Biting the nails of the self: Diary and autobiographic writing of Lorenzo García Vega

Abstract

Lorenzo García Vega developed a substantial autobiographic writing, whose imprint permeates abundantly other genres (poetry, narration and essay) that make up his production. This paper focuses mainly on the author’s diary writing: after reflecting on his main auto-referential texts and highlighting the thematic and stylistic recurrences in them, the study is centred on the analysis of Rostros del reverso (1977) as a literary diary (Luque Amo, 2016). In this work, García Vega testifies about the last years spent in Havana before the triumph of the Cuban Revolution, the transition timeframe in Madrid as an exile and, finally, his stay in New York. The everyday personal chronicle, from 1952 to 1975, is a transmigraphic (Mesa Gancedo, 2013) experience that builds a self in continuous conflict with the Revolution, exile, and himself.