Much has been said about José Martí’s Escenas norteamericanas (North American Scenes), as one of the best examples of literature by this timeless and illustrious intellectual, a Cuban soul, the very essence of this Caribbean land. The variety of themes in the text stand out, his ability to imprint texture, smell, and taste through his use of words, to describe with precision events that occur thousands of kilometers away, such that the reader feels as if they had witnessed them themselves.

The images we receive, thanks to Martí, of the United States in the second half of the nineteenth century are beautiful, touching, and disconcerting. But they are not the only ones.

The Escenas europeas (European Scenes) also reveal the brilliant pen of Cuba’s national hero, and faithfully reflect the most important events of this geographical area, where Spain and France are privileged sites, as Martí had visited the two, and mastered the French language.

From a distance, Martí follows life in France and portrays it for readers in such a way that he makes “a seminar of the news; a laboratory of the event.” His work includes not only aspects of political life, such as the creation of a new house of parliament and relations with Italy, subjects on which he provides thorough analysis, which can still assist us today in understanding the world at that time, and in particular the relations of expansion and the beginning of resistance to this; but also addresses other topics such as science, without leaving aside his fascination with the Parisian cultural life, expressed in the richness of theatrical proposals, literature and its personalities.

Generally speaking, in these scenes the “Apostle” demonstrates his admiration for the French and their culture, beyond the arts, as for him “human labor” had no “better pavilion, or science a busier laboratory, or the arts a more assiduous devotee than Paris.”

From the hand of Martí, we are witness to the surrender of a group of Bonapartists, the revolts in Tunisia, the fall of a government. Through his writing, we embark on a journey from the pain of disasters and fevers, to the delicious madness of the theater, we discover the charms of Sarah Bernhardt and we experience the 80th birthday of Victor Hugo.

Martí describes the celebrations for the birthday of the French poet such that we are transported to the streets of Paris to experience the colors, hear the cheers, witness the festival of artists and the movement in the theaters. His words depict the joy of the people, and his own happiness, as February 25 is also a beautiful day for him.

Through Martí, we come to know Victor Hugo, and learn to love him as a close friend and to respect him as a father.

THE ENCOUNTER

Aged 21 and carrying the suffering of Cuba in his heart, José Martí arrived in France. The young man had come to know the severity of prison at an early age, and his spirit was shaped by sacrifice to become one of those human beings who embrace the light - that blinding star that illuminates and kills - and are capable of giving everything up, leaving behind all those held dear and the comforts of the world, for a greater love: the love of their homeland, the love for others, because this is also the defense of the good and the just.

At the time, Martí had just finished his studies at the University of Zaragoza and was looking forward to being reunited with his family, which would happen later in Mexico. Paris opened its doors to him and he enjoyed its museums, theaters, monuments, gardens and boulevards; but no introduction to France would be complete without meeting Victor Hugo: writer, humanist, defender of the oppressed, the man who embodied the French spirit that the future “Apostle of Cuban Independence” so admired.

They were separated by age, but not by circumstances. Both had been torn between their families and their homeland, both had lived in exile, both loved poetry and the arts; and perhaps due to these similarities, a respect and affection for Hugo grew within Martí, combined with the fact that he was a man who had embraced the causes for freedom and liberation, including the Cuban struggle for independence, as his own. The young Martí was aware of this, and it fueled his reverence.

At various points, the author of Les Miserables had spoken in favor of the right of Cubans to decide their own destiny, ever since shortly after the beginning of the Ten Years' War, when Cuban women living in New York founded the “League of the Daughters of Cuba” and wrote to him to give details of the war against the Spanish. He replied to them in 1870: “Women of Cuba, I hear your complaint. I will talk about Cuba. No nation has the right to establish its grip over another. A people tyrannizing another people, a race sucking the life out of another race, is the monstrous suction of the octopus, and this dreadful absorption is one of the terrible facts of the nineteenth century. Women of Cuba, have no doubt: your persevering homeland will receive the reward of its efforts. So much blood will not have been spilled in vain, and the magnificent Cuba will one day stand free and sovereign among its august sisters, the republics of America.”

Perhaps Martí thought of all this when he was finally presented with the opportunity to meet this great man. The poet Auguste Vacquerie contributed to the encounter. Martí had translated some of his verses into Spanish, so it is no surprise that his praise for the young Cuban, together with his natural charm, may have eventually convinced Hugo to give his work Mes fils (My Sons), dedicated to his dead sons, Charles and François Victor, to Martí to translate, despite not being an experienced professional.

In the introduction to the translation of Mes fils, Martí expresses the literary and humane reasons why Victor Hugo captivates, and points to the universality of the author's works, on discovering an intelligence that goes beyond language within them.

Martí translates Victor Hugo from the soul, as if to read his literature were to read from his own heart.

Never again, following the encounter in which the translation of this book was agreed, would the Cuban patriot and French patriarch meet, however we find the poet again and again within the pages written by the Apostle, like an essential presence, a guide. Martí considered Hugo one of the greatest men of the nineteenth century and put him on a par with freedom fighter Giuseppe Garibaldi: “When looking back from the future, at the peak of this great century will be visible a grey-haired gentleman, with a wrinkled forehead, a burning gaze and a bristly beard, dressed in common black clothing: Victor Hugo; and a brilliant horseman, upon a white steed, with a red cape and blazing sword: Garibaldi.”

This is probably why some researchers assume that the most valuable praise Martí received while still alive came from the Argentine writer Domingo Faustino Sarmiento, who, at the height of his fame, recommended that Paul Groussac translate Martí into French for these reasons: “In Spanish there is nothing resembling the roaring of José Martí, and after Victor Hugo, France presents none of this resonance of metal.”

However, it was not just the literary genius of Victor Hugo that aroused so great an admiration in José Martí, but above all his deep humanism and generosity, expressed in actions such as donating money to the poor of Paris (10,000 francs), which he alludes to in one of his pieces for La Opinión Nacional.

For Martí, to read Hugo’s work is to liberate the thought and art channeled toward the struggles of man, and as such it is essential for the people of America who have conquered freedom, more still as they had no literature of their own. No wonder then, that Martí spoke of Victor Hugo to the children of the continent through La Edad de Oro (The Golden Age) and he features as one of the personalities presented in the “Musicians, poets and painters” section of the magazine.

But it is not only in his capacity as a poet that the author of Les Châtiments (Castigations) becomes a reference, but primarily for his qualities as a human being, revealed in his work and his actions. The Apostle places Hugo in “the place of the ideal role model: the poet who fulfills the mission that his talent commits him to, the task of improving the world.”

This is the main point of convergence of the poetics of Martí and Hugo: the common understanding of the poet as anticipator of the future, as a man ethically committed to humanity. Thus, the lyre, made of sturdy trunks and strings of gold, where, to the astonishment of men, eagles and pigeons perch at the same time, the force of imagination, that which gives life to colossal things, the novels with which he vindicated the slain liberty; transformed Victor Hugo into the poetic man of the era in which they lived, into a father.

Was Victor Hugo the mirror that Martí wished to peek into, to see himself? Yes, in so much as he embodied the spirit of his time, and there was no better way to serve others for the most universal of all Cubans. No, in so much as he never aspired to be seen as a reformer of the language or the most lauded example of a literary movement, although in the end his genius would earn him similar epithets.

Martí, the very essence of the Cuban soul, drank from the universality of Victor Hugo’s work, his imaginative power and innovative word, and created his own universe, where the romantic poet is an obligatory reference. Thus, the most genuine of Cuba and one of the French patriarchs connect, and Cuba and France are united, in an encounter that took place in 1874 and was eternalized in the words of Martí, who himself became immortal, just like his maestro.

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