Calvert Casey Fernández

Cuban writer of North American origin, he was part of the group of intellectuals gathered around Lunes de Revolución.

With a Cuban mother and North American father, he was born in Baltimore, USA, in 1924, but spent much of his childhood and adolescence in La Habana. While still residing in New York, he was already sending contributions to the magazine Ciclón, by José Rodríguez Feo.

After the triumph of the Cuban revolution, he traveled to La Habana and developed intense journalistic work, especially in the cultural supplement Lunes de Revolución, and writing theater criticism, book reviews and translations for magazines such as La calle, La Gaceta de Cuba and Casa de las Américas.

During this period, he was associated with literary figures such as Antón Arrufat, Virgilio Piñera, Guillermo Cabrera Infante, Humberto Arenal and Miguel Barnet.

In 1963, the short story collection El regreso was published (re-edited in Barcelona, in 1967, under the title El regreso y otros relatos); here Casey brought together three narratives: "En el Potosí" (1955), "El regreso" (1957) and "En San Isidro" (1957) –the latter had not appeared in the first edition of the book in 1962.

His vocation for extreme situations became immediately apparent, as well as his connection with existentialism and his care in stylistic treatment.

In Memorias de una isla (1964), he collected his journalistic contributions, through which it is possible to discover his literary tastes (Franz Kafka, Henry Miller, D. H. Lawrence, José Martí, among other writers), as well as descriptions of the Isla de la Juventud (Isla de Pinos), where reality mixes with fiction: "Understanding the past has been for me a kind of obsession. (...) I remember the Isla de Pinos of my adolescence as a vague place, without limits, of endless horseback rides and generous rain."

In 1965, he published his poem "A un viandante de 2778". He left Cuba and settled in Rome, where he met Giovanni Losito, for whom he felt a great love and to whom he dedicated his book Notas de un simulador (Barcelona, 1969). Of his novel Gianni, Gianni, written in English and which he himself decided to destroy, only fragments remain, in particular, the chapter titled "Piazza Morgana".

On May 16, 1969 Calvert Casey committed suicide with an overdose of sleeping pills in his Roman apartment.

Twenty-eight years later (1997), a new edition of his texts was published in Barcelona, under the title Notas de un simulador, carried out by Mario Merlino. By then, he had become a cult writer for the force with which he expressed in his works his affirmation of the right to a life of one's own, outside of stereotyped social models.

Active Bibliography

El regreso (short stories), La Habana, 1962.

El regreso y otros relatos, Seix Barral, Barcelona, 1967.

Memorias de una isla (journalistic writings), 1964.

Notas de un simulador, 1969.

"A un viandante de 2778" (poem), La Gaceta de Cuba, 1965.

"Piazza Morgana", the only chapter (originally written in English) that remains from the novel "Gianni, Gianni", which the author himself decided to destroy.

"Carrión o la desnudez", Memorias de una isla, Ed. R, La Habana, 1964, p. 52.

Source: EnCaribe.org