Venezuelan Rafael Cadenas wins the 2022 Cervantes Prize

First modification: 10/11/2022 – 23:10

“The word is not the place of radiance, but we insist, we insist, nobody knows why”, wrote Rafael Cadenas in his collection of poems Memorialpublished in 1977. It is perhaps this insistence on exploring and making friends with the word that led him to be the first Venezuelan to win the Miguel de Cervantes Prize, the most important in Latin American literature.

This Thursday, the jury recognized in the statement announcing the award that Cadenas is “a creator who has made poetry a reason for his own existence and has taken it to heights of excellence in our language.”

And he added: “He makes words distill their dazzling essence, placing them in the dual territory of sleep and wakefulness and making his poems a deep expression of existence itself and of the universe, also placing them in a dimension that is both mystical and earthly.

Created in 1976, the prize, now 125,000 euros, is awarded each year to a writer whose work has contributed to enriching the Hispanic legacy. And this time another Latin American arrived at the hands, the twenty-second on the list.

“No, I did not expect it (…) so I am still under the effect of that news,” Rafael Cadenas sentenced after receiving the news.

“It makes me happy, but it also scares me because it is a huge responsibility in relation, not only to the language, but to Spain, to Venezuela and to the situation we find ourselves in right now,” he added to EFE.

Cadenas literary career is long and complex. He has published poems, short stories and essays. His name began to spread throughout the Venezuelan territory with the publication of his poem “Defeat” in 1963. Then, the poet wrote “I will rise from the ground even more ridiculous to continue making fun of others and myself until the day of the final judgement.” .

His writing has been transformed until his latest publication titled as Answersfrom 2018, where the poet described himself as “humble, silent and rebellious”.

Some adjectives to which Cadenas, 92, has also added “democratic” and “anti-revolutionary”, showing himself to be a dissident of both the “regime” of Hugo Chávez and that of Nicolás Maduro.

The Venezuelan “dissident” poet

“This is nothing more than the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela. So with lowercase. Diminished and impoverished”, Cadenas recited in 2014 in Caracas.

An apparition that, as the newspaper shows ‘The world’took place within the framework of a day “in solidarity with the political prisoners of the Nicolás Maduro regime and in tribute to the Venezuelans who had died in the riots that year.”

And it is that, just like his writing, his perception of politics has also mutated over the years. Born in Barquisimeto, southeast of the Venezuelan capital, Caracas, Cadenas dabbled early in Marxist texts and was exiled in the 1950s by the Marcos Pérez Jiménez regime after participating in student strikes.

The expulsion from his country led him to Trinidad and Tobago. Many years later, the writer would ensure for the newspaper ‘The country’ that “perhaps I felt fulfilled during the four years —from 1952 to 1956— that I spent in Trinidad, exiled by the then dictatorship. It was a British colony. There was a lot of freedom, which allowed me to really live, without the subsequent anxieties”.

Back in Venezuela, Cadenas went from military in the ranks of the Communist Party to those of the Movement to Socialism (MAS). And some time later he declared himself a detractor of Chavismo. Since then he has expressed his repudiation of the Bolivarian governments through lyrics.

At the same time, he has declared himself a defender of democracy. “Democracy is an internal issue. You have to be a democrat at all times: on the street, at work, at home. Suddenly in a house of democratic people what there is is authoritarianism,” Cadenas sentenced for ‘El Mundo’ .

A diverse and award-winning literary career

“Let’s come to an agreement, poem.

I will no longer force you to say what you don’t want

Not even you will resist what I want so much.

We have struggled a lot.

Why this effort to make you in my image

when you know things I don’t suspect?

Thus begins one of Cadenas’ best-known poems, titled “Las peaces.” A manifestation of what his relationship with writing has been.

Cadenas was part of the so-called literary generation of 58, a group of poets who marked the recent history of Venezuelan literature.

His poems have covered topics such as the city, disenchantment, and he has been recognized for expressing “desolation, calm, and beauty.” And in his latest works there is an approach to philosophical thought.

Cadenas has also been linked to the word detached from poetry. He has worked as a translator, teacher and essayist.

The Cervantes Prize is a new award for the award-winning Venezuelan poet who has won distinctions such as the Federico García Lorca International Poetry Prize (2015) and the Reina Sofía Prize for Ibero-American Poetry (2018).

With EFE and local media