On October 19, 1990, Havana lost one of its most versatile and hard-to-classify intellectuals. Poet, fiction writer, essayist, journalist, translator, literary critic, playwright, and radio and television scriptwriter, F\u00e9lix Pita Rodr\u00edguez defies any attempt to fit him into a simple category. As researcher Juan Nicol\u00e1s Padr\u00f3n observed, Rodr\u00edguez \u201c(…) comes across as an odd figure, standing apart from established classifications or proving difficult to study as either a poet or a fiction writer, elusive when it comes to categorization.\u201d Thirty-five years after his death, that sense of being an \u201codd figure\u201d has only been reinforced, revealing an originality that time has failed to tame.<\/p>\n
Pita Rodr\u00edguez\u2019s education followed the path of the consummate autodidact. Born into a family of Galician immigrants, he received little formal schooling, but his curiosity knew no bounds. At around sixteen, he recalled in an interview, he began writing and looking for ways to publish his work. He sent some prose poems to Alejo Carpentier, then editor-in-chief of the magazine Carteles<\/strong>, and that gesture marked the beginning of a friendship that would last for decades. \u201cWhen Alejo published my prose poems, that was the endorsement I needed: I began writing more regularly and with greater interest,\u201d he recalled years later. By 1925, he had met Nicol\u00e1s Guill\u00e9n, and the three men\u2014Carpentier, Guill\u00e9n, and Pita\u2014developed a friendship that became one of the cornerstones of Cuba\u2019s literary avant-garde.<\/p>\n His poetry belongs to the Cuban avant-garde movement and bears a strong Surrealist influence that sets it apart within the national literary landscape. Roberto Fern\u00e1ndez Retamar described him as \u201cperhaps the only Cuban we can identify as a representative of that movement,\u201d noting that his poetry \u201creflects the absence of fixed rules in its expression.\u201d Pita Rodr\u00edguez himself acknowledged the influence of the Surrealist masters he met in Paris: \u201cThey taught me to liberate language, to use it in a profound, hidden sense, to reach what lies beneath.\u201d Corcel de fuego<\/strong>, published in 1948, marked the culmination of his early period and established his distinctive approach to poetic language. His final poetry collection, Las noches<\/strong>, appeared in 1979 and explored portraits of figures whom time had rendered memorable. Critic Raimundo Lazo wrote of his fiction: \u201cF\u00e9lix was one of the most vigorous and distinctive short-story writers of his time, distinguished by the clarity, objectivity, vividness, and strength of his storytelling.\u201d<\/p>\n From an early age, his byline appeared in magazines such as Avance<\/strong>, Social<\/strong>, and Atuei<\/strong>, as well as in the newspaper Noticias de Hoy<\/strong> and the literary supplement of the Diario de la Marina<\/strong>. In 1940, after returning from his travels in Europe, he took over as editor of the Sunday magazine published by Noticias de Hoy<\/strong>, the official newspaper of the Popular Socialist Party. In 1943, the Association of Cuba\u2019s Radio and Print Journalists named him the country\u2019s best dramatist, and in 1946 he won the prestigious international Hern\u00e1ndez Cat\u00e1 Award for his short story Cosme y Dami\u00e1n<\/strong>. His work as a radio and television scriptwriter took him to Buenos Aires in 1949 and to Caracas between 1958 and 1959. Nicol\u00e1s Guill\u00e9n summed up his prose in a phrase that became a defining description of his writing: it possessed \u201cstorytelling and poetry.\u201d<\/p>\n Pita Rodr\u00edguez\u2019s political commitment was as intense as his literary vocation. In 1937, he was part of the Cuban delegation to the Second International Congress of Writers for the Defense of Culture, held in Valencia, Madrid, and Barcelona, alongside Juan Marinello, Alejo Carpentier, and Nicol\u00e1s Guill\u00e9n. During the Spanish Civil War, he helped many Cuban combatants and was one of the founders of the Ibero-American Committee for the Defense of the Spanish Republic. Years later, his solidarity extended to the cause of Vietnam, about which he wrote widely read reports and the books Vietnam: notas de un diario<\/strong> and Ni\u00f1os de Vietnam<\/strong>.<\/p>\n Following the triumph of the Revolution in 1959, he returned to Cuba and immediately joined the process of social transformation. He served as vice president of the Union of Writers and Artists of Cuba and as president of its Literature Section, positions from which he played a decisive role in promoting emerging talent. In 1985, in recognition of his entire body of work, he received the National Literature Award. The following year, he won the Critics\u2019 Award for his book De sue\u00f1os y memorias<\/strong>. He was also awarded the F\u00e9lix Varela Order and the Distinction for National Culture. He celebrated his eightieth birthday in Bejucal, already blind, at an event where he recited a poem that can be regarded as his literary testament:<\/p>\n \u201cI would not want to die Literary critics have been unanimous in recognizing his intellectual stature. Researcher and professor Salvador Bueno Men\u00e9ndez considered him one of the few outstanding examples of Cuban avant-garde literature, alongside Manuel Navarro Luna. When writing about Pita Rodr\u00edguez as he entered his eighties, Hortensia Pichardo stated emphatically that \u201cwe do not flatter Pita Rodr\u00edguez by calling him a fully established classic of contemporary Cuban literature. I would go even further.\u201d Regino Pedroso added a personal note: \u201c(…) throughout the brilliant output of this great wordsmith, the experience of his fruitful and adventurous life is always in bloom.\u201d<\/p>\n Those who knew him personally share a portrait of a complex yet endearing man. He enjoyed Cuban wit and mischief, could be irreverent and outspoken, and sometimes made enemies through his candor. Writer Emilio Comas Paret, poet Omar Felipe Mauri, and critic Waldo Gonz\u00e1lez, who had known him since their youth, explored both his personal qualities and the social commitments that set him apart. As Fern\u00e1ndez Retamar observed, Pita Rodr\u00edguez\u2019s poetry always moved between two strands: \u201c(…) the poetry of militancy, seeking to improve humanity collectively, and, at the same time, lyrical, introspective poetry that explores the individual, the deeply personal.\u201d<\/p>\n Thirty-six years after his death, F\u00e9lix Pita Rodr\u00edguez continues to challenge readers who explore twentieth-century Cuban literature. He was, as he described himself, a \u201cperennial adolescent\u201d who never ceased to marvel at the world and turned that sense of wonder into literary material. His life was a double adventure: the adventure of living and that of writing. In both, he left a mark that time has not erased.<\/p>\n Translated by Luis E. Amador Dominguez<\/p>\n Photo: La Jiribilla<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Thirty-six years after his death, F\u00e9lix Pita Rodr\u00edguez continues to challenge readers who explore twentieth-century Cuban literature. 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\nwhen the backpack of my life
\nhas already been emptied…
\nFor I want to die
\nwith death fighting for its life
\nagainst mine.\u201d<\/p>\n