Poetry
Ritos
Not translated into English
Guillermo Valencia · 1899
Synopsis
A book of original poems mixed with free versions taken from three European languages, given without always distinguishing one from the other. The piece by which it is known sets two camels walking through a desert, with supple necks and slow pace, exhausted with thirst, and the poet recognises himself in them. Another, long one bears a Greek title that means the absence of power. The language is sculpted, the rare word is sought for its own sake, and the elsewhere, biblical or oriental, serves as a setting for a melancholy that is the true subject.
Context
The collection appeared in Bogotá in 1898 under the title Poesías, which the author changed the following year; an expanded edition came out in London in 1914. He was twenty-five. The book opens with a poem addressed to José Asunción Silva, who had died two years earlier, and this opening says where he comes from: the fin-de-siècle aesthetic that this predecessor and a critic of the same generation had brought to the country. Shortly before, during a European stay, he had met the master of continental modernism.
Who it is for
About a hundred pages in Spanish, with no complete French translation. The vocabulary is rare and the references to antiquity and the Bible are numerous: an annotated edition is useful.
Prizes and reception
The book that made its author the leading figure of Colombian modernism. The national poetry prize now bears his name.
Sources for this page 2
The pages consulted to check this page.