La revolución como era imaginaria. Lezama y la política mito-poética

Abstract

In the essays of Las eras imaginarias as much as in those of La expresión americana, Lezama outlines a theory in which cultural identity is founded upon a collective vision of the poetic image in history, speaking of ‘the diverse eras where la imago imposed itself as history.’ Certain cultures that Lezama analyses, such as the Etruscan, the Carolingian, the Breton, etc. achieved this form of imaginary force. In other articles and essays, Lezama explores el potens of historic revolutions, arguing that ‘revolutions are the gravitation of the eras imaginarias.’ As is well known, the biography of Lezama during the sixties and until 1976 show areas of agreement and disagreement with the Cuban Revolution. In this paper I am not proposing to enter into this polemical biographical debate. Instead, following the declaration of Emilio Bejel that ‘in Lezama’s system, the Cuban Revolution of 1959 constitutes another great era of the image in Latin America,’ I intend to analyse the extent to which Lezama envisioned the Revolution in aesthetic, poetic and cultural terms, and to consider to what degree we can include the Cuban Revolution as another of Lezama’s eras imaginarias.