Herberto
Padilla was born in Puerta de Golpe in the province of Pinar del Río, Cuba, on
January 20, 1932.
He
attended elementary and secondary education in his native province, but then
moved to Havana to study law. He did not finish his law degree. From 1949 to
1952 and from 1956 t0o 1959, Padilla lived in the United States, returning to
Cuba after the 1959 revolution, where he published his first collection of
poetry, El justo tiemp humano (The Fair Human Time).
For the next several years he traveled throughout Europe, representing Cuba’s Ministry of Commerce and working as a correspondent for Cuban publications.
The
Cuban Writers’ Union awarded his 1968 collection of poems, Fuera del
juego (Sent Off the Field, 1972) for that year’s poetry prize.
In that book Padilla had already become disenchanted with the Castro regime,
writing the lines: "The poet! Kick him out!/ He has no business here./ He
doesn't play the game./ He never gets excited/ Or speaks out clearly./ He never
even sees the miracles ..." Understandably the collection and award
resulted in a great deal of controversy throughout Cuba. The book was
republished with an appendix criticizing it as “counter-revolutionary,” and
soon after Padilla was placed under house arrest. In 1971 he was interrogated
by the security police, and forced to make a public confession before the
Writers’ Union. His wife, Belkis Cuza Malé was similarly charged, and the case
quickly moved to the international level, with major writers throughout the
world coming to his support, among them French novelist and dramatist Jean-Paul
Sartre and Peruvian Nobel Prize winner, Mario Vargas Llosa.
Padilla
was not allowed to leave Cuba until 1980, when Senator Edward Kennedy secured
Padilla’s release to to the US. He traveled to New York, Washington, D.C., and
Madrid, before settling in Princeton, New Jersey. He died at age 68 while
teaching at Auburn University in Alabama.
Padilla wrote several books of poetry as well as fiction (such as El buscavidas, 1963 and En mi jardín pastan los heroes) as well as autobiographical and essayistic writings.
The Promise
A while ago
I promised you many love poems
and--now you see--I couldn't write them.
You were sitting next to me
and it is impossible to write about what is just
there.
What one has is always poetry.
But a few clear things
have begun to bring us together--
we have shared the same solitude
in separate rooms,
without knowing anything of each other,
trying, each in place,
to remember the looks on our faces,
which all of a sudden join those
A while ago
I promised you many love poems
and--now you see--I couldn't write them.
You were sitting next to me
we thought we had lost, erased
from our early years.
I remember the knocks on the door
and your frightened voice,
and you, my eyes still filled with sleep.
For a long time
you used to ask me just what History was.
I couldn't answer, I gave vague definitions.
I never dared give you a real answer.
-Translated from the Spanish by Alastair Reid
and Alexander Coleman
