Compilation of: Jaquelyn Elena Martínez Egidio

Emilio Ballagas Cubeñas, Cuban poet and essayist of enormous prestige in the literary field of the 20th century, is considered one of the most outstanding representatives of the Neoromanticism and the Black Poetry in Cuba; also one of the most esteemed national lyricists of all time, for the finesse and perfection of his style. His work is representative of the avant-garde of the 1930s.

He was born in Camagüey on November 7th, 1908. His parents were Mauricio Ballagas Varela and Caridad Cubeñas. He graduated with a Bachelor of Arts and Sciences from the Camagüey Institute of Secondary Education in 1926 and began his studies at the University of Havana in 1928. He got his PhD in Pedagogy in 1933 and that same year he started to work as a professor of Literature and Grammar at the Regular School for Teachers of Santa Clara.

He was a university professor and also alternated literature and journalism throughout his life. He had a poetic personality contrasted through two directions of very different orientation, on the one hand he became a search for pure poetry and on the other he immersed in a popular and folk lyric. For this reason, it was always placed between the two trends that characterized Cuban avant-garde: the “purist” of Dulce María Loynaz, compared to the “realistic” trend of Nicolás Guillén.

As for the purest direction of Ballagas’s poetry, the various thematic and formal resources of his expression were frequent in works such as Júbilo y fuga (1931), Sabor eterno (1939) and even in Nuestra Señora del Mar (1943).

However, in the direction of “realism”, the poet developed part of his most significant work, with “black poetry” and a brilliant lyrical interpretation of feelings and traditions that were alien to him; because Ballagas was white and of bourgeois provenance. Elegía de María Belén Chacón, surely his most popular work, Canción para dormir a un negrito, one of his most tender poems, or Cuaderno de poesía negra (1934); constitute exmples within this trend. He also took care of compiling the important Antología de poesía negra hispanoamericana (1935), which made him one of the main figures of this trend, along with Nicolás Guillén.

He died prematurely on September 11th, 1954 at the age of 46, after suffering for a long time an illness that he accepted with Christian resignation. Emilio Ballagas has been, without a doubt, one of the greatest Cuban poets of the last century.

In the memory of that important writer, whose work is representative of Cuban avant-garde, the Provincial Center for Book and Literature and the Gertrudis Gómez de Avellaneda Center for Literary Promotion in Camagüey announce each year the Emilio Ballagas National Award; conceived for Cuban poetry authors residing in the country.

Thoughts from other illustrious ones about Ballagas

Believe me, Ballagas, that poem of yours “Elegía a María Belén Chacón” has impressed me vividly. Fine, deep and musical, it gives me a clear idea of ​​the agility of his talent and the aristocracy of his sensitivity.
Nicolas Guillén

You are without a doubt (I confirm myself in the idea of ​​1936) the poet of that intimately human poetry that goes and comes from its beginnings to its ends through the depths of man, of man himself, prisoner of time and space; poetry always of his own time; without the bombast or neglect that disfigure and diminish their greatest beauty in others. For this I congratulate him, I love him and I thank him.
Juan Ramon Jimenez

Now, before sitting down to write to him, I have read that “Elegía sin nombre”, a sigh lit all over it, full of definitive verses.
Jorge Manach

Dear Emilio: I received your beautiful poem “Nocturno y elegía”, in which the impeccable edition makes the pleasure of reading more lively. The romantic tone, so piercing, is telling everyone how, sometimes, the slowest and most difficult path, that of authenticity, is the only one.
Octavio Paz

He warmly thanks the great Cuban poet Emilio Ballagas for his “Elegía sin nombre”, braid of sea, sky, ideal and dream. New expression, in the millennial motive of the elusive and eternal reverie. Beautiful. Receive my fraternal greeting, my growing admiration, my hand in your hand, seal of friendship most faithful to those who deserve so much love from those who owe you so much beauty.
Juana de Ibarbourou

The work of Emilio Ballagas sums up in its own way, in the microcosm of his peculiar human experience, the process of our poetry from the origins to Martí […] His accent, moreover, soft and elusive, it would be said too bloodless to coin a style original. And yet he had it in a high degree. He is the mysterious weak poet of his generation; the one that is based on the imponderable of the voice; the one who, always yielding, emerges at the end defenseless, but intact and different, with his silent blown word …
Cintio Vitier

Thank you, my admired Emilio Ballagas, for the poems of “Sabor eterno”. I have always followed him with devoted attention.
Alfonso Reyes

Emilio Ballagas belongs to the history of Cuban poetry, and there are many pages of it that will be written under his name, if one wants to write it with justice and truth. The feeling of lyricism expressed in […] modern times had in Emilio Ballagas one of its great representatives.
Gaston Baquero

Never a poet so genuinely aristocratic by nature enjoyed such democratic roots; never could such ethereal poetry echo all voices, hollow in all souls. […] That masterpiece of the Castilian language, that gem of an anthology that he called “De Otro Modo”, is already of all the ways, of all the concerns, of all the dreams. I could never explain to myself how such a mysterious poem – already hovering around the boundaries of the metaphysical, of the esoteric – could catch on in that way in the crowd. Only a previous discernment of the other Grace would explain such a miracle.
Dulce Maria Loynaz

The ways of God towards man awaited them deepening his word. He saw the tenderness of the divine flow like blood, like blood that will lift the roots and branches of the tree that will give shade to the questioning and enduring grace of hIS poetry, beyond the gloomy abode of fire and emptiness.
Jose Lezama Lima

Translated by: Aileen Álvarez García