I Give You My Silence – Mario Vargas Llosa

I doubt they knew they were changing the face of Peru, let alone that from a cultural and musical point of view they were, in a certain sense, giving birth to it. There, in the narrow alleyways, in the poor and working-class neighborhoods of Lima— Mercedarios, Barrios Altos, Rímac, Malambo, Chirimoyo, and a hundred others—they drank pisco and chicha and sang, danced, and played the guitar for up to three days on end. They died young, lungs ravaged, of yellow fever, smallpox, malaria, or tuberculosis. They were heroes, and they never knew it.

The vals, of Spanish or Austrian origin, or perhaps both, engendered dances in Chile and Argentina as well as in Peru. But it was only in Peru that huachafería appeared: an exaggeration of sentiment, a verbal styling, that I believe to be Peru’s most significant contribution to world culture. At its zenith, huachafería produced true poetry, as in The Black Heralds of César Vallejo; but it is no less present in the endless cast of children filing through the verses of José María Eguren, who seems to have grown up among Scandinavian faeries; and we mustn’t fail to recall the bombast, like an adman’s pitch, of José Santos Chocano, crowned in Lima’s town square like the heroes of ancient Greece in an unforgettable ceremony that was itself the embodiment of huachafería.

This phenomenon united whites, mestizos, and Indians thanks to the universal popularity of the vals. Felipe Pinglo Alva epitomized this trait, this phenomenon, this essence of the Peruvian character, and he granted it immortality in his dedication to the Peruvian vals, unflagging despite the tuberculosis that slowly devoured him.

This admirable bard was well aware of what he was doing; in a letter, he spoke of his “determination to create a national music.” This commitment, perhaps, was what drove him to forgo a more superficial style, peppered with commonplaces, in favor of more serious themes, some even encroaching on the perilous terrain of politics. Think, for example, of “The Commoner,” with its invocations of injustice that even today rend listeners’ hearts.

His chosen subject was love, but he didn’t flee the muck and grime, and he saw clearly the misery, the deprivation, the injustices the poor were made to suffer, as well as the hopes of the boys and girls of the middle classes, who dreamed of happiness and conquering the world. “The Poet of the Paupers,” they called him, and scholars have increasingly paid attention to a critical period between 1924 and 1926 in which his songs not only attained a previously unknown artistic excellence and poetic originality, but also revealed deep social sensitivity and a passion for denunciation that never lost the subtle elegance characteristic of his lyrics.

His life was sad: rich but cut short by tuberculosis, to which he succumbed at just thirty-seven years of age.

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You may not make this e-book publicly available in any way. Copyright infringement is against the law. If you believe the copy of this e-book you are reading infringes on the author’s copyright, please notify the publisher at: us.macmillan.com/piracy. OceanofPDF.com To Patricia OceanofPDF.com I Why had José Durand Flores, that figurehead of Peru’s intellectual pantheon, decided to call him?

His message had reached Toño Azpilcueta through his friend Collau, who had a tavern that sold newspapers and magazines. Toño called back, but no one picked up. Collau said it was Mariquita, his daughter, who had taken the message. She was just a kid, she might have mixed up the numbers; probably he’ll get back in touch, Collau said. At this point, the rats set upon Toño again: obscene little creatures that had hounded him since the early days of his childhood. Why had José Durand Flores called?

Toño didn’t know him personally, but he knew who he was. A renowned writer, a man Toño at once admired and detested, one who had reached the summit and was referred to by such epithets as “illustrious man of letters” and “renowned critic,” plaudits reserved for those of the country’s literati who belonged, as Toño would phrase it, to the “elite.”

But what had he done, this José Durand Flores? He’d lived in Mexico, of course, and Alfonso Reyes, the essayist, poet, scholar, diplomat, and director of the Colegio de Mexico, had written the foreword to his celebrated anthology Twilight of Sirens, Splendor of Manatees, which was published there in the north.

He was considered an expert on the Inca Garcilaso de la Vega, whose library he had reassembled in his home or in the archives of some university. He was something, in other words, but also no big thing—really nothing, when you got down to it. Toño called again, and again he got no answer. The rodents were crawling over his body the way they did every time he felt agitated, nervous, or impatient. Toño Azpilcueta had asked the National Library in downtown Lima to order the works of José Durand Flores, and the attendant had told him that yes, they would do so, but they never did, and so all Toño ever knew about Durand was that he was an important academic for some reason or other.

This is a short excerpt from the opening of “” by Unknown, quoted for review and introduction purposes. All rights belong to the copyright holders.

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• Total Words: 64,698
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