Fina in Her Eternity

For her work and her example, Fina García Marruz received the most important awards in her country, including the highest decoration: the José Martí Order.

The death of Fina García Marruz, at age 99, in Havana, marks the end of an era in the Island literature. The time of great poets from the middle of the last century is over, the generation of Orígenes, men and women who to some extent changed the course of Cuban poetry.

The essential history of Cuban poetry (and one could say more: poetry in Spanish) has in Josefina García-Marruz Badía (Havana, 1923-2022) one of its great references. Although she, so many times, preferred the calmness or the recessing of shadows.

But her verses were always light. During the many years of her life she was articulating a lyrical body, beautiful and throbbing, essentially tinted. Her poems used to be light in their enunciation —like very thin and invigorating air— but strong in their implications.

Roses with a delicate perfume, with thorns, of course... and with roots that drink from underground waters.

Fina García Marruz (preferred? Or should prefer? Should she? Did she correspond?) Not to be very close to the spotlight. She so many times she kept silent, with the discretion of a giant that stalks. She showed an Olympian calm before certain blows of life, although never arrogant.

But her poems "spoke," many times they were her face.

She devoted herself to the usefulness of literature, of all art. And she honored those she always considered her teachers, parents of a culture.

Together with her inseparable Cintio Vitier, she went into the prodigal forest of Marti's work over and over; she dedicated many of her best hours to José Martí, with splendid sensitivity and humbleness. From her pen—from her mind—some of the most transparent and accurate reflections emerged on the personal and creative itinerary of the most universal of Cubans: Martí martyr.

Fina García Marruz didn’t wish for awards, recognition, presumptuous fame… her pride was titanium. She received the highest recognition in her country and some important international distinctions, always with the peace of mind of the one who deserves them, even though she doesn't need them.

Like Martí, she had two homelands: Cuba and poetry. Perhaps only one: the Cuba dreamed in verses, glimpsed in the shifting walk between divine grace (her God) and the performance of men (her people).

Fina García Marruz searched all her life for that precious moment in which the real world is confused with the illusory world. That is the profession of the poet. She left it written in inspired verses: If the poems were all lost / the fire would continue naming them endlessly / clean from all dust, and the eternal poetry / would return bellowing, again, with the break of dawns.

Fina has died in her hometown. She leaves an immense legacy. A work that had long ago transcended the limits of biology, which has been eternalized in the canon. And she has left an example: that of perseverance, ethics, good work. She now inhabits an ineffable but true realm. Along with Lezama, Eliseo, Cintio... Homeland of poetry, stronghold of beauty.