INTERIVEW: José Lezama Lima film now streaming on PBS
Photo: José Lezama Lima is the subject of the new documentary Letters to Eloisa, directed by Adriana Bosch. Photo courtesy of Paolo Gasparini, Fondo Urbano de Fotografia / Provided by press site with permission.
José Lezama Lima was one of the most important Cuban writers of his time, and his influence and literature continue to live on today. The author is now the subject of a new PBS documentary called Letters to Eloisa, streaming through mid-November as part of Latino Public Broadcasting’s VOCES series.
Directed by Adriana Bosch, Letters to Eloisa is an epistolary film that tracks the personal and public life of Lezama through letters to his sister, Eloisa, who was living in exile in Mexico. The writer became part of an emerging group of Latin American artists and authors who captured the identity and unique history of their respective cultures and countries; he joined with Julio Cortázar, Gabriel García Márquez, Octavio Paz and Mario Vargas Llosa, and together they defined Latin American literature in the 20th century, according to press notes.
Problems came for Lezama after he published his masterpiece, Paradiso, which depicted homoerotic scenes. The newly victorious regime of Fidel Castro was notoriously homophobic, and many people were made to endure hard labor for their sexuality. Lezama started to receive further scrutiny in the 1970s when he became one of the subjects of the so-called Padilla Affair, when poet Heberto Padilla gave up names of other “dissidents” who were not on the side of the revolution, according to press notes. Due to this, Lezama’s final years were spent in exile on the island, with his books taken out of circulation in Cuba.
Letters to Eloisa looks back at this influential writer and how his personal story was inextricably tied to his country’s politics and revolutionary upheaval. Recently Hollywood Soapbox exchanged emails with Bosch about the new documentary. Questions and answers have been edited for style.
What inspired you to tell this story about José Lezama Lima?
The letters to Eloisa were my inspiration. I found a collection of those letters published by Eloisa in 2006 while completing research for [a] documentary on Fidel Castro for PBS’ American Experience. They were so haunting and filled with longing. They spoke volumes about the pain of family separation and about the toll of repression on the soul of a poet.
When did you first read Paradiso? What was your reaction to the story?
Paradiso needs to be read slowly and carefully. As Nobel Laureate novelist Mario Vargas Llosa tells us, the story is hidden under a cathedral of baroque poetics. Paradiso’s opening chapters are full of delight as we learn about the history of the Olaya family (a facsimile of Lezama’s maternal family), the very colorful Lima family and the wonderful details of life in the early Cuban 20th century. My recommendation to any reader of Paradiso is to read first about the novel so that you come into it prepared for the language and the flights of imagination that Lezama gifts to us. I would recommend something as simple as Edmund White’s New York Times’ review of Paradiso published in 1972, which is referenced in the film.
What do you think Lezama’s life can teach us today?
In a way that was neither aggressive or confrontational, Lezama’s lesson is one of dignity and resistance. He was cautious not to speak against the Revolution but neither did he bend to its dictates. He is an example of quiet dignity against adversity.
What was it like for Lezama to be ostracized and censored in his own country?
Lezama was a man who lived by and for his friends. His home had been a center of intellectual culture in Havana, constantly visited by writers and painters. He loved public life and had been an avid cultural promoter. He was not allowed to publish, did not appear in journals or could even be cited by others. … In the letters to Eloisa he continuously complains about loneliness. We now know that heartbreak is not only a romantic notion, that people’s health can be compromised by their mental state, and I think Lezama’s physical deterioration was linked to the suffering he endured. “You don’t know how much I have suffered,” he writes Eloisa in 1971. “I live in fear, overwhelmed by melancholy. I live in ruin and desperation.”
Did he ever stop loving Cuba?
No, Lezama never stopped loving Cuba. The film’s ending is an ode to his hope that there will always be a future awaiting to break through the thwarted beginnings of the nation. He speaks of the “Viñales Valley, a beautiful valley with rock formations at dawn, still covered in grey but ready to explode in burst of light.”
Do you believe freedom is needed for the arts to flourish?
Of course. Creative freedom is in danger everywhere in the world. Human Rights Watch has reported a rise on authoritarian government and issued a warning of democracy and human rights being in danger. From China to Venezuela, Budapest to Istanbul, and also in Cuba, “authorities have broadened their assault on freedom of expression, detaining journalists, prosecuting activists, tightening ideological control over universities, and expanding internet censorship.” In this atmosphere a film like Letters to Eloisa is a grain of sand added to the growing resistance against intolerance and repression across the world.
To quote Lezama’s letter to Eloisa in 1963, “If there is no freedom, there is no image, there is no poetry … there can be no truth.”
By John Soltes / Publisher / John@HollywoodSoapbox.com
Letters to Eloisa, directed by Adriana Bosch, is now streaming on PBS.org as part of the VOCES series. Click here for more information.
