Poetry
Cantos populares de mi tierra
Not translated into English
Candelario Obeso · 1877
Synopsis
Sixteen poems in the language of the bogas of the Magdalena, the men who poled the champans along the river. The rower who speaks sings of the absence of the woman he left on the bank, mocks the gentlemen of the capital who would enlist him in their war, and speaks of the obedience owed to a father, of fishing, of hunger, of a serenade beneath a window. Each piece is given twice, first as it is spoken on the river, then in ordinary Castilian, and a glossary closes the book.
Context
Printed in Bogotá by Borda in 1877, ten years after María, Jorge Isaacs's sentimental novel about the Cauca valley, whose oarsmen's song carries the same motif of absence. The book notes the pronunciation of the river people, the r put for the l, the final consonants dropped, and gives opposite each piece its Castilian version: the popular speech is presented there as a language that is being translated. The author revised his text many times before the definitive version. The poems are dedicated to writers and friends, only one to a woman.
Who it is for
About a hundred pages, in Spanish and in a transcribed dialect clarified by a glossary. The Castilian version printed alongside makes the book readable without knowing anything about the Caribbean coast.
Prizes and reception
Underestimated by the critics of its time, it is regarded today as the first book to bring the Black voice into the poetry of the continent.
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