Intimate Correspondence Between Carilda Oliver and Her Last Husband Revealed

October 24, 2023

When in the early 1990s the legendary Cuban poet Carilda Oliver Labra, then nearly in her 70s, decided to allow herself to be courted by one of her most tenacious readers, Raidel Hernández, barely 21 years old, the so-called bride of Matanzas was stirring up even more controversy about her romantic life, which was already quite irreverent in itself.

They married despite the comments from half the world, including close friends of the writer, who did not understand that unbridled love between people with almost 50 years difference in age.

That Raidel was a fortune hunter, they told her; but she stood firm with the determination of the unprejudiced woman she had always been and time ended up proving her right: the young reader and also poet made her happy during her final years in the home at Calzada de Tirry 81, where Carilda died in August 2018.

How a woman in her third age could dazzle a boy who was just beginning to live is a mystery that Oliver Labra clarified like no one else: "One must renounce translating the mystery of eroticism. Between eroticism and profanation, between what should be and what has to be there is a very fine dividing line. It is born, it is not learned," she had declared in an interview.

That doubt that hangs over a relationship as sui generis as hers and Raidel Hernández's is clarified—only in part—in the book that has just come to light under the Ediciones Vigía label and that comprises a good part of the lyrical correspondence between the National Literature Prize winner and who was her last husband.

Decían is the title of the text of crossed, intimate, ardent poems; a dialogue between lovers and a kind of declaration of principles from the very name itself, which alludes to the thousands of comments sparked by the surprising romantic involvement of two beings from such distant generations.

"Those verses speak of the beginning of the relationship and of the defense of continuity and love, and are directed at the people who wanted to break the illusion," Hernández has declared, who also assures that Carilda reviewed them and kept them for an occasion like this.

Much was said about Oliver Labra and her young husband, and it is still being talked about five years after the poet's death, when it is revealed in this testimony who they were in private and what their days were like together in the manor house at Calzada de Tirry 81.

"She wanted a book published with verses from both of them, and we published it in defense of those years they lived and that time they shared, not only of a relationship, but of reading poetry and prose, of getting to know numerous personalities together," Agustina Ponce Valdés, director of Ediciones Vigía, has told the press.

Under this label Oliver Labra published many other texts: Canto a Matanzas, Madre mía que estás en una carta, Guárdame el tiempo, Canto a Fidel, Temblor bajo la piedra…

The edition of Decían, which has already become an editorial success, consists of 200 copies handcrafted and illuminated by hand as part of the San Juan Collection.

The design and drawings are by Marialva Ríos, and in its creation textiles, bond paper, gazette and craft of different textures and weights were used, as well as acrylics, burlap threads and coffee, in keeping with the manufacturing tradition of Ediciones Vigía and as a worthy tribute to a love that dynamited all social conventions and continues to give much to talk about.