IRA MATH­UR

Dulce María Loy­naz re­mains an enig­mat­ic fig­ure in Cuban let­ters, a writer whose lega­cy is both pro­found and strange­ly mut­ed. Born in Ha­vana in 1902, she lived through some of the most tur­bu­lent decades in Cu­ba’s his­to­ry, yet her work re­mains cu­ri­ous­ly re­moved from the overt­ly po­lit­i­cal nar­ra­tives that de­fined many of her con­tem­po­raries.

In­stead, Loy­naz’s writ­ing is in­tro­spec­tive, lyri­cal, and deeply at­tuned to the com­plex­i­ties of iden­ti­ty, be­long­ing, and the ways in which per­son­al and na­tion­al his­to­ries in­ter­twine. Her best-known works, in­clud­ing her on­ly nov­el, Jardín (Gar­den), and her po­et­ry col­lec­tions, re­flect a life spent med­i­tat­ing on the frac­tures and con­ti­nu­ities of Cuban cul­ture and her own place with­in it.

Dulce María Loy­naz was born in­to a promi­nent and pa­tri­ot­ic fam­i­ly. Her fa­ther, En­rique Loy­naz del Castil­lo, was a gen­er­al in Cu­ba’s War of In­de­pen­dence and the au­thor of the lyrics to Cu­ba’s na­tion­al an­them, El Him­no de Bayamo. Her moth­er, María de las Mer­cedes Muñoz, was a cul­tured woman who in­stilled in her chil­dren a love for lit­er­a­ture and the arts.

The fam­i­ly home in the Veda­do dis­trict of Ha­vana be­came a meet­ing place for po­ets, artists, and in­tel­lec­tu­als, ex­pos­ing Loy­naz to com­plex and deep cul­tur­al in­flu­ences from a young age.

Grow­ing up in this at­mos­phere, Loy­naz was im­mersed in Cuban na­tion­al­ism. Yet her up­bring­ing was al­so marked by priv­i­lege, and she of­ten found her­self strad­dling two worlds: the gen­teel re­fine­ment of Ha­vana’s elite and the broad­er, more tu­mul­tuous cur­rents of Cuban so­ci­ety. This du­al­i­ty would be­come a re­cur­ring theme in her work, par­tic­u­lar­ly in Jardín, where the en­closed, de­cay­ing man­sion serves as a mi­cro­cosm for Cu­ba it­self—at once beau­ti­ful, in­su­lar, and haunt­ed by the past.

Loy­naz at­tend­ed pres­ti­gious schools in Ha­vana, ex­celling in lit­er­a­ture and lan­guages. Her ear­ly ex­po­sure to the works of Eu­ro­pean writ­ers like Rain­er Maria Rilke, Fed­eri­co Gar­cía Lor­ca, and Gabriela Mis­tral in­flu­enced her po­et­ic sen­si­bil­i­ty. How­ev­er, she was equal­ly shaped by Cu­ba’s oral tra­di­tions, folk­lore, and the rhythms of its mu­sic. The con­tra­dic­tions be­tween Eu­ro­pean lit­er­ary tra­di­tions and the dis­tinct­ly Cuban cul­tur­al mi­lieu in which she was raised gave her work a unique ten­sion that is uni­ver­sal yet root­ed in place.

Loy­naz be­gan pub­lish­ing po­et­ry in the 1920s, earn­ing a rep­u­ta­tion for her el­e­gant, re­strained style. Her work was in­tro­spec­tive, of­ten fo­cus­ing on themes of love, time, and the nat­ur­al world. In her ear­ly po­et­ry, she ex­plored the land­scapes of Cu­ba with an al­most mys­ti­cal rev­er­ence, im­bu­ing the is­land’s flo­ra and fau­na with a sense of per­ma­nence and mem­o­ry.

In one ear­ly po­em, she writes:

“The palm tree stands silent, its roots tan­gled in the earth’s se­crets, its fronds brush­ing the edge of the sky. It has seen em­pires rise and fall, and still, it sways, in­dif­fer­ent to the pass­ing of time.”

This qui­et yet pow­er­ful im­agery be­came a hall­mark of Loy­naz’s work, re­flect­ing her abil­i­ty to evoke com­plex emo­tions through sim­ple, un­adorned lan­guage.

This is an­oth­er ex­am­ple:

Ros­es

In my gar­den, ros­es:

I don’t want to give you ros­es

that to­mor­row …

that to­mor­row you won’t have.

In my gar­den, birds

with crys­tal song:

I do not give them to you;

they have wings to fly.

In my gar­den, bees

craft a fine hive:

A minute’s sweet­ness …

I don’t want to give you that!

For you, the in­fi­nite or noth­ing:

what is im­mor­tal or this mute sad­ness

you won’t un­der­stand …

The un­nam­able sad­ness of not hav­ing

some­thing to give

to some­one who car­ries on the fore­head

a por­tion of eter­ni­ty.

Leave, leave the gar­den …

Don’t touch the ros­es:

things that die

should not be touched.

Rosas

En mi jardín hay rosas:

Yo no te quiero dar las rosas

que mañana …

mañana no ten­drás.

En mi jardín hay pá­jaros

con can­tos de cristal:

No te los doy,

que tienen alas para volar …

En mi jardín abe­jas

labran fi­no panal:

Dulzu­ra de un min­u­to …

no te la quiero dar!

Para ti lo in­fini­to o na­da;

lo in­mor­tal o es­ta mu­da tris­teza

que no com­pren­derás …

La tris­teza sin nom­bre

de no ten­er que dar

a quien ll­e­va en la frente

al­go de eternidad …

De­ja, de­ja el jardín …

No toques el ros­al:

las cosas que se mueren

no se deben to­car.

While her po­et­ry gained her a mod­est fol­low­ing in Cu­ba, she re­mained on the pe­riph­ery of the is­land’s lit­er­ary scene, in­creas­ing­ly dom­i­nat­ed by po­lit­i­cal­ly charged voic­es. Writ­ers like Nicolás Guil­lén and Ale­jo Car­pen­tier pro­duced works that di­rect­ly en­gaged with Cu­ba’s colo­nial his­to­ry and so­cio-po­lit­i­cal strug­gles. Loy­naz, by con­trast, seemed al­most in­dif­fer­ent to these con­cerns, fo­cus­ing in­stead on the in­te­ri­or lives of her char­ac­ters and the sub­tler ways in which his­to­ry shapes iden­ti­ty. This per­ceived de­tach­ment from the po­lit­i­cal cur­rents of her time would lat­er con­tribute to her mar­gin­al­i­sa­tion with­in Cuban lit­er­ary cir­cles.

Pub­lished in 1951, Jardín is Loy­naz’s on­ly nov­el, yet it stands as one of the most sig­nif­i­cant works of Cuban lit­er­a­ture. The nov­el cen­tres on Bár­bara, a young woman who re­treats in­to the over­grown gar­den of her fam­i­ly’s de­cay­ing man­sion, seek­ing so­lace from the chaos of the out­side world. The gar­den is both a sanc­tu­ary and a prison, where Bár­bara con­fronts the weight of her fam­i­ly’s his­to­ry and the broad­er forces of change sweep­ing through Cu­ba.

The nov­el is marked by its lush, evoca­tive de­scrip­tions of the nat­ur­al world, which serve as both set­ting and metaphor.

In one pas­sage, Loy­naz writes: “The gar­den grew wild, de­fy­ing the hand of man. Vines twist­ed around stat­ues, and flow­ers bloomed in un­ex­pect­ed places as if na­ture sought to re­claim what had been tak­en from it. Here, time moved dif­fer­ent­ly—slow­er, heav­ier—mea­sured not by clocks but by the open­ing and clos­ing of petals.”

Through Bár­bara’s jour­ney, Loy­naz ex­plores themes of mem­o­ry, loss, and the pas­sage of time. The gar­den be­comes a sym­bol of Cu­ba it­self, em­body­ing its beau­ty and en­trap­ment in cy­cles of his­to­ry. Bár­bara’s iso­la­tion mir­rors the iso­la­tion of the Cuban elite, who re­mained cut off from the broad­er cur­rents of change even as they shaped them.

De­spite its lit­er­ary mer­it, Jardín failed to achieve wide­spread recog­ni­tion, over­shad­owed by the more dy­nam­ic and out­ward­ly po­lit­i­cal works of Loy­naz’s male con­tem­po­raries. This mar­gin­al­i­sa­tion was com­pound­ed by Loy­naz’s re­luc­tance to en­gage with the lit­er­ary es­tab­lish­ment or align her­self with the rev­o­lu­tion­ary gov­ern­ment fol­low­ing Fi­del Cas­tro’s rise to pow­er in 1959. While oth­er writ­ers were cel­e­brat­ed as cul­tur­al he­roes, Loy­naz was qui­et­ly side­lined, her work falling out of print and in­to ob­scu­ri­ty.

The po­lit­i­cal cli­mate of post-rev­o­lu­tion­ary Cu­ba fur­ther com­pli­cat­ed Loy­naz’s po­si­tion. Her aris­to­crat­ic back­ground and apo­lit­i­cal stance made her un­com­fort­able in a so­ci­ety that in­creas­ing­ly val­orised pro­le­tar­i­an ideals. She with­drew from pub­lic life, spend­ing much of her lat­er years in seclu­sion at her fam­i­ly home in Veda­do. Yet she con­tin­ued to write, pro­duc­ing po­et­ry that re­mained in­tro­spec­tive and evoca­tive.

In one of her lat­er po­ems, she re­flects on the pas­sage of time and the weight of his­to­ry:

“We car­ry the past in our bod­ies, in the lines on our hands and the shad­ows in our eyes. The land re­mem­bers, even when we try to for­get. It holds our sto­ries in its soil, wait­ing for us to re­turn.”

It was not un­til 1992 when Loy­naz was award­ed the Miguel de Cer­vantes Prize, that her con­tri­bu­tions to lit­er­a­ture were ful­ly ac­knowl­edged. The recog­ni­tion brought her work back in­to the pub­lic eye, but by then, Loy­naz was in her 90s and in frail health. She died in 1997, leav­ing be­hind a body of work that res­onates with those will­ing to en­gage with its qui­et bril­liance.

Dulce María Loy­naz’s writ­ing is not loud or in­cen­di­ary. It does not de­mand at­ten­tion or call for rev­o­lu­tion. In­stead, it in­vites read­ers to pause, re­flect, and see the world through a lens of qui­et in­ten­si­ty. Her work cap­tures the beau­ty and com­plex­i­ty of Cu­ba in ways that are both time­less and deeply root­ed in the specifics of place and his­to­ry.

For Cuban read­ers, Loy­naz mir­rors their ex­pe­ri­ences of love, loss, and re­silience. For the wider world, she pro­vides a win­dow in­to a Cu­ba that is of­ten over­shad­owed by its pol­i­tics—a Cu­ba of gar­dens and palm trees, whis­pers and mem­o­ries, and the spaces be­tween si­lence and song.

Ira Math­ur is a Guardian Me­dia jour­nal­ist and win­ner of the 2023 Bo­cas Prize for Non-Fic­tion for her mem­oir, Love The Dark Days.

Web­site: www.iras­room.org

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