# Ramón de Palma Romay

**Date of birth:** January 3, 1812

**Date of death:** June 21, 1860

**Categories:** Society, journalist, educator, essayist, poet, playwright, narrator, lawyer

Journalist, pedagogue, lawyer, essayist, poet, playwright, and narrator. One of the fundamental figures in the origins of Cuban narrative in the nineteenth century.

He was born in La Habana and there he studied Latin, Philosophy, and Jurisprudence at the Seminario de San Carlos y San Ambrosio and, in 1842, he completed his university studies and graduated as a lawyer. Previously, he had directed the La Empresa school in Matanzas for 4 years, and had already made known his first poetic compositions.

Ramón de Palma is considered one of the most faithful disciples of Domingo del Monte, because of the close bond that always united him, in life and work, to the literary circles and ideas of this intellectual. Together with José Antonio Echeverría, another great friend of Domingo del Monte, Palma founded, in 1837 and in 1838, the newspapers Aguinaldo Habanero and El Plantel, respectively. In 1839, he began working on the editing of El Álbum (1838-1839), one of the great Cuban magazines of the nineteenth century, of which he was editor and director. He collaborated with many other periodical publications such as Rimas Americanas, Diario de la Habana, El Artista, Diario de Avisos, Diario de la Marina, and Revista de la Habana. In the latter, he made known his work «Cantares de Cuba» (1854), where he outlines the study of Cuban popular poetry. Although his poetic work has not been the most praised of his production, his creollist incursions stand out in it, with titles such as «La danza cubana» and «La corrida de patos».

In 1855, he suffered imprisonment for having collaborated with the landing and annexionist attempt of Narciso López. Years later, he served as secretary of the Camino de Hierro de Villanueva, a position that allowed him to dedicate more time to literary activity without having to practice as a lawyer.

A year after his death, a volume with his lyrical works appeared, with a preface by Anselmo Suárez y Romero. In several of his writings, he used the pseudonym Bachiller Alfonso de Maldonado.

Ramón de Palma was one of the most notable cultivators of Cuban narrative during the first half of the nineteenth century, although his work did not receive the recognition it deserved in his time. Palma was one of the few nineteenth-century Cuban intellectuals concerned with the theory of narrative genre. This is demonstrated by his article «La novela», published in the first issue of El Álbum, in 1837, in which, through the critical commentary of the first narratives of Cirilo Villaverde, he proposes to offer a brief study of the novel as a genre, both in terms of its history and its development. In this article, Palma highlights the importance of the novelist to the life of peoples, since he conceived his work more as a form of knowledge of reality and a representation of life than as a pastime. This is how he writes in the article: «An author today is as positive as the most solid mathematician and woe to him if, upon taking up the pen, he loses sight of the society in which he finds himself and only fills the page with insipid falsehoods; for he will obtain, in return for his labors, the mockery of critics in life and the oblivion of posterity in death.»

The importance of Palma as a narrator is also based on the fact that he was the first to consciously introduce his stories in Cuban settings, as occurs in «Matanzas y Yumurí» (1837), which is the first Indianist narrative account in America. Likewise, other titles such as «Un episodio de la historia de la Isla de Cuba» (1837), in which he completes, with his imagination, the historical account on which Silvestre de Balboa based himself to write Espejo de paciencia (1608), the first Cuban literary work; or Una pascua en San Marcos (1838), a short novel published in installments in four consecutive issues of El Álbum and which, despite still moving between romantic and neoclassical aesthetics, through its testimonial characteristics already offers an opening toward the critical realism with costumbrista tones that will characterize nineteenth-century Cuban narrative. With Una pascua en San Marcos, Palma harshly criticizes the banalities and vices of the upper classes of Cuban society, which aligns with the reformist thinking of his era and echoes the book Memorias sobre la vagancia en la isla de Cuba (1830), by José Antonio Saco.

This work, whose plot is set on a coffee plantation in the western part of the Island, sparked an intense controversy that can be traced through the press of the time and the letters exchanged with Domingo del Monte, since it was accused of being immoral—especially in the representation of women—as well as of disregarding the situation of slaves in Cuban fields. The controversy generated by Una pascua en San Marcos determined that Palma's next narratives would avoid social criticism as much as possible and would adjust more to an idealistic and sentimental romantic aesthetic. This occurred with «El cólera en La Habana» (1833), a novelette in which he recreates an epidemic that had ravaged the capital a few years before, and where the resonances of Los novios, by the Italian Alejandro Manzoni, are felt.

Ramón de Palma y Romay began to write and work in teaching. In Matanzas he directed the school "La Empresa". He published with José Antonio Echeverría "El Aguinaldo Habanero", where he made known some of his compositions. In "Revista de La Habana" he published "Cantares de Cuba", an outline that opened the way for the organization and classification of folklore and genuinely popular Cuban poetry. He was one of the numerous intellectuals who attended the literary circles of Domingo del Monte. He ventured into poetry, narrative, essay, theater, and journalism.