{"id":204865,"date":"2019-08-26T16:08:20","date_gmt":"2019-08-26T20:08:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/oncubanews.com\/en\/?p=204865"},"modified":"2019-08-26T16:16:19","modified_gmt":"2019-08-26T20:16:19","slug":"that-house-of-linea-and-14","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/oncubanews.com\/en\/culture\/that-house-of-linea-and-14\/","title":{"rendered":"That house of L\u00ednea and 14"},"content":{"rendered":"

At the start of the Republic, the island\u2019s elite had decided to eliminate the Spanish footprint in architecture, since it did not represent the modern spirit, such as France or the United States. As an expression of the times, one of the works built during the expansion\/remodeling process of Prado was the Glorieta, designed by French architect Charles Brun, where the Army \u2018s General Band played for the enjoyment of Havanans, well seated on iron chairs around it or beginning the practice of sitting on the Malec\u00f3n\u2019s wall to take in the sea breeze.<\/span><\/p>\n

Enrique Loynaz del Castillo (1871-1963) and his wife Mar\u00eda de las Mercedes Mu\u00f1oz Sa\u00f1udo, a descendant of illustrious military and religious Basques, lived nearby. A man known to Havanans because of his merits during the 1895 War of Independence and for composing the “Himno invasor” hymn. He was, in effect, commander, lieutenant colonel, colonel and brigadier general, ranks won through his own merits, to which we should add the confidence of Jos\u00e9 Mart\u00ed and the fact that he had saved Antonio Maceo\u2019s life in Costa Rica. According to historians, at the exit of a theater a Spaniard shot Maceo in the back, seriously injuring him. Another Spaniard was advancing, weapon in hand, to finish him off. But when he was going to shoot, a bullet from Loynaz del Castillo’s revolver downed him.<\/span><\/p>\n

Marti wrote from New York: “The murderers can do nothing against the defenders of freedom. The infamous stab does not hurt the Revolution, it hurts the honor of those who pretend to suffocate, with their wicked crime, the aspiration of a people.”<\/span><\/p>\n

He was 21 years old. A budding writer and poet.<\/span><\/p>\n

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Photo: Otmaro Rodr\u00edguez.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

From that house near the Prado, they moved to San Rafael and Amistad, where the children from that young man’s marriage took their first steps: Dulce Mar\u00eda (1902-1997), Enrique (1904-1966), Carlos Manuel (1906-1977) and Flor (1908-1985). But the author of the hymn was not a straight as a die man and in certain things he used to be quite conservative. The kids had an atypical childhood, even considering the patterns of the time, which would apparently leave traces in all of them. And not precisely because their parents had decided they receive an education at home.<\/span><\/p>\n

A fellow fighter of his had introduced modern education on the island, one of the bases on which the Cuban school was built. “Let all the work of our teaching be put to rest,” said Enrique Jos\u00e9 Varona, “on a strictly scientific basis so that it is objective, experimental and practical. To make adolescents acquire their knowledge of the world, of man and of society in a mainly direct way and not in the way reflected in books and purely verbal lessons, is to prepare men for the active competition compelled by the multiplicity of relationships of modern life, not spirits for fantastic speculation.”<\/span><\/p>\n

But not with them. The older sister once said:<\/span><\/p>\n

We had been raised in an environment of great solitude. We were not allowed to have exchanges with friends. There was a very great severity regarding that. But later, when our parents had already divorced and my mother was in charge of the household and of us, she wasn\u2019t so hard on us and allowed us to feel at ease at home.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

She was referring to the house on L\u00ednea and 14, in Vedado, to which they moved in 1908 after Flor was born. Located near La Chorrera River\u2015today Almendares\u2015and the homonymous tower the colonial authorities built to detect pirates close to the coast. Based on the work of the Count of Pozos Dulces, who, as it were, laid the first stone, a process of urbanization had started in the area in 1859, when Jos\u00e9 Domingo Trigo and Juan Espino asked the president of the Havana City Council to create the district of El Carmelo, a fundamental cell of everything that would come later, including the outline of streets and avenues, including L\u00ednea Street, which owes its name to the tram that began operating in 1901. <\/span>Ren\u00e9e M\u00e9ndez Capote<\/span><\/a> said:<\/span><\/p>\n

The Vedado of my childhood was a sea rock over which the seagulls flew confidently and in whose weeds sea grapes grew wildly and abundantly. The fences were of prickly pears, the air was filled with vultures, tot\u00edes, sparrows, bijiritas and mockingbirds and in the gigantic depths of the right bank of the Almendares, of what would be 23rd Street and 15th Street, nested iguanas, ferrets and rats…. The only streets worthy of that name, without being interrupted by the deep holes, were L\u00ednea, 17 and part of Calzada.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

That house was inhabited by rare beings who often received eccentric guests. Alejo Carpentier, who was inspired by what happened there to write a passage from his novel El siglo de las luces<\/em>, says:<\/span><\/p>\n

They had reversed the hours of life, that is, they started the day at 5, 5.30, 6 in the afternoon, lived at night and went to bed at dawn. And one of them, who always wore a tuxedo, was the first one I heard playing Sch\u00f6nberg’s music on the piano.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Another of the sisters who had been told she would be a spinster (in Spanish it is left to dress saints), had bought some life-size saints and, indeed, she dressed them. Another invariably wore beautiful 1860 costumes. They lived in the world of Cocteau\u2019s enfants terribles.<\/span><\/p>\n

One of those guests was Federico Garc\u00eda Lorca, a young poet who had just arrived from New York. After his first foray into those places looking for Enrique, whose poems he knew from Spain, the elective affinities took a turn. Carlos Manuel and, above all, Flor occupied his foreground.<\/span><\/p>\n

The first, without a doubt, was a tragic character. “Our brother Carlos Manuel, who never graduated with a doctor’s degree,” <\/span>Dulce Mar\u00eda once said<\/span><\/a>, “was able to acquire one of the most extensive cultures I have ever known, to the extent that he was called, in the inner circle, the Living Encyclopedia\u2026our brother Carlos Manuel was the only one who persisted in that direction; his poetic incursions were brief, strange and sporadic, highly spoken of by the few who knew them, among them Juan Ram\u00f3n Jim\u00e9nez and Lorca.”<\/span><\/p>\n