IDENTIDADES 1 ENGLISH IDENTIDADES 9 ENGLISH | Page 91

Art and Identity

The Nicolás I know
Marta Limia
Cuban Historian and Curator
Resident in the United States
The bat seems to be asleep, but when a bird comes to do
something against the bat, the bird can’t do anything
Cuban proverb

N

icolás Lara is one of the most
powerful voices of the Cuban
poetry after 1959. Mix of
erudition and slang, cynicism, sophistry
and feeling. It seems that he came to
this world with the mission to draw
attention to the great contradictions of
the so-called Cuban identity in the
global context.
With authenticity outside any canon,
Nicolás
expresses
lust,
family,
philosophical obsessions, political

struggles, artistic styles, history and, of
course, the racial problems, mixed and
protected by certain naïveté that allows,
without respecting any rule, to stand
aside from anything smelling like
convention and to follow the dictums of
his own truth.
Thus, nobody falls outside the scope of
his special cynicism. And his work,
ruthless and tender at once, serves as
open platform to express —with all its
freshness and boldness— his

90