Куба ақыны және Лэнгстон Хьюзбен байланысы

Cuban poet, journalist and political activist (1902–1989)
the Cuban poet
Born in Camagüey, Cuba, he studied law at the University of Havana, but abandoned a legal career and worked as both a typographer and journalist. His poetry was published in various magazines from the early 1920s; his first collection, Motivos de son (1930) was strongly influenced by his meeting that year with the African American poet, Langston Hughes. He drew from son music in his poetry. West Indies, Ltd., published in 1934, was Guillén's first collection with political implications. Cuba's dictatorial Gerardo Machado regime was overthrown in 1933, but political repression intensified. After being jailed in 1936, Guillén joined the Communist Party the next year,

In 1930, José Antonio Fernández de Castro, publisher of the Havana daily paper, Diario de la Marina, and the first to translate American Langston Hughes’s poetry to Spanish, arranged for the two poets to meet. He was a white Cuban from an aristocratic family who loved black Cuba. He was a newspaperman, a diplomat, and a friend to Cuba’s artists. In February 1930, Langston Hughes traveled to Cuba for the second time, on a two week mission to find a black composer to collaborate on a folk opera. He had been given a letter of introduction to José Antonio Fernández de Castro, his door to Cuba’s artistic world. At this time Hughes’ poetry was better known to Cubans than that of Guillén, so the American's arrival created a stir in the artistic community. The next month, on 9 March 1930, Guillén published “Conversación con Langston Hughes”, an article describing his experience of meeting Hughes in Havana. The Cubans expected a nearly white, tall and heavyset man in his forties with thin lips and an even thinner English style mustache. Instead they saw a twenty seven year old, slight brown man without a mustache. Guillén wrote that Mr. Hughes "parece justamente un mulatico cubano” – looks just like a Cuban mulatto. Guillén was especially taken with Hughes' warm personality and enthusiasm for the "son" music, which he heard on the nightly forays into Cuba's Marinao district organized by Fernandez de Castro. Hughes was said to be a hit with the soneros. His enthusiasm for Cuban music inspired Guillén. Hughes immediately saw the similarities between son and the blues, as folk music traditions whose form was based on the call and response structure of African music. Additionally, he was excited about its possibilities as an organic base for formal poetry. According to biographer Arnold Rampersad, Hughes suggested to Guillén that he make the rhythms of the son central to his poetry, as the American had used elements of blues and jazz. Hughes drew not only rhythmic innovation from these folk music traditions, but used them as a means to express his protest against racial inequality. Both poets shared anger against racism, but Hughes impressed Guillén with his particular kind of racial consciousness. Although the Cuban poet had expressed outrage against racism and economic imperialism, he had not yet done so in language inspired by Afro Cuban speech, song, and dance. He had been more concerned with protest than with celebrating the power and beauty of Afro Cubans. Within weeks of meeting Hughes, Guillén quickly wrote eight poems that were markedly different from his previous work. His new poems generated controversy and established Guillén's fame as one of the premier poets of the Négritude movement, which spanned the Americas. On 21 April 1930, Guillén sent Hughes the result of his inspiration, his book of poetry Motivos de Son. The author wrote on the inside cover, “Al poeta Langston Hughes, querido amigo mío. Afectuosamente, Nicolás Guillén”. Although Hughes did not find an Afro Cuban composer to work with, he created a lasting friendship with Guillén; it was based on their mutual respect and convictions about racial inequality.

Cuba's dictatorial Gerardo Machado regime was overthrown in 1933, but political repression in the following years intensified. In 1936, with other editors of Mediodía, Guillén was arrested on trumped up charges, and spent some time in jail. In 1937 he joined the Communist Party During his travels in the country, he covered Spain's Civil War as a magazine reporter. In 1953, he was prevented by the Fulgencio Batista government from re entering Cuba after a trip to Chile and had to spend five years in exile. After the Cuban revolution of 1959, Guillen was welcomed back by Fidel Castro, the new president. In 1961 he was appointed as president of the Unión Nacional de Escritores de Cuba, the National Cuban Writers' Union, serving for more than 25 years. He continued to write evocative and poignant poetry highlighting social conditions, such as "Problemas de Subdesarrollo" and "Dos Niños" (Two Children). He was considered the national poet of Cuba, who drew from its multicultural history and population for inspiration. Nicolás Guillén died in 1989, aged 87, of Parkinson's disease. He was buried in the Colon Cemetery, Havana.

In 1954, Guillén was awarded the Stalin Peace Prize (it was later renamed for Lenin under de Stalinization). 1976, he was awarded the International Botev Prize. In 1983, he was the inaugural winner of Cuba's National Prize for Literature. His nephew was experimental Cuban filmmaker Nicolás Guillén Landrián (1938–2003).