Poetry
Poesías
Not translated into English
Mariano Melgar · 1878
Synopsis
The collection brings together verses that remained unpublished or were scattered in newspapers of Lima and Arequipa. It includes a letter in verse to the woman the poet calls Silvia, odes, one of them to freedom and another to the sea, a few elegies, five fables, translations of Ovid and Virgil, and ten yaravíes, those short songs of love's lament made for the guitar or the quena. The poems to Silvia mingle elements of the Andean world with the Spanish.
Context
Nothing appeared in volume during the poet's lifetime: his nephew Manuel Moscoso Melgar gathered the poems in 1878, in Lima, dedicating them to the youth of Arequipa, and this is the first collected edition of his work. The collection gives only ten yaravís, whereas many more are attributed to their author. Two copies of this edition, held at the National Library of Peru, were declared cultural heritage of the nation in 2023; one bears the ex libris of Raúl Porras Barrenechea, the other an inscription from the poet Alberto Ureta. Peru officially recognised Melgar in 1964 among its first patriots.
Who it is for
Short verses in Spanish, many of them made for singing; in Arequipa, his yaravíes are still sung.
Prizes and reception
Its author, regarded as one of the leading Romantic poets of Peru, is often compared, as a patriot poet, to Olmedo and Martí.