This is a book with a very special home: it was written in an isolation cell in Kilo 8 prison in Camagüey Abel Germain, Valencia in which Jorge Luis Borges received from a faceless man personal memory of Shakespeare. Then I wanted to allude to the autonomy which the novelist (taking off his face: that is, their beliefs, their way of being the me that is) should give his creatures. Today I return to that image, but I do it in a different sense, if not opposite. That is, not as metaphor, it is also-but as an objective description of a circumstance.
And I refer, not a novel, as on that occasion, but a collection of poems. In other words, a work which, by their gender, should have a different relationship with its author. It is faceless man, Ricardo Gonzalez Alfonso, published by Sepha, Spain, in 2005. A book also has a "biography" very special.
was written in an underground solitary confinement cell in Kilo 8 prison in the Cuban province of Camaguey, where the author had been confined for their activities in independent journalism, and where they could see the co-sentence. These were just voices, words, sounds through the walls. Were "like men without faces." He himself was.
have to imagine as the poet and journalist in his cell walled, bent, as he wrote in secret with almost unintelligible handwriting. You have to imagine how made to hide the "little bullets" of paper in their shoes when they had to leave his cell to the requisition in which the guards were looking for prohibited items (including texts such as this). You have to imagine how carefully opened to avoid damage to the closure, a pack of cigarettes, and how the bite emptied and filled with poems each cigarette. And then you have to figure out how to beat the pack with the same thoroughness. You have to imagine it in this task of miniaturization and risk to save the verses of the prison. And then you have to imagine his wife, Alida Viso in spaced visits, fragile, probably in fear, when extracted from the prison that valuable pack. Then you have to imagine the almost cryptographic deciphering handwriting; happening in each poem clean, ordered the manuscript. And then you have to imagine their efforts to circumvent controls another prison (the big prison) that is Cuba, out of the country.
have to imagine all this to understand how confused the biographies of these verses and the people who fought for them. Is yes, what usually happens. But in this case these biographies (the poet, his wife and the poetry book) go beyond the meaning of its own to become an allegory represent the peaceful struggle of the Cuban people for freedom. And all in opposition to Ortega y Gasset [1], who advised to separate the "intellectual life" of what he called living life. Because in the end, and this is a good example-it is a whole.
But let the book. Is a collection of poems with a prologue and epilogue. But the prologue is not a prologue to use. Its author is Esteban Beltran, director of the English section of Amnesty International, and is a plea for the release of the poet and the other Cuban prisoners of conscience. Nor is the epilogue. He wrote his wife, Alida Viso and is a short report on the health status of the poet, then very sick.
Thus both (the prologue and epilogue) talk about the situation of the author, not his poems. And understood. In such circumstances it is normal especially dramatic poet amount at risk over his book. I hope that these assessments will help to remedy-albeit six years late, "the understandable lack. Men without faces
consists of forty-three poems, and each works as a chapter or a window that opens at different times of the prison. Attended, among other events, to his arrest; entered his cell, share their isolation; see and judge their jailers, attended the searches of his cell, and we share his solitude; heard how an inmate suffers a beating, suffered their nights prisoner; us hurts the light seen by three months perennial burned his eyes, suffered one of his dejection, we witness the sad intimacy of the inmate; enjoyed their modest joys we share their views, and feel a chill the night he shared with the young they shot at dawn.
is, therefore, like any good book of poems, a kind of diary that refers (and document) what, in reaction to the environment, goes on inside the subject he writes. Reality is transcended, previously filtered through the senses and feelings. The reality turned into words: the human act par excellence. Because whenever we talk about poetry, we must speak forcefully, and in the first place language. How-to how much hit or miss-the poet has chosen and arranged words and pictures what has been achieved for the poetic discourse and the world that motivated him to acquire meaning in the reader's consciousness.
And that (give those keys and arrange with them that speech) Ricardo Gonzalez has done very well.
There truly memorable verses to prove it. They supported the move to set up its disturbing final return / to the edge of fear / feel / letter to blood / whole prison. / Doubt / of my questions / and love. ("After the Apocalypse", ps. 67-68.) The question that coexists with the belief distressingly and activates the essential knowledge work.
Other examples: They ordered
. / I was assigned a number / decoding / in that equation / which one is none (p. 19).
And under a concrete sky / lit / by a star / glass / I sing (p. 21).
Solos /. Imagine the look / the act of another. / As blind from staring. / As faceless men (p. 22).
penalties Clock / reeled time. / Died when / breathing / light. / We got the cell (p. 28).
He took an eye / and someone stopped / you start the other. / "You see now alone half of their tragedy? (P.52)
born orphan / words / the prison. / Born orphan and / murderers. / Oh the years shadows / the years jargons / Looms / without peace / magic / tremendous / language (p.62).
There an Arab proverb that says it is impossible for man to jump out of his shadow. But always the case? In reading these poems we see not. At least not entirely. Ricardo González Alfonso rebelled against this fate. Search for yourself in this, its double insulation (the prison and of itself) and tried not to lose their own face, even as far as possible tried to rescue the other prisoners. And he did.
[1] ideas and beliefs, José Ortega y Gasset, 1940.
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---- German Abel is a writer, poet and journalist in Cuba. Has published the day after my children (Editorial Letras Cubanas) Rucbick Cube (Editorial Union) and Trivia (Ediciones Outside the Walls). Worked on the independent news agency "Cuba Press" since its founding as an editor and writer, working, among others, Radio Martí, Cuba Free Press, Cubanet and HC Journal of Hispanic-Cuban Foundation. Now in exile in Spain. ____________________________
be good is the only way to be happy.
Being educated is the only way to be free. José Martí
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