Severo Sarduy

Severo Sarduy was born February 25, 1937 in Camagüey, Cuba, where he received both his elementary and secondary education, and at the Institute of Higher Learning (Instituto de Segunda Enseñanza) he earned a Bachelor of Sciences and Arts in 1955. While still a college student he begun to write poetry; some of which was published in the literary journal "Ciclín". Sarduy then travelled to La Habana to study medicine but was only able to attend classes for a year because Fulgencio Batista, then-dictator of Cuba, closed the university. Sarduy opposed the government of Batista and became one of the leading intellectuals of the Cuban Revolution. During this period he wrote articles on Cuban and Latin-American art, and after the triumph of the Revolution, he collaborated for the journal "Lunes de Revolución" and saw one of his early short stories published in "Carteles". He was also part of the editorial committee for the arts and literature page of the newspaper "Diario Libre". In 1959 Sarduy won a scholarship from the new government to study art history in Europe. After few months in Madrid, he travelled to Paris, where he studied at the Ecole du Louvre (School of the Louvre). In Paris Sarduy become part of the journal "Tel Quel", where he was influenced by Structuralist and Poststructuralist movements, and formed literary relations with Francois Wahl and Roland Barthes. During the 60s, he collaborated with the magazine "Mundo Nuevo" and wrote for several literary and intellectual journals, including "Plural", "Papeles de son armadans", "Sur", "La Quinzaine Litteraire", and "Ruedo Ibèrico". Sarduy edited the Latin American collection for one of France's major publishing houses, Editions du Seuil, introducing Gabriel García Marquez's "Cien años de Soledad" (One Hundred years of Solitude, 1967). Estranged from the Castro government, Sarduy remained in Paris, where he died of AIDS in 1993.








Info by: www.personal.psu.edu/users/t/o/tob/503/sarduy.html

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