The eminent Cuban intellectual Roberto Fernández Retamar passes away

July 21, 2019

The intellectual Roberto Fernández Retamar passed away this afternoon in Havana at the age of 89. President of the Casa de las Américas since 1986, Retamar became one of the most prestigious thinkers of the continent.

The distinguished poet, essayist and cultural promoter obtained the National Prize for Literature in 1989, as well as multiple recognitions and decorations.

He was a member of the Cuban Academy of the Language, an institution which he also presided over, and to his infinite work one would have to add his teaching work and his incomparable role as an editor.

He was a deputy to the National Assembly of People's Power and a member of the Council of State of the Republic of Cuba.

By family decision, his body will be cremated and his ashes scattered at sea.

The death of Roberto Fernández Retamar is an irreparable loss for Cuban culture.

Biographical summary of Retamar:
Between 1945 and 1946 he was a student in a course on plastic arts.

He graduated with a Bachelor's degree in Sciences and Letters from the Instituto de La Víbora, in Havana (1947). In 1948 he abandoned his architecture studies and enrolled in Philosophy and Letters. In 1954 he earned his doctorate in Philosophy and Letters from the University of Havana. In 1955 he completed a course in linguistics at La Sorbona, and in 1956 he studied at the University of London.

Revolutionary trajectory
After his return to Cuba in 1958, he was part of the Civic Resistance Movement during Batista's dictatorship and published in clandestine press. After the triumph of the Revolution (January 1959) he rejoined the university.

In 1960 he held the position of cultural advisor in Paris.

As a Cuban delegate he attended the XI General Conference of UNESCO. At the first National Congress of Writers and Artists of Cuba (1961) he was elected coordinating secretary of UNEAC.

Between 1998 and 2013 he was a deputy to the National Assembly of People's Power and a member of the Council of State.

Intellectual trajectory
He was between 1947 and 1948 head of information for the magazine Alba (for which he interviewed Ernest Hemingway), a contributor from 1951 to the magazine Orígenes, director between 1959 and 1960 of the Nueva Revista Cubana, cultural advisor for Cuba in France (1960) and secretary of UNEAC (Union of Writers and Artists of Cuba), between 1961 and 1964, where he founded in 1962 and co-directed until 1964, together with Nicolás Guillén, Alejo Carpentier and José Rodríguez Feo, the magazine Unión. In 1965 he began directing the magazine that is the organ of the Casa de las Américas, an institution which he has also presided over since 1986. He founded in 1977 and directed until 1986 the Martí Studies Center and its Yearbook.

Since 1955 he was a professor at the University of Havana (which in 1995 named him Professor Emeritus), having also been so, between 1957 and 1958, at Yale University, and has offered lectures, readings and courses, and attended meetings at many other cultural institutions in America, Europe and Japan.

Between 1961 and 1964 he was co-editor of the Revista Unión. In 1965 he gave lectures on Spanish American literature at the universities of Prague and Bratislava. He traveled to the DRV in 1970 to collaborate in the filming of the Cuban film Viet Nam, third world, third world war, directed by Julio García Espinosa.

Since 1995 he is a member of the Cuban Academy of the Language, which he directed between 2008 and 2012, and corresponding member of the Royal Spanish Academy.

He was director of the Nueva Revista Cubana. He collaborated in numerous newspapers and magazines, and belonged to the editorial boards of several of these, in America and Europe, among them: Orígenes, Nuestro Tiempo, Lunes de Revolución, Bohemia, Cuba, Cuba Socialista, Poesía de América, Siempre!, El Corno Emplumado, La Gaceta del Fondo de Cultura Económica (Mexico), the supplement of El Nacional (Mexico), Marcha (Uruguay), Asonante (Puerto Rico), Amaru (Peru), Revista Hispánica Moderna (New York), Triad (United States), Partisans (France), Ínsula (Spain), Literatura Internacional and La Gaceta Literaria (Soviet Union).

He is a doctor in Philological Sciences and senior researcher, honorary professor (1986) of the Universidad de San Marcos (Lima) and doctor honoris causa of the Universities of Sofia (1989), Buenos Aires (1993) and Universidad Central de Las Villas (2011).

He collaborated in Les Lettres Nouvelles, Esprit, Europe, and Les Lettres Françaises.

He is the author of Órbita de Rubén Martínez Villena (1964), of the selection and prologue of the anthology Cinco escritores de la Revolución rusa (1968) and of the poetry anthology Para un mundo amasado por los trabajadores (1973), among many other works of this kind. In collaboration with Fayad Jamís he compiled the anthology Poesía joven de Cuba (1959).

From 1962 and until 1965, respectively, he is professor of the School of Letters and Art of the University of Havana and director of the Revista Casa de las Américas.

On June 10, 2008 he was elected director of the Cuban Academy of the Language, of which he had been a member since September 17, 1995, occupying the chair with the letter K.

Prizes and honors:
At the inauguration of the Casa Prize in 1978, Haydée alongside Mariano Rodríguez and Roberto Fernández Retamar. Photo: Archive of Casa de las Américas.

For his intellectual work, in addition to honorary doctorates, he has been awarded numerous distinctions:

National:
National Prize for Poetry (1952)
Félix Varela Order of the First Grade (1981)
National Prize for Literature (1989)
Alejo Carpentier Medal, 1994
Juan Marinello Order, 1996
Literary Criticism Prize for Aquí in 1996
National Prize for Cultural Research (2007)
Latinidad Prize (2007)
ALBA Prize for Letters, 2008
José Martí Order (2009)
Centennial Medal of José Lezama Lima (2010)
National Prize for Social Sciences (2012)

International:
Condition of Honorary Member of the Society of Writers of Chile (1972) and the Felipe Herrera Lane Prize (1999), in Chile
Rubén Darío Latin American Poetry Prize (1980), in Nicaragua
Nikola Vaptsarov International Poetry Prize (1989), in Bulgaria
Pérez Bonalde International Poetry Prize, in Venezuela (1994)
Alba de las Letras Prize (2009), in Venezuela
Officer Grade of the Order of Arts and Letters (1994), in France
Feronia Prize (2000) and the Nicolás Guillén Prize (2001), in Italy
Puterbaugh Fellow Status (2002), in the United States
Juchimán de Plata Prize, in 2004
International José Martí Prize 2019, awarded by UNESCO
Works
Roberto Fernández Retamar: "The Cuban Revolution is essentially Caliban-esque"

Books of his in prose and verse, translated, have been published in Germany, Brazil, Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, Korea, Cuba, United States, France, Galicia, Greece, Italy, Jamaica, Poland, Portugal, Soviet Union and Yugoslavia.

His poems and essays appear in anthologies and collective volumes published in many languages. In Havana, a record, two cassettes and a compact disc were printed with his poems read by him.

He has written texts for films by Armand Gatti, Santiago Álvarez, Julio García Espinosa and Alejandro Saderman. A documentary about his life and work was filmed in Alicante (Spain), and two in Havana, in addition to a CD-Rom about his work.

Among the authors whose books he has written prologues for or compiled are Domingo Alfonso, Juan Almeida, Mario Benedetti, Jorge Luis Borges, Régis Debray, Julio García Espinosa, Fayad Jamís, Ernesto Che Guevara, George Lamming, Juan Marinello, José Martí, Ezequiel Martínez Estrada, Rubén Martínez Villena, Pablo Neruda, Fernando Ortiz, José Antonio Portuondo, Alfonso Reyes, César Vallejo.

Among the visual artists he has presented or commented on: Basquiat, Corrales, Antonia Eiriz, Ernesto, Feijoo, Gasparini, Korda, Mariano, Matta, Raúl Martínez, Mayito, Peña, Portocarrero, Rauschenberg, Osvaldo Salas, Víctor Manuel.

(With information from Cubadebate and Ecured)

Statement from Casa de las Américas: "It is necessary to say that he will be with us, in us"

"He put at the disposal of men what he had of intelligence // […] He gave them what he had of courage // […] He did his part, when the moment came // […] at the end, he declared that he would start again if they let him". Thus the poet expressed himself in the verses titled It Would Be Good to Deserve This Epitaph, and thus we remember him.

The death of Roberto Fernández Retamar is an irreparable loss for Cuban culture. Since he became known in 1950 with the poetry collection Elegy Like a Hymn, his work opened paths and marked milestones in Spanish-language poetry, to which he left texts that will remain forever as Happy Are the Normal, And Fernández? or With the Same Hands.

No less relevant are his penetrating and enlightened essays, which reveal the vastness of his thought and the magnitude of his intellectual work, whether we remember that classic of Latin American and Caribbean reflection, Caliban, or whether we think of For a Theory of Spanish American Literature, in his fervent passion for the Martí work, or in his lucid essays on the role of the intellectual and the processes of cultural decolonization in our America.

It is impossible to dissociate his name from the history of the Cuban Revolution, to separate it from a phenomenon that has been a permanent subject and concern, as much as the vital stage and sounding board of his figure and his work.

It would be much, already, if that were Roberto's legacy, but to his literary work one would have to add his teaching work and his incomparable role as an editor, which led him to direct various magazines before assuming in 1965 the direction of Casa de las Américas, to consolidate it as one of the most important cultural references of our America.

But he would do even more, at the head of the Casa de las Américas as a whole from 1986, as a successor to the heroine and founder, Haydee Santamaría, and the great painter Mariano Rodríguez. The privilege of Roberto presiding over this Casa in recent decades contributed to it –under his leadership– betting on risk without ceasing to be faithful to itself, to the spirit that saw it born in the enormous and unfinished task of cultural integration of Latin America and the Caribbean.

On the occasion of the painful loss of Haydee, Casa de las Américas made public a statement –in which Roberto's writing is evident– that concluded by affirming:

"It is necessary to say that she will be with us, in us. […] But from now on we are poorer, although we are accompanied forever by the honor of having worked under her guidance, under her encouragement, which we continue to feel, proud and deeply moved, at our side".

Those words remain valid for Haydee, just as they are for this dear brother of yours who has just left us. We make them our own for you, in this moment of infinite sadness, dear Roberto.