Lost Havana's preserver: IN TRIBUTE: GUILLERMO CABRERA INFANTE: BRILLIANT WRITER AND CRITIC OF CASTRO

Click here: Herald.com 02/23/2005 Lost Havana's preserver
http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/news/1096680Click here: Herald.com 02/23/2005 Lost Havana's preserver 5.htm


Posted on Wed, Feb. 23, 2005


Lost Havana's preserver
IN TRIBUTE: GUILLERMO CABRERA INFANTE: BRILLIANT WRITER AND CRITIC OF CASTRO


Guillermo Cabrera Infante's death on Monday at age 75 leaves a void in the Spanish-language's literary world and in the heart of Cuba's diaspora.

A celebrated writer and movie critic, he wielded his pen in biting criticism of Fidel Castro and of totalitarian Cuba. As close friend and fellow writer Carlos Franqui said, Mr. Cabrera Infante was viciously attacked by Cuba's regime for his criticism.

Mr. Cabrera Infante broke with the regime in 1965 and settled in London. This was his 40th year in exile. He was an exile who famously recreated the lost Havana of the 1940s and 1950s in classic books such as Tres tristes tigres, known in English as Three Trapped Tigers; La Habana para un infante difunto, also loosely translated as Infante's Inferno. Another book Un oficio del Siglo XX -- 20th Century Job -- collects his film reviews.

His writing often defies literal translation because Mr. Cabrera Infante loved puns and word games. Indeed, he loved language as much as he did Cuban culture. Consider this excerpt from his 1985 Herald piece in Tropic Magazine describing his first sighting of Peniscola, a Spanish city, hearing Beethoven's Fifth blaring from a car radio. Read it aloud:

'Die-die-die dah! The fatal first notes of the Fifth had struck true. Destiny's at the door, like a higher calling of Avon: `This is Fate Calling!' Ding dang dong. How does Death knock on the hide of elephants? Dodo. Destiny is now a coda. The radio is already on its way to extinction. Off!''

Mr. Cabrera Infante will be missed by countless friends, literary fans and dissidents still struggling for Cuba's freedom. His lost Havana, however, lives in the legacy of his words.