Poetry
Santos Vega
Not translated into English
Rafael Obligado · 1885
Opening lines
Cuando era al sur cosa extraña,
por ahi junto á la laguna
que llaman de la Espadaña,
poder encontrar alguna
pulpería de campaña:
Como caso sucedido,
y muy cierto de una vez,
cuenta un flaire cordovés
en un proceso imprimido,
que, el dia de san Andrés,
Casualmente se toparon,
al llegar á una tapera,
dos paisanos que se apiaron
juntos, y desensillaron
à la sombra de una higuera.
When it was a rare thing in the south,
out there by the lagoon
they call the Espadaña,
to be able to find any
country store:
as a thing that really happened,
and altogether certain,
a friar from Córdoba tells
in a printed record
that, on Saint Andrew's day,
by chance there met,
on reaching a ruined homestead,
two countrymen who dismounted
together, and unsaddled
in the shade of a fig tree.
Translation by Erostrate
Text quoted from archive.org
Synopsis
Santos Vega is a payador of great renown, a singer who improvises his verses, according to Plenc as well as Biografías y Vidas, perhaps inspired by a real person. The poem makes him a sad soul wandering the pampa, almost a shadow, according to Plenc. The first cantos tell of his soul, his pledge and his hymn; in the last, a stranger named Juan Sin Ropa appears to confront him in a sung contest.
Context
The poem, in décimas, is divided into four cantos, according to Biografías y Vidas and Plenc. The author dated it 1883; it entered his collection of poems in 1885, reissued, corrected and expanded in 1906. Biografías y Vidas sees in him the best continuer of the gauchesque poets, although he does not write in their language, and reads in the poem a faith in progress against Creole traditionalism; the influence of the French poetry of his time can be seen in it.
Who it is for
Four cantos in décimas, in a polished Spanish without rural speech; no known French translation.
Prizes and reception
The best-known in Argentina of its author's poems, an ode to a gaucho singer.
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