Itineraries of an impossible return: Reinaldo Arenas’s Viaje a La Habana

Abstract

This article explores the themes of exile, the city, and the impossibility of return, through the itinerary which the author traces in the novel Viaje a La Habana: Novela en tres viajes. The novel is divided into three novellas: in the first, Que trine Eva (Primer viaje), the characters flee Havana and travel to the easternmost point in the island of Cuba; in Mona (Segundo viaje), the leading character is a marielito who is imprisoned and falls ill in New York City; the third, Viaje a La Habana (Tercer viaje), recounts the return of an exile to Havana and the impossible encounter with his youth and love. The places and times in which these narratives take place are emblematic of the author’s own exilic and vital journey, and portray these topics. All efforts to retrieve and eroticize his lost city and his past youth, both calamities inextricably related to exile, will succeed only through his writing.