Translators From Cuba

"For my family it [the revolution] meant achieving a real, tangible position in the social and political life of Cuba, which Fidel’s bearded revolutionaries [los barbudos] made possible. Those transformations opened the doors of the university to me, something that would have been impossible, given the slender means of my parents."

"We Cuban artists have played a decisive role not only in the Cuban society of today but also in its greatest definition throughout our history. We Cuban artists have contributed to improving our values, to articulating our character, to stimulating the clearest cultural resistance, to understanding ourselves better, to creating a world where, as the poet José Martí demanded, the most important currency is the full dignity of man and woman. We have offered that contribution through our work and, in many cases, through our efforts to transform the country. Sometimes utopian, sometimes feasible, our art operates in the spirit of modernity, service and independence."

"My country will remain there where it is, washed by the Gulf Stream, the Caribbean Sea and by that desire to exist and remain and last with its windows open to the purest elements in human civilization without renouncing social justice. I would earnestly hope that there is a greater understanding between our cultures, in favor of civilization, against war, against terrorism, against every regressive atavism. Art is the magic that will take us by the hand along the most beautiful of paths."

"one of its [society's] most sinister creatures: the practice of racial discrimination, a lever that always heightens racial prejudice. Both creatures make up racism."

"For my generation and for the generations that came after, Camilo Cienfuegos and Che Guevara preside over an irreversible constellation of heroes and, for that reason, have become integrated into the most beautiful popular imagination on the planet."

"Morejón has been recognized as one of the most celebrated and revered writers and intellectuals of the Cuban revolutionary period and one of the most important Caribbean women writers of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries...Her experiences and her fluency in the languages of the region have endowed her with a profound and rich voice that has helped shape our understanding of the Caribbean as a field of study."

"For me, writing a poem means enormous enjoyment that reaches its culmination when the poem appears in print."

"In Cuba we must respect all those writers who have maintained their space and their dignity beyond the question of making a hit at book fairs or in the commercial world. I respect all of them even if all of them are not to my taste or don’t make me happy."

"My whole vision of the world, beyond the perspective of art, literature and specifically poetry, is affected by those three conditions, which cannot in any way be separated...I am not more of a black person than a woman; I am not more of a woman than a Cuban; I am not more of a black person than a Cuban. I am a brief combustion of those factors."

"The working class districts of Havana shaped my outlook"

"We also need to see black characters somewhere other than in films about slavery. We badly need something more contemporary and more pertinent."

"The revolution opened doors for us and allowed an enormous social mobility. Many walls that blocked communication were demolished, and taboos were cast out."

"In 1959, when the revolution triumphed, I was an adolescent. I had only lived 14 years in the other society. Today, with the passage of time, we see how different it was in 1959 to have the power of reasoning. I was a person whose sensibility, intelligence, and knowledge were in formation. Various members of my family-and I myself—were the objects of many racist demonstrations. In addition, I was a witness along with them to many others. Thus, the transformations that were starting to take place were obvious, unobjectionable. Notice that I use the word transformations but not changes. I do so because I think that when I’m speaking about transformations the reader must think of a process that moves forward in a progressive way; whereas if I speak about changes, one thinks of a magic leap toward some paradise. We have made extraordinary advances in this terrain. And yet it has been neither easy, nor by way of a magic wand. The social gains in this domain respond to a long-standing, well-defined awareness that supports the full dignity of all Cubans, whatever their class or ethnic origins or their sexual or religious preferences. Racial prejudices still exist, which these 40 years of efforts have not been able to eradicate completely. This is a reality. I can tell you that, in this sense, racial prejudice is defeated but not dead."

"Perhaps Nancy Morejón’s most precious gift to both readers and listeners is her complex portrait of empowered black women."

"Very often people abroad see us talking about our free education as some sort of empty political slogan but in fact it is a reality and a priority."

"The purpose of any piece of writing is its existence before a reader’s eyes."

"For many years I have said, following the tradition of Nicolás Guillén, Fernando Ortiz and Alejo Carpentier, that whoever wants to understand Cuba cannot ignore its mestizo condition in which the Hispanic and African components cannot be divided because they have created a cosmovisión that is authentically original."

"The spirit of a government must be that of the country. The form of a government must come from the makeup of the country. Government is nothing but the balance of the natural elements of a country."

"Poetry is the work of the bard and of the people who inspire him."

"Terrible times in which priests no longer merit the praise of poets and in which poets have not yet begun to be priests."

"Man needs to go outside himself in order to find repose and reveal himself."

"Day and night I always dream with open eyes."

"La patria es ara, no pedestal."

"Others go to bed with their mistresses; I with my ideas."

"Cuba and Belgium are both countries of modest size, surrounded by large, powerful and often hostile powers."

"The conceited villager believes the entire world to be his village. Provided that he can be mayor, humiliate the rival who stole his sweetheart, or add to the savings in his strongbox, he considers the universal order good, unaware of those giants with seven-league boots who can crush him underfoot, or of the strife in the heavens between comets that go through the air asleep, gulping down worlds."

"Barricades of ideas are worth more than barricades of stones. There is no prow that can cut through a cloudbank of ideas. A powerful idea, waved before the world at the proper time, can stop a squadron of iron-clad ships, like the mystical flag of the Last judgement."

"The trees must form ranks to keep the giant with seven-league boots from passing! It is the time of mobilization, of marching together, and we must go forward in close ranks, like silver in the veins of the Andes."

"To govern well, one must see things as they are."

"Government must originate in the country. The spirit of government must be that of the country Its structure must conform to rules appropriate to the country. Good government is nothing more than the balance of the country's natural elements."

"Man needs to suffer. When he does not have real griefs he creates them. Griefs purify and prepare him."

"Oh, what company good poets are!"

"Rights are to be taken, not requested; seized, not begged for."

"I have lived in the monster and I know its insides; and my sling is the sling of David."

"Hatred, slavery's inevitable aftermath."

"Only those who hate the Negro see hatred in the Negro."

"One must have faith in the best in men and distrust the worst. One must allow the best to be shown so that it reveals and prevails over the worst. Nations should have a pillory for whoever stirs up useless hate, and another for whoever fails to tell them the truth in time."

"Politics and strategy are one. Nations should live in an atmosphere of self-criticism because it is healthy, but always with one heart and one mind. Stoop to the unhappy, and lift them up in your arms! Thaw out frozen America with the fire of your hearts! Make the natural blood of the nations´ course vigorously through their veins! The new American are on their feet, saluting each other from nation to nation, the eyes of the laborers shining with joy. The natural statesman arises, schooled in the direct study of Nature. He reads to apply his knowledge, not to imitate."

"This is the age in which hills can look down upon the mountains."

"A grain of poetry suffices to season a century."

"There can be no racial animosity, because there are no races. The theorist and feeble thinkers string together and warm over the bookshelf races which the well-disposed observer and the fair-minded traveller vainly seek in the justice of Nature where man's universal identity springs forth from triumphant love and the turbulent hunger for life. The soul, equal and eternal, emanates from bodies of different shapes and colors. Whoever foments and spreads antagonism and hate between the races, sins against humanity."

"Yo soy un hombre sincero De donde crece la palma Y antes de morirme quiero Echar mis versos del alma."

"I come from all places and to all places I go: I am art among the arts and mountain among mountains. I know the strange names of flowers and herbs and of fatal deceptions and magnificent griefs. In night's darkness I've seen raining down on my head pure flames, flashing rays of beauty divine."

"Wings I saw springing from fair women's shoulders, and from beneath rubble I've seen butterflies flutter."

"Once I reveled in a destiny like no other joy I'd known: when the warden — reading my death sentence — wept."

"I know that when the world surrenders, pallid, to repose, the murmur of a tranquil stream through the deep silence flows."

"All is beautiful and unceasing, all is music and reason, and all, like diamond, is carbon first, then light."

"My poems are like a dagger Sprouting flowers from the hilt; My poetry is like a fountain Sprinkling streams of coral water."

"My poems please the brave: My poems, short and sincere, Have the force of steel Which forges swords."

"To beautify life is to give it an object."