Essays
Cuba has an important tradition of essay writing that began in the first half of the 19th century and includes many world-famous authors. Some of the most renowned essayists were Alejo Carpentier, José Lezama Lima, Guillermo Cabrera Infante, Ramiro Guerra, Emilio Roig de Leuchsenring, Cintio Vitier, Jorge Mañach, Graziella Pogolotti and Roberto Fernández Retamar.
Before 1959, essayists who stand out are the ethnographer Fernando Ortiz, author of works including Azúcar y Población de las Antillas (1927) and Contrapunteo cubano del tabaco y el azúcar (1940); Emilio Roig de Leuchsenring with works such as Cuba no debe su independencia a los Estados Unidos (1950); José Lezama Lima with Analecta del reloj (1953) and Tratados en La Habana (1958). Among many other writers of note are Jorge Mañach, Ramiro Guerra, Juan Marinello, Medardo Vitier, José Antonio Portuondo, Carlos Rafael Rodríguez and Raúl Roa.
During the second half of the 20th century and the beginning of the 21st, the development of essay writing accelerated, with dozens of writers cultivating the genre: Cintio Vitier, Fina García Marruz, Roberto Fernández Retamar,Roberto Friol, Ambrosio Fornet, Graziella Pogolotti, Adelaida de Juan, Rine Leal, Leonardo Acosta, Justo C. Ulloa, Enrico Mario Santi, Rafael Rojas, Jorge Luis Arcos, Enrique Sainz, Luis Álvarez, Raúl Hernández Novás, Virgilio López Lemus, Enrique Ubieta Gómez, Alberto Garrandés, Beatriz Maggi, Emilio Ichikawa, Madeline Cámara, Rita Martín and Vitalina Alfonso.
Read more about this topic: Cuban Literature
Famous quotes containing the word essays:
“I have been reporting club meetings for four years and I am tired of hearing reviews of the books I was brought up on. I am tired of amateur performances at occasions announced to be for purposes either of enjoyment or improvement. I am tired of suffering under the pretense of acquiring culture. I am tired of hearing the word “culture” used so wantonly. I am tired of essays that let no guilty author escape quotation.”
—Josephine Woodward, U.S. author. As quoted in Everyone Was Brave, ch. 3, by William L. O’Neill (1969)
“I undertake the same project as Montaigne, but with an aim contrary to his own: for he wrote his Essays only for others, and I write my reveries only for myself.”
—Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712–1778)
“If these Essays were worthy of being judged, it might fall out, in my opinion, that they would not find much favour, either with common and vulgar minds, or with uncommon and eminent ones: the former would not find enough in them, the latter would find too much; they might manage to live somewhere in the middle region.”
—Michel de Montaigne (1533–1592)