AUTHOR
Ernesto Cardenal was born in Granada, Nicaragua, on January 20, 1925. Ordained a priest in Granada in 1965, Ernesto Cardenal was an early advocate of liberation theology and served as a priest in Nicaragua until declared an "outlaw" in 1977. He has long been recognized as an outspoken advocate for political freedom as well as for his many volumes of poetry which have been published in many countries. Following the Sandinista triumph, he served as Minister of Culture from 1979 to 1988, and is currently the director of Casa de los Tres Mundos, a cultural organization in Granada, Nicaragua.
Enesto Cardenal writes most of his poetry in a montage style that unites revolutionary political ideology with Roman Catholic theology. Like other modern revolutionary poets, most notably Pablo Neruda, Cardenal focuses his writing on oppression in society and attempts to motivate his readers to bring about social change. Critics often note that Cardenal has been strongly influenced by the poetry of Ezra Pound. Cardenal's juxtaposition of disparate images, his contrast between lyrical and prosaic passages of poetry, and his emphasis on the relationship between socioeconomic and spirituality are devices employed by Pound in his most important work, Cantos. Cardenal's technical skill and the sociopolitical relevance of his work have led one reviewer to praise him as “probably the most stimulating Latin American poet to have emerged since 1950.”
In the 1950’s, Cardenal became deeply involved in the revolutionary politics of Nicaragua and joined forces with those opposed to dictatorship of the United States-backed Somoza regime. Converting to Catholicism in 1956, he became a novice at Gethsemeni, a Trappist abbey in Kentucky, where he studied under the well-known religious scholar and poet, Thomas Merton. Cardenal completed his studies in Cuernavaca, Mexico, and was ordained a Catholic priest in 1965. He later cofounded Solentiname, a religious commune on an island in Lake Nicaragua, where he preached Mertonian nonviolence. In 1970, however, Cardenal changed his stance on violence and decreed that militancy would be necessary to achieve the Christian goals of peace and brotherhood desired by the anti-Somozan majority. After the downfall of the Somoza regime in 1979, Cardenal was appointed Minister of Culture for the new government of Nicaragua.
Cardenal’s first major work, “La hora 0” (1956), “Zero Hour”, was collected along with seven related poems and published as Zero Hour and Other Documentary Poems (1980), a poetic history of events leading to the Nicaraguan revolution in 1979. The use of factual information, crosscutting, and contrast in these poems contribute to a style not unlike that used by documentary filmmakers. Cardenal creates a multilevel narrative in his long poem “El estecho dudoso” (1966) by using similar techniques. On the surface, this work relates a history of destruction in Central America; through comparison's and juxtaposed images; however, the poem becomes a commentary on contemporary political and cultural exploitation. Cardenal’s concern with the decline of spiritual values is also evident his collection Homenaje a los indios americanos (1966), Homage to the American Indians, in which the psychic wholeness of extinct Indian civilizations is contrasted with modern imperialism, and Oración por Marilyn Monroe (1965), Marilyn Monroe and other poems, in which commercialization is seen to have replaced emotional spontaneity.
Works by Ernesto Cardenal from Curbstone Press:
