By Alejandra Garcia on September 22, 2023 from Havana
photo: Bill Hackwell
In a burst of nostalgia, the Czech poet Rainer Maria Rilke said that a man’s true homeland can be found in his childhood, in those first memories linked to smells, tastes, and landscapes, where pain does not exist. But Havana proves otherwise. Even if the childhood of those who travel through the city is not tied to its streets, it is impossible for them not to feel it as their own.
It is difficult for a Havana resident not to be overwhelmed by the perfect geographical setting of the capital, which has grown for centuries with the sea at its gates, in a feast of colors every sunrise and sunset, with a climate that brings flowers at all times. Everyone perceives its beauty, not only those who grew up walking its streets, witnesses of the passage of time, but also every stranger who travels to Cuba for its history and people.
Throughout its over five centuries of existence, Havana has been the muse of poets, writers, and intellectuals from other lands. This was the case of the American traveler Samuel Hazard, who visited the city in the 19th century and was captivated by Obispo Street, by “the picture of life and movement” that this busy street offered at that time and preserves today.
“This is one of the busiest streets in the city, where the most attractive establishments are found. One never tires of walking down this street,” he described in his well-known work Cuba a pluma y lápiz (Cuba in pen and pencil), published in 1871 in New York.
The Cuban-Parisian writer Mercedes Santa Cruz, Countess of Merlin, met Havana again in 1840, and when she saw the coastline from the ship she was traveling on she said: “I have been motionless for a few hours, breathing the embalmed air that comes from that land blessed by God… Cheers, my beautiful homeland! In the beating of my heart and the trembling of my entrails, I know that neither the distance nor the years have warmed my first love.”
About this land that she loved “as a mother loves her child, and the child loves his mother,” she wrote, “When I breathe this perfumed breath that you send, and I feel it sweetly slide down my head, I shudder to the core of my bones, and I think I feel its tender maternal kiss.”
Beautiful, Maritime, Vital Havana
Almost a century later, in 1922, the Chilean poet Gabriela Mistral, winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature of 1945, arrived in Havana for the first time following the footsteps of the Apostle José Martí. “Cuba had been anticipated to me in him (Martí), as the sea wind anticipates the aromas of the yet distant land,” said the author of Sonetos de la muerte.
When she arrived at the port of Havana, “I did not know to what extent José Martí expressed his Island, with its ineffable ardor and softness, and I didn’t know either to what extent all Cubans prolong in the flesh of their hearts these attributes of the Island and its distinguished generosity and effusion,” she recalled on that day.
“There is no way for me to feel nostalgia amid a light that bathes and possesses, and amid people whose sympathy penetrates and ignites like the light itself”.
Years later, in October 1938, she referred to Havana as “this city that I love for being beautiful, maritime and vital”.
The French writer Anaïs Nin, then in her teens, traveled to Havana the same year as Mistral. It is not hard to imagine her slim, with flowing black hair, contemplating the city lights for the first time from the bow of the ship that brought her to Havana from New York. “The spell of the South has fallen upon me,” she instantly wrote in her diary.
“Already I feel the softness of the air and the warmth, the overpowering gloom, and my thoughts soothed. I have been taken to ‘The Land of Beauty’! All my sadness and apprehension disappeared the moment I held the view over Havana, and as the ship approached the bay, I shuddered beyond expression at the wonder (…),” she added.
photo: Bill Hackwell
A couple of years later, in 1930, the Spanish poet Federico García Lorca arrived in Havana. An old photograph shows him on the dock, swarthy, his face full and dotted with beauty marks, his eyebrows bushy and tousled. “How marvelous! When I found myself in front of the Morro’s lighthouse, I felt such a great emotion and joy that I threw my gloves and raincoat on the ground,” he recalled.
Havana emerged before him “among noises of maracas and marimba… And people emerged with the rhythms so typical also of the great Andalusian region. They were people without drama who roll their eyes and say ‘we are Latinos'”.
He didn’t forget the old and modern Havana, the rhythm of the city caressing, soft, sensual, “and full of a charm absolutely Spanish, but of the most characteristic and deepest of our civilization. The sea is prodigious and light full. It resembles the Mediterranean, although it has more violent shades.”
Havana was like a home for Federico García Lorca. It was also for the Spanish poet Juan Ramón Jiménez, winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature, who arrived in Cuba in 1936 and didn’t leave until January 1939. Here, he maintained a close relationship with intellectuals like José Lezama Lima, Cintio Vitier, Fina García Marruz and other members of the Origenes generation.
“Havana has been in my Andalusian imagination and longing since I was a child. The extensive reality has surpassed the total of my dreams and my thoughts. My new vision of Havana and the Cuba I have touched are incorporated to the best of the treasure of my memory,” said the author of Platero y yo.
Havana has belonged to everyone who has felt it as his own, even when nostalgia makes people believe that a man’s true homeland is in his childhood memories. This was confirmed by Nobel Literature Prize winner Ernest Hemingway, when he said, “I love this country and I feel at home; and wherever a man feels at home, apart from the place where he was born, that is the place where he was destined to go.”
Source: Resumen Latinoamericano – English