Poetry
El cofre de Psiquis
Not translated into English
Gregorio Reynolds · 1918
Synopsis
Some hundred sonnets, opened by a poem on the sonnet itself and divided into evocatively titled sections, from "Preludio galante" to "Jardín de Sade" and "Glosario espiritual". Bolivian landscapes and Indian life, moon and reverie, eroticism and decadence, Pierrot and Columbine, Christian mysticism and death stand side by side, in a constant contrast between sensuality and mystical fervour.
Context
The collection appeared in 1918 in La Paz, from Alfredo H. Otero, preceded by a prologue that sees in its apparent sadism an aesthetic game rather than a perversion. It follows El mendigo, which won a prize at the Floral Games of La Paz in 1913, and the dramatic poem Quimeras, and precedes Horas turbias and Redención. Critics rank its author, with Ricardo Jaimes Freyre and Franz Tamayo, among the three great modernist poets of the country. It has been translated into neither French nor English.
Who it is for
To discover Bolivian modernism through one of its masters of the sonnet, between Baudelaire and the Andes.
Prizes and reception
Biografías y Vidas sees in it probably the best of the work of a sonneteer of great technical perfection.