Alcides Iznaga

Writer, teacher, poet, novelist, and pedagogue. Shy to the point of pathology, occupied with minor jobs, he often had to pay for the publication of his books. He died during the so-called 'special period', in the solitude of a true teacher.

A native of Cienfuegos, born into a humble peasant family, he wanted to become a priest, but lacked the economic resources to afford the calling. Through great effort by his family and his own, he was able to study Pedagogy at the University of La Habana, while working at the Pastora sugar mill in San Juan de las Yeras, Las Villas, graduating with a doctorate in 1941. This doctorate allowed him to occupy remote rural classrooms in Matanzas and his native city, Cienfuegos, for 20 years as a rural teacher.

He taught between 1941 and 1961 in a rural school in Matanzas and in his native city. He moved to La Habana in 1961.

He began publishing in 1947, in collaboration with Samuel Feijoó and Aldo Menéndez, dear friends and fellow devotees of letters and art. He published Soledad refugiada, poems in concert, followed by his novel Los Valedontes, written that same year and published in 1953, in an edition paid for out of his own pocket, of 500 copies.

Los Valedontes competed without success in the annual contest run by the Ministry of Education at that time, and received only the vote of Onelio Jorge Cardoso, who disqualified it as a novel, saying: "I believe you are one of the short story authors —not novel, in the case of Los Valedontes— who achieves the most wonderful poetic atmosphere of our countryside, which allows it to be enjoyed anywhere in the world, if when translated to another language they respect the wise language in which it is written.(...) Of everything sent to the contest, I believe and continue to believe that the only thing that showed flight, force, a unique expressive manner for speaking of the Cuban countryside was Los Valedontes. I read it twice, once coldly to give an opinion and again to enjoy what was written." (In a letter addressed to its author, in the newspaper La Correspondencia, November 9, 1952).

Rumbos (1948?) and La piel de Felipe (1954), short stories, would likewise be published paid for out of his own pocket. Wrestling with the poverty that accompanied him well into the 1960s of the past century, Alcides Iznaga began his poetic journey late in life. "Without clarifying readings, without lucid friends, without knowledge, with a sort of perpetual turmoil," thus he described his situation.

The journal Orígenes welcomed him on its pages, and Cintio Vitier in Lo cubano en la poesía. Like his entire generation, his greatest influence came from North American literature. He was a friend of Hemingway, of Langston Hughes, among others. An upright man, he greeted the 1959 revolution, like his fellow origenistas, "as if it were about the creation of the true Cuban State" (Antonio José Ponte, El libro perdido de los origenistas).

In 1959 he received the first prize in the contest of the Union of Writers of México for the poem Patria Imperecedera. In 1969 he received the Cirilo Villaverde novel prize from the Union of Writers and Artists of Cuba for Las cercas caminaban, a much more elaborate novel than Los Valedontes, with similar themes —the latifundia— though perhaps with less magic than the first.

In 1961 he would leave Cienfuegos and his work at the newspaper La Correspondencia to return to La Habana, this time married to the woman who would be his lifelong companion until his death, the eminent pedagogue María de los Angeles Periú, creator of the literacy primer with which the massive campaign to teach reading and writing in the countryside and cities of the nation would begin.

From 1961 to 1966 he worked as a proofreader and editor at the Pedagogical Publishing House of MINED. He worked as a copy editor for the newspaper Granma. In 1969 he won the novel prize in the UNEAC contest with the work Las cercas caminaban.

He collaborated in El Comercio, La Correspondencia, Liberación, Ateje, Signos —of which he was co-director with Aldo Menéndez—, Cuba, Diario Libre (all from Cienfuegos), Social, El País Gráfico, Orto (Manzanillo, Oriente), Orígenes, Islas, Nueva Revista Cubana, Bohemia, Hoy, Juventud Rebelde, Lunes de Revolución, Asomante (Puerto Rico), Poesía de América (México), Idea (Peru).

He is co-author, with Samuel Feijóo and Aldo Menéndez, of the book Concierto (La Habana, Imp. de Herrería y Fernández, 1947).

Author of a sparse, demanding, and exquisite body of work, if we speak of poetry, he also left us two novels, several poetry collections gathered in La roca y la espuma, and another unpublished and unfinished work, La ciudad y el tiempo, which he considered his most accomplished work in this genre.

His poetry, with a clear line between melancholy and hope, resists regular meter, inflexible syllable count, formal compromises. Admirable and at the same time moving, his voice is an authentic rarity in the history of Cuban letters.