José Eustasio Rivera

José Eustacio Rivera

José Eustasio Rivera Salas (born February 19, 1888 in San Mateo, today Rivera , Department Huila , † December 1, 1928 in New York ) was a Colombian writer .

Life

José Eustasio Rivera was born the fifth of eleven children into a farming family. He first attended the Santa Librada School in Neiva, and since 1902 the San Luis Gonzaga School in Elías (Huila Department).

Teacher, lawyer, diplomat, congressman

From 1906 to 1909, José Eustasio Rivera was able to complete his teacher training thanks to a scholarship at the College of Education (Escuela Normal de Institutores) in Bogotá . After graduating, he worked as a school inspector in Ibagué . In 1912 he began studying law and political science at the Universidad Nacional de Colombia , which he obtained on March 3, 1917 with a doctorate. jur. et rer. pole. completed. He earned his living while also working as an employee of a ministry. After completing his doctorate, he established himself as a lawyer. In 1921 he represented his country for the first time on a diplomatic mission in Peru and Mexico on the occasion of the 100th anniversary of the independence of both countries. A second diplomatic mission took him to Havana (Cuba) in 1928 , where he represented Colombia at the International Congress on Emigration and Immigration .

In 1922 Rivera was appointed Legal Secretary of the Colombian-Venezuelan Border Commission. The reason for this was that since the dissolution of Greater Colombia, the border between the two countries had been in dispute and, following an arbitration ruling by the Spanish Queen Maria Christina of Austria, the border was now to be demarcated by Swiss surveyors. From September 1922 to October 1923, the commission, Rivera at times also alone, traveled through the Llanos and the undeveloped rainforest. Rivera witnessed the poor living conditions of the rubber tappers on the Río Putumayo and their exploitation by the brutal feudal lord Julio César Arana . The impressions of this trip left deep traces in his novel La Vorágine .

Upon his return to Bogotá, Rivera publicized the crimes in the rainforest, both in the press and in parliament . Because during his long journey he had moved into the lower house as a replacement for the conservative faction . But the Colombian government remained inactive.

In 1928, José Eustasio Rivera, only 40 years old, died on a trip to the USA to prepare the English translation of La Vorágine , presumably of malaria, which he contracted while traveling through the rainforest and from whose attacks he has since suffered. His body was transferred to his homeland for burial in Bogotá. The ship that took the dead poet up the Río Magdalena and the train to Bogotá had to stop again and again so that the crowd could say goodbye to José Eustasio Rivera.

His hometown was renamed Rivera in 1943 in honor of the poet.

Literary career

José Eustasio Rivera began writing poetry as an 18-year-old student of education. During his law studies he wrote several plays. Of the poems of his early work, the Oda a San Mateo , which Rivera wrote in 1914 in honor of the freedom hero Antonio Ricaurte , is still the most cited in Colombia today. A first collection of 55 of his 168 sonnets was published in 1921 under the title Tierra de promisión (The Promised Land).

The most important work of his small oeuvre is the novel La Vorágine (German: Der Strudel ), which he published in 1924 and which he revised up to the fifth edition, which appeared in the year of his death. La vorágine was soon hailed as one of the major works of Latin American literature of the 20th century.

Works

First publications (selection)

• Oda a San Mateo , 1914
• Tierra de promisión , 1921
• La Vorágine , 1924

Translations into German

• Der Strudel (in the 1st edition with the subtitle Das Buch vom Kautschuksammler ), translated by Georg Hellmuth Neuendorf. Expenditure:
  • Hans Müller, Leipzig 1934
  • Stahlberg-Verlag, Karlsruhe 1946
  • Central German printing and publishing house, Halle 1948 (= The Atlantic Books, Vol. 1)
  • AWA-Verlag, Munich 1955
  • Aufbau Verlag, Berlin (GDR) 1972
  • New Life Publishing House, Berlin (GDR) 1977 (= Kompaß-Bücherei, vol. 220)
  • Rowohlt, Reinbek near Hamburg 1990 (= Rowohlt Century, Vol. 73)

literature

• Clara Sofía Díaz: Huilensidad. Homenaje a los dos grandes maestros líricos: José Eustasio Rivera, Jorge Villamil Cordovéz . Sofiarte Editora, Neiva 2009. ISBN 978-958-446055-4 .
• Juan Loveluck: Prólogo . In: José Eustasio Rivera: La Vorágine . Edition in the Biblioteca Ayacucho, Caracas, 2nd edition 1985. ISBN 84-660-0138-7 , pp. IX-XLIII.
• Félix Ramiro Lozada Flórez (ed.): Una vida azarosa. José Eustasio Rivera . Caza de Libros, Ibagué 2011. ISBN 978-958-859683-9 .
• Eduardo Neale-Silva: Horizons humano. Vida de José Eustasio Rivera . Fondo de Cultura Económica, Mexico City, 2nd edition 1986. ISBN 968-162095-X .
• Isaias Peña Gutierrez: Breve historia de José Eustasio Rivera . 2nd edition. Cooperativa Editorial Magisterio, Bogotá 1988. ISBN 958-20-0031-7 .

Footnotes

1. ↑ Juan Loveluck: Prólogo . In: José Eustasio Rivera: La Vorágine . Edition in the Biblioteca Ayacucho, Caracas, 2nd edition 1985. pp. IX – XLIII, here SX
2. ↑ Isaias Peña Gutierrez: Breve historia de José Eustasio Rivera . 2nd ed. 1988, p. 18.
3. ↑ Juan Loveluck: Prólogo . In: José Eustasio Rivera: La Vorágine . Edition in the Biblioteca Ayacucho, Caracas, 2nd edition 1985. pp. IX-XLIII, here p. XIV.
4. ↑ Juan Loveluck: Prólogo . In: José Eustasio Rivera: La Vorágine . Edition in the Biblioteca Ayacucho, Caracas, 2nd edition 1985. pp. IX-XLIII, here p. XIX.
5. ↑ Isaias Peña Gutierrez: Breve historia de José Eustasio Rivera . 2nd ed. 1988. p. 30.
6. ↑ Isaias Peña Gutierrez: Breve historia de José Eustasio Rivera . 2nd ed. 1988. pp. 39-40.
7. ↑ Juan Loveluck: Prólogo . In: José Eustasio Rivera: La Vorágine . Edition in the Biblioteca Ayacucho, Caracas, 2nd edition 1985. pp. IX – XLIII, here p. XVI.
8. ^ Claudia Umaña: José Eustasio Rivera . In: Biblioteca Luis Ángel Arango.
9. ↑ Isaias Peña Gutierrez: Breve historia de José Eustasio Rivera . 2nd ed. 1988. p. 6.
10. ↑ Isaias Peña Gutierrez: Breve historia de José Eustasio Rivera . 2nd edition 1988. p. 12.
11. ^ Félix Ramiro Lozada Flórez: José Eustasio Rivera: Una vida azarosa . In the S. (Ed.): Una vida azarosa. José Eustasio Rivera . Caza de Libros, Ibagué 2011. pp. 449-460.
12. ↑ Horacio Quiroga : José Eustasio Rivera: El poeta de la selva . In: La Nación . Buenos Aires, January 22, 1929. pp. 17-18.

Web links

• Literature by and about José Eustasio Rivera in the catalog of the Ibero-American Institute of Prussian Cultural Heritage, Berlin