Antipodes of Roberto Friol: an introduction to his poetry

Abstract

This work tries to elucidate the constituent parts of Roberto Friol’s poetics, one of the most important poets from the 1950’s generation and, generally, from all the poetic tradition in Cuba. First, the separation of Friol’s poetic from the poetic thinking of the
literary father personified on Vitier’s Poetics is analyzed, through the redefinitions of the Christian fall and redemption topics and, secondly, of the poetic word on its interweaving to the Indivisible flow of the Word of God. On such passages the poet’s affiliation
to the central line of the modern tradition that recognizes man as the measure of all things is proven; opposed to the recessive and traditionalist ideology of Orígenes that believes on the supremacy of the Word of God and, therefore, understands the Fall as the
rediscovering of the creation splendors. At a second stage, he devotes to show the parallel substance of the turning and correction movements by which the poet tries to fix his mark with the nuances of immobility and the archetypical flow of the symbol. From the fire paradigm it is analyzed the constant way of gains and recoils by which this poetry swings in a wavelength range that goes from the calm extreme that reveals itself in a state of last safety and convinced on certain type of redemption from the reminiscent memory; until the heretical vein where the vision of nothingness assumes the moment when the poet engenders himself.