more perplexing

Dulce María Loynaz

Dulce María Loynaz (December 10, 1902 - April 27, 1997) Born in Cuba. 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 Spanish author Federico García Lorca and Chilean poet Gabriela Mistral (both Nobel Prize winners), and Cuban authors Alejo Carpentier and José Ramón Jiménez.

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 an 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 Distintive 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.

Two Poems

I dream of classifying

I had dream of classifying

Good and Evil, the same way scientist

classify butterflies:

I had dream to pin Good and Evil

in the dark velvet

of the glass display case…

Under the white butterfly

a label that will read “The Good”.

under the black butterfly,

a label that will read “The Evil”.

But the white butterfly

was not the good, neither the black butterfly

was the evil… And between my two butterflies,

green, golden and infinite all the earth butterflies fly.

If you love me, love me whole

not by zones of light or shadow…

if you love me, love me black

and white, and gray and green and blond,

and mixed…

love me day,

love me night…

and in the morning with the open window!

If you love me, don’t break me in pieces:

love me whole… Or do not love me at all.

Dos Poemas

YO SOÑABA EN CLASIFICAR...

Yo soñaba en clasificar

el Bien y el Mal, como los sabios

clasifican las mariposas:

Yo soñaba en clavar el Bien y el Mal

en el obscuro terciopelo

de una vitrina de cristal...

Debajo de la mariposa

blanca, un letrero que dijera: "EL BIEN".

Debajo de la mariposa

negra, un letrero que dijera: "EL MAL".

Pero la mariposa blanca

no era el bien, ni la mariposa negra

era el mal... ¡Y entre mis dos mariposas,

volaban verdes, áureas, infinitas,

todas las mariposas de la tierra!...

SI ME QUIERES, QUIÉREME ENTERA

Si me quieres, quiéreme entera,

no por zonas de luz o sombra...

Si me quieres, quiéreme negra

y blanca. Y gris, y verde, y rubia,

y morena...

Quiéreme día,

quiéreme noche...

¡Y madrugada en la ventana abierta!

Si me quieres, no me recortes:

¡Quiéreme toda... O no me quieras!

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.