José María Heredia in New York, 1823–1825

An Exiled Cuban Poet in the Age of Revolution, Selected Letters and Verse

Frederick Luciani, Frederick Luciani

• Publisher: SUNY Press
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9781438479859
• Topic: Literatura
• Subtopic: Crítica literaria latinoamericana y caribeña

This volume offers the most complete English translation to date of the prose and poetry of José María Heredia (b. Cuba, 1803; d. Mexico, 1839), focusing on Heredia's political exile in the United States from November 1823 to August 1825. Frederick Luciani's introduction offers a complete biographical sketch that discusses the complications of Heredia's life in exile, his conflicted political views, his significance as a travel writer and observer of life in the United States, and his reception by nineteenth-century North American writers and critics. The volume includes thoroughly annotated letters that Heredia wrote to family and friends in Cuba, describing his struggles and adventures living among other young expatriates in New York City—fellow conspirators in a failed plot to overthrow Spanish rule on the island. His travel letters, especially those that describe his trip to the Niagara frontier in 1824 along the Hudson River and the Erie Canal, offer discerning reflections on American landscapes, technological advances, political culture, and social customs. The volume also offers translations of the verse that Heredia composed during his New York exile, in which he gave impassioned voice to Cuba's struggle for independence from Spain, and which reflected the emerging Romantic sensibilities in Spanish-language poetry. With accurate, clear translations, this volume serves as an introduction to a figure who is enshrined in the canon of Latin American literature, but scarcely known to Anglophone readers.

Selected Letters, 1823–1825

To Francisco Hernández Morejón1 [Augier no. 24]

Matanzas, November 6, 1823

Señor Don Francisco Hernández Morejón

My Dear Sir:

As I depart this city in order to safeguard my freedom, threatened as I am by proceedings in which you have a role, I feel I must make this declaration of the reasons that compel me to take this step, so that the latter will not be interpreted in a way that is more unfavorable than it merits. Don Juan Guillermo Aranguren has told me that he and his brother-in-law Don Antonio Betancourt2 have denounced me as a member of a secret society which is being prosecuted, called the Caballeros Racionales. Upon receiving this news I knew that my imprisonment was inevitable, since those two witnesses were themselves more than deserving of it.3 It is said that these proceedings are directed against a conspiracy discovered in Havana, and which is accused of preparing a scene of horror the very semblance of which is sufficient to make any righteous man tremble with indignation and fright.4 My integrity has not allowed me to countenance the prospect of finding myself mingled in prison with men to whom such abominable and horrifying plans have been attributed. It is true that some overheated theories of social improvement may have induced me to fall into error, but my soul is not stained with sanguinary projects, nor is it susceptible to them. I do not know if the others who are accused are in the same situation as I, since almost a year ago I broke off all close contact with the Racionales, a group I believed to be defunct. When I knew them, they only endeavored peacefully to prepare public opinion for independence. That should appear in the proceedings.

But while these proceedings unfold and remove the veil from your eyes, and show me as I truly am, I wish to preserve my liberty in a foreign country. It is painful for me to go to breathe the air of any place other than my homeland. Along the happy banks of the San Juan River I am leaving behind … suffice it to say a good mother who is drowning in tears of affliction.5 But necessity so orders things, and the sacrifice must be made. Oh! That sacrifice is sufficiently rigorous punishment for my offenses such as they are, whose origin must be pardonable in the eyes of the thoughtful man who will gauge correctly the steps taken by a youth of eighteen years upon the slippery ground of the times in which we live, in which diverging ideas of patriotism have tripped up even more experienced men. Not even the faintest idea of contributing to a conflagration of my country in civil war ever entered my heart. Sweet-tempered and sensitive by nature and upbringing, and as befits my years, how could I look without horror upon a future of frightful calamities, such as those that always accompany such wars? No one who knows me could believe me capable of such a thing, and I cannot hold myself in lesser esteem because of a misplaced notion that, while now subjecting me to misfortune, does not close the door to the correction of my error, which is limited to the dimensions I have indicated.

I reiterate that time will find me innocent and will make you see that that is true, and that I have not deserved the misfortune that has befallen me, despite the poor light in which the indictment may have made me appear.

The day will come when I will return to this city and devote myself to my peaceful occupations in the bosom of my family, but I do not wish to await that day in a jail cell. I beg you then that you see fit to give this letter all possible publicity so as to realize the effect indicated at the outset, and that you add this original to the judicial documents so that at every point the motives for my flight are on record, a flight made necessary by the news that I received from Aranguren and by impulses of conscience overwhelmed by the horrendous crimes that have been planned.

Since it is to be feared that some of those who accuse me in the future will include me in their reports to try to gain some benefit, believing that they cannot harm me with their slander since I am absent, I also beg that, upon interrogating them, if it falls within your authority, you read them this letter, so that they will know that as soon as the criminal proceedings have concluded, or before if I have been able exactly to assess the accusations, I will appear in person to clear my name, and since it will be easy to refute anyone who has lied, I will be implacable in the pursuit of my slanderers.

I have the honor of according you the consideration and respect with which I remain your most humble servant,

José María Heredia

To Josefa (“Pepilla”) Arango y Manzano6 [Augier no. 25]

Tarpaulin Cove, November 31, 18237

My Dear Friend:

I shall begin to fulfill my promise to write you about the land of my exile, although I have not yet reached the end of my journey. Surrounded by strangers with their barbarous and incomprehensible tongue, and distressed by the frozen silence of this climate, I take pen in hand in the eager hope that to speak with you, my rescuer, my sweet friend, my sister in love, will help me to forget the horror of my present situation, if just for a few moments.

I shall not attempt to portray here the terrible days of my banishment. Were you not there to view them yourself, and did you not join in my afflictions and dangers with the most intense sympathy? Every time that I see the moon resplendent in the purest of skies, and its rays refracted in the tranquil surface of the waters, I shall remember the last night that I spent on the banks of the San Juan River. I shall hear again the long-desired signal, and see the celestial young woman who, with the most affectionate attentions, tempered the horrors of my situation. I shall see her hide her tears and extend her hand to me in a final farewell. I shall feel, beating upon my desperate heart, that of my benefactress, and I will feel the fragile little boat that evaded the vengeance of tyrants tremble beneath my feet.

I departed in silence from that beloved and ill-fated land, and, seated in the prow of that flimsy boat, I could scarcely sort out my feelings: my eyes rested in turn upon the city where so many loved ones wept for me, and upon the fortress8 in which the most savage and insolent tyranny had imprisoned my unfortunate friends and had a cell ready for me. I felt moved simultaneously by tenderness and rage; my eyes were incapable of tears, my head was a burning volcano, and an inferno and death were in my heart.

More than once I felt tempted to throw myself into the sea and end my life, and I believe that all that dissuaded me was the prospect of dying unavenged. Bloody, ruinous designs presented themselves to my mind, and in them alone could I find a kind of dreadful relief. I am horrified now to remember what I might have been capable of in those terrible moments.

I spent the night on board, not many yards from that awful fortress, gazing at the lights burning in some of its cells. At dawn we weighed anchor, and I trembled when I saw the sails unfurl and, filling with a fresh wind, carry me out to sea. The ship ran aground, and amid the general confusion, I felt a kind of secret joy in finding my escape temporarily thwarted. But the damage was repaired and I spent all the next day seated in the stern of the ship, staring dully at the shore receding in the distance. As evening fell, the shoreline disappeared entirely, and only the Pan de Matanzas9 was yet visible, like a shoal in the midst of the sea. In turn it was enveloped by the shadows of night, and still I strove to penetrate them with my vision, and to catch a farewell glimpse of the land of my birth. A flash of lightning revealed it to me for the last time.

What can I tell you of the sea journey? We were beset by the gales typical of the season, which were followed by great calms in which the churning sea still evoked the past storm. The early winter cold was uncomfortable to all, and most of all to me, since I was dressed as lightly as in our own torrid climate. Perhaps I would have perished had it not been for the humanity of the captain, who loaned me some of his own clothing.

I never have felt less afraid of the perils of the sea. I always have found a kind of pleasure in contemplating the furor of its unchained, roiling elements, and I never have heard the crash of thunder above me without feeling an intense, sublime emotion. But now amid the storm in all its fury, I spent hours at a time seated in the stern, gazing at the enraged sea or at the sky covered with fearsome clouds, sometimes laughing at the struggles of the crew, their confusion and their shouting. It was not that way when I arrived from Puerto Príncipe just four months ago, and a fortunate and tranquil future seemed to open before me.10 Doubtlessly the value of life diminishes greatly for the man who has fallen into misfortune, who sees his existence only fraught with crimes and sorrows, and who regards the grave as his refuge from the storms of the world and the injustices of men.

The headwinds that prevented us from rounding Cape Cod compelled us to make anchor here, in one of the small islands near Falmouth, on the coast of Massachusetts. I went ashore and saw with horror just what winter is. A river was frozen. The countryside seemed to have been consumed by a recent fire. Not a single blade of grass alleviated the vision of such frightful aridness. Not a soul was to be seen, nor animal, nor insect. The only two buildings upon which my eyes could rest—a lighthouse and the keeper’s cottage, entirely closed up—looked like tombs. To expand the picture that I am painting for you, I saw a sky covered in clouds whose uncertain horizon blended with a sea enveloped in fog … I stood there shuddering, believing I was with Milton in that immense solitude where the throne of death rises up.11

Without a doubt this terrible scene did much to cool the enthusiasm with which I greeted the land of liberty, which offers an immense refuge to all the oppressed of the world, and where that man of clear conscience, beneath the aegis of wise legislation, can raise his brow to the sun, and has only to fear the law which, protecting the innocent, is unerring and relentless in the remedying of his wrongs.

I went to have a look at the lighthouse, which is tended by a sailor who lost his leg in a naval combat during the last war with the British. His grateful homeland thus provides for his sustenance, and compensates him for the blood he shed on its behalf. The tidiness of his quarters, his own cleanliness and that of his wife and children, whose robust appearance bespoke their health and good fortune, and a small barn in which there was a cow and lots of fowl, did much to dissipate the sad impression that the first glimpse of his wooden leg had left me with. He clambered up the stairs of the lighthouse with the greatest agility. My own limbs, stiff with cold, prevented me from keeping up with him, and two or three times he stopped to wait for me. Gazing at me with pity, and taking one of my frozen hands in his, he spoke to me some affectionate and incomprehensible words.

The horrible cold weather has compelled me to take refuge indoors before a consoling fire. I shall finish this letter and then browse through some newspapers of which I will not understand a single syllable. Except for the chance to observe the curious dress and manners of these people, I shall be consumed by tedium in this absolute isolation.

Goodbye, my Emilia.

—H

To Ignacio Heredia Campuzano [BNJM; Moda; Augier no. 26]

Boston, December 4, 1823

Much loved Ignacio:

I did not want to embrace you when we parted, because I was afraid that my resolve would fail that ultimate test, and that it would be impossible for me to tear myself away from a land in which I was leaving behind so many loved ones. That feeling was so strong in me, that even as I crossed the dock to board ship, I had no fear that I would be discovered, and ruined. At that moment, prison almost seemed less distressing than to embark upon that trip. And I abandoned myself to my fate with neither hope nor trepidation. Once on board, I did not go below until the moment of departure, and then only because a small s...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Introduction
• Selected Letters, 1823–1825
• Selected Verse, 1823–1825
• Notes
• Works Cited
• Index
• Back Cover