Virgilio Piñera

Virgilio Piñera was born in Cárdenas, Matanzas Province. In 1925 he and his family moved to Camagüey, where he obtained his high school diploma. In 1938 he established himself in Havana, earning his doctoral degree in philosophy and letters from the University of Havana in 1940. Beginning the previous year he began to publish his poems in the literary magazine Espuela de plata (Silver Spur), the predecessor to Orígenes. In 1941 he wrote his first collection of poems, Las furias (The Furies), and his best known play, Electra Garrigó. The latter was premiered in Havana eight years later and was poorly received by the press.

In 1942 Piñera founded and headed the magazine Poeta (Poet). The following year he published La isla en peso (The Island in Weight), subsequently regarded as one of the heights of Cuban literature, but in its time the object of scorn from fellow poets Gastón Baquero, Eliseo Diego, and critics such as Cintio Vitier. Together with José Lezama Lima and José Rodríguez Feo he founded Orígenes, despite his aesthetic disagreements with them. Among his most notable contributions were a number of poems, an essay titled El secreto de Kafka (The Secret of Kafka), and another essay on Argentine literature.

In February 1946 Piñera traveled to Buenos Aires, where he would remain on and off until 1958, working for the Cuban Embassy as a proofreader and translator.[1] While in Argentina he forged friendships with Jorge Luis Borges, Victoria Ocampo, Graziella Peyrou, and José Bianco; the latter contributing the foreword to Piñera's collection of short stories, El que vino a salvarme (The One Who Came to Save Me), published by Editorial Sudamericana. Piñera also became friendly with Witold Gombrowicz, and was part of the team that translated Ferdydurke into Spanish. During this period he wrote his plays Jesús and Falsa alarma (False Alarm).

Piñera's first novel, La carne de René (René's Flesh), was published in 1952. Three years later, following a bitter dispute among the co-founders of Orígenes which resulted in its closure, he founded his final magazine, Ciclón (Cyclone). He would also occasionally contribute to Sur, as well as to the French magazines Lettres Nouvelles and Les Temps modernes.

In 1958 he left Argentina and settled permanently in Cuba, arriving there shortly before the Cuban Revolution, contributing thereafter to the newspaper Revolución and its supplement Lunes de Revolución. In 1960 he staged Electra Garrigó once again and published his complete plays. In 1968 he received Premio Casa de las Américas for the play Dos viejos pánicos (Two Old Panics), which would not be performed in Cuba until the 1990s.

Beginning in 1971 Piñera was ostracized by the Cuban government and literary establishment because of his sharply divergent ideological beliefs and his homosexuality, which he never occulted.[2] He died on October 18, 1979; his remains were buried in his native Cárdenas.[3]

Anderson, Thomas F. Everything in its Place: The Life and Works of Virgilio Piñera. Lewisburg, PA: Bucknell University Press, 2006.

Cabrera Infante, Guillermo. Mea Cuba. In Aviva Chomsky, Barry Carr and Pamela Maria Smorkaloff (eds.) The Cuba Reader: History, Culture, Politics. Duke University Press (2004).

Chichester, Ana Garcia. "Virgilio Piñera and the Formulation of a National Literature." CR: The New Centennial Review, 2.2 (2002): 231-251.

Jambrina, Jesús. "Virgilio Piñera: poesía, nación y diferencias". Madrid: Editorial Verbum, 2012

López Cruz, Humberto, ed. Virgilio Piñera: el artificio del miedo. Madrid: Hispano Cubana, 2012.

Molinero, Rita (ed). Virgilio Piñera: la memoria del cuerpo. Editorial Plaza Mayor, San Juan, Puerto Rico, 2002.

Rosario, Felix M. “Natural Traps in “La isla en peso” by Virgilio Piñera: Towards a Narrative of the Persecution of Cuban History-Hysteria”. Visitas al patio: Revista del Programa de Lingüística y Literatura, vol. 0, no. 14, 2019, pp. 79-91.

• René's Flesh, translated by Mark Schafer. Foreword by Antón Arrufat. Eridanos Press, 1988. ISBN 0-941419-40-1
• Cold Tales, translated by Mark Schafer. Introduction by Guillermo Cabrera-Infante. Eridanos Press, 1988.
• Electra Garrigó, translated by Margaret Carson. In Stages of Conflict: A Critical Anthology of Latin American Theater and Performance, ed. Diana Taylor and Sarah J. Townsend. Ann Arbor: U Michigan Press, 2008.

• Website in Spanish and Portuguese
• Virgilio Piñera at Find a Grave
• Electra Garrigó, companion webpage to English translation in Stages of Conflict: A Critical Anthology of Latin American Theater and Performance
• Portraits of Virgilio Piñera at the National Portrait Gallery, London