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Abraham Valdelomar
Perú (1888-1919)
BNP, http://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archivo:Valdelomar1.jpg
Abraham Valdelomar was born in Ica, Peru, on april 27, 1888. He started his studies in Pisco, in 1900, and finished them in Lima, in 1904. In 1905, he enrolled at San Marcos Major University but his interest in becoming a illustrator for different magazines (among others Aplausos y silbidos, Monos y monadas, Actualidades) postponed his academic plans. He published his first poems in the Contemporáneos magazine, in 1909.
In 1912 he joined the presidential campaign of Guillermo Billinghurst, who, after being elected, named Valdelomar as a diplomatic in Italy in may 1913. During his stay in Rome he wrote a series of journalistic articles called Crónicas de Roma, published by the newspapers La Nación and La Opinión Nacional, both based in Lima. During 1914, still living in Europe, the author took part in a short story contest organized by La Nación with his tale “El Caballero Carmelo”, which won the first prize.
After his comeback to Peru in 1915, he worked as a journalist for the newspaper La Prensa and in 1916 founded his own magazine, Colónida, with the main objective of represent the new generation of peruvian writers. With this publication Valdelomar imposed himself the challenge of leaving a renewed way of making autonomous literature in his country for the future, far away from european models. Despite having released only four issues, the magazine had a great impact on the national cultural circle, which increased author's influence far beyond his own literary work.
In 1918 some of his most well-known short stories were published under the name of El Caballero Carmelo (included in our Colección 800). That year he quitted his job as an editor at La Prensa and was elected to the Center Regional Congress to represent his hometown. On november 1, 1919 Valdelomar had an accident which broke his spine and died a few days later. The wake and burial took place in Lima. The short-tales book Los hijos del sol and the patriotic collection of poems titled Tríptico heroico were published posthumously in 1921.
Even with the brevity of his life and work, Valdelomar has an essential place in peruvian literature due to the broad range of genres he developed. His work, which covered chronic, essay, drama, novel, short story and poetry is found to be quite relevant as it is seen as a key moment of latin american modern writing, specially because of the close exam of habits in his books, through which he tried to vindicate rural-indigenous peruvian culture from the early 20th century.
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