The writer José Lezama Lima, smoking in front of the camera
"Only the difficult is stimulating."
– José Lezama Lima
José Lezama Lima was born on December 19, 1910, in Havana, a city he would rarely leave throughout his life. He spent most of his early years sick, and due to asthma as well as other health issues he was not able to be as active as many of the children with whom he grew up. While he was limited in his physical activities, he excelled in scholastics, getting into law school and becoming a prolific writer. While his family fled Cuba due to political unrest, José stayed behind, having faith in his country and supporting the revolution. He wrote for several different literary reviews, eventually helping to find one himself in Orígenes. It would quickly become very popular if also controversial.
Because of his poor health, José read often and ambitiously focusing on Spanish classics and French symbolists, something that would play a large role in his writing as he worked. While he was rarely able to leave Cuba he used books to gain knowledge about the world outside of his country, using what he learned to improve his work and eventually releasing a book of poetry that was successful enough to make him a known name in the Cuban literary community. His poetry was what he was most well known for a significant period of his life, and he was named director of the Department of Literature and Publications in 1959 by Fidel Castro.
As his work became well known throughout Cuba, his life did as well. His personal life became the focus of a government doing its best to remove both queer people and their legacies. While José was married to a woman to give the appearance of heterosexuality, his queerness was an open secret. The release of José’s book Paradiso was what truly caused controversy for him. With explicit queer content and a lengthy discussion as to the morality of queerness that never seems to fully settle within the text, it was his most successful and despised book.
It did not help that the book played very close to being autobiographical. Castro's government had just recently cracked down on political works with the trial of Jose Padilla—who named José Lezama Lima in his confession.
Lima’s books were removed from circulation. He was banned from publishing outside of one essay collection and many of the people he counted as friends began distancing themselves from him.
Globally his work found startling success, having drawn on literary traditions from all over the world. He gained praise from all over the world, becoming more and more beloved throughout the literary community of different countries even as he was excommunicated from his own. This is possibly what kept him from being jailed. Castro was well aware of what jailing an internationally renowned author could do to Cuba's reputation.
Lima remained free but cut off from his community, and in many ways from the world. He only left Cuba twice in his lifetime. While he kept writing and reading, his work was not published again until after his death in 1976, when a sequel to Paradiso was released along with some of his letters and essays.
While a hugely respected author, José Lezama Lima’s contributions to his country’s literary canon are less than they could have been had Fidel Castro’s homophobia not gotten in the way. Castro was too blinded by his prejudice and hate to allow the artists and creators in his country to improve the place they loved. In the case of Lima, he brought something to the Cuban literary scene that couldn’t be replaced easily, and that was a challenge. A challenge to discuss the difficult, because in the end his book never came to a conclusion. Scholars are still fighting over whether or not he supported homosexuality morally because in the book he doesn’t decide; he discusses. He put forward an idea, and Castro knew better than most how powerful ideas can be and was scared. From the impact Lima’s work still has, it seems he was right to be. One of the most influential and well-known Cuban writers, Lima looms large in the country’s legacy.
[Disclaimer: some of the sources may contain triggering material]
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