Cuban author Nivaria Tejera endured a life of resistance. Having experienced the trauma of the Spanish Civil War as a child, the anguish of evading three dictatorial regimes, and the lasting isolation of fifty years in exile, Tejera lived a legendary existence. Writing became her obsession: El barranco (1959; The Ravine, 2008), Sonámbulo del sol (1971; Sleepwalker in the Sun), Huir la espiral (1983; Fleeing the Spiral), and Espero la noche para soñarte, Revolución (2002; I Await the Night to Dream of You, Revolution), along with her other publications, constitute a single testimonial work conceived from the fierce conviction that poetry should destroy all walls, drag readers toward a creative rapture, and transcend their immediate reality.
However, she paid a high price for faithfully asserting her personal style, far from popular narratives and current literary trends. On January 6, 2016, the Cuban-Canarian author died in poverty in her small atelier on the Avenue Jean Moulin in the fourteenth arrondissement of Paris, at the age of 86. Had she opted to write her autobiography—Nivaria related to the most renowned figures of the arts in twentieth century Europe and Latin America—or even publish popular narratives describing her transatlantic experiences under the regimes of Francisco Franco, Fulgencio Batista, and Fidel Castro, she might have suffered fewer hardships. Yet she never wrote a single word with the purpose of selling books. Literature became the only form of resistance for a life pained by multiple exiles.
Nivaria Tejera was born in Cienfuegos, Cuba on September 30, 1929Footnote1, but her father's native land, the Canary Islands, was the geographical space where she encountered her literary catalyst, the Spanish Civil War. The author's first novel, El barranco, is a poetic autobiographical account of her experience during the war. It is a story of the greatest loss: the sudden arrest and final disappearance of a young girl's father, narrated in the child's own voice. Unlike his fictional persona, Saturnino Tejera was able to escape to Cuba in 1944. Nevertheless, he would only survive twelve more years due to his fragile health following his long imprisonment. Undoubtedly, this first episode of political violence would define the author's life experience and writing.
El barranco’s aesthetic challenge lies within a highly synesthetic language embedded in a powerful testimonial narrative. Praised in 1958 as one of the best literary works of the Spanish Civil War, El barranco had an outstanding reception in France. The number of editions and translationsFootnote2 that this novel inspired ought to be an indication of its respected position in the Spanish literary canon, yet this is not the case. Largely unknown, El barranco should stand alongside essential texts of the Spanish Civil War that unveil children's grim experience of the military conflict, such as Ana Maria Matute's Primera Memoria or even the recent film Pan’s Labyrinth by Guillermo Del Toro. El barranco's contradictory status is representative of the author's relationship with the critical and editorial world in Spanish and Latin American letters.
Nivaria Tejera's second novel, Sonámbulo del sol, Footnote3 received the prestigious Biblioteca Breve prize from Seix Barral in 1971. She was the first woman writer to be so honored. The previous nine authors who obtained that recognition were young novelists at the beginning of their careers: Mario Vargas Llosa, Guillermo Cabrera Infante, and Carlos Fuentes, among others. Her book stands out for its musical language and poetic density: lack of punctuation, recurrent alliterations, avant-garde images, and narrative heteroglossia. A surprising text, Sonámbulo del sol was acknowledged for its innovative quality.Footnote4
In the novel, Sidelfiro, an Afro-Cuban man, wanders the streets of Havana searching for employment during the Batista dictatorship. He sleepwalks under the oppressive symbol of tyranny, the Cuban sun, which serves as a paralyzing force on every inhabitant of the chaotic city. If the young girl in El barranco desperately seeks to free her father from a ruthless adversary, the war itself, Sidelfiro is battling for his own survival in a Dantesque journey through Havana. Sonámbulo del sol belongs to Tejera's trilogy of Cuba and exile along with Huir la espiral and Espero la noche para soñarte, Revolución. These three texts expose itinerant protagonists in an urban exodus of anguish and solitude. Whether in Havana or Paris, the journey of the exiled writer is an interior one.
Tejera waited decades before she resolved to publicly write about her experience in the Cuban Revolution.Footnote5 In 1959, already in Paris, Tejera took one of the first flights back to Cuba in order to work with the new regime. She was named Cultural Attaché in Paris and Rome. Six years later, in 1965, the author abandoned her commitment to the Cuban government and re-settled in Paris, where she remained the rest of her life. The dream of the Cuban Revolution turned into the nightmare of exile, as she conveys in Espero la noche para soñarte, Revolución. Paris became a space with “four free walls,” safe from exposure to the sun, which she associated with oppressive regimes. The main character “N” in Espero carries on the journey of the Canarian child in El barranco, the Afro-Cuban man in Sonámbulo del sol, and the dying exile in Huir la espiral. These characters became fictional representations of her life experience: they are in permanent search for freedom, denouncing all dogmas, abuse of power, and political persecution.
Sixteen years ago, I first read El barranco as a wide-eyed doctoral student. Intrigued by the style and theme of the novel, I wanted to read more books by her, but it proved quite an arduous task. Thanks to editor and critic Pío E. Serrano, I was able to contact Nivaria Tejera and establish a relationship that lasted until her death. Through her, I had access to her publicationsFootnote6, as well as a vast collection of articles, essays, and texts that discussed her writing, particularly during the seventies. Most importantly, I was privileged to learn about Nivaria's life and work from numerous visits to the author herself.
Approaching her was not an easy task. Removed from social circles, she lived with her partner, the Spanish artist Antón González (Hantón), in a modest atelier near the Alésia métro station. “I am clumsy at introductions,” she admitted once. It was impossible to ignore her gaze: Nivaria's black eyes conveyed a unique mixture of curiosity, fear, and anguish. She was candid to the point of harshness, yet there was much vulnerability in her expressions. The memories of my encounters include the magnetism of her voice, the dark bohemian living room filled with books, Nivaria's joy when nibbling a croque monsieur, or strolling around St. Germain and Montparnasse. She had an intense relationship with “the painter,” as she used to call him. Inseparable, Hantón followed Nivaria everywhere, even in their final journey: the painter died just two months after the writer's death.
Nivaria Tejera's legacy dwells in her absolute dedication to the poetic word and her defiance of imposed norms in matters of identity, literature, or politics. She was a model of integrity and resisted in the only way possible, by remaining faithful to her notion of writing. In 2008, Tejera spoke at a conference in New York: “Only time will be able to rate someone’s work, and—in a subtle or brutal manner, the desire to write, its secret development, the intrinsic needs that cultivate one’s style, out of an obstinate idea to depart from common places—will we discover if this work left a mark.”Footnote7 The present text in her memory also serves as an invitation to read her books and ensure that her enigmatic voice lives on. Nivaria's works remain largely absent from libraries and bookstores, sixty years after her first publication, Luces y piedras, in 1949. She has certainly left a mark, thus it is time to recognize Nivaria Tejera's major significance in Spanish and Latin American letters of the twentieth century.
Nivaria Tejera, Paris, July 2002. Photo by María Hernández-Ojeda.
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María Hernández-Ojeda
María Hernández-Ojeda is Associate Professor of Spanish in the Department of Romance Languages at Hunter College-CUNY. She specializes in transatlantic literature, with a research focus on the relationship between the Americas and the Canary Islands; other areas of study include the Spanish Civil War, and anarchist and feminist women authors. She has published two books about Cuban-Canarian writer Nivaria Tejera.
An excerpt translated from Tejera's final novel, Buscar otro nombre al amor, appeared in Review 82.
Notes
1 Nivaria Tejera used to provide different birth years during her interviews. She once explained to me that this confusion helped “to create an aura of mystery” around her figure.
2 El barranco was first published in French (Le ravin, 1958 and 1986), in Cuba (1959), four times in the Canary Islands (1982, 1989, 2004, 2009), and translated into Italian (Il burrone, 1960), German (Die Schlucht, 1964), Czech (Priepast [napsala], 1964), and English (The Ravine, 2008).
3 It was first published in French translation in 1970 as Somnambule du soleil.
4 The jury that selected Nivaria Tejera's novel in 1971 was composed of noted authors Luis Goytisolo, Juan Rulfo, Pere Gimferrer, and Juan Ferraté.
5 Espero la noche para soñarte, Revolución was a finalist for the Plaza y Janés award in 1997, the year it first appeared in French translation. However, it was not published in Spanish until 2002 by Editorial Verbum, Madrid.
6 Nivaria Tejera wrote seven books of poetry and five narrative texts, including Buscar otro nombre al amor, which was published (in French translation) only months prior to her death.
7 March 8, 2008 at the Cervantes Institute in New York. My translation.