Ao de la Consolidacin del Mar de Grau

RICARDO PALMA BIOGRAPHY

Ricardo Palma was born in Lima on Febrary 7, 1833, son

of a well-to-do family. He grew up amid turbulent political
events and reached adolescence as the romantic tradition
in Peru was reaching its zenith. He was a Peruvian
essayist and short-story writer.
At 15 he published his first verses and became the editor
of a political and satiric newssheet called El Diablo (The
Devil).
He was educated in a Jesuit school and went on to the University San Carlos, where
his studies were cut short by a six year period of voluntary service in the Peruvian
navy.
A trip to Europe in 1864-1865 was marked by the publication of two new volumes of
verse, Harmonies and Lyre, in Paris. Palma returned to Lima in 1865 and became
involved in political affairs that engaged him in public service until 1876. Yet during this
time he continued to amass an excellent personal library and compose out of the
history

and

legend

of

Peru's

past

his

charming,

spicy,

always

sprightly tradiciones. These were collected in separate volumes during his lifetime, the
first selection of his Peruvian Traditions appearing in 1872 and the next five at irregular
intervals over the next decade. These collections form the nucleus of the six-volume
edition of the Peruvian Traditions.
The War of the Pacific (1879-1883) between Chile and Peru disrupted Palma's life and
resulted in the virtual destruction of his own library as well as that housed in the
Peruvian National Library. After the war Palma was named director of the National
Library, a post he held until his retirement in 1912. He died in Lima on October 6, 1919.

Universidad Cesar Vallejo Pgina 1

Ao de la Consolidacin del Mar de Grau

BIOGRAPHY CESAR VALLEJO

Cesar
only
one of
Always
books

Vallejo (March 16, 1892 - April 15, 1938) published

three books of poetry but is nonetheless considered
the great poetic innovators of the 20th century.
a step ahead of the literary currents, each of his
was distinct from the others and in its own sense
revolutionary.

Life
Csar
in

Vallejo was born the youngest of eleven children

Santiago de Chuco, a remote village in the
Andes of Peru. He studied literature in the
Universidad de la Libertad in Trujillo, Peru. The
poet dropped out of the university several
times, working at a sugar plantations where he saw firsthand the
exploitation of agrarian workers, a sight that would influence his
politics and aesthetics. Vallejo received a masters degree in spanish
literature
in
1915.
Later, Vallejo moved to Lima, where he lived a Bohemian lifestyle,
meeting important members of the intellectual left, and working as a
tutor and then a teacher. The poet suffered a number of calamities in
the years leading up to the publication of Los Heraldos Negros: He
lost his teaching post after having refusing to marry a woman with
whom he had an affair, his lover died of a failed abortion which he
had forced her to undergo, his mother died in 1920, and he was
imprisoned for 105 days after returning home to Santiago de Chuco
and
igniting
a
scandal
there.
After publishing Trilce in 1923, the poet, having lost another
professorship in Lima, emigrated to Europe, where he lived until his
death in Paris in 1938. He is interred in the Cimetire du
Montparnasse.

Universidad Cesar Vallejo Pgina 2

Ao de la Consolidacin del Mar de Grau

Universidad Cesar Vallejo Pgina 3