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• Arts and Culture
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• 10 / 23 / 2008

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Célida Álvarez, director of the Library, thanked in the name of the institution, the contribution of the Portuguese employee and she highlighted the importance of having texts in its original languages from authors such as Pessoa, “because of the influence they have had on creation by Latin American authors.”

Also, she referred to the collection of books in Portuguese treasured by the Casa de las Américas, which has been specially benefited by the impulse of the CASA Award, which includes in its yearly announcement recognition to Brazilean literature.

She pointed out that the Library has around 100 thousand titles and is nurtured mainly from contributions similar to this one, while it encourages the links with its equivalents in the Spain and Latin American region.

On the other hand, Godinho de Matos expressed his satisfaction for making this donation, which he hopes will be advantageous for readers, especially for those who are attracted to Fernando Pessoa. He declared that it is surprising the currency of an author of whom there are still appearing, even seventy years after his death, unpublished documents and even poems.

Roberto Zurbano, director of the Casa de las Américas Editorial Fund, highlighted the mystery by Pessoa, the author with the greatest number of heteronyms, and he pointed out that in Cuba there are many readers of his work, especially after the 1980’s.

Carlos Bernal, a specialist from the Editorial Fund, pointed out that despite the fact that he was poorly published in Cuba; Fernando Pessoa has many potential readers, taking into account the well known influence he had in fields of national literary creation, such as colloquial poetry. He said that during the 1960’s there existed in the eastern province of Holguín, a circle of poets where Pessoa was read.

Célida Álvarez classified the donation as a happy moment in every sense, at the moment when the la Casa de las Américas is undergoing actions inside and outside of Cuba in order to celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of its foundation.


(La Ventana)