“I feel good, except that old age limits a lot, but in general I feel good”says the poet and essayist with his soft and slow voice Rafael Cadenas.
“Preparing for the trip to Spain”.
BBC World chatted with the winner Cervantes Award 2022 a few days before his arrival in Madrid, on Wednesday.
This Monday, the writer receives the most important award for letters in Spanish from the hands of the kings, in Alcalá de Henares.
At 93 years old, he is the first venezuelan to whom they give the distinction, which in the past honored figures such as Jorge Luis Borges, Mario Vargas Llosa, Camilo José Cela or Carlos Fuentes.
He answered us by phone from his home in Caracas.
-Did you ever imagine that you would have journalists calling you from different countries to interview you?
– “No, that never crossed my mind.”
Although millions of his compatriots have emigrated in recent years, Cadenas has not been tempted to leave Venezuela.
“No, I am very used to the country, although I have a cosmopolitan spirit.
I want to raise the importance of cosmopolitanism, which actually already exists, but that is opposed by nationalisms, which are cause of almost all the problems between countries.
I believe that nationalisms, ideologies and religions are factors that divide the world, it is something very evident, but it is very difficult for human beings to see that so clearly.
Each country clings to its history, there is a kind of narcissism that has to do with each country”.
Exile
Being very young, he was a member of the Communist Party of Venezuela.
“I had political participation, especially during the period of the Marcos Pérez Jiménez dictatorship,” he says.
General Pérez Jiménez was one of the leaders of the coup that overthrew President Rómulo Gallegos in 1948, and became one of the members of the Military Junta that governed the country.
In April 1953, he was elected president by a contested National Constituent Assembly and was sworn in as president for the constitutional term that would end in 1958.
Your regimen imprisoned and expelled from the country to Cadenas, who spent four years on the island of Trinidad.
With the return of democracy in 1958, he too returned.
“From that moment, I had some political activity, but much less and after the 70s I dedicated myself more to writing.”
What is expected of poetry if not to make living more alive?
Thus, the work of Cadenas has accompanied several generations of Latin Americans in their lives.
“For me that has been a surprise, I did not imagine that this was going to happen, still I find it hard to believe because it’s too much for me.”
His poetry has captivated great connoisseurs of that genre, but also ordinary people.
For example, his famous poem “Defeat” not only marked the generation of the sixties, today it continues to shake many who read it.
I have never had a trade
that before every competitor I have felt weak
(…)
that I have been denied in advance and mocked by the fittest
that I lean against the walls so as not to fall completely
(…)
that I have been humiliated by literature teachers
that one day I asked how I could help and the answer was a laugh
that I will never be able to make a home, or be brilliant, or succeed in life
“I was quite depressed when I wrote that poem, I think it is the one that has been published and translated the most,” he tells us.
“I didn’t think my books were going to be translated either and they are already in several languages.”
He remembers that recently he was reviewing his books and “the anthology that they published for me appeared in Bulgaria. Also in Germany They published a short anthology. That’s something I didn’t imagine.”
His writings are also found in French, Italian and English.
He answers sparingly when asked what has made him feel most proud of his prolific and successful career, seeing all those translations, recognitions and awards (Federico García Lorca Poetry Prize, Romance Languages Literature Prize of the Fair International Book of Guadalajara, San Juan de la Cruz Award, among others).
“I don’t have pride, I accept all of this quite easily, I know that it is something important and, of course, that I feel happy, but I don’t know what pride isnor success, I think I have never used the word success “.
The teacher
For more than 30 years, Cadenas was a professor at the School of Letters at the Central University of Venezuela.
Teaching, an experience that he assures has been quite satisfactory, was never alien to him.
“From a very young age I taught in schools and when I graduated from the School of Letters, shortly after, I worked as a teacher, especially Spanish literature, especially poetry. I also taught American poets.”
And it is that poetry entered his life from a very young age, in his native Barquisimeto, a city in the west of the country.
The poets do not convince. They don’t expire either. His role is another, alien to power: to be a contrast
“At the age of 14 I was already quite a reader and I had contact with Salvador Garmendia, who was surely two years older than me.
I read a lot with him, for example, Don Quixote, Rubén Darío, the truly modern poetry that began in those years”.
At the age of 16, he wrote “Initial Songs”.
When talking about authors who have inspired him and sources that have nurtured him, the writer highlights the American poet and essayist walt whitman.
“But the style I use has nothing to do with his,” he clarifies. “The important thing is what he says, as well as being the creator of free verse and the great singer of democracy. For this reason, he has always interested me, but it is not reflected in what I write ”.
I belonged to a people of great snake-eaters, sensual, vehement, silent and apt to go mad with love. But my race was of a different lineage
“In ‘Los cuadernos del destierro’ there is influence from the Venezuelan poet José Antonio Ramos Sucre and the French poet Henri Michaux. He brought me closer to the prose poem.”
Regarding his most recent work, he indicates that “lately the poems have been shorter and with a certain oriental influence.”
The I
In his poetic exploration, Cadenas seeks introspection, addresses questions about existence, and makes the ego, the self, a constant guest in his writings.
–What does the ego do to us as individuals and as nations?
“I have been reading modern authors for years with an oriental influence, Zen, classical Indian thought and Taoism, that in itself has become an influence as well.
“I believe that what is happening in the world has a lot to do with the ego, which is necessary for ordinary life, but I consider that it is a factor that is present throughout history. in a very negative way and today that has been extreme.
“The possibility that we have is to observe the ego, the self, because it cannot be destroyed, the self cannot destroy the self.
“A transformation in this sense would be a phenomenon that did not have his intervention, which is what has happened in the case of great teachers, who have reached an understanding that has changed their lives.
But it is very complex to explain.
“Heights of Excellence”
In November, the Spanish Minister of Culture, Miquel Iceta, read the verdict of the Cervantes Prize jury.
“Because of his vast and extensive literary work, the jury recognizes the importance of a creator who has made poetry a reason for his own existence and has taken it to heights of excellence in our language.”
“His work is one of the most important and demonstrates the transformative power of the word when the language is elevated, it is taken to the limit of its creative possibilities”.
The journalist Dalila Itriago, from HispanoPost, asked Cadenas how he would like to be remembered and he, with a blue pen, wrote to her:
“As a defender of democracy, which means plurality of thought in the face of totalitarianism that is gaining more and more strength due to ignorance.”
Venezuela
In his speech upon receiving the Reina Sofía Prize for Ibero-American Poetry, in 2018, Cadenas said that “in Venezuela we urgently need to establish normality, which can only be democratic.”
And he recalled that in an interview he had said that “the word crisis applied to Venezuela is a euphemism. Our situation is something that goes beyond the crisis“.
–Five years later, how do you feel, how do you see to his country?
“It is difficult to express to him what I think about this situation. The crisis continues, but there is an improvement in certain areas and, above all, the private initiative in the cultural field is very important.
For example, universities are in a very difficult situation, and yet there are professors and students who keep universities alive. There are still spaces where you can express your opinion”.
–If you had to explain to a child from a far away land who has never heard of Venezuela what Venezuela is, what would you say?
“I would tell him that Venezuela is a privileged country by nature because it has plains, jungles, coasts that overlook the Caribbean, a part of the Andes mountain range, it is a country favored by nature.
I would tell you that it also has a very interesting history and a figure in the field of warfare, which was Simón Bolívar, and in the humanities, an extremely important man in language, law, and poetry, which was Andrés Bello.
The country has given figures that transcend”.
He is definitely one of them.
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