Nicolás Heredia

Born in Baní, Santo Domingo. Cuban novelist by adoption. He belonged to the lineage of conquistador Pedro de Heredia, who laid the foundations of Cartagena de Indias and left a long list of descendants.

As a very young child he was taken to Cuba, where he completed all his studies. He resided most of his life in Matanzas. He obtained the degrees of Bachelor of Laws and Bachelor of Philosophy and Letters. He dedicated himself to teaching. He was a Cuban writer, there is no doubt about it. From the moment he was brought to the Island as a very young child, he made the Athens of Cuba his city, and dedicated his entire work to it.

Although he affiliated with the Autonomist Party, his ideas moved toward separatism.

He presided over the Circle of Liberal Youth, in which he delivered numerous speeches. His novel A Man of Business was awarded at the Floral Games of the Liceo de Matanzas.

He founded the Diario de Matanzas and El Álbum. He was a contributor to Revista de Cuba, Revista Cubana, Cuba y America, and El Fígaro. In the latter he published, after the outbreak of the 1895 war, the "Chronicles of the Cuban War". After the Spanish authorities suspended publication of these installments, Heredia moved to the United States and joined the revolutionary leaders.

In New York he delivered political speeches of interest and wrote regularly for the newspaper Patria.

Upon his return to Cuba during the American occupation government, he took charge of the direction of Public Instruction and the Chair of Modern and Foreign Literatures at the University of Havana.

He is the author of an anthology of prose and verse entitled El Lector cubano. He signed some of his works under the pseudonyms Cesar de Hinolia, Mostaza, El emigrado, Rodrigo Ruiz, El Caballero Bayardo, Luis Villarena, Marabut, Porfirio, Nemo, Bibelot, and others with the initials N.H.

In addition to El lector cubano, an anthology in prose and verse, he wrote the novel A Man of Business (1882) and essays such as Tribute to José Martí (1898), Sensibility in Castilian Poetry (1898), and The Utopian and Utopia (1899). But his most important work is Leonela (1893), his second novel, which laid the foundation for the costumbrista genre.

His most well-known novel is Leonela (1893) and is based on an exactly historical episode, except for the ending and the physical description of the protagonist sisters, as Heredia expressed to Enrique Piñeyro in a letter to the eminent critic. "If we ever meet one day, I will tell you in your ear the name of the illustrious Cuban who was born from the most original circumstance that gave rise to the novel". By some magic, or destiny, or pure whim of the poet who guards his mystery, Piñeyro and Heredia never met.

Perhaps those who today walk the streets of Cuba in a guayabera, the brave ones who defy a maddening summer, do not know that it was Nicolás Heredia who mentioned in Leonela that garment which, without speaking, says there goes a Cuban.

In honor of one who was not fairly recognized and remembered, here are a few lines from that Heredia who lives again in his own words: "Those who look inward are pleased; those who look outward, perhaps regret that the poet does not speak to them of loves and dreams, to tell them stories of skeletons and witches."