Poetry
Kacharpari
Not translated into English
Juan Wallparrimachi · 1891
Synopsis
The speaker addresses his beloved dove, who is leaving for a distant land. He tells of his grief, asks who will remain in the empty nest, and sees himself running after her, weeping, on the road. The sun, the eagle's wings and Mount Misti pass through his images, and he wonders how far his widowed heart must go to reach the love of the one who leaves.
Context
The song first lived in oral memory: the priest Carlos Felipe Beltrán published it in 1891 among poems that he gave as anonymous. It was Bolivian collectors who then restored it to Wallparrimachi, and before 1947 it is the only poem attributed to him. Jesús Lara, who translates and adapts it, then raises the number of pieces to twelve, on the basis of two collections of 1922 that disappeared without leaving any originals; Julio A. Noriega has since challenged this construction and returned these texts to the common tradition.
Who it is for
A few short stanzas in Quechua, most often read in Jesús Lara's Spanish version. Nothing to know beforehand, except that the dove stands for the beloved.
Prizes and reception
An essential piece in Quechua and Bolivian anthologies for more than a century, and recently translated into English.
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