Las Tres Habanas de Abilio Estévez: La Representación del Espacio Urbano en su Literatura
Date
2007-05
Authors
Serrano, José-Enrique Navarro
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Abstract
The Cuban novelist, poet and dramatist Abilio Estevez considers La Havana as a synecdoque of Cuba. In its personal representation of the city where he spent his university and maturity years, we may differentiate three Havanas: The first one is The Havana of the future, an apocalyptical city with 1984's Orwell reminiscences. Estevez's future Havana never survives its fatal fate: it will be consistently destroyed by floods or fires. Even in Tuyo es el reino ( Thine is the Kingdom) will the second Havana, the Havana of the past, of his childhood and memory, in the Baptista's Cuba, a sweetened reality, end in flames. Nevertheless, this second Havana manages to survive. Estevez associates the memories of his childhood with happiness. Consequently, this second Havana usually survives its particular fatum. The Havana of the past will be saved by the word, by the written or the spoken word, by memory or literature. These will be the tools used by the author for the reconstruction of his city. The third Havana, the Havana of the present is closer to the apocalyptic Havana than to the almost perfect Havana of the past. Estevez describes Fidel Castro's Cuba and La Havana as a ruined reality, where only few places provide the feeling of safeness: theatres, cemeteries, parks or flat roofs, spaces that are part of the city, but at the same time distant (aside of above the city), places full of memories and past.
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Keywords
literary criticism, Cuba, Havana
Citation
Serrano, J.E. (2007). Las tres habanas de Abilio Estévez: la representación del espacio urbano en su literatura (Unpublished thesis). Texas State University-San Marcos, San Marcos, Texas.