Few books can be said, at this point, to have founded a tradition or bear witness to a legacy. ¿Una verdadera patria? —the question posed by the publisher Casa Vacía is as mischievous as it is sincere— commemorates the centenary of the lecture The Crisis of High Culture in Cuba, given by Jorge Mañach in 1925, but it is also a manifesto-book, a provocative book.
A volume whose title is a suspicion cannot, of course, be read without suspicion. The works are framed within a “centenary in ruins.” Mañach provides the centenary, we provide the ruins. The aim is to search that distant 1925 for keys to understanding 2025, or at least a clue to understanding the collapse of a country now silent, but then vibrant in its public discourse.
It is a book with a voice. What was Jorge Mañach’s voice like? Years ago, the discovery of Mañach’s 1950 interview with General Loynaz made headlines. He speaks calmly, emphatically, with a stiffness that could be described as republican. Perhaps in 1925, after attending Harvard and the Sorbonne, the young journalist’s speech would have been a little different, perhaps more hurried, but it must not have changed much. They talked about the “great old days” and another voice, that of Martí.
The crisis of high culture in Cuba was pronounced at the Economic Society of Friends of the Country, where the Institute of Literature and Linguistics is located today. One must imagine that meeting as similar to the one Conrado Massaguer depicted in his watercolor Sobremesa sabática. In the audience is Fernando Ortiz, who heads the Society, and quite a few Havana intellectuals discussing the historic moment. The world remembers the Great War perfectly; people are beginning to talk about a certain Mussolini; Machado is inaugurated as president. No one is afraid to speak, everyone wants to be a debater, and Mañach takes the podium.
From the outset, he seeks a middle ground. Cubans oscillate between “all is lost” and “the best of all possible worlds” —aren’t both extremes familiar to us a hundred years later?— and lack the will or vigor to found a true nation. Numerous obstacles stand between the Cuban and his “destiny.” The lack of education, the disconnect between his intellectuals, the ignorance of his own history, the poor or non-existent reading of his founding fathers, the lack of mental discipline, the mockery, and other factors that depend more on nature than on his character.
“No great philosophical system has been composed at 76 degrees Fahrenheit, which is our average temperature,” jokes Mañach (today it is rare to have such little heat in Cuba!), and it is not difficult to imagine the laughter of Ortiz and the others.
Mañach addresses everything. Everything that can be said about that young republic with a tradition and cultural aspirations that he—he makes no secret of saying so—values as superior to those of the United States. Despite everything, he is proud of the “great old days.” He ends by assuring us that crisis is not agony (he could not repeat this today), but a warning of change. “Crisis means change” is the formula. The controversy arises immediately. Mañach forces himself to publish several glosses, short programs that complement his lecture and offer “some remedies” to the crisis.
The lecture is the core of ¿Una verdadera patria? (A True Homeland?). A series of concentric circles are constructed around Mañach’s words, not only to understand the text, but also to understand the man. The second section, which encapsulates and explains the speech, features Daniel Céspedes Góngora, Jorge Domingo Cuadriello, Gustavo Pérez Firmat, Alfredo Triff, and José Prats Sariol. Each brings their own pocket Mañach.
Céspedes Góngora’s text is erudite and covers another Mañach classic, Historia y estilo (History and Style). Cuadriello recounts his very active life as a cultural manager and director of institutions until his death in Puerto Rico, exiled and disillusioned with Fidel Castro, whom he initially supported. The researcher also does justice by recalling the frequent (and far from innocent) attacks by Heberto Padilla, Virgilio Piñera, and Antón Arrufat, who considered him a mummy from the republican era. Triff defines Mañach’s place in 20th-century philosophy.
Pérez Firmat looks for clues to Mañach’s character in the Harvard indifference he cultivated since his student years in New England, gauging his public style, his elegance, his seriousness, his civility summed up in a wonderful aphorism: “In the face of relaxation, formality.” Prats, for his part, carries out the expected “landing” of Mañach in the 21st century and analyzes the parallels and differences between the two realities. Faced with complaints about the heat, Prats wonders why he does not mention how the cyclones affected Creole sensibilities. Not without vertigo, we finally witness what Artificial Intelligence has to say about Mañach.
The third part of ¿Una verdadera patria? is a vibrant dossier, prepared by Ricardo Luis Hernández Otero, of letters, documents, comments, and controversies in which Mañach was involved. It is perhaps where the tension of the 1920s in Cuba is best perceived, in its delightful choral nature.
The writers mentioned in this review have formed a kind of clan with Mañach as their patron saint. ¿Una verdadera patria? could become their gospel, if they are not careful. They believe in Cuba. They believe in Cuba despite everything. I do not share their faith, but I admire it. Or rather, I admire what the book’s editor, Pablo de Cuba Soria, sees in those extraordinary conversations of the old creoles: “a culture that once knew how to discuss with elegance, think with risk, and write with style.”
