Nicolas Guillen

Nicolas Guillen was heavily influenced by the Harlem renaissance. Specifically, Langston Hughes and his beautiful poetry. The Harlem Renaissance was an era that was profoundly looked at for cultural and artists such as Langston Hughes. Black writers, poets and musicians made the world sing and they made this time wonderful to live in. The era had a significant impact in the political views and life of Nicolas Guillen. He was a communist who later on fought in the Spanish Civil War for the loyalists. During his time upon returning to Cuba he was delt with a lot by the police because of his political views but also he was very outspoken on them which made for reason to be arrested. There were some differences and some similarities between both poems. The first thing I noticed is the divide he explains between people who are different from one another. In one poem he describes how people used to fight each other due to their differences in ethnicity which I think is horrible. A couple similarities that he points out is by examining the differences in two different ethnicities. I believe that “yo” y “tú en el poema “No sé por qué piensas tu” represents two ethnicic groups in Cuba. Since he was mixed with many other races he tried to incorporate that into his writing. There were a lot of irony in both of these poems starting with “Balada de los dos Abuelos” they’re fighting each other because they are different but they are doing the exact same thing in which is ironic. In the other poem the street is mentioned which is also ironic. He says we are all together in the same street but in the context the street resembles the world, in which then everybody is basically intermingled in the same world. Which doesn’t make them different at all, they are fighting over their brothers and sisters.