Poetry
Concherías
Not translated into English
Aquileo Echeverría · 1905
Opening lines
Mi musa es joven y ardiente,
morena, de erguido seno,
boca sensual y más roja
que las bayas del cafeto;
My muse is young and ardent,
dark, with upright breast,
a sensual mouth, redder
than the berries of the coffee tree;
Translation by Erostrate
Text quoted from archive.org
Synopsis
Poems of peasant life, in which the conchos, the country people, speak and act: weddings, funeral wakes, condolence visits, dinner invitations, purchases and serenades, love affairs and festivals, piety and a sense of trade. We follow the idyll of Lina, “the most beautiful girl of La Pitaya”, and Luis, the boy from San Joaquín; old villagers remember their youth. The scenes are set in the house, the village and the fields, and the dialogues are written in the speech of the countryside.
Context
The collection appears in 1905 in San José, two years after a first book of romances. A second edition came out in Barcelona in 1909, the year of the author's death, with a preface by his Nicaraguan friend, Rubén Darío, who had hailed him in La Nación of Buenos Aires as the “poet of Costa Rica”. As early as 1913, José Fabio Garnier defended it against the label of mere imitator of Vicente Medina and saw in it a precious document on popular psychology. It is now read in the country's secondary education.
Who it is for
Short poems in Spanish, in a somewhat old-fashioned peasant speech, with a great deal of dialogue.
Prizes and reception
The book that made its author the national poet; the Costa Rican national prize for literature has borne his name since 1961.
Sources for this page 4
The pages consulted to check this page.