Francisco Coloane

Bust of Francisco Coloane in Quemchi

Francisco Coloane Cárdenas (born July 19, 1910 in Quemchi , Chiloé Island , † August 5, 2002 in Santiago de Chile ) was a Chilean writer who wrote mainly short stories and novels in Spanish . Some of his works have been translated into several languages ​​and adapted for theater and film. He is considered one of the discoverers of Tierra del Fuego and Patagonia for literature.

biography

Francisco Coloane Cárdenas was born in 1910 to the chilotic whaling captain Juan Agustín Coloane and the farmer Humiliana Cárdenas. He grew up among sailors and fishermen and studied in different places, but broke off his education with the death of his mother.

Together with his father, he traveled to the Strait of Magellan . On Tierra del Fuego he worked in sheep breeding, as a foreman , court clerk, sailor and rider, among other things .

He also worked on El Magallanes magazine and was a civil servant in the administration of the Armada de Chile . For much of his adult life, Coloane was an active member of the Communist Party of Chile . Eventually he moved to Santiago de Chile, where he died in 2002.

Coloane as a writer

His experiences in Tierra del Fuego are reflected in his work with a simple and agile style. His writings are about the extreme south of America, the children's novel The Last Cabin Boy of the Baquedano is inspired, for example, by a trip on the sailing ship Baquedano in 1933.

For his work Coloane received the Premio de la Sociedad de Escritores in 1957 , the National Prize for Literature of Chile in 1964 , and in 1966 he became chairman of the Chiles Association of Writers. In 1980 he was appointed a member of the Chilean Language Academy, in 2001 Coloane received the Gabriela Mistral Order of Merit , and in France in 1997 he was awarded the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres .

Some of his works have been translated into English, Russian, Swedish, Slovak, French, Czech, Hungarian, Greek, Bulgarian, Portuguese and also German.

Works

Coloane's most outstanding works are:

• Cabo de Hornos (14 short stories, 1941, German Cape Horn , 1998)
• El último grumete de la Baquedano (1941, German The last cabin boy of the Baquedano )
• La Tierra del Fuego se apaga (1945)
• Golfo de Penas (1945)
• Los conquistadores de la Antártida (1945)
• Tierra del Fuego (9 stories, 1956, German Tierra del Fuego , 1996)
• Viaje al Este (1958)
• El camino de la ballena (1962)
• El chilote Otey y Otros relatos (1971)
• Rastros del Guanaco Blanco (1980)
• Crónicas de la India (1983)
• Velero Anclado (1995)
• Cuentos completos (1999)
• Papeles recortados (posthumous 2004)
• Última carta (posthumously 2005)

Web links

• Portrait on escritores.cl (spanish)
• Article in Diario Llanquihue (Spanish)
• Article about Coloane on quetzal-leipzig.de (German)