editions or post mortem–, and also due the political censorship of his work by the Cuban revolution since the late 60s until the late 80s.
While Piñera’s theater was staged in the United States, Latin America and Europe during the 1970s and 80s, his short stories and novels had to wait until the late 80s to be reedited or even published in Cuba, for example his novel Rene’s Flesh (1952) whose first Cuban edition dates from the late 1990s. After the censorship on his works was lifted Piñera has increasingly received a well-deserved recognition.
Alberto Acosta Pérez, Alfredo Alonso Estenoz, Thomas F. Anderson, Odette Casamayor-Cisneros, Abilio Estévez, Juan Carlos Flores, Jesús Jambrina, Alen Lauzán, José Lezama Lima, Pedro Marqués de Armas, Lucila Navarrete Turrent, Enrique Del Risco Arrocha, Luis Rondón Paz, Severo Sarduy, José Triana, Alan West-Durán, Milde Zilinskaite.
All contributors to this volume have studied Piñera’s work for many years, while in the testimonies section both authors were friend with the writer in the last years of his life.
The editor of the volume, Jesús Jambrina, has published one of the few books dedicated entirely to Piñera’s poetry, several articles in academic journals.
Jambrina published some of Piñera’s manuscripts in Havana in the early 2000s, which made visible a period of the author’s life and work that was virtually unknown to public, specifically Piñera’s relationship with the Gomez Family (descendants of the Cuban patriot Juan Gualberto Gomez), who the writer visited from 1972 to 1978.
The figure of Piñera emerging from those years is one of a writer totally engaged with his creation, his friends, and very active on sharing his work with the new generations, in contrast with the mythological image of a depressed Piñera living alone and forgotten at his apartment in El Vedado.
This book also presents several poems dedicated to the author of The Weight of the Island (1943) by writers of the last four generations in Cuba, including, among others, José Lezama Lima and Severo Sarduy, as a way of showing the impact that the author has had across time.
Today, Piñera is not only known as the most important playwright in Cuba, but also as a relevant poet, narrator, essayist, translator and editor, whose influence in Cuban culture is still evolving. |
