My father, Eliseo Diego, and Cintio Vitier met being children at La Luz school, in El Vedado. It was a friendship that lasted a lifetime. At the University of Havana they met the Bella and Fina García Marruz sisters, and formed a quartet that only death could separate.
They united poetry, affection, an intimate friendship. They were together since they wrote their first verses, they founded the magazine Clavileño and then Origins. And it was Cintio who praised my father’s life and work when he was given the International Latin American and Caribbean Poetry Award Juan Rulfo, at the Guadalajara International Book Fair, Mexico, in November 1993, four months before his death.
My father always suffered from his nerves and went through very strong depressive crises. The letter that I will show you, and that remains unpublished, is 1942. He was 22 years old and had decided to isolate himself from everyone in a little fell in the bay of Santiago de Cuba, Cayo Smith.
He was only written with his closest friends. This isolation lasted, fortunately, very little, just a year. Living in the Cayo was linked to the fishermen, he left his beard and even thought to get ready to participate in World War II; All very romantic, typical of “a young poet.” This correspondence could be titled as Rilke’s book, one of its favorite authors, with a slight change: Letters from a young poet.
There is this letter that I reproduce below as a small tribute of my father to Cintio this October 1, one more anniversary of his departure.
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El Cayo, May 19, 1943
Dear Cintio:
Yesterday I received your letter. I went to look for her in the boat, which I left later, in the bay, as I usually read to read your cards. This is how [logro] Have them with me on the best place, between the blue water, still, and the sun air so close. All morning I have been thinking about your letter, its sadness, in case I found any word of trust to tell you. Now I see that every word is left over and is wrong for those who have such a pure nature.
How am I going to remind you that your poetry reaches only God and you, that your salvation in body and soul matters, that there is no reason to hear the dogs barking sinisterly to the moon, if you start telling me that “I live thinking nothing more about those leaves”? This is neither childish nor unfair; It is from the purest man. Who understands in this way the sacrifice and passion that is, at last and on any small vanity, make some poetry leaves, it is not possible to reason that I do not listen to the stupid evil of others. I know what you are going, my friend, and how all this awkwardness has to hurt, although it does not matter to you.
What has always happened is that while you talk about one thing, they chat of another incalculably different. For you it is the only “policy of God”; For them, of gazetilla and beautiful letters. Do you remember that I never wanted to go to the conferences? You were going to make a person’s best friendship there; They, to make culture or for a new entertainment. I think you thought they were going to the same as you; I always disgusted its smell of fresh ink. If you are not a person like you, for whom these things are bread of life and death, tell me, God, the people of the Cayo, attentive to live alone. Thus, while you were cleanly to the essential act, I, more “alive”, more darkly distrustful, I was attentive to the “dirty vaho.”
And it is, Cintio, that there are two genres of men: some, who are only instruments of the angel or the devil; Others, capable of participating in the angel’s work. The men, such as David, Vallejo, Rilke and – tell me to say it, because it is true – you, those of this temper, must continue the work in patience, sacrifice, humility and, above all, in absolute solitude and helplessness. The others, “the intellectuals”, are the empty skin: abandoned from the pure or damn voice that speaks in them, they have only their vanity, their emptiness.
In this passion – I don’t know how to call your serious affection on the leaves – you will be, you have to be alone; Of “the intellectuals”, of the holes, you will receive only disdain, hate. But, can it be called loneliness to the conscious company you make, you, your guardian angel? My friend, Cintio, your race men can be requested courage, effort; For God’s service is not easy, and you are so clearly enshrined to him.
I do not know how to tell you anything else or if I have clearly told you the above. I have thought about all this, and, finally, I have barely said anything. God, who has chosen you, will have already reaffirmed in your mood. And if not, if you feel alone and desert, remember that he must win, and that he would be worth his service if he did not leave you, alone, to fulfill it. Forgive me, in short, that I speak in this way of what I am so far, that he speaks of God as if I had him, because perhaps those who feel their fault most can remind you with more serious and certainty.
Now I will tell you that I also feel as an irremediable loss, because next to what I wanted most, I lost so much of your generous company, that – and with what emotion I discover it in your words, almost accidentally! – It has been an essential part of my life for “so many years”. It would be useless and stupid to ignore it, and instead, looking at the face, we can save so much. I don’t know if you will remember that a long time ago – I have so exact and painful memory for what I lived – I told you that I would play everything in a letter. Anyway, then I played my life as I wanted it and I have lost it, but instead I know now that “we are more than these events”, and that there is a more serious bet: that of the soul itself and its destiny.
What sadness always, however, before the already irremediable loss, and how much this is born again. Although for me it will be, until I die, all or nothing.
You don’t know what I feel had forgotten Kikoleto’s birthday 1. It would be worth having lived only for their friendship. And then, what a clear example of a ultimate and divine reason in the world this union of you two; So fair and perfect! Never forget, of course, that yours is balance, joyful effort. And now, “ridiculously”, as Agustín will say, and as if he were going to leave them – what I will never do, well you know. And as for the last time, I will tell you: God keep them.
Well, friend. Here you live with a such “conscious unconsciousness”, as if the body, he alone, was aware of his blood, which seems that everything else left over. Looking at Juan González, the old veteran, sees one as in his dark body they encourage cleanly every day of his life, already left over. This is how I understand what I did not understand, by Rilke, that the “own paths” of a life can be “so good, rich and broad”, that everything else does not matter.
And I was almost ashamed to have thought of superior, once, Juan Gómez, to Jesús Díaz, all those men who live would be their lives seriously and quietly.
I will be with you soon. ”He can embark on 25 or 26. Cristina, Vitier, I always love yours and I remember them.
And, by the subject of ClavileñoMom will have some subscriptions of mine.
Since the letter is very long and is checked with the already famous “fascination of the point”, I say goodbye until very soon.
Loves you,
Elysium.
Tell Kikoleto that I have delayed a little to write to him, because I am already in recent days. Tomorrow she will receive her letter. And we will see each other very soon.
Note:
1 “Kikoleto” called Fina.
