Fall 2021

ILA 387/CL 386/LAS 392S

Scanning the Caribbean: Print and Digital Networks After Orígenes

Prof. César A. Salgado

Course Description
Octavio Paz and Vicente Aleixandre once considered the Havana literary journal Orígenes “the
best of its kind in our language." Published from 1944 to 1956 by poet-writer José Lezama Lima
and translator-essayist José Rodríguez Feo, Orígenes featured works by authors of international
renown such as T.S. Eliot, Wallace Stevens, and Saint-John Perse and by the circle of young local
poets eventually known as Grupo Orígenes. After the Cuban Revolution and up to this day, most
origenista writers—Lezama Lima, Virgilio Piñera, Cintio Vitier, Fina García Marruz, María
Zambrano, Lorenzo García Vega, Gastón Baquero, Eliseo Diego, and Lydia Cabrera, among many
others—came to be recognized as canonical or cult authors, in and out of Cuba.

This course will evaluate the Orígenes constellation of authors and publications as an ever-
changing network of artists and intellectuals confronting the challenges and consequences
of some of the most polarizing political events in the hemisphere following the Mexican
Revolution. It will review lasting questions raised by the Orígenes project about the role of art
and poetry during the Spanish Civil War, WWII, the Cold War, the Cuban Revolution and post-
1989 globalization, and about anti-normative expressions of sexuality, religion, gender, race,
and national and cultural ontopolitics in print, visual, and virtual modes of dissemination.
Depending on student interest and choice, we will review Orígenes-like polemics in a selection
of rival cohorts and journals in its past, present, and future, both archipelagic and diasporic,
regional and global, print and virtual. Among these options are: in Cuba, Jorge Mañach’s
Revista Avance, Nicolás Guillén’s Gaceta del Caribe; José Rodríguez Feo’s Ciclón; Guillermo
Cabrera Infante's Lunes de Revolución; Roberto Fernández Retamar's Casa de las Américas;
Nancy Morejón and Jorge Mario's Ediciones El Puente, and the post-Soviet samizdat Revista
Diaspora(s); in exile, Reinaldo Arenas' Mariel (New York), Octavio Armand's 
Escandalar (Venezuela), Belkis Cuza Malé's Linden Lane (New Jersey-Dallas), Jesús Díaz's Revista
Encuentro and Antonio José Ponte’s Diario de Cuba (Madrid); in the Dominican Republic,
Franklin Mieses Burgos’ La poesía sorprendida and Brigadas dominicanas; in Haiti, the Revue
Indigène; in Martinique, Aimé Césaire, Suzanne Césaire and René Ménil ’s Tropiques; in Puerto
Rico Indice, Nilita Vientós Gastón’s Asomante and Sin Nombre, Rosario Ferré’s Zona Carga y
Descarga, Guajana, or Nómada, among others.

Since almost all of the journal and print materials for this class will be consulted virtually, a
good part of our reflection will deal with how digitalization initiatives related to Orígenes and
other journal networks in the Antilles and Greater Caribbean are reshaping and galvanizing the
academic field. We will reflect about how “distant reading” programming and online data
searches could be used to set new agendas for historical research and esthetic analysis about
journal-and-cohort dynamics. We will capitalize on the Benson Collection’s recent acquisition of
origenista poet Eliseo Diego’s archives to think up and propose digital, publishing, curatorial,
and material-and-virtual display projects that can invigorate further the study of Orígenes and
other Caribbean Journal Networks (CJNs).

Grading
One class presentation/book review on chosen scholarship on Orígenes or other CJNs for
tentative publication in E3W Review (10%); digital research proposal based on materials from
the Eliseo Diego archives or other relevant resources at the Benson or the Ransom
Center(10%); short reading presentation assignments (15%); seminar participation (15%); 15-18
page research paper/possible conference presentation with preliminary draft (50%).

Texts
Journals (digitally accessible through Blackboard)

Required (Cuba):
Verbum (1937)
Espuela de Plata (1939-1941)
Poeta, Clavileño, Nadie Parecía (1941-43)
Orígenes, revista de literatura y arte (1944-1956)
Gaceta del Caribe (1944)
Ciclón (1956-1959)
Optional (Cuba):
Revista Avance (1927-30)
Lunes de Revolución (1959-1961)
Ediciones El Puente (Havana)
Revista Mariel (New York)
Escandalar (Venezuela)
Revista Diaspora(s)

Journal choices from the rest of the Caribbean will be decided in consultation with class
participants

Books:
Required:
José Rodríguez Feo, Mi correspondencia con Lezama Lima [Co-op]
Jose Lezama Lima, Paradiso, La expresión americana [Co-op or Internet]
Cintio Vitier, De Peña Pobre, Lo cubano en la poesía [Co-op Custom Publishing]
Virgilio Piñera, Poesía y crítica, La carne de René [Co-op Custom Publishing, Co-op)]
Ernesto Cardenal, En Cuba (digitalización de seleciones en Canvas)
Lorenzo García Vega, Espirales del cuje, Los años de Orígenes [Co-op Custom Publishing, Co-op]
Fina García Marruz, La familia de Orígenes [Co-op Custom Publishing]
Antonio José Ponte, El libro perdido de los origenistas [Co-op]
Angel Escobar, Abuso de confianza (1992) (Canvas or Amazon)
Optional:
Jesus Barquet, ed. Ediciones El Puente en la Habana de los años 60
Revista Diaspora(s), edición facsimilar (2012)

Reading Packets:
Packet #1: Anthology of critical articles on Orígenes [P1, Jenn's Copies]
Packet #2: Reader with articles on methodologies in the Digital Humanities relevant for
processing and analyzing CJNs (Caribbean Journal Networks) such as Orígenes.

Choice of scholarly studies for presentations:

 Ben A. Heller, de Assimilation/Generation/Resurrection. Contrapuntal Readings in the Poetry of
José Lezama Lima (2000); Thomas Anderson, Everything in its Place: The Life and Works of
Virgilio Piñera (2006); Juan Carlos Quintero Herencia, Fulguración del espacio. Letras e
imaginario institucional de la Revolución Cubana (2002); Adriana Kanzelpolsky, Un dibujo del
mundo: extranjeros en Orígenes (2004); Rafael Rojas, Motivos de Anteo. Patria y nación en la
historia intelectual de Cuba (2008); Nancy Calomarde, El diálogo oblicuo: Orígenes y
Sur: Fragmentos de una escena de lectura latinoamericana (1944-1956) (2010); Eduardo
González, Cuba and the Fall: Christian Text and Queer Narrative in Lezama Lima and Reinaldo
Arenas (2010); Sergio Ugalde Quintana, La biblioteca en la isla. Una lectura de la expresión
americana de José Lezama Lima (2010); James Buckwalter-Arias, Cuba and the New
Origenismo (2010); Amaury Gutiérrez Coto, El grupo Orígenes de Lezama Lima o el infierno de
la trascendencia (2012); Juan Pablo Lupi, Reading Anew: José Lezama Lima's Rhetorical
Investigations (2012); Jorge Luis Arcos, Kaleidoscopio. La poética de Lorenzo. García
Vega (2012); Duanel Díaz, Límites del origenismo (new edition, 2015); Marta Hernández
Salván, Mínima Cuba (2015); Jaime Rodríguez Matos, Writing of the Formless: José Lezama and
the End of Time (2017); Juan Pablo Lupi and César A. Salgado, eds., La futuridad del naufragio;
Orígenes, estelas y derivas (2019); Ingrid Robyn, Márgenes del reverso. José Lezama Lima en la
encrucijada vanguardista (2020)