2023-10-21 16:33:17
At the beginning of 1822 José María Heredia resided in Matanzas. The family has lived in the City of Bridges since their return from Mexico, welcomed by the lawyer Ignacio Heredia, brother of the poet’s mother, María de la Merced.
In order to complete the two years of internship established by Law to practice law, he collaborates with Uncle Ignacio’s law firm. There is unanimity among his biographers that this stage of his life was the poet’s happiest, a criterion that is based on the enjoyment of new friendships and love affairs, and an active literary and social life, in particular, that related to the theater. manifestation to which he was linked not only as a writer, but also as an actor, by representing some of the central characters of his translations and dramatic adaptations. It will also be that of his definitive commitment to the independence of Cuba and poetry with patriotic content.
In a romantic personality like Heredia’s, everything indicates that happiness could only be completed with the ultimate detachment from oneself in favor of a just cause. It mattered little that this cause was not accepted by the majority at the beginning – as almost always happens – because in adolescents and young people like our poet, it was inspiring enough to generate a libertarian ideal that would last the historical time in which he would live.
The antecedents, in this sense, were not only already visible to the young man, but were beginning to manifest themselves in all their real historical significance. The Bolivarian armies triumph in South America; Mexico obtains its independence just the year of its return to Cuba; Greece takes up arms against the Ottoman colonial empire, and the reestablished constitutionality of Spain, once again, is threatened by the retrograde forces of the national and European monarchy.
His poet’s response to this whole state of affairs will not be long in coming… He conceives the ode To the inhabitants of Anáhuac, which appears published anonymously by the Havana printing press of the independence agents Bejerano and Vicente Rocafuerte. The ode will be his first song to the independence of America.
Birthplace of the poet José María Heredia in Santiago de Cuba. Image: Taken from Casa Dranguet
For the writer Leonardo Padura, “the Heredian expression is of such maturity that in several passages of the poem it announces the Latin American ideology that more than half a century later will animate Martí’s thought and action.”[1]
He joined the revolutionary secret society Caballeros Racionales—Matanzas branch of the Conspiracy of the Suns and Rays of Bolívar—and wrote the poem “In a Tempest.”, which begins with the verse: Hurricane, hurricane, coming I feel you.
The next step will be strategic, he joins the National Militia of Matanzas, a body created with the purpose of defending the threatened Constitution. However, unlike those pro-Spanish young people and even some who only want to “wear the military uniform”, according to the historian Jacobo de la Pezuela, our poet, as well as other friends of his such as Tomás Gener and the Teurbe Tolón brothers , join their ranks with the purpose of having military training without raising the suspicion of the colonial authorities and, when the time comes for the proclamation of independence, to take up arms.
At the international level the situation is no less complex. Louis XVIII, king of France, announces the decision of the Holy Alliance to invade Spain to reestablish absolutism. In Havana, at the presentation of the first issue of the illustrated youth newspaper, The Political and Literary Reviewer, of March 3, 1823, written by students of the Constitution class of the Colegio de San Carlos, it reads: “Restore tranquility to the heart of happy and peaceful Havana, silencing the fierce language of passions and somewhat quieting resentment.” of political hatreds, nothing is more natural and consequential than to present to the enlightened politician a newspaper, in which political, scientific and literary matters are developed; subjects, which, while serving as some instruction, please and delight.”[2]
The message from the students of the Seminar in support of the Constitution and the deputies is also published on its pages. On March 15, deputy Félix Varela presents a project for an autonomous government for Cuba in the Cortes. A week later, on March 23, French troops enter Madrid. The Cortes moved to Seville with Fernando VII. The Spanish monarch’s betrayal of the Constitution is only a matter of time.
Meanwhile, Heredia’s literary activity, particularly that related to his work written for the theater, continues to occupy his life and that of Matanzas’s enlightened society. While his collaborations with The Political and Literary Reviewer They live up to the title with political articles and poems. These collaborations with the recently created organ of Havana’s enlightened youth will not be interrupted even when he travels to Port-au-Prince (Cuban province of Camagüey), where he finally receives his law degree in the Court of this city, the only one on the island at that time.
Just two days before his graduation, The Political and Literary Reviewerin its edition of June 16, 1823, makes his song known To the Mexicans, inspired by the fall of the self-proclaimed emperor Agustín de Iturbide. This last fact allows him to reveal his political position contrary to all freedom not born of the authority of the people. This poem will be followed by another one of greater historical significance for Cuban literature when, less than two months after the publication of the aforementioned hymn to the Mexican people, in the same newspaper, on August 6, 1823 it came to light publicly. A the insurrection of Greece in 1820, where he makes his first direct allusion to the independence of Cuba.
But the tyrant fate
It didn’t freeze my fantasy
And in its fiery flight taken away
I am transported to future centuries.
I live in the future: like a ghost
Of the grave on the suspended edge
I direct my last wishes to Heaven
For the soul Freedom: I look at my homeland,
To the smiling Cuba, that the forehead
Elevate to the sea crowned with palms,
Through the seas of America tending
its glory and its power: I look at Greece
launch your tyrants indignantly,
and the soul Freedom to serve as a temple,
and I hear the Orb that joyfully applauds
Victory such and such a glorious example.[3]
It is of greatest literary historical interest and even national pride to highlight that, with the publication of this poem about the Greek insurrection against the colonial yoke of the Ottoman Empire, Heredia would anticipate in a few months the Hymn to freedom of the Greek poet Dionisio Solomo, with which he earned recognition as National Poet of Greece.
Coincident with the publication of Heredia’s poem, the arrest of the leaders of the Conspiracy of the Suns and Rays of Bolívar begins, among whom is Dr. Juan José Hernández, a person close to the poet. More than six hundred conspirators are arrested. In the list corresponding to Matanzas the name of Heredia appears; A prison order is issued against him.
Such events are a reflection of what is happening on the Peninsula. The invading troops of the Holy Alliance take the city of Cádiz, ending the second constitutional period. The Cuban deputies, among whom is Félix Varela, are sentenced to death, which is why they are forced to flee Spain to the United States of America. Ferdinand VII restores absolutism again.
Faced with such a state of things inside and outside the island, Heredia hides in the house of José de Arango, father of Josefa de Arango (Pepilla), the Emilia from his epistle poem. Waiting for an opportunity to leave the country, he only has one weapon to defend himself against his enemies and the frustration caused by the aborted conspiracy: poetry.
October 1823 passes, in complete secrecy he conceives the verses of “The Star of Cuba”, first openly pro-independence poem in the history of Cuban literature.
The star of Cuba
Freedom! never again about Cuba
Your divine radiance will shine.
We don’t even have any left, petty!
The honor is sublime from the company.
Oh senseless and disastrous pity!
Woe to him who is human, and conspires!
Long fruit of blood and anger
He will take responsibility for his miserable mistake.
When our eloquent voice sounds
All the people hugged each other in fury,
And the star of Cuba rose
More ardent and serene than the sun.
Of traitors and vile tyrants
We mercifully respect life,
When a little blood spilled
He gave us freedom and honor.
Today the people, wounded by vertigo,
He hands us over to the insolent tyrant,
And cowardly and stolidly
He didn’t want to draw the sword.
Everything lies dissolved, lost…!
Well, I despair of Cuba and myself,
Against the terrible, severe fate,
My asylum will be a noble tomb.
We fight fierce tyranny
With slight treason plotted,
And the star of Cuba eclipsed
For a century of horror now remains.
What if a town has a hard chain
He does not dare to break with his hands,
It is easy for him to change tyrants,
But he can never be free.
Cowards hide their faces,
The vile plebs bow to the tyrant,
And the proud threatens, fulminates,
And he rejoices in fatal victory.
Freedom! To your children your breath
In unjust prison he inspires more;
I will hang my lyre from its bars,
And the Glory that will temper it will know.
If the scaffold awaits me, at its height
Will show my bloody head
Monument of Hispanic fierceness,
When drying in the sun’s rays.
The torture of the patriot does not disgrace;
And from him my last moan
Will throw from the tyrant to the ear
Fierce vow of eternal resentment.
Grades:
[1] Leonardo Padura Fuentes. José María Heredia: the country and life. UNION Publishing, 2003, p. 125.
[2] Dictionary of Cuban Literature, Institute of Literature and Linguistics of the Cuban Academy of Sciences. Editorial Letras Cubanas, Havana, 1984, t. II, p. 859.
[3] The aforementioned fragment included in the last stanza of the 1823 version will no longer appear in the edition of the Poems, that saw the light of day in New York, in 1825. The title will also undergo a change: “To the uprising of the Greeks against the Turks in 1821”. (N. of A.)
(Taken from The Jiribilla. Cover image: Isis of Lazarus)
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