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Issue 25
Rafael Cadenas, 2022 Cervantes Prize Winner

Three Unpublished Poems

  • by Rafael Cadenas

Editor’s Note: Last year, Venezuelan poet Rafael Cadenas was declared the winner of the 2022 Cervantes Prize, the highest literary honor in the Spanish-speaking world. He will receive the prize from King Felipe VI of Spain on April 23, 2023. We are proud to share these poems as a tribute to this achievement and his immeasurable influence on Spanish-language letters.

 

You were given the deep
commission to make plain
as if sculpted
the omnipresent
mystery

to which is attached
a noisy
forgetting.

You prepared your language
for that undertaking.

 

 

You spoke to men so they would look at themselves
thus taking from them arrogance
that excess that cuts off the path
toward their unsuspected depth.

 

 

So much migrating
by lonely roads
in search
of your tone of voice
annulled
like one who looks
with vacant eyes.

 

Translated by Rowena Hill
These texts belong to Variations, an unpublished book dedicated to Rilke that awaits publication soon.

 

Photo: Venezuelan poet Rafael Cadenas with his cat Luna, by Lázaro Álvarez.
  • Rafael Cadenas

Photo: Claudia Posadas

Rafael Cadenas (Barquisimeto, 1930) is a Venezuelan poet, translator, and educator. He formed part of the “Tabla Redonda” group in the early sixties, when he was active in the Communist Party of Venezuela. He was imprisoned and exiled during the dictatorship of Marcos Pérez Jiménez, and he took refuge on the island of Trinidad until 1957. He has published the books Los cuadernos del destierro (1960), Falsas maniobras (1966), Memorial (1977), Intemperie (1977), Anotaciones (1983), Amante (1983), Dichos (1992), Gestiones (1992), Apuntes sobre San Juan de la Cruz y la mística (1995), and En torno a Basho y otros asuntos (2016). He received a Guggenheim grant in 1986 and an Honoris Causa doctorate from the Central University of Venezuela. His work has been awarded several important prizes, including the Premio Nacional de Ensayo in 1984, the Premio Nacional de Literatura in 1985, the Premio San Juan de la Cruz in 1991, and the Premio Internacional de Poesía Ciudad de Granada Federico García Lorca in 2016. In 2022 he received the Cervantes Prize, the most prestigious award given to writers of Spanish-language literature.

  • Rowena Hill
rh1

Rowena Hill lives in Mérida, Venezuela. She has taught English Literature at the Universidad de los Andes in Mérida, and she has published several verse collections in Spanish, as well as poems, essays, and translations in Venezuelan, Colombian, Indian, and US publications. She has translated some of the best known Venezuelan poets into English.

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