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2009. Rafael Cadenas
Rafael Cadenas (Barquisimeto, 1930) currently lives in Caracas, city he returned to in 1958 after his exile in Trinidad Island, in 1952, caused by his communist allegiance. He is part of the Venezuelan generation of 1960. He was part of the Round Table (Tabla Redonda) next to Arnaldo Acosta Bello, Jesús Guédez, Ángel Eduardo Acevedo, Darlo Lancini, José Barroeta and Sanoja Hernández. Critic Juan Gustavo Cobo Borda has called him “a secret language renovator”, a poet that slakes from aphorisms, the silence and immediacy of life. Cadenas has defined himself as someone who “writes from normality with a sense of awe.”
Among his works are Cantos iniciales (1946), Una isla (1958), Los cuadernos del destierro (1960), Derrota (1963), Falsas maniobras (1960), Anotaciones (1973), Intemperie (1977), Memorial (1977), Amante (1983), Dichos (1992), Gestiones (1992). In 2000, the Fondo de Cultura Económica published his Complete Works. He is translator of English poetry, he was university professor and has an extensive essay collection that is considered an essential reference of contemporary literature in Spanish, among which are his books En torno al lenguaje and Apuntes sobre San Juan de la Cruz y la mística. He received the National Literary Award in Venezuela, the Pérez Bonalde International Poetry Award, the Guggenheim Fellowship, and honoris causa doctorates from the Universidad Central de Venezuela and the Los Andes University.
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