Frederick Luciani, ed. and tr., José María Heredia in New York, 1823–1825: An Exiled Cuban Poet in the Age of Revolution

• DOI: https://doi.org/10.13169/intejcubastud.14.2.0362
• Published date: 20 January 2023
• Date: 20 January 2023
• Pages: 362-364
• Author: Jorge I. Dominguez

362 BOOK REVIEWS

InternatIonal Journal of Cuban StudIeS 14.2 WInter 2022

Frederick Luciani, ed. and tr., José María Heredia in New York,

1823–1825: An Exiled Cuban Poet in the Age of Revolution. Selected Letters

and Verse, State University of New York Press, 2020. Pbk 276pp.

ISBN: 9781438479842.

Reviewed by Jorge I. Dominguez1

Niagara, your terror sublime alone

Could give me back the gift divine

That sorrow had me denied

José María Heredia (Cuba 1803–Mexico 1839) was the first Cuban poet of

renown in the United States. In 1827 a lengthy fragment of his ode to Niagara

Falls appeared in The National Reader, a textbook for US schoolchildren, and in

1845 Henry Wadsworth Longfellow included all of it in his influential compila-

tion The Poets and Poetry of Europe (1845). Heredia’s poetry exemplified the

lyrical romanticism of his age, lush in its portrayal of landscapes, and a veritable

waterfall of emotions, feelings, ardour, passion and zeal. Heredia’s poetry circu-

lated in Cuba during his lifetime. Brimming in passion, his poems became pillars

of patriotic literature.

This anthology of poems and letters focuses on Heredia’s years in New York,

during which he wrote his best and best-known poetry. In these poems and in his

letters, he narrated his life, its political context and its relationship to Cuba and

the United States. Luciani, their editor and translator, drew on the collections of

the Biblioteca Nacional José Martí, the Cuban Heritage Collection at the

University of Miami Libraries and Harvard University’s Houghton Library. He

also provides a thoughtful and informative introductory essay to shed light on

nine Heredia poems, presented in Spanish and English, and 130 printed pages of

translated letters.

Every exile is at some point Janus-faced, looking around at his country of

refuge and looking back upon his country of origin. Mesmerised by the evolu-

tion of the early American Republic, Heredia wrote this ode to Washington:

First in peace and war,

And in your countrymen’s hearts,

And in the veneration of the world;

Replica of God upon the earth,

Liberator, legislator, just…

1 Jorge I. Domínguez was formerly a professor (1972–2018) at Harvard University.

Website: https://jorgeidominguez.com.

DOI:10.13169/intejcubastud.14.2.0362