In the poet's centenary
Lezama
on his island
The 19th December marks the centenary of the birth of one of the greatest Cuban writers
Image: Lezama seen Sotelo Jesus Lara. Technique: charcoal on canvas
For Yuris Nórido
Taken 
of Workers
Sitting in his armchair by the window open, looking at the Trocadero streets, listening to the hubbub of the city José Lezama Lima lived their daily adventure. Traveling without leaving their four walls, which is one of the most extraordinary forms of travel: borders are those of the imagination. Recreated the world. Creating a world, in the manner of a demiurge.
Lezama always embodied the ideal of the writer completely immersed in his work and his reading to the point of constituting another vital area. Literature not as a profession, but as the priesthood.
"You have to be that type," he told his mother when he was still a child, a day the family played the Yaquis in the courtyard of the house minutes earlier had all recognized in the "drawing" that formed the pieces fell to the floor, the portrait of his dead father.
The anecdote reveals, perhaps, trigger a creative universe: the image that somehow death is imposed, which perpetuates a boost as it redeems the ordinary world, the image as possible multiple Crossroads of meanings, senses manager, the guardian of their essences ...
Lezama that day received a mandate outlining the years would go. Circumstances even the most painful, it ceased to be favorable: the child was sickly, suffering from asthma attacks, which always accompanied him, "was seen frequently confined to the domestic sphere, where living memories, ghost-father family among them-challenging weight of a saga that was the depositary.
readings did the rest, as the literature part of the same stuff of dreams. Books and hallucinations were cultivating a sensitivity eclosionaría then "rich notion," in "expression borbotante" in the words of John Ramón Jiménez.
But we can not assume that the image Lezama, the dreaming, were mere substitutes. Rather than replace a world was complete (infinite task), to discover (envision, invent) a thousand and one differences of things. So in his poetry triumphs over the adjective verb.
action is poetry, running, yes, in a time that is not ours (unless you conquer) in a mythical space that stands second nature.
Poetry Lezama seems to say, is not in things. Things are in poetry. Then attended the naturalization of wonder, which is an arduous exercise, mysterious and fruit set of tricks, a "game" that often resists our understanding, but that tempts us with a promise of freedom.
Some see (saw) in the writer Lezama alienated and self-sufficient, selfish, self-enclosed. But his own biography disrupts prejudice. There never gave back to their circumstances, indeed rebelled against the apathy and the prevailing grayness. What, if not, the band origins, beyond their deep literary impact? And in times of revolution, Lezama did not want to be just a spectator and strengthened its editorial work to contribute to the intellectual emancipation of a people.
Solo to dialogue with its historical moment for him did not mean never give up their own time, dreamy and poetic (as we have seen how vital it was), make concessions to fashion and trends, traps and charges "creative", following the dictates of "gurus" literary (rather bureaucratic) guided by immaturity, confusion or mere opportunism.
Lezama clung to their system, their world view. His house was the porch of his adventure. But did not close the doors or windows, though some were determined to close from the outside.
Poetry, fiction, essay, journalism ... José Lezama Lima pitched his literary building between two shores. It was not a writer "the past" (he rebelled again and again against those who sought to pigeonhole it, reduce it to the category of living relic), but revisited to meet again to round the whole.
was a true journalist-as Reynaldo González-pointed, only most peculiar: was interested in apprehending the "mystery" of the Cuban, its universality, the constant that describes this way of being and feeling that transcends eras and generations, and that he envisioned in rituals and customs more dream they lived.
But the evocation becomes testimony, though often sacrifice clearness towards fidelity to what envisioned.
There is Paradiso, masterpiece, the symbolic apotheosis. The river runs wild Lezama expressive moments in similes and metaphors bordering on the absurd, the whimsical (the literature also is a game, challenge), deliriously baroque constructions in outward and return journeys mazes that are difficult to find the thread ... but in the chaos there is order: Paradiso is the journey to the essences, the alleged pact of coexistence between the historical (can not forget it is a somewhat autobiographical novel) and the imagined, settlement of multiple readings, philosophical and moral consideration, mystical experience, inventory, customs, sensual and erotic delight ... All at once, a "summa" he would say.
Paradiso was mandated, even though its author think (know) that it was unfinished.
José Lezama Lima is the inimitable writer; sterile and ridicule would try: his style is a result of the image that formed the world. Both of them are inseparable, and therefore unique.
A hundred years after his birth, 34 of his death, his legacy remains rara avis on the literary scene of the English language. He drank from here and there, of life itself, but shone creatures that did stumble visions of the human and the divine.
Island on an island, his work continues to challenge us, seducing.
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