La cuarta Noche

Severo Sarduy

Oye, que acordeones falsos.

La lucidez, el muro blanco,

(la voz gangosa del disco)

rayado, un leopardo arisco
preso entre los hilos rojos.
(las agujas de sus ojos

me miran). La hoja en blanco,

la mano que escribe temblando.

Severo Sarduy (25 February 1937, Camagüey, Cuba – 8 June 1993, Paris) was a Cuban

poet, author, playwright, and critic of Cuban literature and art. Some of his works deal

explicitly with male homosexuality and transvestism.

Born in a working-class family of Spanish, African, and Chinese heritage, Sarduy was the top

student in his high school, in Camagüey, and in 1956 moved to Havana, where he began a

study of medicine. With the triumph of the Cuban revolution he collaborated with the Diario

libre and Lunes de revolución, pro-Marxist papers. In 1960 he traveled to Paris to study at the

Ecole du Louvre. There he was connected to the group of intellectuals who produced the

magazine Tel Quel, particularly to philosopher François Wahl, with whom he was openly

involved[4]
Sarduy worked as a reader for Editions du Seuil and as editor and producer of the

Radiodiffusion-Télévision Française. Sarduy decided not to return to Cuba when his

scholarship ran out a year later. Disaffected with Castro’s regime and fearful of its persecution

of homosexuals and the censorship imposed on writers, Sarduy never went home.

In 1972 his novel Cobra won him the Medici Prize. He was among the most brilliant essayists

writing in Spanish and "a powerful baroque narrator, full of surprising resources."[5] As a poet,

he was considered one of the greatest of his time. He was also a more or less secret painter;

a major retrospective of his work was held at the Reina Sofía Museum of Madrid after his

death.

He died due to complications from AIDS just after finishing his autobiographical work Pájaros

de la playa (translated as Beach Birds by Suzanne Jill Levine and Carol Maier). To this day,

his writings are difficult to access for a Cuban audience, whereas his books are available to

the French and international public.

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