Abraham Valdelomar
Encyclopedia
Pisco, Peru
Pisco is a city located in the Ica Region of Peru, the capital of the Pisco Province. The city is around 9 metres above sea level. Originally the villa of Pisco was founded in 1640, close to the indigenous emplacement of the same name...
, Ica
Ica Region
Ica is a region in Peru. It borders the Pacific Ocean on the west; the Lima Region on the north; the Huancavelica and Ayacucho regions on the east; and the Arequipa Region on the south. Its capital is the city of Ica.- Geography :...
, April 27, 1888 - † Ayacucho
Ayacucho
Ayacucho is the capital city of Huamanga Province, Ayacucho Region, Peru.Ayacucho is famous for its 33 churches, which represent one for each year of Jesus's life. Ayacucho has large religious celebrations, especially during the Holy Week of Easter...
, November 3, 1919) was a Peruvian
Peru
Peru , officially the Republic of Peru , is a country in western South America. It is bordered on the north by Ecuador and Colombia, on the east by Brazil, on the southeast by Bolivia, on the south by Chile, and on the west by the Pacific Ocean....
narrator, poet, journalist, essayist and dramatist; he is considered the founder of the avant-garde in Peru, although more for his dandy-like public poses and his founding of the journal Colónida than for his own writing, which is lyrically posmodernista rather than aggressively experimental. Like Charles Baudelaire
Charles Baudelaire
Charles Baudelaire was a French poet who produced notable work as an essayist, art critic, and pioneering translator of Edgar Allan Poe. His most famous work, Les Fleurs du mal expresses the changing nature of beauty in modern, industrializing Paris during the nineteenth century...
in 19th century Paris, he claimed to have made his country aware for the first time of the relationship between poetry and the market, and to have recognized the need for the writer to turn himself into a celebrity.
Biography
Valdelomar grew up in the port city of San Andres PiscoPisco, Peru
Pisco is a city located in the Ica Region of Peru, the capital of the Pisco Province. The city is around 9 metres above sea level. Originally the villa of Pisco was founded in 1640, close to the indigenous emplacement of the same name...
; his childhood in this idyllic coastal setting and within an affectionate household are often the basis for his short stories and poems. After studying at the well-known Guadalupe School in Lima
Lima
Lima is the capital and the largest city of Peru. It is located in the valleys of the Chillón, Rímac and Lurín rivers, in the central part of the country, on a desert coast overlooking the Pacific Ocean. Together with the seaport of Callao, it forms a contiguous urban area known as the Lima...
, in 1905 he enrolled to study literature at the National University of San Marcos
National University of San Marcos
The National University of San Marcos is the most important and respected higher-education institution in Peru. Its main campus, the University City, is located in Lima...
. However, in 1906 he began contributing caricatures and poems to a number of illustrated magazines and periodicals, such as Aplausos y silbidos, Monos y Monadas, Actualidades, Cinema and Gil Blas, and he soon abandoned university life completely for the world of journalism. In 1910 he started writing chronicles for newspapers, and published his first stories the following year, including two novels, La ciudad de los tísicos and La ciudad muerta, which show the influence of Gabriele d'Annunzio
Gabriele D'Annunzio
Gabriele D'Annunzio or d'Annunzio was an Italian poet, journalist, novelist, and dramatist...
.
Valdelomar was also becoming increasingly interested in politics, and in 1912 he participated in the successful presidential campaign of Guillermo Billinghurst
Guillermo Billinghurst
Guillermo Enrique Billinghurst Angulo was a Peruvian politician. He succeeded Augusto B. Leguía as President of Peru from 1912 to 1914. Billinghurst was of English descent...
. To reward him for his support, Billinghurst named Valdelomar editor of the newspaper El Peruano
El Peruano
Diario Oficial El Peruano is the official daily newspaper of Peru. The paper was founded on October 22, 1825 by Simón Bolívar, making it the oldest newspaper still in existence in Latin America. In addition to carrying news, all laws passed in Peru must be published by El Peruano.It is currently...
in 1912, and the following year sent him on a diplomatic posting to Rome, where he wrote his best-loved and prize-winning story, El Caballero Carmelo. In 1914, after Billinghurst's overthrow, Valdelomar was forced to return to Peru, where he worked as secretary to historian Jose de la Riva-Agüero
José de la Riva-Agüero y Osma
José de la Riva-Agüero y Osma was a Peruvian historian, writer and politician who served as Prime Minister of Peru...
, under whose influence he wrote La mariscala, the biography of Francisca Zubiaga (1803-1835), wife of the president, Agustín Gamarra
Agustín Gamarra
Agustín Gamarra Messia was a Peruvian soldier and politician, becoming twice President of Peru from 1829 to 1833 and from 1838 to 1841....
.
He returned to work as a journalist, writing for the newspaper La Prensa under the aristocratic pseudonym "El Conde de Lemos", collaborating with the young José Carlos Mariátegui
José Carlos Mariátegui
José Carlos Mariátegui La Chira was a Peruvian journalist, political philosopher, and activist. A prolific writer before his early death at age 35, he is considered one of the most influential Latin American socialists of the 20th century...
, while cutting a provocative dandy-like figure on the streets and in the cafes of Lima (particularly the Palais Concert); here he coined his famous sorites, "El Perú es Lima; Lima es el Jirón de la Unión; el Jirón de la Unión es el Palais Concert; y el Palais Concert soy yo" (Peru is Lima; Lima is the Jirón de la Unión; the Jirón de la Unión is the Palais Concert; and the Palais Concert is me"). He founded the ephemeral but influential avant-garde magazine Colónida, which saw four issues in 1916 (the first three edited by Valdelomar himself), and headed the intellectual movement of the same name. That same year he was a contributor to Las voces múltiples, an anthology of modernista poetry by eight members of the Colonida group, which was less avant-garde than their criticism. The anthology included Valdelomar's best-known poems, "Tristia" and "El hermano ausente en la cena de Pascua...", both of which influenced the early writing of César Vallejo
César Vallejo
César Abraham Vallejo Mendoza was a Peruvian poet. Although he published only three books of poetry during his lifetime, he is considered one of the great poetic innovators of the 20th century in any language. Thomas Merton called him "the greatest universal poet since Dante"...
, whom Valdelomar had taken under his wing on the latter's arrival in Lima in 1916. Valdelomar promised to provide a prologue for Vallejo's first collection of poetry, Los heraldos negros, but his ambitious lecture tours of the provinces distracted his attention. Vallejo's collection finally appeared without the prologue in 1919, although it had been completed in 1918—which has led to some confusion over its publication date. In the meantime, Valdelomar was giving lectures the length and breadth of the country; as part of his commitment to reaching and educating a broad audience, but also as part and parcel of his efficient showmanship and entrepreneurial sense, he offered this first lectures in each town at a discount price—or for free—to workers and peasants, and later hiked up the admission price to a by-now eager public.
On his tour to Huamanga province Ayacucho
Ayacucho
Ayacucho is the capital city of Huamanga Province, Ayacucho Region, Peru.Ayacucho is famous for its 33 churches, which represent one for each year of Jesus's life. Ayacucho has large religious celebrations, especially during the Holy Week of Easter...
, he suffered a fall that led to a fractured spine and severe concussions; he died next day.
His best fiction is contained in two short story collections: El caballero Carmelo (1918) and Los hijos del sol (1921); the first inaugurates the genre of "cuentos criollos", or local fiction, focused on daily life in the port town of Pisco (the coastal area usually left out of accounts of Peru which focused on either Lima or the Andean regions); the second was an ambitious modernista reworking of legends of life under the Inca empire. He was also ther of two important essays: the first, "La sicologia del gallinazo", an anti-tourist, unembellished guide to Lima and its psychology, which would later influence Julio Ramón Ribeyro
Julio Ramón Ribeyro
Julio Ramón Ribeyro Zúñiga was a Peruvian writer best known for his short stories. He was also successful in other genres: novel, essay, theater, diary and aphorism. In the year of his death, he was awarded the US$100,000 Premio Juan Rulfo de literatura latinoamericana y del Caribe...
; the second, "Belmonte el tragico". a study of bull-fighting.
Story
- 1918 - El Caballero Carmelo
- 1921 - Los hijos del sol
- ???? - El vuelo de los condores
- ???? - El Caballero Carmelo
Theater
- 1914 -El vuelo (Drama inspired by the flight of Carlos pioneering Tenaud of Peruvian aviation)
- 1916 - Verdolaga (Tragedy of single that fragments are conserved)
- Palabras (modernist and allegorical Tragedy in one act)
Essay
- 1910 - Con la argelina al viento (crónicas)
- 1917 - Ensayo sobre la psicología del gallinazo
- ???? - Con la argelina al viento
- 1918 - Belmonte, El Trágico. Ensayo de una estética futura a través del arte nuevo
See also
- Peruvian LiteraturePeruvian literatureThe term Peruvian literature not only refers to literature produced in the independent Republic of Peru, but also to literature produced in the Viceroyalty of Peru during the country's colonial period, and to oral artistic forms created by diverse ethnic groups that existed in the area during the...