Aurelio Mitjans

Mitjans was a scholar of Cuban literature, a verse writer, and an interesting personality in his own right who died at twenty-six years old. He never moved beyond youth and his work remained in unfinished projects, which fortunately endure today, as does his memory.

Mitjans is considered the author of the first history of Cuban literature, titled Estudio sobre el movimiento científico y literario de Cuba, published in 1890, a year after his death. That work alone merits the place it occupies in texts that chronicle insular literature.

The cited book spans from the beginning of the colonial period to the middle of the nineteenth century and, in that sense, represents a thorough effort with very well-presented critical sense, which shows the profound knowledge Mitjans had of the subject despite being so young.

He studied at the Colegio de Belén. He was a student of Calcagno. He studied Law in Spain. In Cuba he received the degree of Licentiate in Civil and Canon Law. His poor health forced him to lead a withdrawn life. He devoted himself to literary criticism and research.

In 1885 he would meet in Ramón Meza's library with his friends Julián del Casal, Manuel de la Cruz, and Enrique Hernández Miyares. His first book, the only one he published during his lifetime, Estudios literarios (1887), contains a collection of essays that won prizes in various competitions, so "Estudio sobre J.J.Milanés" and "Del teatro bufo y de la necesidad de reemplazarlo fomentando la buena comedia" triumphed in the literary conversations held at the home of Dr. José María Céspedes. He collaborated in the newspaper La Habana Elegante.

Literary research absorbed him and the library was his great collaborator. Among his friends were also the unfortunate and prematurely departed Julián del Casal and Manuel de la Cruz, as well as Enrique Hernández Miyares.

Aurelio Mitjans published a single book during his lifetime and titled it Estudios literarios and it came out in 1887. It includes several essays that had previously been awarded prizes and established his prestige. It was remarked then that his judgment was reasoned, that objectivity always prevailed, that his style was precise and his correctness surprising. Mitjans possessed everything—except health—to establish himself as one of the most important Cuban critics of the second half of the nineteenth century.

He collaborated in the most select publications: La Habana Elegante, El Fígaro, Revista Cubana… José María Heredia, Gertrudis Gómez de Avellaneda, José Jacinto Milanés, Joaquín Lorenzo Luaces, and also several foreign authors were the subject of his critical studies.

Professor Salvador Bueno, who places Mitjans within the fin-de-siècle generation, recognizes in his work "one of the first serious attempts to make an evaluative summary of our literature. Considered a disciplined and methodical critic, of academic bent, it has also been affirmed of him that he transferred the autonomist formula to the fields of literary criticism, which already reveals not only the author's literary critical thinking but also his political thinking.

It was thanks to a subscription directed by intellectuals Francisco Calcagno, Raimundo Cabrera, and Rafael Montoro that his aforementioned work Estudio sobre el movimiento científico y literario de Cuba appeared in 1890, as useful as it was revised by those who succeeded him in treating the subject, whether to be guided by it, to complement it, raise some objection to it, or note its virtues, for it was a text highly appreciated by his contemporaries and by successive generations of literary critics.

Mitjans also wrote verses, published almost entirely in La Habana Elegante, among them several of patriotic inspiration, and on occasions he used the pseudonym El Camagüeyano, even though he was from Havana.

Professor Max Henríquez Ureña noted of him: "No one with better aptitudes than Mitjans, in whom maturity was glimpsed, to write the history of Cuban literature."