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Editorial |
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This January second edition dedicates its main article to José Martí on his 155th birth anniversary. Soycubano
also wish to pay tribute to great painter Fidelio Ponce, to that end we give our readers a short article about his life. The Book Fair is coming this time with new proposals for reading, find it out at Soycubano.com; available in our stores varied offers made of authentic Cuban articles. Visit us!
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Tribute to Martí |
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José Martí is honored on his 155th birth anniversary by all people who are proud of being Cuban.
Along the century, historians and teachers of this island have intensively cultivated that we call tribute to Martí without feeling ashamed or embarrassed. It did not mediate the selfish desire of getting the attention to what is our as something different, unique, but the truth is that our Apostle had exceptional qualities inside the American philosophers.
Each outstanding leading man has their own title: El Libertador (Bolívar), Benemérito de las Américas (Juárez), Protector de los Pueblos Libres... Uruguayan José Gervasio Artigas (1764-1850) made history with this nickname. The march he carried out in 1812 from the south to the north, known as the Exodus of the Eastern people, is similar to that of the Hebrew people leaded by Moses.
In this way, we move near José Martí... When I talk about him, I am referring to the man, because I will always see him this way. It would be a big mistake to begin gathering gold and carving cornucopias to place him with saint's aureole in the shrine once again. His virtues would be inimitable then.
His talent was great and varied wrote Enrique Collazo who did not love him a lot for a while. Martí was amazing. During his youth he had reached a surprising domain of the world reality: he traveled through the classical philosophers from Greece and Rome to the oldest towns, cults and ancestral Eastern countries. He had the gift of expressing himself in his mother tongue and other languages. That is to say, he spoke and prepared himself to interpret the decisive languages in the world of his time.
As he masters several languages, he was also able to speak with the French man that him and the Cubans considered the supreme genius of the civil rights: Victor Hugo. He got really impressed about the powerful columnist of the events happened in France after revolution of 1789 and its echo in 1848.
Martí would summarize in himself the spirit and the work of those Cubans as José Agustín Caballero, José Antonio Saco, Domingo del Monte... and priest Varela whose remains are in the marble cenotaph in the Aula Magna of the Havana University, founded 280 years ago.
Cuba has had many talented women and men, endowed with the gift of the loquacity; a country where the live word has had a predominant, essential and unique meaning.
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We can publish hundreds of books and newspapers, but it is necessary the word to get to Cubans´ heart. But besides of being a great speaker and an eager reader, Martí was an artist who was able to recognize the talent of others.
How many times he would have been scolded at home! How much he should have suffered those so many times repeated words from his admirable mother letters: while you cannot move away from all that is political and journalism, you won't have a day of calmness (...) or I think, son, that while you do not let the papers of the newspapers go, your luck won't vary (...). But Martí should have tolerated such things because of the loved he felt for his good and generous parents who also loved him immensely.
It is necessary to understand that Martí was not a docile person; he was not fainted on the corners, smelling flowers either... He was persistent, obsessive with a single idea when he had to look for something... He felt disappointments because he wanted to conquer spirits and everybody is not conquerable. Loving beauty, he resigned from it... Wanting the beautiful books - and not the cheapest ones that are defoliated after leaving knowledge in the heart and memory -, he could only have those whose pages he filled with written notes in the margins... Loving the women - as they should love men: with passion -, and being him a great lover, he should give up painfully to marry the ethereal and distant girlfriend... That is why the iron ring with the name of Cuba, is the symbol of his strange and exceptional marriage.
 The infinite legacy of Martí lies in his copious mail, his eloquence, his journalistic work, in its work as revolutionary plotter... It reveals his ability to convince, persuade, unite... outliving the poisoned arrows of the envious and mediocre people, because there are people that admire, but jealously. He was able to make a newspaper from many newspapers; a party, from other so many parties and flags; a voice, from infinite voices... to become the unquestionable leader of the Cuban nation. So that a worker and a teacher of the poor call him Apostle; they told him it with the same humility and recognition as other people had identified El Libertador years ago.
But Cuba has only one Apostle. Here there are not twelve, neither four nor six, there is one; because he did not live in banquets or dissipations, but with the discretion of the apostles. He had that charisma which, according to the Greeks, was able to light a perennial fire in the hearts and conscience of the other people.
He attended his death as to indispensable wedlock; with pain and feeling that partners can consider it was not his place. Fate placed him on the road: before a ravine, the canyon of the river... When we look at the plain in which his calvary evaporated, stood in the border and before the flooding waters of May, we imagine the ford...
My verse will grow: under the grass, / I will also grow (...), he said once. And the verse grew because poetry was not only the mechanical rhyme, but the vital blow that encourages it and the inspiration that promotes it.
When an agnostic asks me: Did Martí spoke or prophesy about everything? I tell him they ignore how integral and immense Marti’s moral work was. And when we turn the historical thing into mechanical reduction, we forget the main, biggest and most outstanding achievement of Cuban Revolution: its moral work. As Cintio Vitier has said, Martí has not left a single loose end in the history of Cuba. He tried to give solution to big enigmas and complexities of his time and the future. His thought has led us to pursue the union of the continent as a goal till nowadays.
That is the redeeming strength, so that legitimate homage to a man from all time; not only in Cuba, but also in the rest of the world: José Martí.
Taken rom an article by Eusebio Leal Spengler, published in Granma newspaper.
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Topics |
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Fidelio Ponce
 Began to study in San Alejandro Fine Arts Academy in 1915, but as he was a bohemian and independent person he left the school before graduating and disappeared in Havana. Since that moment he traveled by nearby towns, taught drawing lessons to poor children, painted movie posters, made advertisement for cigarettes, among other things.
He arranged his first solo exhibition of oil paintings and drawings at the Lyceum of Havana. Style, subjects and formal processing unite in very pasty and milky oils, elongated and poorly defined figures, monochromatism, certain abstractions, melancholic topics about illness, death and religion. He participated in the XVII Fine Arts Salon (1934) with his oil painting Paisaje (Landscape).
Some of his most significant works are from that moment: Tuberculosis, Beatas which won an award in the National Exhibition of Painting and Sculpture next year. Outstanding and respected he participated in group exhibitions and arranged solo exhibitions.
After a relatively stability period he began to ramble again in 1943. However, his oil painting San Ignacio de Loyola is included in the exhibition Pintores Modernos Cubanos (Cuban Contemporary Painters) at the Museum of Modern Art (New York, 1944) and in Modern Cuban Painters at the Palace of Fine Arts (Mexico, D.F, 1946); II Cuban Painters (Museum of Fine Arts, Buenos Aires, 1946); Cuban Modern Paintings in Washington Collections (Washington, DC, 1947).
The Lyceum arranged an exhibition of his work in April, 1949. The National Museum of Fine Arts in Havana City presented and anthological exhibition on the centennial of his birth in 1995. | |
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XVII Havana International Book Fair
 The XVII Cuban International Book Fair will begin next February 13 in Havana and will end on March 9 after traveling around 40 cities of the island with an offer of 8 million books and 350 new titles.
This literary meeting will be dedicated to Galician culture, honor guest this year, and its main venue will be Morro-Cabaña complex that will open its doors with a concert, according to information provided by local mass media.
On his first stage, the Fair will be also in recreational centers and other institutions, the Faculty of Arts and Letters of Havana University and 44 bookstores of the capital.
The novels “La historia del cerco de Lisboa” by Portuguese José Saramago, new Cuban edition of “Cien años de soledad” (One hundred years of solitude) with 87.500 copies, “En el cielo con diamantes” by Cuban writer Senel Paz and the books by Uruguayan Daniel Chavarría will be on the shelves.
The sponsors of this edition have prepared special tributes to two figures of local literature, winners of National Prize of Literature, Graziella Pogolotti (2005) and Antón Arrufat (2000) of whom new works and reissuing will be launched.
Parallel to books launching and selling, the Fair will also carry out a program of activities for editors, writers, academicians, translators and designers as well as musical, dance shows, stage plays, fine arts exhibitions and films.
After being inaugurated in Havana, the Fair will be in Pinar del Río, the most western province of the island, also in the central province of Sancti Spiritus and then in the eastern provinces finishing in Santiago de Cuba.
Taken from Cubarte. | |
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Special offers for St. Valentine's day at Soycubano. Shop Cuban Culture. |
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Offer for him
A pullover from Ra'ices Collection, a mug and a headwear
Prize: 19.00 USD
A special gift for him… a souvenir for him. Includes a free musical postcard with design by Cuban plastic artists. |
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Buena Vista Social Club's Diva
3 CDs by Omara Portuondo and Collectionn 5 Legends (5 CDs)
Prize: 47.00 USD
Exceptional offer that is bringing us the peerless Omara Portuondo singing, through 3 CDs, the best of Cuban music, compositions from diverse generations of Cuban authors, such as: Gonzalo Roig, Agustín Rodríguez, Ernesto Lecuona, Isolina Carrillo, María Teresa Vera, César Portillo de la Luz and Silvio Rodríguez, plus some others tunes boasting the authorship of international composers. Accompanying this offer is Collection 5 Leyendas, a compilation having 5 CDs, 5 legends, 5 members from the Buena Vista Social Club: Eliades Ochoa, Compay Segundo, Ibrahim Ferrer, Omara Portuondo and Rubén González. A free musical postcard having design of Cuban plastic artists is included in this offer.
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Your preference for Variety
CD La Bodeguita del Medio, CD 5 Leyendas, CD… Del agua que bebimos, CD Cuba le canta a Serrat (2 CDs)
Price: 86.00 USD
Varied offer of Cuban music including the most tradicional trova present in CDs La bodeguita del Medio, 5 Leyendas,….Del Agua que Bebimos, also the homage to the Spanish singer/songwriter Joan Manuel Serrat: CD Cuba le canta a Serrat (2CD) and Antología de Oro de la Música Cubana (4 CDs). A free musical postcard having design of Cuban plastic artists is included in this offer.
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Love with Cuban Art
Two serigraphies of Amelia Peláez and two books: Book Nelson Domínguez. Mágico ritual de la creación and book Nelson Domínguez.
Price: 180.00 USD
A jewel of Cuban plastic arts, an ideal gift for lovers. A complete work by the Cuban plastic artist Nelson Dominguez accompanied by two beautiful serigraphies by Amelia Peláez. A free musical postcard having design of Cuban plastic artists is included in this offer. | |
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