Ricardo Palma

Manuel Ricardo Palma Soriano (February 7, 1833 in Lima - October 6, 1919 in Lima) was a romantic writer, costumbrista, traditionalist, journalist and Peruvian politician, internationally known as Ricardo Palma, famous mainly for his historical fiction short stories collected in the book Peruvian Traditions. He cultivated practically all genres: poetry, novels, drama, satire, criticism, chronicles and essays of various kinds. His children Clemente and Angélica followed in his footsteps as writers. In 1883, he was appointed director of the National Library. His selfless work to rebuild said institution (he requested books from different countries) earned him the nickname "The Beggar Librarian". In 1892 he represented Peru in the fourth centenary of the Discovery of America made in Europe.

Biography

He was born on February 7, 1833 in Lima (although there is a theory by Monsignor Salvador Herrera Pinto that he placed his cradle eight years earlier in the town of Talavera de la Reyna in Apurímac), in the bosom of a humble family; He was registered in the baptismal certificate as the natural son of Pedro Ramón Palma Castañeda and Guillerma Carrillo y Pardos, whom many consider the maternal grandmother and that his mother was actually Dominga Soriano y Carrillo, her 16-year-old daughter, whom Pedro would marry four years later, on April 6, 1837. An aspiring mestizo merchant, Pedro was twice the age of Dominga, who was a cuarterona (sub-Saharan descent). The Palma-Soriano marriage "failed quickly -according to historian Oswaldo Holguín Callo- due to racial, generational and cultural differences", and little Ricardo, who was 9 years old, naturally remained in the parental home.

He attended the Pascual Guerrero nursery school, the Antonio Arengo school, and the Clemente Noel school. After finishing high school, he studied law at the Convictorio de San Carlos (although some question this information as a trick of the author and others say that he was probably an external student).

At the age of 15 he began his literary career, first writing poetry and drama. It was at that age that he began to use, along with his first name, his second name, Ricardo, which he would later use alone, without Manuel's original first name. He also mixed in politics from a young age, and in 1857 he supported the uprising of General Manuel Ignacio de Vivanco against President Ramón Castilla, for which he was separated from the exercise of his position in the Political Corps of the Peruvian Navy.

He completed his university studies at the Convictorio de San Carlos, which served as the Faculty of Law of the University of San Marcos.

He began as a Freemason at the age of 22 in the Chalaca lodge of Callao Concordia Universal, on July 4, 1855, being a venerable teacher Damián Alzamora, speaker Antonio Álvarez del Villar and secretary José Antonio Barboza.

In the Navy, which he entered as a third officer in 1853, he served on the schooner Libertad, the brig Almirante Guisse, the transport Rímac —where on March 1, 1855 he was about to die as a result of the shipwreck— and the steam Loa. He took part in the landing of Guayaquil in 1859, during the war with Ecuador.

In November 1860, he participated in the unsuccessful assault on the presidential house carried out by a group of civilians and soldiers with a liberal tendency, led by José Gálvez. The failure of the coup against Castilla forced him to leave Peru and on December 20 he embarked for Chile.

In Valparaíso, where he arrived at the end of the month, he frequented literary salons, was a member of the Society of Friends of the Illustration and collaborated in the Revista del Pacífico and in the Revista de South-America. The almost three years that he spent in that city—during which he made frequent trips to Santiago—were literary "intense and fruitful." There he met José Victorino Lastarria, Guillermo Blest Gana and other writers, and in the mentioned magazines he published important texts: poems, seven traditions and what would later derive in the Annals of the Inquisition of Lima that would appear in the Peruvian capital upon his return and with which it can be said that "the literary fullness of Palma begins".

He returned to Peru in August 1863, after being amnestied, and in July of the following year he was appointed consul in Pará, Brazil, a position that apparently he never held: he obtained a license and traveled to Europe: Le Havre, Paris, London. In 1865 he returned via the United States —he stayed for a while in New York—, when Peru was already in full conflict with Spain. With the port of Callao blocked, Palma probably disembarked in Paita and was appointed assistant to Gálvez, Minister of War and Navy. Both participate, from the La Merced tower in Callao, in combat against the Spanish squadron on May 2, 1866, in which Galvéz died when a bomb was fired from the Spanish frigate Almansa or from the Blanca, fell into some gunpowder deposits. Palma is miraculously saved: he had left the tower minutes before the explosion.

The spa of Chorrillos1843, oil from Mauricio Rugendas.

He took part in the uprising of Colonel José Balta the following year, and was imprisoned and briefly exiled in Guayaquil. Balta named him his private secretary after being elected president in 1868. Soon after, he was also elected senator for Loreto, a position he held until 1872. Balta's assassination, which occurred on July 26, 1872, marks the end of the political life of Palma, which happens to dedicate itself exclusively to literature. Three years later he retired to Miraflores and in 1878, he moved with his family to the Chorrillos spa.

During the war with Chile, he participated in the defense of Lima. When the occupation troops burned down his house, located in the Miraflores resort, in January 1881, Palma lost his library and some manuscripts, such as the novel Los Marañones and his memoirs of the government of Balta. Lost his house, he moves to Lima where he rents one on Veracruz street.

Two years later, the owner of the Buenos Aires newspaper La Prensa offered him the position of literary editor of the newspaper, but President Miguel Iglesias managed to convince him to accept the directorship of the National Library, that it was destroyed as a consequence of the war and that during the occupation it had been plundered by the Chileans. When these events occurred in March 1881, Palma, who was deputy director of the Library at the time, had written a protest letter, signed by him and the director, Manuel de Odriozola. This prompted the then Rear Admiral Patricio Lynch and commander chief of the occupation army, sentenced the writer to prison, which he served first on the second floor of the same occupied Library and later on a ship in Callao, where he spent 12 days until he was released thanks to the efforts of French diplomats and Brazilians. Odriozola, against whom there was also an arrest warrant, "managed to take refuge in the North American legation".

His work at the head of this institution was one of the great achievements of his life. It was at that time that he earned the nickname "the beggar librarian" because, given the meager budget he had, he decided to use his prestige and his contacts to ask personalities from various countries that donated books. Thanks to his friendship with the President of Chile Domingo Santa María (1881-1886), he managed to recover more than 14,000 volumes from Chilean hands. On July 28, 1884, he inaugurated the library, which he directed until February 1912, when he resigned for discrepancies with the government of Augusto Leguía, who, in his replacement, appoints his enemy, Manuel González Prada. It is true that the writer will have his reparation: the new government of Colonel Óscar R. Benavides will name him honorary director of the Library in 1914, González Prada will be dismissed and his position will be occupied by Palma's candidate, Luis Ulloa. This, however, did not last long: in February 1916 González Prada regained his position and the famous writer renounced his honorary appointment.

Ricardo Palma, The Beggar Librarian, already become the patriarch of Peruvian letters, had retired in March 1912 to Miraflores, where he would live the last years of his life.

He was a corresponding member of the Royal Spanish Academy (1878) and of the Peruvian Academy of Language —which he presided over from its founding in 1887 until his resignation in 1918, when he became honorary director—, and of other prestigious institutions, such as the Grand Lodge of Peru.

Personal life

Ricardo Palma and Cristina Román with 5 children of the couple and Clemente Palma.

In 1872, he had a natural son with the Ecuadorian Clemencia (or Clementina) Ramírez: Clemente Palma, who would become a noted writer. Married to Cristina Román and Olivier since 1876, they had 7 children (some of whom died prematurely): Félix Vital, Angélica, also a writer and one of the founders of the Peruvian feminist movement, Ricardo, Peregrina Augusta, Cristina, Cristián and Renée Cristina.

Literary career

Only two pieces from this period have survived: the drama Rodil (1851), rediscovered one hundred years after its premiere in 1952 by José Jiménez Borja in the Club Nacional library (Palma had practically destroyed all copies) and the comedy El santo de Panchita, which he wrote together with Manuel Ascencio Segura.

His first book of prose, Corona patriotica, appeared in 1853. Two years later Poesías came out and in 1865, Harmonías. Book of an exile.

His poetic work was not exempt from controversy: in 1890 he published A San Martín , a poem that provoked the protest of the Chilean government, which considered it offensive to his country. Palma's latest collection of poems, Filigranas. Bonus to my friends, appeared two years later. In 1865, he compiled the anthology American Lira. Collection of poems by the best poets of Peru, Chile and Bolivia.

Palma Sculpture in Bogotá.

As a journalist, he collaborated in numerous national and foreign media. At 15, the same age he made his literary debut, she ran El Diablo, a political and satirical newspaper. He would continue to exploit this last vein in his collaboration with the sheet El Burro (1852), in 1867 he would be the main editor of another satirical and political newspaper, La Campana and ten more years Later he would found, together with Acisclo Villarán and Manuel Atanasio Fuentes (known as El Murciélago), La Broma (1877-1878). He was editor of El Liberal , El Mercurio , La Revista de Lima —late literary organ of romanticism, which he came to direct—; collaborator of El Correo del Perú, where he will publish numerous traditions, El Correo de Lima, La Patria, El Liberal, La Prensa (Buenos Aires), El Perú Ilustrado and many other newspapers and magazines, both in Peru and abroad.

Palma also stood out in the historical genre. From his pen came the Annals of the Lima Inquisition (1863), the controversial Monteagudo and Sánchez Carrión. Pages from the history of independence (1877) and its Refutation of a compendium of the history of Peru (Lima 1886). In this work, Palma, who was a Freemason, launched such a virulent attack against the Jesuits that led to the prohibition, by the Peruvian Congress, of the establishment of this religious order in the country and its expulsion.

As a linguist —Palma was president of the Peruvian Academy of Language since its founding on May 5, 1887— he advocated the admission of new words, which was reflected in his books Neologisms and Americanisms (1896) and Lexicographic papers (1903).

Peruvian traditions

The short stories on various topics, which he began to write in the early 1850s, would later derive in his Peruvian Traditions (strictly speaking, the first time he used the name of “Peruvian tradition” was for a text from 1854 entitled Infernum the sorcerer and which was never included in the series). The first series was published in 1872, the same year in which, following the assassination of President José Balta, he decided to abandon politics and dedicate himself definitively to letters.

1893 edition of Peruvian traditions.

The texts that make up the Tradiciones —and which can be said to constitute a new genre, intermediate between the narrative and the chronicle— are constructed from historical facts or popular anecdotes of a light and burlesque that constitute a particular literary genre. The first volume was followed two years later by another with the second series. There were six series in total, to which must be added Ropa vieja and Ropa vejada. The title Peruvian Traditions, by which all these books are known today, was used for the first time in the Barcelona edition of four volumes (1893-1896). But this was not the end of the series: later he published Tradiciones y artículos históricos, Cachivaches, My latest Peruvian traditions and cachivachería and Appendix to my latest Peruvian traditions, plus the edition El Palma de la juventud. The daughters of Palma, after the writer died, were in charge of making the final edition, in six volumes, of the Peruvian Traditions, which had the support of the Peruvian government.

The Traditions have been the subject of various analyses, and while some have seen in them a nostalgia for the colonial past, others have considered that the irony with which they describe that past hides a social criticism. Be that as it may, and regardless of the discussions surrounding its literary merits, the impact that this work had on Spanish-American narrative is undeniable.

His tradition writing style is history in Lima. The tradition cultivated outside of Lima and by another pen other than that of Palma, is not good, has little perfume, it looks lack of color.

Ruben Darío

Historian Raúl Porras Barrenechea, for his part, described Palma as the second founder of Lima, for having created the image of this city and a particular vision of its past, which despite its mistakes has not yet been able to be replaced.

Traditions in green sauce

After finishing his Peruvian Traditions (set of texts), since 1901 he has been writing a series of stories with a more lewd or obscene tone. The themes of the set maintain suggestive motifs. At no time does Palma marvel or celebrate when telling it, he simply recounts facts or anecdotes.

Ricardo Palma never signed these texts, apparently to avoid the censorship of society at the time. Its publication did not take place until 1973, whose first edition was produced by Francisco Carrillo and Carlos Garayar.

Tradiciones en salsa verde is made up of eighteen narratives, almost all of which are brief in their narrative, context, and set.

Correspondence

His daughters Augusta and Renée published the first collection of his letters in 1949: they published two volumes with Palma's correspondence from 1862-1918. In 1969 Carlos Miró published a selection of the writer's correspondence entitled Indiscreet Letters and, finally, between 2005 and 2007 the Ricardo Palma University published three volumes of his letters under the title Epistolario generally . Although this edition is the most complete to date, it is not yet the definitive one, since it does not contain those kept by the National Library of Peru. In addition, some researchers think that, since in 1997 a well-known London auction firm put up for sale a batch of 50 letters that it had sent to an Argentine friend and which were acquired by the National Library of Peru itself, there will still be new finds..

Contradictory figure

The remains of Ricardo Palma are in the Presbyter Cemetery Master Matías.

George W. Umphrey and Carlos García-Prada, scholars of Palma's work, characterized the contradictory figure of the writer with the following words:

“Ricardo Palma, a mestizo representative of the nineteenth century, that is, a American new, unstable, through formation: a spirit without clear, precise, defined orientation, which was attracted by opposing values and realities of force for him irresistible: a spirit in search of his own balance. We see this in his character, in his life, in his writings. He wanted a synthesis that did not understand well, and that he acted on a continuous basis. He was American and came from the village, but he doubled in front of the prestige of the Spanish, peninsular or American aristocracy. He intituated ‘liberal’ and did anti-clerical campaigns, but he cried out to the conservative classes, and still sympathized with the Carlists of Spain; he was condolenced with the poor and the humble, but he fought with the powerful and proud of the honors that conferred on him in exchange for his literary zalemas; he loved the order, the cleansing and the first

Raúl Porras Barrenechea, for his part, says:

“The biography of the traditionist needs to be clarified and studied to heal the personality factors of the writer and his work. Without the true and punctual knowledge of the various stages of the life of Palma, especially those prior to its celebrity, of the difficult years of formation and without the precise location of the family and social situation to be faced, there is no need to make such disquisitions as those that the teachers of the superficial critique, on the biological or moral characteristics of Palma. His family and social origin, his childhood, the struggles of his youth, his random days of marines, of opposition journalist, of political conspirators and of banished, are almost unknown or barely alluded, in the admirative reconstructions or in the tendentious semblances that of the life of Palma have been made, by their own and adverse... From the authentic reconstruction of Palma's life, they will emerge with its inescapable contradictions, its hesitations and its congots and with the final indelible triumph, the illusory moral trajectory of the writer son of the people, who opened his way, against all the conjures, to occupy the highest place of the national and American literature".

José Gálvez, in turn, points out that:

“Coursed by its way, which is very persuasive for its creation, criollo for its typical ingenuity, Palma has within its essential characteristics, which make it the most Peruvian of our writers, the universal sense of its sentimental romanticism and its volterian and encyclopaedist philosophical tendency.”

José de la Riva Agüero believes that Ricardo Palma is:

“...as nobody and before anyone, legitimate incarnation of the spirit of our homeland.”

Manuel Beltroy argues that:

“Ricardo Palma occupies in Peruvian literature the same place as the poets of romanticism occupy in their respective countries, and has in that same meaning. Just as those poets adapted the poetic doctrines of Romanticism to the nature of their literatures, condensed in their works the intimate feeling and thinking of their people, Palma made these doctrines serve the expression of the Peruvian poetic spirit and went to the likeness of them, the full incarnation of that spirit, as if it had been chosen to represent it."

Augusto Tamayo Vargas states:

"The life and work of Ricardo Palma are inextricably linked to the incessant search for the national. The splendid combination of historical truth and literary fabulation, its attachment to veracity and, at the same time, its sharp disbelief, its unparalleled humour, flash in its vast and valuable writings, from its early Romantic scripts - as the same one calls its first compositions- to the wide and fresh complex of the Peruvian Traditions, where the country is recognized in its image, half of its own.

During the War of the Pacific, Palma made a bitter but superficial criticism of the Indian and his culture, abject and degraded, cowardly, without a country and enemy of whites . But as in any historical judgment, it is essential and necessary to locate facts, characters and ideas in the time and cultural context in which they occur, exist and manifest themselves.

Posthumous Tributes

Interior of the Casa Museo Ricardo Palma.

Many educational institutions (the Ricardo Palma University, various schools), cultural, medicinal and other institutions bear his name. There are hotels, streets, a subway station, a book fair (opened in 1972), a recreation center named after him.

In Miraflores there is the Ricardo Palma House Museum, which is also a research center dedicated to the writer's work. There is also the Ricardo Palma Foundation.

Monuments have immortalized his figure, and scholars have filled thousands of pages analyzing his work. The Central Bank put into circulation a 10 intis bill with a portrait of Palma in 1985 (with the reverse of an indigenous farmer and a cotton crop), which in 1988 became one of 500,000 (with the Church of La Caridad, headquarters of the First Constituent Congress, on the back); It stopped circulating in 1991.

Works

• The Son of the Sun, 1849
• I have biographical, 1855
• The saint of Panchita, 1869
• Anales de la Inquisition de Lima, historical essay, Lima, 1863
• Constituent Congress, satire published under the pseudonym A Campanero, 1867
• Harmonies. Book of a banishment, poetry, Paris, 1895
• American bitch. Collection of Poetry of the Best Poets of Peru, Chile and Bolivia, Paris, 1895
• Passionpoetry, with prologue by Luis Benjamin Cisneros; Havre, 1870
• Traditions, first series of his magna work, State Printer, Lima, 1872
• Don Juan del Valle Caviedes, the poet of the Ribera, essay, 1873
• Traditions. Second instalment, Liberal Printer The Mail of Peru, Lima, 1874
• Traditions. Third series, Benito Gil Editor, Lima, 1875
• Traditions. Fourth series, Benito Gil Editor, Lima, 1877
• Monteagudo and Sánchez Carrión. Pages of the history of independence, essay, Lima, 1877
• Traditions. Fifth series, edition of Carlos Prince, Lima, 1883 (Prince also publishes the previous four)
• Traditions. Sixth series, edition of Carlos Prince, Lima, 1883
• The demon of the Andestraditions about the conqueror Francisco de Carvajal, Printer of The News (period in which Palma collaborated), New York, 1883 (2nd edition: Casa Maucci, Barcelona / Buenos Aires, 1911)
• Enrique Heine. Translations, made on the French version of Gérard de Nerval, 1886
• Refutation to a compendium of Peruvian historyagainst the book of Jesuit Ricardo Cappa, Lima, 1886
• Poetry, anthology that collects most of its lyrics; accompanied it, as a prologue, of the study Limous bohemia from 1848 to 1860. Literary trusts1887
• Old clothesSeventh series Traditions; Print of the Universe, by Carlos Prince, Lima 1889.
• Cristián, tribute book published in private edition by the Palmas to the son of the deceased writer at ten months; Lima, 1889
• Peruvian traditions, first foreign edition of this work; Buenos Aires, 1890
• To San Martín, poem, Lima, 1890
• Apolished clothes, eighth and last series Traditions; Print of the Universe by Carlos Prince; Lima, 1891
• Faithful. Aguinaldo my friends, his last poem, Lima, 1892
• Peruvian traditions, 4 volumes, Montaner and Simon, Barcelona, 1893-96
• Neologismos and americanismos, Lima, 1896
• Memories of Spainon his trip of 1892; Buenos Aires, 1897 (reissued with the title Memories of Spainpreceded by The bohemia of my time, Lima, 1899)
• Historical traditions and articles, Lima 1899
• Cachivaches, literary and bibliographic articles; Lima, 1900
• Two thousand voices that are needed in the Dictionary. Lexicographic ballots, Lima, 1903
• My latest Peruvian traditions and cachivacheria, Casa Maucci, Barcelona / Buenos Aires, 1906
• Appendix to my latest Peruvian traditions, Casa Maucci, Barcelona / Buenos Aires, 1910
• Complete poetry, Barcelona, 1911
• Selected traditions of PeruA. J. Sagrestan and Cía, Callao, 1911
• The best Peruvian traditions, selected and approved by Ventura García Calderón and accompanied by a brief autobiography; Casa Maucci, Barcelona, 1917
• El Palma de la JuventudLima, 1921* Epistolary, 1862-1918, edition of Augusta and Renée Palma with prologue by Raúl Porras Barrenechea, two volumes; Editorial Antarctic Culture, Lima, 1949
• Peruvian traditions, edition sponsored by the Peruvian government and supervised by their daughters; 6 volumes, Espasa-Calpe, Madrid, 1923-25
• Peruvian traditions, the first Peruvian edition of the traditions of Palma; 6 volumes, Editorial Cultura Antártica, Lima, 1951
• Complete Peruvian traditions, by Edith Palma, granddaughter of the writer and daughter of Clemente Palma; Aguilar, Madrid, 1952 (various reedditions; also includes the Anales de la Inquisition de Lima, The bohemia of my time and Remembrance of Spainarticles, humorous "priologists" accompanying some series, and numerous appendices)
• Indiscreet letters, edition of Carlos Mirón; F. Moncloa, 1969
• General Epistle, three volumes with prologue, notes and indexes by Miguel Ángel Rodríguez Rea; Universidad Ricardo Palma, Editorial Universitaria, Lima, 2005-2006
  • Volume 1: covers the years from 1846 to 1891, 2005; Volume 2: from 1892 to 1904, 2006; Volume 3: from 1905 to 1919, 2006
• Traditions in green salsa, first edition, Lima 1973, Editions of the University Library.