Nieves Xenes

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Cuban romantic and modernist poetess. She began writing poetry on her own, without anyone teaching or encouraging her.

In the passionate poetry of Nieves Xenes, love is a recurring theme.

She was born at Finca Santa Teresa, near Quivicán, in the province of Havana. Her parents were Dr. José Xenes, who was the second cousin of the illustrious Don José de la Luz y Caballero and Doña Asunción Duarte.

When she was 19 years old, after a long stay at Finca La Esperanza, a property of her parents located in the hamlet of El Aguacate, also in Quivicán, the family settled in the capital where she was introduced in the literary gatherings of José María Céspedes and Nicolás Azcárate.

Upon meeting José Antonio Cortina, a famous autonomist orator, she fell in love with him, constituting the impossible love of her entire life, because after his early death she continued loving him without bothering to hide it anymore and reflecting her passion for the deceased. Love is the fundamental theme in her poetry, sincere and passionate.

In her poetry she exalts the natural beauties of Cuba, love of country, and the cruel destiny that confined her to an impossible love and an amorous passion for José A. Cortina, which is presumed to have produced in her psychological problems to the point of becoming an obsession. This is expressed by the fact that she renounced being a wife and mother. This love was never revealed because Cortina never knew of it.

During her life she showed great affection for her family and particularly for her nephews and nieces, which denoted her frustration at not having been a mother and which she maintained until her death on July 8, 1915, after a painful illness, surviving only 7 months after her mother, whom she cared for with total devotion and which logically could have influenced the deterioration of her own health.

She was a founding member of the National Academy of Arts and Letters. She collaborated with important publications of the time such as Cuba y América, "El País", "Revista Cubana", "El Fígaro", "Letras", "La Habana Elegante", among others. All her work was compiled in a volume with a prologue by Aurelia Castillo de González.

Nieves Xenes lived a passionate and romantic existence, even for her time. Frustrated in her love, she isolated herself from the world, to such a point that in her final years she even stopped writing, possibly due to her mother's illness and her own.

We should clarify that the writer never wanted to publish her work despite the insistence of her family and friends; her work was only known in the literary gatherings she attended and in the narrow circle of her friendships, and although she won some awards, she never cared about publicizing her work.