Poetry
The Gaucho Martín Fierro
El gaucho Martín Fierro
José Hernández · 1872
Opening lines
Aquí me pongo a cantar
Al compás de la vigüela,
Que el hombre que lo desvela
Una pena estraordinaria
Como la ave solitaria
Con el cantar se consuela.
Here I start to sing
To the beat of the guitar,
For the man kept awake
By an extraordinary sorrow,
Like the solitary bird,
Finds comfort in his song.
Translation by Erostrate
Text quoted from gutenberg.org
Synopsis
Martín Fierro lived happily with his family on the plain when he is forcibly enlisted, according to Billiken. He is sent to a fort on the frontier, facing the Indians; he deserts and returns home, where the house is destroyed and the family gone. He kills a man with a knife in a drinking house and becomes an outlaw pursued by the militia. It is he who tells his life, in the first person, according to escritores.org.
Context
The poem, begun during the exile in Brazil, was largely written at the Hotel Argentino, facing the Plaza de Mayo, on the author's return, according to La Nación; it appeared in 1872. His newspaper was already calling for an end to the levies sent to the frontier forts. Sold in bookshops and in the pulperías, often read aloud, it had reached forty-eight thousand copies when the sequel appeared, in 1879, according to Billiken; La Nación puts it at sixty-three thousand as early as 1873. The two parts are now published together.
Who it is for
A long poem in six-line stanzas, in the language of the gauchos; translated into French by Paul Verdevoye in 1955.
Prizes and reception
Translated into more than seventy languages, and the Argentine poem with the most translations according to La Nación.
Sources for this page 4
The pages consulted to check this page.