# Virgilio Piñera Llera

**Date of birth:** August 4, 1912

**Date of death:** October 18, 1979

**Categories:** Arts, Writer, poet, translator, narrator, essayist, Society, literature

He was born in the city of Cárdenas, province of Matanzas.

He completed his early studies in his native town, but in 1925 he moved with his family to Camagüey, where he studied high school. In 1938 he settled in Havana, where he earned his doctorate in Philosophy and Letters from its university in 1940.

The previous year he had already begun publishing, especially poems, in the magazine Espuela de plata, predecessor of Orígenes, where he coincided with José Lezama Lima. In 1941 his first book of poems, Las furias, was published, and that same year he also wrote what is perhaps his most important theatrical work, Electra Garrigó, which premiered in Havana eight years later, and constituted one of the great milestones of Cuban theater, and for many critics, such as Rine Leal or Raquel Carrió, the true beginning of modern Cuban theater.

In 1942 he founded the short-lived magazine Poeta, of which he was director. The following year he published the extensive poem La isla en peso, one of the peaks of Cuban poetry, which at the time was, however, objected to by great poets such as Gastón Baquero or Eliseo Diego and critics such as Cintio Vitier. Although today La isla en peso is considered one of the highest moments of Cuban poetry.

When in 1944 Lezama and Rodríguez Feo founded the magazine Orígenes, Piñera was part of the initial group of contributors, despite maintaining important aesthetic disagreements with the magazine's group of poets. There he published poetry and an excellent essay: "El secreto de Kafka". He also prepared an issue on Argentine literature.

In February 1946 he traveled to Buenos Aires, where he lived, with some interruptions, until 1958. There he worked as a functionary of his country's consulate, as a proofreader and as a translator. In the Argentine capital he befriended Polish writer Witold Gombrowicz, and was part of the team of translators who carried out the Spanish version of Ferdydurke. He also met Jorge Luis Borges, Victoria Ocampo and José Bianco, who wrote a prologue to his volume of short stories El que vino a salvarme, published by Editorial Sudamericana.

He continued collaborating with Orígenes with short stories, essays and critical reviews.

In 1948 Electra Garrigó premiered in Havana, poorly received by critics. During this time he wrote other theatrical works: Jesús and Falsa alarma, a work considered one of the first examples of theater of the absurd, even prior to La cantante calva by Eugène Ionesco.

In 1952 he published his first novel, La carne de René. In 1955, after the end of Orígenes, marked by a bitter dispute between Lezama Lima and Rodríguez Feo, he founded with the latter the magazine Ciclón, of great importance in the history of Cuban literature. During this time he also collaborated with the Argentine magazine Sur and with the French publications Lettres Nouvelles and Les Temps Modernes.

In 1958 he left Argentina and settled permanently in Cuba, where he would live until his death.

Following the triumph of the Cuban Revolution, Piñera collaborated in the newspaper Revolución and in its supplement Lunes de Revolución. In 1960 he premiered Electra Garrigó again and published his Teatro completo.

In 1968 he received the Casa de las Américas Prize for theater for Dos viejos pánicos, a work that was not premiered in Cuba until the early nineties.

In Mexico there has been a successful run of a new interpretation of "Electra Garrigo" titled "El Son de Electra" under the direction of the prominent creator Ramón Díaz and the performances of Thais Valdés and Sandra Muñoz and in Havana this work has reappeared under the direction of Roberto Blanco and most recently by Raúl Martín with the Theatrical Group La Luna.

From 1971 until his death, Piñera suffered strong ostracism from the Cuban government and official cultural institutions, largely due to a radical ideological difference and his sexual orientation, since he never hid his homosexuality.

As a narrator, he stands out for his black humor, within the line of the absurd. He was also a prominent translator, and rendered into Spanish works by Jean Giono, Imre Madách, Charles Baudelaire and Witold Gombrowicz, among many others.1
His Cuentos completos have been published by Editorial Alfaguara. His complete poetry, as well as La carne de René, appeared under the Tusquets Editores imprint.

Works
Poetry
1941 - Las furias
1943 - La isla en peso (abridged reissue in Virgilio Piñera La poesía, Havana 1965 - aside from some minor modifications, mainly orthographic corrections adding other errors, the main change is the cutting of a paragraph about masturbation; re-edited in this truncated version also in Virgilio Piñera 'La isla en peso. Obra poética', compilation and prologue by Antón Arrufat, Havana 1999 and Barcelona: Tusquets editores 2000, collection Nuevos textos sagrados; the original version with a few more minor differences is found among others on javiergato.blogspot.com in the section 'Taedium mundi')
1944 - Poesía y prosa
1969 - "La vida entera"
1988 - Una broma colosal
1994 - Poesía y crítica
Short Story
1942 - El conflicto
1956 - Cuentos fríos
1961 - "Oficio de tinieblas"
1970 - El que vino a salvarme
1987 - Un fogonazo
1987 - Muecas para escribientes
1992 - Algunas verdades sospechosas
1992 - El viaje
1994 - Cuentos de la risa del horror (anthology)
2008 - Cuentos fríos. El que vino a salvarme. Edition by Vicente Cervera and Mercedes Serna Cátedra, 2008.

Novel
1952 - La carne de René, Buenos Aires, modified reissue Tusquets Editores, Collection Andanzas, Barcelona, 2000.
1963 - Pequeñas maniobras
1967 - Presiones y diamantes
1997 - El caso baldomero

Theater
1959 - Electra Garrigó
1959 - Aire frío
1960 - Teatro completo
1968 - Dos viejos pánicos
1986 - Una caja de zapatos vacía
1990 - Teatro inconcluso
1993 - Teatro inédito
1994 - los negros de arian que les dan todas las noches

Translation
1947 - Witold Gombrowicz Ferdydurke (translated by Virgilio Piñera together with Humberto Rodríguez Tomeu and Adolfo de Obieta and 'sometimes twenty people', see Witold Gombrowicz Diarios, chap. XV, and Virgilio Piñera La vida tal cual, p. 32, where he describes how Gombrowicz declares him 'president of the Translation Committee', in Unión 10 / 1990, Havana, issue dedicated to Virgilio Piñera, p. 22 - p. 35)

CHRONOLOGY
1912-1945 First experiences, beginning of full maturity

12 He was born on August 4 in the city of Cárdenas, province of Matanzas, son of a surveyor father and teacher mother. His family moves, for work reasons, to Guanabacoa, in Havana.
25 He moves to Camagüey, and in this important provincial city he completes his high school studies. The teacher Felipe Echemendía and writer and researcher Felipe Pichardo Moya guide his first steps in reading and the beginnings of his literary vocation.
35 He founds, together with Luis Martínez and Aníbal Vega, the Hermandad de Jóvenes Cubanos, an organization whose fundamental purpose was the dissemination of culture and among whose tasks was the presentation in Camagüey of the "La Cueva" Art Theater group from the capital. His vocation as a writer is defined. He writes his first significant poems.
37 He settles in the capital and enrolls in the Faculty of Philosophy and Letters at the University of Havana with free tuition, requested by himself given his precarious financial situation, exposed in a letter he addressed to that institution. In the anthology La poesía cubana en 1936, which appeared that year and compiled by Juan Ramón Jiménez, his poem "El grito mudo" is included.
38 He is already living in Havana, under precarious conditions due to lack of money. His first public appearance as a poet -if not the first, a precision that is not certain, but the most significant of those moments- takes place at the important cultural institution Sociedad Lyceum that same year, with the reading of a group of high-quality texts and the presentation by José Antonio Portuondo (1911-1996). He gives a lecture at that same institution. He writes his theatrical work Clamor en el penal, the first of his extensive corpus for the stage. Both presentations and the piece to which we have just alluded constitute the beginning of a literary career that, although it had had its precedents in Camagüey, now begins to reach its most complete definition.
39 He makes known other poems in the magazine Espuela de Plata (1939-1941), directed by poet José Lezama Lima, art critic Guy Pérez Cisneros and painter Mariano Rodríguez, one of the predecessors of Orígenes (1944-1956) along with Verbum -prior to Espuela de Plata-, Nadie Parecía, Clavileño, Poeta.
40 He collaborates in the magazine Grafos and writes the short story "El conflicto".
41 He publishes his first book of poems: Las furias, in the Cuadernos Espuela de Plata. He writes his theatrical piece Electra Garrigó, perhaps the best and most important of all his vast repertoire. He also gives, at the Sociedad Lyceum and invited by Cuban researcher José María Chacón y Calvo, his important lecture on Gertrudis Gómez de Avellaneda, the notable Cuban poet, narrator and playwright of the 19th century. His work on La Avellaneda -a lecture that was part of a series called "Los poetas de ayer vistos por los poetas de hoy"- shows us already a different writer, with an accentuated will toward heterodoxy, a discordant voice to the point of irritation. His statements were certainly not what criticism had been making about the great 19th-century figure, so celebrated in Spain at the time and by Cuban scholars in the 20th century. Piñera dares to make judgments like this: "Here is La Avellaneda's secret: to adorn everything with the oriental splendor of the most select and melodious words and phrases. To speak much without saying anything or almost nothing". That is the tone of his best essays: decisive phrases, a break with assertions and judgments that tradition has been repeating, a deconstructing of high values established by assessments of an academicist flavor. The poems he gathers in that year's notebook are likewise paradigmatic of his way of writing, of his worldview, full expression of the poet once he has overcome the initial stage of searches and experiments (1935-1940). Another relevant essay from that moment: "Dos poemas, dos poetas, dos modos de poesía", about "Elegía sin nombre" (1936), by Emilio Ballagas, and Muerte de Narciso (1937), by José Lezama Lima, which appeared in Espuela de Plata in August 1941, perhaps constitutes the first approach to both texts by these two figures of Cuban poetry to whom Piñera was always so closely connected, as is seen in the enmity and later reconciliation with the creator of Paradiso and in the two other approaches he made to Ballagas, from 1955 and 1959.
42 He founds and directs the magazine Poeta, of very brief life -only two issues-, where he makes known his essays "Erística de Valéry" and "Terribilia meditans", pages of great interest for what they reveal to us about the author, his worldview and his concerns around problems of writing, a subject that obsessed him all his life, as he states in his autobiography, when he says: "For me, writing has always been a real torture". In Clavileño he publishes his essay "De la contemplación", likewise an expression of his most genuine concerns about the artist and the work of art, a precursor to another essay, biting in its relentless heterodoxy, titled "En el país del Arte" (published in 1947 in the magazine Orígenes).
43 He publishes the second and last issue of the magazine Poeta. His extensive poem "La isla en peso" appears, a fundamental text within the history of Cuban poetry of the 20th century and a complete paradigm of Piñera's work through the heterodoxy of its conceptualization, its anti-poetry and the rupture with the canons of traditional lyric; its intense dramaticism, which emerges from the underside of reality, from his vision of the meaninglessness of the real, marks important differences with respect to the visions of insularity observed in works by José Lezama Lima, Cintio Vitier and Eliseo Diego. "La isla en peso" was severely objected to by Gastón Baquero in Anuario Cultural Cubano 1943 and later by Cintio Vitier in his anthology Diez poetas cubanos. 1937-1947 (1948), as well as in the lectures he titled "Lo cubano en la poesía" (1957), published in book form the following year.
44 He publishes Poesía y prosa, where he gathers several important texts (eight poems and fourteen short stories), among them "Vida de Flora". This book deserved a favorable comment from Vitier that appeared in the magazine Orígenes (founded that very year 1944) the following year, 1945, where the critic notes, among other equally valuable assessments: "Apart from its literary quality and the unshakeable place that corresponds to it in the expressive endeavor of the current generation, this book by Virgilio Piñera will in any case be able to boast the honor of having confronted, in order to expose and perfectly contain it, the unseizable and iron void that means to us, through our daily metaphysical experience, the demon of the most absolute and sterile anti-poetry. And undoubtedly, for this reason it will always symbolize, for the possible successive reader, a bewildering feat". He refuses to participate in the celebration of Poet's Day, an event to be held at the Lyceum, and in a harsh letter to the institution (dated March 2 of this year) he expresses his reasons, with these essential affirmations of his concept of culture: "Whoever consciously works his art, whoever esteems culture, not as elegant entertainment but as a dignified destiny received, cannot accept such comedies".
45 He collaborates in Orígenes and writes several poems, including "En estos páramos", "El oro de los días", "Tesis del gabinete azul" and "La oscura".

1946-1958: Trips to Buenos Aires. His stay in Buenos Aires and the continuous enrichment of his work define this period, years in which he comes to know firsthand the work of some of the masters of Argentine literature of those moments and publishes in important magazines, among them Sur, for which Borges requests his collaboration.

1946-1958
46 In February he travels to Buenos Aires, where he stays from the 24th of that month until December 1947 as a fellow of the National Commission of Culture of that city. There he came into contact with many of the best Argentine writers of those moments, a closeness that undoubtedly greatly influenced his formation and, in general, the integration of his writing. He performed the duties of correspondent for Orígenes and works on the team of translators of the novel Ferdydurke, by Polish writer Witold Gombrowicz, one of his closest friends in the Argentine capital. In October his short story "En el insomnio" is published in the magazine Anales de Buenos Aires, directed by Borges. At the end of the year his article "Los valores más jóvenes de la literatura cubana" appears in La Nación. He writes the poem "Treno por la muerte del príncipe Fuminaro Konoye".
47 He makes known in Orígenes the essay "El país del arte", in Anales de Buenos Aires the short story "El señor ministro" and critical reviews in the magazine Realidad, also from the Argentine capital. He publishes an issue of Victrola. Revista de la insistencia, a small pamphlet that had no other pretensions than to play along with another that Gombrowicz had published a day earlier titled Aurora. Revista de la resistencia, a mockery against Victoria Ocampo. In December he returns to Havana.
48 Electra Garrigó premieres on October 23 by the theatrical group "Prometeo", under the direction of Francisco Morín, at the "Valdés Rodríguez" Theater, in Havana. The critics receive it unfavorably and Piñera takes action against the commentators, treating them as failed artists, philistines and uncultured in an article titled "Ojo con el crítico" and which he makes known in the specialized magazine Prometeo, with which an angry polemic broke out with protests for this treatment by the playwright. He writes Jesús, with which he won the Second Prize in the Theatrical Contest of the Academy of Dramatic Arts (ADAD), an important institution in the capital. He also writes Falsa alarma, a piece considered as the first of theater of the absurd in Spanish America, a precursor even to Ionesco's work, La soprano calva, from 1950.
49 In Orígenes Falsa alarma appears; he begins his novel La carne de René.
50 In April he travels again to Buenos Aires as an administrative employee of the Cuban Consulate. At the Argentine Society of Writers -at that time presided by Borges, who extends him an invitation to speak at that institution- he gives the lecture "Cuba y la literatura". He travels to Belgium and France. His piece Jesús is premiered in Havana under the direction of Morín, in the "Valdés Rodríguez" hall.
51 Jesús is published in the magazine Prometeo and he writes the poem "Aire mallarmeano".
52 His novel La carne de René appears, published by Siglo XX Editorial, Buenos Aires. In Cuba, Fulgencio Batista carries out a coup d'état backed by the army and comes to power, an act that initiates a period of political crisis that will end with the triumph of the Revolution on January 1, 1959.
54 In May he returns to Cuba. He writes the short story "El gran Baro".
55 In February he returns to Buenos Aires. The first issue of the magazine Ciclón appears, financed and directed by José Rodríguez Feo -with whom Piñera had a great friendship, as seen in the letters exchanged between them-, following the latter's separation from Lezama on the Orígenes project, when its director, without prior consultation with Rodríguez Feo, decided to publish a text by Juan Ramón Jiménez in which he attacked Vicente Aleixandre. In fact, this rupture is produced by the ideological-aesthetic differences between the antagonists, as can be seen in the editorial policy of Ciclón, with concerns and inquiries so different from those that constituted the foundation of Orígenes. This year Piñera begins to collaborate in Sur with the short story "El enemigo" and performs the duties of correspondent for the magazine founded by Rodríguez Feo. He publishes frequently in Ciclón: in September he makes known his essay "Ballagas en persona", in large part as a response to the introductory essay that Vitier wrote for the compilation Obra poética de Emilio Ballagas, which appeared that very year, the year following the death of the important poet. Borges includes his short story "En el insomnio" in the anthology Cuentos breves y extraordinarios.
56 The edition of Cuentos fríos comes out, published by Losada, Buenos Aires. He publishes reviews in El hogar -where Borges also collaborated- at the request of Carlos Mastronardi. The last issue -40- of Orígenes appears. He begins to write the novel Pequeñas maniobras. In Sur he makes known the short stories "La carne", "La caída" and "El infierno".
57 Three short stories by Piñera are published in Les Temps Modernes, in October, under the heading "Goyesques". Ciclón ceases, as Rodríguez Feo considered it improper to make a literary magazine while a violent armed struggle was taking place against the tyranny of Batista, in power since 1952 by a coup d'état. On June 28 his work Falsa alarma premieres at the Sociedad Lyceum, directed by Julio Matas. He publishes short stories in the Havana magazine Carteles. He writes his piece La boda.
58 In February he returns to Cuba. That very month Electra Garrigó is put on stage for the second time, within the activities celebrating Cuban Theater Month, under the direction of Francisco Morín. In the Prometeo hall La boda is staged, with direction by Adolfo de Luis. Within these festivities Piñera gives the lecture "¿Por dónde anda lo cubano en el teatro?" He returns to Buenos Aires in March. In Sur he makes known several reviews and the short story "La gran escalera del Palacio Legislativo". In September he returns to Cuba and will never return to Buenos Aires. He begins to write Aire frío.

1959-1979:
Revolution. The revolutionary triumph determines the publication of numerous essays and critical articles by Piñera in Revolución and in its supplement Lunes de Revolución, belligerent pages and passionate judgments about his contemporaries and some authors of the past.

59 On January 1 the Revolution triumphs following the flight of dictator Batista on the night of December 31, already in the early morning of day 1. He writes El flaco y el gordo, premiered that very year at the Sociedad Lyceum with direction by Julio Matas. Aire frío is published by the Pagrán editorial. Immediately after they are founded, he begins to collaborate frequently in the newspaper Revolución -where he is in charge of the fixed section "Puntos, comas y paréntesis", in which he publishes critical texts and essays under the pseudonym El Escriba- and in its supplement Lunes de Revolución, a very important weekly where he collaborates with various texts, including theatrical works, and which was characterized by its aggressiveness and irreverence against some of the most significant representatives of Orígenes, especially Lezama and Vitier. The articles published by Piñera in these two press organs are likewise examples of his belligerence and that style that characterized the reflective prose texts he made known at other times.
60 Electra Garrigó is performed again in Havana, a production that is attended by Jean Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir, visiting Cuba at the time. His Teatro completo is published by Ediciones R, in Havana. He continues to collaborate in Lunes de Revolución. In the magazine Casa de las Américas he makes known the first chapter of his novel Presiones y diamantes. In Lunes de Revolución he publishes his comedy La sorpresa. He writes El filántropo and it is staged in the Covarrubias Hall of the National Theater, directed by Humberto Arenal.
61 Lunes de Revolución ceases. He begins to direct Ediciones R. La sorpresa premieres at the National Theater, with direction by Manuel Bosch. Electra Garrigó -performed again this year- and Jesús are brought to television. In August he travels to Czechoslovakia and Belgium. From this year are his short story "Oficio de tinieblas" and the poems "Un hombre es así", "Yo estallo", "El delirante" and "Un bamboleo frenético".
62 In the American magazine Odyssey an English version of his piece Los siervos and the short story "El gran Baro" are published. He writes the short stories "Un fantasma a posteriori", "Amores de vista" and "El señor ministro", and the poems "Los muertos de la patria", "Palma negra", "Sin embargo...", "Entre la espada y la pared", "Cuando vengan a buscarme", etc. In December the premiere of Aire frío takes place, directed by Humberto Arenal.
63 His novel Pequeñas maniobras appears, under the Ediciones R imprint. His short story "El filántropo" is published in French in Les Temps Modernes. In May Aire frío is restaged. He writes the theatrical piece Siempre se olvida algo.
64 Electra Garrigó is back on stage, now at the Musical Theater of Havana. Ediciones Unión publishes Cuentos completos. At the end of the year he travels to Europe (Prague, Milan, Paris).
65 From this year are the poem "El jardín", the short story "El caso Baldomero" and the theatrical work El no. Under the direction of Adolfo de Luis, the theatrical work El álbum is adapted for television.
66 He participates in the Second National Encounter of Writers and Artists held in Matanzas. He writes the piece La niñita querida. Electra Garrigó reappears on stage, in Havana and in Camagüey.
67 He is part of the jury for the short story prize of Casa de las Américas. Aire frío is restaged, directed by Humberto Arenal, by the Drama Workshop, in the "El Sótano" Hall. The novel Presiones y diamantes appears published by Ediciones Unión. He is anthologized in separate selections of Cuban short stories made by José Rodríguez Feo and Ambrosio Fornet. He writes the theatrical piece Dos viejos pánicos and, among others, the poems "En el Gato Tuerto", "Solicitud de canonización de Rosa Cagí" and "El banco que murió de amor".
68 He is awarded the Casa de las Américas Prize in the theater genre for Dos viejos pánicos, published that very year by that Cuban institution and by Centro Editor de América Latina, Buenos Aires. Falsa alarma is performed, in January, directed by Nicolás Dorr, within the sessions of the Cultural Congress of Havana, an important meeting of writers, intellectuals and artists from Cuba and other countries, in which Piñera was present as one of the prominent figures of Cuban literature of those moments. Aire frío is broadcast by the CMQ radio station, Havana, under the direction of Marta Jiménez Oropesa. His poems and short stories are included in various anthologies from Cuba and other countries. He writes the theatrical piece Una caja de zapatos vacía.
69 In Bogotá Dos viejos pánicos premieres, a work that came to consolidate Piñera's international recognition as an important playwright. In New York Falsa alarma is staged, in English version by Walter Bernard. The Musical Theater of Havana presents El encarne, directed by David Camps, a piece written this year, whose performance was the last to be made in Cuba for several years. In Ediciones Unión La vida entera appears, a compilation of his poetic work done by the author himself, excluding texts of great quality that had only been published in magazines. Estudio en blanco y negro, a one-act work, is published in Spain. He writes several poems, a short story and a theatrical piece, and Electra Garrigó is performed again.
70 In Madrid Dos viejos pánicos is staged by the Taller de Teatro group, directed by Hugo Benavente, and in the Mexican capital it is performed within the II Latin American Theater Festival. In Paris the French version of Cuentos fríos is published by Denoël editions, and two of those texts appear in Les Lettres Nouvelles. Other samples of his work are made known in Spain (Estudio en blanco y negro is part of Teatro breve hispanoamericano, an anthology prepared by Carlos Solórzano and published in Madrid by Aguilar) and in Buenos Aires, where his short stories El que vino a salvarme are published in book form, with a prologue by José Bianco. He writes El trac, a theatrical piece, and several poems of verbal games. In London and Frankfurt, respectively, Electra Garrigó and Dos viejos pánicos are performed. The novel Pequeñas maniobras is translated and published in Romania. Spanish Television and Argentine National Radio broadcast, respectively, Aire frío and Estudio en blanco y negro. Translations made by Piñera -during these years he worked as a French translator at the Book Institute, in Havana- see the light of day in Cuban editions. In various anthologies his texts continue to be disseminated abroad. He continues writing and attends gatherings of writer friends, in which his rich creativity and belligerent critical spirit remain alive.
79 On October 18 he dies in Havana of a heart attack. He had in the process of creation at those moments his theatrical piece Un pico o una pala.