We have spoken of Doña Louisa Perez as probably the foremost of Cuba's women poets. Her chief rival for that distinction was Doña Gertrudis Gomez de Avellanda, a woman of real genius. But she, although born in Camaguey, was for practically all her life so identified with Spain that she is commonly regarded as a Spaniard rather than a Cuban. Born in 1814, she went to Spain with her mother in 1836, and there remained until 1860. By that time she had gained world-wide reputation as a poet and dramatist, and also as a writer of prose fiction, and on her return to Cuba she was publicly greeted as though she were a queen or an empress. A few months later she hastened back to Spain and there spent the remainder of her life. Only a few of her writings were on Cuban themes, but they indicated that she retained in her voluntary exile a deep love for and sympathy with her native land.
The successor of Domingo Del Monte as a patron of Cuban letters was Nicolas Azcarate, a very wealthy lawyer of Havana, himself a writer and orator of great power, and an ardent patriot, though generally inclined toward reforms and autonomy rather than independence. He was the leader of that "Committee of Information" which went to Spain in 1865 to lay before the Spanish Minister for the Colonies, Canovas del Castillo, the grievances and the demands of Cuba; a mission which was quite fruitless, for it was quickly followed by the outbreak of the Ten Years' War. Azcarate also founded and conducted at his own cost a newspaper at Havana, La Voz del Siglo, to advocate reforms and autonomy. But he lost popularity with the Cubans, who were by this time almost unanimous for independence, while he could not command the favor of the Spaniards; and in consequence he lost his influence, his fortune and his place in society, and ended his life in obscurity and poverty.
Although most of her life was spent abroad, the name of Gertrudis Gomez de Avellaneda y Arteaga must always be enrolled among the glories of Cuban literature and Cuban womanhood. She was born in Camaguey on March 23, 1814, and almost literally "lisped in numbers," since she wrote an elegy on the death of her father at the age of six, and two years later wrote a fairy tale, "The Hundred-Headed Giant." In 1836 she bade farewell to Cuba in a memorable sonnet, and went to France, and thence to Spain. There she wrote poems and dramas which placed her in the foremost rank of the world's literary artists; her poetical drama of "Baltasar" in 1853 being one of the greatest triumphs of that generation. In 1860 she revisited Cuba and was publicly crowned in the Tacon Theatre before a great assemblage of the foremost men and women of the nation. She returned to Spain a few years later and died at Seville on February 2, 1873.
Prominent among the poets of the Revolution was Juan Clemente Zenea, who was a martyr as well as a poet. He was born at Bayamo in 1832, his mother being the sister of the poet Fornaris already mentioned. He was one of the pupils of José de la Luz y Caballero, and before leaving school began to write patriotic poems and other articles. At the age of twenty he had to flee from Cuba to escape arrest and prosecution for his complicity in some revolutionary publications; whereupon he went to New York and there continued his revolutionary writings. So extreme were some of these that in December, 1853, a court martial at Havana condemned him to death. Under the amnesty of 1855 he returned to Cuba and became a teacher of modern languages and a writer for the press, and a few years later published a volume of charming poems. After ten years he left Cuba for New York and then for Mexico, and upon the outbreak of the Ten Years' War he joined the Cuban Junta in New York and became editor of its organ, La Revolucion. In 1870 the Spanish Minister at Washington, wishing to negotiate secretly with Cespedes, the leader of the Cuban revolutionists, gave Zenea a safe conduct to pass through the Spanish lines and convey a message to Cespedes. This errand was undertaken against the advice of his friends. It was accomplished in safety, however, until when, on his return trip, he was just about to pass beyond the limits of Spanish jurisdiction. Then he was seized by order of the Volunteers and imprisoned. The Spanish government at Madrid telegraphed orders to the Captain-General to honor the safe conduct and to release him at once. But that officer, the notorious Count Valmaseda, ignored these orders, kept Zenea in prison until there was a change of Ministry at Madrid, and then, on August 25, 1871, put him to death. The Spanish government disavowed this monstrous crime, and paid Zenea's widow an indemnity of $25,000, though it failed to punish Valmaseda according to his deserts.
Another pupil of Luz y Caballero, and a close friend of Zenea, was Enrique Piñeyro, a journalist, historian, essayist and lecturer, who, born in 1839, had the good fortune to survive until 1911 and thus to see the work of Cuban independence triumphantly completed. José Morales Lemus, born in 1808, established in Havana in 1863 the paper El Siglo, a powerful advocate of reforms and autonomy. He went with Saco and Azcarate on the Committee of Information to Madrid, and on his return from that bootless errand he went to Washington as the first Cuban Minister. He was the envoy of the Provisional Government of the Cubans in the Ten Years' War, and as such, though the Cuban Republic did not receive official recognition, he participated in formulating the plan of Cuban settlement which General Daniel E. Sickles, as a special American envoy, carried to Madrid to propose to the Spanish government. This plan provided that Spain should grant Cuban independence in return for a large indemnity to be paid by Cuba under the guarantee of the United States. It was not certain that the Cuban people would have approved that plan. Indeed, it is probable that they would not have done so. The Spanish government would not listen to it, however, and it was abandoned. A little later, in June, 1870, Lemus died.
ENRIQUE PIÑEYRO
The son of a University professor of literature and history, Enrique Piñeyro was born in Havana in 1839 and was educated at La Luz's school of El Salvador. He became a successful journalist, writer and teacher, and when the Ten Years' War began he went to New York and there edited "La Revolucion" and "El Nuevo Mundo," and wrote several notable histories and biographies. After the war he returned to Cuba for a short time, then went to Paris and remained there until his death in 1910.
