Abraham Valdelomar

Source: Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
Abraham Valdelomar

Pedro Abraham Valdelomar Pinto (April 27, 1888 – November 3, 1919) was a

Peruvian 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
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.

He has been pictured on the Peruvian sol S/ 50 banknote since its introduction in 1991.

Biography

Valdelomar was born in

Gabriele d'Annunzio
.

Valdelomar was also becoming increasingly interested in politics, and in 1912 he participated in the successful presidential campaign of Guillermo Billinghurst. To reward him for his support, Billinghurst named Valdelomar editor of the newspaper El Peruano 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, under whose influence he wrote La mariscala, the biography of Francisca Zubiaga (1803–1835), wife of the president, Agustín Gamarra.

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, 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, "Tristitia" and "El hermano ausente en la cena de Pascua...", both of which influenced the early writing of César Vallejo, 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 a tour of Ayacucho, in the Huamanga province, he suffered a fall that led to a fractured spine and severe concussions; he died next day, aged 31.

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," creole stories or local fiction focused on daily life in the port town of Pisco, a 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 the author of two important essays: the first, "La sicología del gallinazo," an anti-tourist, unembellished guide to Lima and its psychology, which would later influence Julio Ramón Ribeyro; the second, "Belmonte el tragico," a study of bullfighting.

Legacy

A Google Doodle on 27 April 2019 commemorated Valdelomar’s 131st birth anniversary.[1]

Bibliography

Novel

  • 1911 - La Ciudad de los Tísicos
  • 1911 - La Ciudad Muerta
  • Yerba Santa

Story

  • 1918 - El Caballero Carmelo
  • 1921 - Los hijos del sol
  • 1924 - El vuelo de los cóndores
  • 1927 - El Caballero Carmelo

Poem

  • 1916 - Las Voces Múltiples
  • Tristitia- 1916, PERU
  • El hermano ausente en la cena de Pascua

Theater

  • 1914 - El vuelo (Drama inspired by the flight of Carlos pioneering Tenaud of Peruvian aviation[clarification needed])
  • 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

Biography

  • 1915 - La Mariscala

See also

  • Peruvian literature

References

  1. ^ "Abraham Valdelomar's 131st Birthday". Google. 27 April 2019.

External links

Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Abraham_Valdelomar&oldid=1229952779"