Poetry
Canto fúnebre a la muerte de Don Diego Portales
Not translated into English
Mercedes Marín del Solar · 1837
Synopsis
A silva, a poem both elegiac and laudatory, written after the death of the minister Diego Portales, shot in 1837 during the Quillota uprising by a faction of the army opposed to the war against the Peruvian-Bolivian Confederation. The poem mourns this assassination and makes of Portales, in a perspective of celebration, a national hero. It appeared nearly two months later in El Araucano, the newspaper edited by Andrés Bello, signed “Por una Señora Chilena”, and readers wanted to know who was hiding behind this pseudonym.
Context
The poem appeared in issue 361 of El Araucano on 18 July 1837, then as a pamphlet at the La Opinión press, and in El Mercurio de Valparaíso on 4 August, this time signed by its author. Juan María Gutiérrez included it in 1846 in América poética. It first bore the title Homenaje de gratitud a la memoria del benemérito Ministro Don Diego Portales, and took the title Canto fúnebre only in the Poesías collected in 1874 by Enrique del Solar, the author's son. She published no book in her lifetime; her Obras reunidas appeared in 2015.
Who it is for
An occasional poem in Spanish from the nineteenth century, with no French or English translation found.
Prizes and reception
According to Memoria Chilena, the poem made a great impression both through its subject and through the quality of its craftsmanship.
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