César Calvo
César Calvo Soriano was a Peruvian poet, journalist, and author. Calvo was part of the "Generación del Sesenta", a group of prominent Peruvian poets that came of age in the 1960s. Considered an important voice in the literature of Peru and the Amazon basin, his work has been celebrated in Latin America and a novel translated into Italian and English.
Life and career
Calvo was born in Iquitos, Loreto, Peru. He was a son of César Calvo de Araujo the Peruvian painter.His first chapbook of poetry was published in 1960 when he was twenty; it drew literary praise. At Universidades Nacional Mayor de San Marcos in Lima, his subjects were literature, psychology, and law. He continued to write poetry. In 1974 Calvo was awarded First Prize of the Concurso Hispanoamericano de Literatura, by which he had been honorably mentioned in 1960. In 1976 his works won him the Premio Nacional de Poesía of Peru.
His occupation in journalism included his youthful founding of Expresso in Lima. For several decades he actively participated in newspapers, magazines, and later television. In politics on the left, Calvo was known to be friendly and spontaneous. Apparently he struck up conversations with a wide variety of people, making little distinction as to class, race, social position, or culture.
He once led the Instituto Nacional de Cultura en Iquitos. He also served in Iquitos as Director of the Fundación Pro Selva, involved in the protection of the Amazon ecology, both flora and fauna. He traveled widely; besides Iquitos, Lima, and Cuzco in Peru, he has resided in London, Paris, Rome, Madrid, and Barcelona. Later he served as Director Artístico of the Conjunto Folklórico Perú Negro.
He died suddenly, his last work Edipo entre los Inkas almost finished. Among his major works:
- El Cetro de los Jovenes 1967
- Cancionario 1967
Literary corpus
Poetry
His Cancionario is a collection of his poems written in the form of songs, published in 1967. Later many were made the basis of compositions by various singers and musicians. Accordingly, he co-wrote with an Afro-Peruvian chanteuse, the great Chabuca Granda, the landó "María landó". This song became internationally famous later when recorded by another Afro-Peruvian of renown, Susana Baca. It was released on the 1995 compilation CD The Soul of Black Peru.As a poet for several decades he published volumes and poemarios: Carta para el Tiempo 1960; Poemas Bajo Tierra 1961; Ausencias y Retardos 1963; El Último poema de Volcek Kalsaretz 1965; El Cetro de los Jovenes 1967; Cancionario 1967; Poco antes de partir 1971; Pedestal Para Nadie 1975; Como Tatuajes en el Piel de un Río 1985.
''Las tres mitades de Ino Moxo''
Of Calvo's written works perhaps the best known internationally is his novel Las Tres Mitades de Ino Moxo y otros Brujos de la Amazonía 1981. This work is framed as a journey of Calvo and his cousin into the Amazon forest, to visit the revered shaman Manuel Córdova known as Ino Moxo. Its poetic narrative adopts the intersubjective spiritual perception of Ino Moxo and addresses the tribal aftermath of the violent commercial conquests during the rubber boom.This autobiographical 1981 novel "has been a hailed by scholars of literary Amazonia as a welcome alternative to the Amazonian novels that see the region from an outsider's perspective." Similar to Mario Vargas Llosa, Calvo discusses the violence to Amazonian people and to the biodiversity. "Unlike Vargas Llosa, however, Calvo imagines a way out through Indigenous Amazonian knowledge."