I owe to the visit of Yoan Rivero, young Cuban bibliophile, may these memories have been disturbed. Rummaging through my rough shelves, we found some interesting books, both for the quality of the texts and for the generous autographs of the authors. One of them is the prince edition of the days of your lifeof Elisha DiegoUnion Editions, 1977.
The “discovery” led us to share anecdotes in which my modest path crossed with that of the author of On the road to Jesús del Monte, one of the classics of Cuban poetry. Eliseo, at the same time as authority, gave off a human warmth that many times materialized in the painstaking attention when listening and in certain jaunty little lights that sparkled in his eyes. His goatee, his eternal pipe, his fine humor, made him a hybrid of an English lord and a Creole fucker.
The poet must be demonstrated
I had approached him in the corridors of the Writers’ Union in the early 1970s, when I was joining the Hermanos Saíz Brigade. I showed him on the run some perfectly forgettable poems. He looked at my manuscript and told me: “If you let me have it for a few days, I can read it with the concentration that the case warrants. Come see me in my office next week, and we can talk there.” He treated everyone as “you”.
Of course I entrusted him with my complete works… until then. And I began to count the days. When I thought it was time, I dropped by one morning at his workplace. He received me with a cordiality that disarmed me from the outset.
he spoke. I don’t remember how much he said, because I was in a state of ecstasy that I haven’t experienced since. When he finished giving me encouragement and suggesting readings, he let me know that what interested him most in my poems was what I had not written in them, the potentiality that made him predict (I remember that he used this verb) that verses could emerge from my hand. truly remarkable. What a fancy way of telling me that this was bullshit, and that what he should do was read and work more, to see if he ever managed to come up with something that wasn’t bullshit!
Anyway, I was so comradely and happy with the teacher, that I ventured to blurt out, out loud, a stream of poems that I had written since our last meeting. He listened to me with the resignation of a bull grazing in the rain, and from time to time he consulted his wristwatch. But I didn’t take it for granted. Around 11:30 in the morning he asked me: “Would you like to meet Guillén?” How could I not like it, if I had practically learned to read in the “Elegy to Jesús Menéndez”, which was one of my father’s favorite poems?
What I didn’t know is that Nicolás and Eliseo had a daily ritual. Half an hour before noon, they met in the office of the Presidency to joke around and have an ice-cold vodka as an aperitif before each one went home for lunch. In those meetings, I found out later, they joked like schoolchildren. The expansive character of Nicolás fit perfectly with the serene forms of Eliseo, who smiled while his swaggering fellow laughed heartily.
Eliseo gave a few discreet taps on the door of Nicolás’s office, and from the other side he received a thunderous “pass”. We had overcome the stumbling block of Sarah, the iron secretary, and if someone got there at that time, it couldn’t be other than my guide for that day. Seeing that Eliseo was accompanied by a stranger, Guillén was not very pleasantly surprised.
“Nicolas,” Eliseo said, “I present to you a young poet.” To which the man from Camagüey responded with that grace and that mental agility that were proverbial: “You can see it when you’re young.”
I stammered two or three words of greeting, and left the office terrified. Behind me were the laughter and the humorous comments.
Fray Luis de Leon
In 1975 he had entered the then Faculty of Philology. Very soon I alternated my duties as a student with work in the culture team of rebel youth. With what I didn’t know at the time, five volumes of the Encyclopedia Britannica could be made (now there would be a few less). But I didn’t think so. Ignorance is bold.
In 1978 the collection of poems fell into my hands the days of your life, which, to say it fast and wrong, blew my mind. Alejandro Alonso, my boss, asked me to review that book for a Sunday edition, to which I more than gladly agreed.
My very enthusiastic review, among other dalliances, advanced the risky theory that Eliseo owed a lot to Fray Luis de León. Now that I think about it, perhaps it is not entirely nonsense to say that. But at that time, by Fray Luis I knew the poems “When leaving prison”, “Agora with the dawn rises” and little else.
Mid-morning on the Sunday my comment appeared, Eliseo called me to thank me for noticing his book. Bella, his wife, and Rapi, Lichi and Fefé, his children, he told me, were very happy with the review; also Cintio and Fina… At the end, at the farewell, he blurted out: “Listen, Alex, we have to meet sometime so that you can point out the points of contact that you find between me and the man from Salamanca”. Needless to say, that possibility terrified me. What could I tell him if, honestly, I didn’t know how I had come to write that?
After that, every time we saw each other, he reminded me that we had a pending conversation. I would get away as best I could, and change the subject. I never asked him if he was really interested in my “theory” or if it was a fraternal joke on his part.
Party
It must have been in the high 80s. At the Cuban Cinematheque they organized a cycle dedicated to the work of Jorge Sanjinés. Now I don’t remember at the screening of which film I met Eliseo, who was sitting two or three rows behind me. It could have been ukamau (1966), Yawar Malku (1969) or The courage of the people (1971). The fact is that in the film there was a sequence of some men celebrating something around a bonfire. They drank chicha and sang and danced to the melancholic sound of the quena. I think it was huaynos that was playing.
At the exit of the Charles Chaplin room, Eliseo was waiting for me. Without further words, he told me: “How sad these Bolivians have fun!” And then he was lost, down 23rd street, in the night.
The dedication of the book that has triggered these memories says: “For Alex, in the confidence that, no matter how hard or long the road, he will find his Dulcinea, dawning on the word.” Now it occurs to me to respond with a quote that, I’m sure, you would have liked. It’s also from Don Quixote:
Evil signum! Evil signum! Hare runs away; greyhounds chase her: Dulcinea does not appear!
