las américas (1947-1952)

Invited by his close friend, Concha de Albornoz Cernuda arrived at Mount Holyoke, a women’s college in Massachusetts, in September 1947.

He had left behind the misery of a Europe in ruins and, for the first time, he had a well-paid job. But the joy of his arrival soon dissolved. Cernuda met again with people he once loved such as Pedro Salinas and Jorge Guillén. But the old sensitivities surfaced, and Cernuda, jaded by the endless winter snow, constantly thought of leaving the United States.

Since 1949 he spent the summers in Mexico, where the climate and the cultural environment are remind him of Spain. After 11 years spent in English-speaking countries, he could hear people around him speaking Spanish, at the same time that he rediscovered the sun and the sea at the Mexican beaches. Fascinated by these experiences, he began the prose poems, Variaciones sobre tema mexicano in 1950. Moreover, during another trip to Mexico in June 1951, he fell in love with a young Mexican, Salvador Alighieri, an experience that inspired the series Poemas para un cuerpo.

Invited by José Rodríguez Feo, Cernuda visited Havana between November 1951 and February 1952. There he lectured about Spanish poetry and met with the group of poets in the Orígenes periodical, especially the Cuban writers José Lezama Lima and Cintio Vitier, and with María Zambrano, who was exiled in Havana at the time.