Theatre
La Prometheida o las oceánides
Not translated into English
Franz Tamayo · 1917
Synopsis
The titan who gave fire to men is chained somewhere in the Caucasus, and he is never seen. Psyche, a nymph and daughter of a god, loves him: she weeps over his torment and reproaches the gods. The chorus of the Oceanids, daughters of Ocean, first tries to turn her away from him, then joins her quest. She addresses Ares, who sends her to Apollo, and also meets Iris and Athena on her way.
Context
Prometheus himself does not appear in it: the Titan remains off the stage, and the action follows those who seek him. The text is divided into choruses, speeches and monologues, in hendecasyllables and heptasyllables, and lends itself to reading more than to the theatre. Its language admits coined words, Hellenisms and Latinisms; the future president Daniel Salamanca wrote on 12 June 1917 that it brought new materials to the lexicon of Castilian poetry. Daniel Sánchez Bustamante reproached it for taking its motifs from Greece rather than from America, and the author replied that a poet belongs to no region and that he had translated the human soul. Harold Osborne read in it an allegory of Bolivia deprived of the sea, before qualifying that reading.
Who it is for
A long tragedy in verse, in Spanish, with no French translation. Some coined vocabulary in places, and the myth of Prometheus to be known before opening the book.
Prizes and reception
A work that should rank, according to Bolivian critics, among the summits of Latin American poetry; the country's press celebrated its centenary in 2017.
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