By Hector Daniel Velarde, edited by Jim Luce.
On Thursday, November 12th, the Americas Society launched a special "Inca Garcilaso" issue of its acclaimed journal, Review: Literature and Arts of the Americas (see also).
The launch culminated the Society’s Fall 2009 literature series —- a season that focused on the life and legacy of Inca Garcilaso de la Vega, son of an Inca princess and a Spanish conquistador and considered the first Spanish American writer, and author of Royal Commentaries (Lisbon, 1609), which celebrates its 400th anniversary this year.
Raquel Chang-Rodríguez, Review 79 launch, Americas Society, November 12, 2009.
The season consisted of a symposium on Inca Garcilaso and his masterpiece, Royal Commentaries (October 15-16), co-organized by the Americas Society and The City College of New York, CUNY and presented at the CUNY Graduate Center, and the Society, culminating in a special appearance there by Peruvian novelist Mario Vargas Llosa in conversation with Raquel Chang-Rodríguez; a special reading by Peruvian authors Jorge Díaz Herrera, Nilo Espinoza Haro, and Alfredo Pita (October 23); and the Review 79 launch.
Review 79. Cover-image by José Carlos Martinat.
In addition to The City College, the Society’s other partners for the series were Colonial Latin American Review; the Graduate Center, CUNY; the Latin American Writers Institute, CUNY; Hofstra University; and the Consulate General of Peru in New York.
The program was part of the Fourth Latin American Culture Week in New York City. See more information, see both the Americas Society general website and Literature Department website.
Review: Literature and Arts of the Americas is a U.S. major forum for literature in English and English translation from throughout the Americas. Its current editor is Daniel Shapiro, who also serves as Director of Literature at the Americas Society, a non-profit organization founded in 1965 to promote greater awareness in the U.S. about the societies and cultures of the Western Hemisphere.
Tulio Mora, Review 79 launch, Americas Society, November 12, 2009.
Founded in 1968, Review first brought the work of authors including José Donoso, Gabriel García Márquez, and Mario Vargas Llosa to critical attention in the United States.
It has, since its inception, presented work by numerous writers from Latin America, the Caribbean, and Canada to a U.S. readership. Review is currently published by Routledge/Taylor and Francis on behalf of the Americas Society.
Review 79 ( "Inca Garcilaso and His Legacy," Fall 2009) was developed by guest academic editor Raquel Chang-Rodríguez (CCNY-Graduate Center, CUNY) and guest creative editors Isaac Goldemberg (Hostos Community College/CUNY) and Miguel-Angel Zapata (Hofstra University), together with Shapiro and arts editors Gabriela Rangel and Sebastián Zubieta.
The academic contents showcase Chang-Rodríguez’s introduction and articles by, respectively, Peruvian author Mario Vargas Llosa and Colonial scholars José Antonio Mazzotti (Tufts), Thomas Ward (Loyola University), and Margarita Zamora (University of Wisconsin), on various dimensions of Inca Garcilaso’s life, literature, and legacy.
Left to right: Odi Gonzales, Miguel Angel Zapata, Tulio Mora, Review 79 launch,
Americas Society, November 12, 2009.
The creative literature features a special collage of poetry, fiction, and personal essays, introduced by Goldemberg and Zapata, by writers from the Colonial to the contemporary period; these open with a selection by Inca Garcilaso (a fragment from Royal Commentaries on the founding of Cuzco).
This was followed by texts by icons such as José María Arguedas, Alberto Flores Galindo, Clorinda Matto de Turner, Laura Riesco, and César Vallejo; and pieces by writers of subsequent generations including Jorge Díaz Herrera, Nilo Espinoza Haro, Odi Gonzales, Tulio Mora, Alfredo Pita, and Yolanda Westphalen; a memorial piece on Peruvian poet Blanca Varela culminates the literature section in the issue.
Arts features include essays on early music in Cuzco, by musicologist Bernardo Illari, and on dress and identity among the Inca, by art historian Elena Phipps.
The Review 79 launch featured a welcome by Daniel Shapiro; an illustrated presentation by Raquel Chang-Rodríguez, who detailed key moments in Inca Garcilaso’s life and work and discussed her experience developing the four academic texts in Review 79; comments by Miguel Angel Zapata drawn from his introduction with Isaac Goldemberg in Review 79; and readings by poets Odi Gonzales ("The Immaculate Virgin," translated by Jessica Ernst Powell) and Tulio Mora ("Garcilaso de la Vega, 1539-1616," translated by Alita Kelly and David Tipton).
Zapata also read a statement by novelist Edgardo Rivera Martínez, another author featured in the issue, on his development as a writer in Andean Peru and his creative models, including Inca Garcilaso as well as other Peruvian and European writers.
Jason Weiss read the translations of the texts and translated their comments for English speakers attending the event. The audience was comprised of writers, scholars, students, and members of the general public, many of them native Peruvians and other Latin Americans.
Review 79 was displayed and available to order at the event. Learn more, purchase or subscribe to Review 79.
From comments by Raquel Chang-Rodríguez
"Review 79 dedicated to Inca Garcilaso and his literary legacy. It is a fitting tribute to the first great Spanish American writer and the first historian of the Americas... As you know, the issue marks the fourth centenary of the publication in Lisbon in 1609 of his masterpiece, Comentarios reales/ Royal Commentaries.
I was assigned to coordinate and edit the academic component of Review 79 and prepare an introduction about Inca Garcilaso’s and his writings to frame the articles.
The first one is by Mario Vargas Llosa and it centers on the linguistic skills of the Cuzcan author, particularly in how he was able to master Spanish, his second language, to produce a historical account of singular elegance and beauty.
The second article, by José Antonio Mazzotti, concentrates on Garcilaso’s real and symbolic "migrations"—of geographies, of names, of languages, of cultures.
Margarita Zamora brings to the fore the subversive aspect of Royal Commentaries, focusing on historical events used by the author to criticize Spanish rule in his homeland.
Thomas Ward reviews how Garcilaso’s masterpiece has been woven into interpretations of Peru as a nation by three very different figures: Clorinda Matto de Turner, José de la Riva Agüero and Luis E. Valcárcel.
A generous bibliography will lead those interested in going beyond these essays to further readings on the elusive Inca Garcilaso."
From the Introduction by Isaac Goldemberg and Miguel Angel Zapata (trans. by Rose Shapiro)
"When José María Arguedas says that Peru is an infinite country, he is doubtless referring to the vastness of Peruvian culture and its perpetual urge to move forward in search of a definitive union of its own multiple traditions.
The past and the present are merged in a single dimension, emphasizing Peru’s multifacetic history, its linguistic polyphony, and the art of its diversity. Peru is infinite because it possesses an immense culture, one of many facets and contradictions.
Peru is infinite also because, as Arguedas emphasizes, it is the birthplace of three towering figures in Peruvian culture: Inca Garcilaso, Huamán Poma, and César Vallejo.
In the selection we present here we have included representative work from an important segment of Peruvian literature and culture. The contributions of these writers, whether in the literary essay, poetry, or prose, have had wide-ranging influence in the culture of Peru.
Each writer and poet included here contributes his or her own perspective on Peruvian culture. The experiences of the authors, as well as that of their characters, amply demonstrate this multiplicity of perspectives, from the poems of Yolanda Westphalen, Tulio Mora, Odi Gonzales, and Denisse Vega Farfán to the prose of Clorinda Matto de Turner, Edgardo Rivera Martínez, Laura Riesco, Alfredo Pita, Jorge Díaz Herrera, Nilo Espinoza Haro, and César Gutiérrez.
This sampling is only one approach to the study of Peruvian identity, so misunderstood and misinterpreted in recent times. One path to understanding this complex mosaic is the study of literature."
Biographical sketches
Raquel Chang-Rodríguez, Distinguished Professor of Spanish American literature and culture at The Graduate Center and The City College of the City University of New York, is the founding editor of the journal Colonial Latin American Review.
Her recent books and editions include: "Aquí, ninfas del sur, venid ligeras." Voces poéticas virreinales (2008; "Here, Southern nymphs, come swiftly": Poetic Voices of the Viceroyalty), Beyond Books and Borders: Garcilaso de la Vega and La Florida del Inca (2006), and La palabra y la pluma en Primer nueva corónica y buen gobierno (2005; The Word and The Pen in First New Chronicle and Good Government).
Isaac Goldemberg is the author of novels (La vida a plazos de don Jacobo Lerner, 1978 [The Fragmented Life of Don Jacobo Lerner, 1976, 1999]; El nombre del padre, 2001 [The Name of the Father]); poetry collections (Hombre de paso/Just Passing Through, 1981; Libro de las transformaciones, 2007 [Book of Transformations]); and the anthology El gran libro de América judía (1998; The Great Book of Jewish America).
Isaac Goldemberg is Distinguished Professor at Hostos Community College, CUNY, where he is Director of the Latin American Writers’ Institute and Editor of Hostos Review.
Odi Gonzales (Valle Sagrado, Cusco, 1962) is a professor of Quechua at New York University. His most recent books of poems are Taki parwa/22 poemas de Kilku Warak’a (traducción y estudio de la poesía quechua de Andrés Alencastre (2000; Taki parwa/22 poems of Kilku Warak [study and translation of Andrés Alencastre’s Quechuan poetry]), Tunupa/el libro de las sirenas (2002; Tunupa/The Book of Sirens), and La escuela de Cusco (2005; The School of Cusco).
Tulio Mora (Huancayo, 1948) has published six books of poetry including: Mitología (1978; Mythology), Cementerio general (1989; A Mountain Crowned by a Cemetery, 2001), País interior (1994; Inward Country), and Simulación de la máscara (2006; Masked Simulation). With Roberto Bolaño he co-edited Hora Zero, la última vanguardia latinoamericana de poesía (2000; Zero Hour, the Last Latin-American Vanguard of Poetry), on the Hora Zero and Infrarrealismo movements (some of whose exponents appear in Bolaño’s The Savage Detectives).
Edgardo Rivera Martínez (Jauja, 1933) grew up with a fascination for landscapes and images of the Peruvian mountain range that would become the source of inspiration for his future works, as would his experiences of cultural interchange in his native town of Jauja. He has published short stories (Angel de Ocongate, 1982; Danzantes de la noche y de la muerte y otros cuentos, 2006 [Dancers of Night and Death and Other Stories]), as well as novels (País de Jauja, 1993 [Land of Jauja; reprinted six times]; Diario de Santa María, 2008 [Journal of Santa Maria]).
Jason Weiss (translator) has published The Lights of Home: A Century of Latin American Writers in Paris and the novel Faces by the Wayside. He is currently completing a novel and a work on the music label ESP-Disk. He recently translated Silvia Baron Supervielle's latest book of poems, Around the Void.
Miguel Angel Zapata’s publications include Transatlantic Steamer: New Approaches to Hispanic and American Poetry (2008), Los canales de piedra (2008; The Stone Canals), Un pino me habla de la lluvia (2007; A Pine Tree Speaks to Me of the Rain), Asir la forma que se va. Nuevos asedios a Carlos Germán Belli (2006; To Seize the Vanishing Form: New Approaches to Carlos Germán Belli), and Mario Vargas Llosa and the Persistence of Memory (2005). He is an Associate Professor in the Department of Romance Languages and Literatures at Hofstra University.
All photos © 2009 Elsa Ruiz