Wisdom is a lot more expensive than virtue. Graziella Pogolotti is a woman of immense culture. The solidity of her knowledge gives her such power that she does not need to presume of her talent. From the apparent quietness she is forcedly in due to her blindness – not of lights or lucidity—she seems to hold all the keys of the past and the evolution of Cuban cultural universe. She is a sort of Oracle of Delphos for the intellectual community of the Island. As an ancient and strong oak, fights back time with pure limitless tenacity.

She has been an exception witness. Maybe because since her arrival to the world she found herself in the middle of the appropriate environment. The main representative of artistic vanguard in the passed century, used to sit at the table in her house, invited by the leadership of Marcelo Pogolotti, noteworthy painter and writer. There she received spontaneously the most efficient of expertise in arts and letters, specially the keys to understand the natural fashion of our origins. The routine character was signed by a fond dialogue with the makers of an universal and Creole art.

Afterwards, adulthood was marked by an integrity only granted to very few in the artistic and literary world. Her exercise of the criterion, supported by such a vanguard practice like Escambray Theatre in the 60´s of the XX century, by means of a constant exchange with Cuban theatrical movement, by her solid studies about plastic arts and national literature are now of compulsory reference for those who begin to show in the complex framework of our culture.

One way or another, after long debates a certain topic, close to artistic and literary creation, the excited and opposed criteria at a public meeting, had found the necessary equilibrium in the coherent speech of Doctor Pogolotti.

Doctor not only for her proven academic talents rather than for the difference that comes from the respect to her work, many times covered with dust in the archives of her office and in the chest of drawers in her apartment at the Havanian El Vedado neighborhood “because they are not big deal”, as it’s used to repeating to those who try to compile the indispensable legacy of their wisdom.

After reaching 60 years, she has received the love of so many friends that her proverbial shortage of leading role interests has been a little rocked. That famous professor from the Higher Institute of Arts who captivated her students with her discreet wisdom; the unforgettable foreword writer of so much good literature published after the Triumph of the Revolution ; the clever and merciful or unbiased critic that has always known to call a spade a spade, foreign to erudite poses and in plain Spanish; the respected and consulted vice-president of Cuban Union of Writers and Artists allows people to love her in a public and obvious way around these days.
Although, any reverence before her genuine sensitivity, her uninterested commitment to the nation and a fidelity born from the profound devotion and enjoyment of everything that transpire the real Cuban identity will be never enough.

There is a majority tendency around these days to relate the processes of development to cultural dynamics; do you consider essential that association for the survival of the future world?

There is an indispensable relation, above all starting from a definition that we must establish regarding the terms culture and development. There was a time in which the notion of development was basically associated to a kind of autonomous development of productive forces and the increase of goods.

Nevertheless an authentic notion of development comprises the assimilation of technology, the improvement of life conditions and also the so-called life quality. The material dimension is not to be seen as unique, because the spiritual one must be also considered.

The term culture must be understood as something that goes beyond the manifestation of artistic creation, beyond the so-called literary artistic culture. It’s about a broader concept that it’s linked to the popular imagination, costumes, beliefs, that is, linked to the assemble of man’s spiritual life. This is the sense in which the terms culture and development are related. Man is the protagonist in all this development process, for this reason, the more man enriches his spiritual world, more conscious he will act over his own destiny.

Today’s economic formulas are taken to support culture in contemporary world; they are greatly conditioned by marketing. In what way can cultural identities be preserved on the face of the inevitable standardization of the culture consuming patterns?

At a certain moment, the market was a way of distributing the works of art and substituted the sponsorship of literary and artistic creation, of feudal lords, of the church, of kings..that´s how they appeared, for example, editorial houses that took their books everywhere, the galleries that contributed to the spreading of plastic arts. But with the passing of time especially in contemporary times, that dimension has been connected to economic processes of the monopoly and the dominion of the world by huge transnational enterprises.

This phenomenon of the market of establishing hierarchies, dictates the fashion and most of all the creation which is extraordinarily risky for the preservation of cultural identities as well as the defense of true art, which in itself, leads to the search, exploration and discovery of new zones of reality. To achieve this the author needs independence, by keeping out of every possible subordination to the market’s dictates. In a way that becomes extremely dangerous not only to the preservation of identities, but also to the defense of the historical role played by art.

What grounds do you find for the attraction exerted by Cuban culture in the world at present?

There is a cause which is of extra cultural and extra artistic order, which is politics. The essential features of Cuban Revolutionary process, the role played in the world by defending the principles directed to the formation of a more fair and equitable society, arise a particular interest. Ours is a country which role has been further than that of a small geographical dimension. But to this, it’s added --and these are the essential grounds--, plus its remarkable quality, the fact that our culture is extraordinarily diverse, not only regarding its artistic manifestations, but also in the order of trends and expressive forms that rule each one of them.

José Martí once wrote: “Art, as salt for meals, preserves nations” in this XXI century, will Cuban nation be ready to face the sustainable development that will protect autochthonous culture?

Cuba is particularly ready because throughout history culture has been closely related to the re-vindication of patriotic values, the appearance of a freeing and antidogmatic thought. Culture was shaping the image of the Cuban long before the existence of the project of nation itself.(February/2004)

(Taken from: Cubasí)