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Virgilio Piñera Llera (August 4, 1912 – October 18, 1979) was a Cuban author, playwright, poet, short-story writer, and essayist.
Among his most famous poems are "La isla en peso" (1943), and "La gran puta" (1960). He was a member of the Origenes literary group, although he often differed with the conservative views of the group. In the late 1950s he co-founded the literary journal Ciclón. Following a long exile in Buenos Aires, Argentina, Piñera returned to Cuba in 1958, months before Fidel Castro took power. Due to Piñera's social points of view and especially to his homosexuality, he was censured by the revolution, and died without any official recognition. His work includes essays on literature and literary criticism, several collections of short stories compiled under the title of "Cold Tales," a great number of dramatic works, and three novels: "La carne de René" (Rene's Flesh), "Presiones y Diamantes" (Pressures and Diamonds), and "Las pequeñas maniobras" (Small manoeuvres). His work is seen today as a model by new generations of Cuban and Latin American writers. Some believe that his work influenced that of Reinaldo Arenas, who wrote in his memoir Before Night Falls of Piñera's time in Argentina and friendship there with Witold Gombrowicz. The magazine Unión posthumously published autobiographical writing by Piñera in which he discussed how he concluded he was gay.[1]
[edit] Bibliography
- Molinero, Rita (ed). Virgilio Piñera: la memoria del cuerpo, Editorial Plaza Mayor, San Juan, Puerto Rico, 2002. Cabrera Infante, Guillermo. "Mea Cuba." In Aviva Chomsky, Barry Carr and Pamela Maria Smorkaloff (eds.) The Cuba Reader: History, Culture, Politics. Duke University Press (2004).
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