Medardo Vitier

Pedagogue, radiant spirit, poet. Cuban essayist, born in Las Villas and died in Havana in 1960.

A rigorous humanist and polymath, he directed the objective of his study toward the most diverse areas of knowledge, which also allowed him to concern himself with the most outstanding figures of each discipline. Along this line of work, his most representative works centered on the Cuban philosopher, politician and man of letters Enrique de Varona, as well as on the Spanish thinker and writer José Ortega y Gasset.

Specialized, thus, within the essayistic genre, in the composition of biographical works, Medardo Vitier left a vast and fruitful printed legacy in which stand out some titles as relevant as Varona, La ruta del sembrador, Lo fundamental, Arturo Echemendía and José Ortega y Gasset. His masterwork, however, is the one published under the title of Las ideas en Cuba, awarded in 1938 with the prestigious "National Prize for Literature".

Medardo Vitier Guanche (father of Cintio Vitier), born on June 8, 1886 in Rancho Veloz, a small town in Las Villas.

Thanks to his parents –Severo Vitier Hernández and Carolina Guanche Santos–, who decided to emigrate to Cárdenas so that Severo could work as a carpenter and construction foreman, and not as a carpenter and deer hunter, as he worked within the peasant family to which he belonged, the young Medardo enrolled as a student at the school La Progresiva, a prestigious educational center of which he later became part of its Faculty of Professors, after long years of tenacious and brilliant dedication.

When the Cuban nation was taking its first steps, Medardo was an adolescent, but he came to be part of the group of notable personalities of the so-called "first republican generation" –a period as we know characterized by frustration, opportunism and disenchantment–, thanks not only to his talent, but to his virtues and radiant spirit.

I met him in Matanzas in the 1940s. My uncle, Pablo García Díaz, visited him because he had been his friend since the days in Cárdenas. When he took me to see him, he would tell me that I should remain silent, because the young Cintio was always there playing violin and I should not disturb him. Medardo, both my teacher in Amarillas, as well as other educators from numerous municipalities in the province, were greatly admired by many. What caught my attention was his hairstyle, the same as my father's, with a part down the middle and soft waves on the sides.

When I edited in 1980 –in Letras Cubanas– the novel De Peña Pobre, by Cintio, where a passage appears as in a medallion the figure of Medardo, I felt that I was living an unforgettable experience. It reads in that passage: "The jet-black hair, with bluish waves parted down the middle, the dark, pale forehead, perpetually dedicated to kindness, the brown eyes, didactic, ethical beneath very thick eyebrows, the Guanche nose, the slightly violet mouth, a teacher's tool, honeycomb of lectures, gunpowder of speeches that seemed to rise to the very seat of the nation. Fear, fear and pride of hearing him in the theater swarming with political passion, with political light, bursting at the end with the wave of ovation that left vibrating, as in a burning and dreadful hollow, his voice, the father's voice, the dear and strange beloved voice".

The fundamental calling of Medardo Vitier was that of a teacher. His house in Matanzas was a forge, where his word was a faithful image of his deeds, a powerful orator in the end, the flight of his humanistic culture, which today affirms vigorous gifts in the construction of socialism in Cuba, because they are undoubtedly genuine values on the paths of the twenty-first century, threatened by the current rampant globalization full of all the hatred of imperialism.

In an interview that Rosa Miriam Elizarde conducted with Cintio Vitier in June 2006 at the Centro de Estudios Martianos. She asked the author of Ese sol del mundo moral how he found José Martí, and he, caressing the table that his grandfather had built, where he wrote and redeemed all memories, explains Rosa Miriam, he answered looking at Fina: With my teacher, my father. Cintio was celebrating the 120th birthday of Medardo and the publication (in 1911) of the first volume edited in Cuba on José Martí, written by the author of Las ideas en Cuba, which "only had one purpose: to reach Martí", Cintio told the journalist.

From age 12, Cintio was Medardo's typist, who worked as a cane weigher at the former Merceditas sugar mill in Santa Clara. Cintio's mother, Cristina Bolaños, Medardo met in Matanzas, as she was his student at the Irene Tolan school. He dedicated to her –Cintio told Rosa Miriam– some of the most beautiful love letters that Cintio knows, in which he discovered that his father, besides being a pedagogue and philosopher, was a poet. "Imagine the letter from a suitor whose main theme is silence. My mother had the most beautiful eyes I have ever seen. After I read Juan Clemente Zenea I discovered that she had the eyes of Adah Menken, the great American actress".

Fina –explains Rosa Miriam– complements Cintio's recollection by reciting the verses of Zenea: "From the green of the wings at rest/ the pure green of her eyes was/, when the leafy forest tinges its cloak/ with emerald shadows on the riverbank". Once, Carilda Oliver Labra told me at her house that when Cintio's mother went downtown in Matanzas, she would paralyze traffic because of her exceptional beauty. In the interview, Fina affirmed to Rosa Miriam that Medardo studied obsessively to ward off time. "Teacher –pointed out Fina quoting Guimaraes Rosa– is not the one who always teaches, but the one who suddenly learns" For Fina, Medardo was brilliant, and he was also in domestic matters, a humorist, an intuitive musician. It was what Martí asked of his son in that well-known example: be just. Medardo was –affirms Fina– exactly that, a just man.

Medardo Vitier Guanche graduated as a primary school teacher in 1904 and in 1911, for his work Martí, su obra política y literaria and for a study on José de la Luz y Caballero, the Colegio de Abogados de La Habana awarded him a prize. In 1916 he founded the Froebel school in Matanzas. He earned a doctorate in Pedagogy from the University of Havana in 1918. From 1919 he was a professor of Spanish Literature at the Escuela Normal de Maestros in Matanzas. He studied Spanish literature at Columbia University in New York. He fought against Machado and adhered to the manifesto against the extension of powers.

In 1934 he was appointed Secretary of Education. And Superintendent General of Secondary Education in 1935. In 1937 he was awarded a prize for his book Las ideas en Cuba. In 1938 he attended the Congress of Iberoamerican Literature held in Mexico. In 1941 he won the Justo de Lara Prize. He was Inspector General of Normal Schools and Director of Culture. In 1953, on the centennial of Martí, he won a prize with his book Martí, estudio integral. He taught summer courses at the Universities of Havana, New Mexico and Puerto Rico. He traveled to Santo Domingo, Venezuela, Spain and France on cultural missions. In 1956 the Central University of Las Villas conferred upon him the title of Doctor Honoris Causa in Philosophy, where since 1952 he served as professor of the history of philosophy.

His active bibliography is impressive. Among others, are his works Apuntaciones literarias, La filosofía en Cuba, Las ideas en Cuba, Varona, maestro de juventudes, La ruta del sembrador, Estudios, notas, epígrafes cubanas; José Ortega y Gasset; Lo fundamental, la personalidad de Arturo Echemendía; etc.

The work of Medardo Vitier –and his thought– differ from many of the members of "the first republican generation". He drew close to José de la Luz y Caballero, believed like Martí in the deeds of the spirit, as symbols of consciousness, of human culture. He affirmed that reality in itself is unitary. In his essay Varona y Martí he undoubtedly expresses a spiritualism close to Martí. He was opposed to all dogmatism, both philosophical and religious. His prose, of solid conceptualization, is very solid. He always weighs, probes, assesses, in order to express his criterion. His book in two volumes, Valoraciones, is not well known by the current generations.

In his texts the sense of serving dominates more than that of discoursing. He was essentially a freethinker who continued with genuine creativity the tradition of Cuban eclecticism, as specialists of the Instituto de Literatura Lingüística point out in volume II of the Historia de la Literatura Cubana.

As a true intellectual, Medardo was an honored man who observed the inevitable liberating path of peoples, from his calling as a pedagogue and philosopher.

He wins the Justo de Lara prize. He obtains the title of Doctor Honoris Causa in Philosophy from the Central University of Las Villas. He dies on March 18, 1960.

What a great poem that of Cintio, titled Dicho en el alma:

Dear cane weigher,
Dear philosopher,
son of the deer hunter,
of the carpenter who made the table where I write,
of the reader of the Bible,
who one afternoon, on the path of Las Villas,
saw all the animals of Creation;
son of Light, of Varela, of Varona,
dear studious child,
dear orator,
beloved elder and teacher,
poet, my father, gentle stoic,
radiant spirit,
do not abandon me…