Reinaldo Arenas Fuentes

Cuban novelist whose early work was part of the Latin American boom narrative, and whose latest productions are a painful and satirical testimony of his life, as in Before Night Falls (1992).

Raised within a humble peasant family, his adolescence was marked by his involvement in the Castroite insurrection against Batista's dictatorship from 1958. With the triumph of the Revolution, he had the opportunity to participate in the new government's education program, where his self-taught education was enriched by the mentorship of two masters, José Lezama Lima and Virgilio Piñera, who endorsed his early publications.

In 1962, at only nineteen years old, his first and last novel published on the island appeared, Celestino before Dawn, as the rest of his work was published abroad.

As the sixties progressed, he became a victim of the Cuban government's measures against homosexuals and the harassment against him increased until in 1973 he was accused of sexual abuse and arrested: he fled and became a fugitive in the interior of the island, but shortly after he was detained and imprisoned in El Morro prison.

Finally, in 1980, through a government amnesty, he was able to opt for exile. He moved first to Miami, where he had no luck, and then to New York, the city where he settled permanently and continued writing.

From this moment on, and in the exile that was never accepted in New York, he deployed a profound intellectual vision of existence framed between the most beautiful poetic expression and the most bitter defeat of disenchantment. He was diagnosed with AIDS in 1987 and after suffering from the disease, he decided to take his own life in 1990, leaving more than twenty books, including ten novels, some poems, short stories, and theatrical works.

In that dense production it is worth highlighting The Ill-Fated Peregrinations of Fray Servando (1965), Farewell to the Sea and the autobiographical Before Night Falls, whose film version premiered in 2001. This film, based on his autobiographical book, was directed by Julian Schnabel, with Javier Bardem in the lead role. Of the same title is the opera that composer Jorge Martín dedicated to him, presented at Lincoln Center in New York.

The Ill-Fated Peregrinations of Fray Servando was smuggled into France, a fact that heightened the Cuban government's hostility toward the writer; the work is a mythical recreation of the life of Mexican priest Servando Teresa de Mier. Farewell to the Sea, one of his fundamental novels, was confiscated by police; Reinaldo Arenas was forced to rewrite it three times.

Other works worth mentioning are The Palace of the Very White Skunks (1980), The Central (1981), The Parade Ends (1981), Arturo, the Brightest Star (1984), The Color of Summer (1991), and The Assault (1991). Arenas, along with S. Sarduy, is considered one of the main continuators of Cuban neobaroque initiated by the work of Lezama Lima.

Works

Novels

* 1967: Celestino before Dawn.
* 1969: The Ill-Fated Peregrinations of Fray Servando.
* 1980: The Palace of the Very White Skunks
* 1980: Old Rosa.
* 1982: Farewell to the Sea.
* 1984: Arturo, the Brightest Star.
* 1987: The Hill of the Angel.
* 1988: The Assault.
* 1989: The Doorman.
* 1990: Trip to Havana.
* 1991: "The Color of Summer" or "New 'Garden of Earthly Delights'"

Short Narratives

* 1972: With Eyes Closed.
* 1981: The Parade Ends.

Poetry Anthologies

* 1981: The Central.
* 1989: Will to Live Manifesting Itself.

Essay

* 1986: Necessity of Freedom.

Theater

* 1986: Five theatrical works under the title Persecution

Autobiographical Novel

* 1992: Before Night Falls.

Editions Published After Reinaldo Arenas's Death

* 2001: Inferno, complete poetry with prologue by Juan Abreu.