Havana, July 24 – Among the great classics of Cuban literature, Miguel de Carrión stands out, renowned author of the first half of the XX century and of the novels Las Honradas and Las Impuras.
On the previous day, Letras Cubanas Publishing House presented the writer's two best-known works at the Pabellón Cuba.
However, to complete a sort of trilogy, so named by editor Ruby Ruíz, greater visibility is currently being given to another of his gems, La Esfinge, as a kind of culmination of a literary era focused on the female figure of that era.
To talk about Miguel de Carrión (1875-1929) and other writers, Ruíz, also head of the Narrative Editorial Department at Letras Cubanas, told Prensa Latina that these proposals are part of the summer agenda.
Letras Cubanas, along with other publishing houses, worked on the Biblioteca del Pueblo collection, which includes the great classics of our literature. However, the series is incomplete and new titles are still being considered, even for the upcoming International Book Fair, the specialist told this media outlet.
Ruíz added that the promotion of these traditional works aims to be read by all readers.
The idea is to ensure that the classics are not missing from our bookstores, nor that they are lost to younger readers, because many of us already know these writers, poets, and novelists, but the new generations don't, she noted.
That's why we want to make them more widely known, and we have these presentations on Madera Street, located in Old Havana, or at the Pabellón Cuba, headquarters of the Hermanos Saíz Association, the publisher added.
Ruíz referred to how these classics reach our educational system through the Literature subject. Writers from the Cuban Romantic period, such as the poets Gertrudis Gómez de Avellaneda and José María Heredia, are known in senior high school, but Miguel de Carrión and Cirilo Villaverde, for example, are studied beforehand.
We have a very interesting literature program that somehow integrates the different literary movements and their representatives, she indicated.
Our publishing house has a book by Heredia that hasn't been published yet, titled From Poetry to Journalism, which was conceived from an idea based on what they studied in eleventh grade, so that, in some way, the students would have a different perspective on this Cuban independentist, author of poems like "Hymn to the Exile" and his famous "Niagara," Ruíz specified.
Regarding the presence of women in society, the differences and similarities between women of the XIX century and those of today, alluding, above all, to the work of Miguel de Carrión, the expert mentioned that certain prejudices still exist in society.
The woman of these times still lives this double standard and even the women themselves condemn themselves, not only the prejudice comes from the man, remarked the literary editor; certain freedoms that they can have, we are restricted or criticized by society itself, she lamented.
In these times the woman must know, study, prepare for life, not lose those jobs that our mothers and grandmothers taught us because so she can defend herself in a world of men, concluded the literary. (Source: Prensa Latina)