Guillermo Valencia
Encyclopedia
Popayán
Popayán is the capital of the Colombian department of Cauca. It is located in southwestern Colombia between Colombia's Western Mountain Range and Central Mountain Range...
, Colombia – July 8, 1943, Popayán
Popayán
Popayán is the capital of the Colombian department of Cauca. It is located in southwestern Colombia between Colombia's Western Mountain Range and Central Mountain Range...
) was a Colombia
Colombia
Colombia, officially the Republic of Colombia , is a unitary constitutional republic comprising thirty-two departments. The country is located in northwestern South America, bordered to the east by Venezuela and Brazil; to the south by Ecuador and Peru; to the north by the Caribbean Sea; to the...
n poet
Poet
A poet is a person who writes poetry. A poet's work can be literal, meaning that his work is derived from a specific event, or metaphorical, meaning that his work can take on many meanings and forms. Poets have existed since antiquity, in nearly all languages, and have produced works that vary...
and translator. He was the father of Guillermo León Valencia
Guillermo León Valencia
Guillermo León Valencia Muñóz was a Colombian lawyer and statesman, who served as President of Colombia from August 7, 1962 to August 7, 1966.-Personal life:...
(1909-1971), Colombian president during 1962-1966.
His first volume of poetry, Ritos (1898, rev. ed. 1914; “Rites”), containing original poems and free translations from French, Italian, and Portuguese, established his literary reputation at home and abroad as a leader of the experimental Modernist movement with its exotic imagery. Unlike many of the Modernists, however, he was an escapist only in his poetry, not in his own life. He led an active career as a statesman and a diplomat and was twice a candidate for the presidency of Colombia, in 1918 and 1930.
He had the poetry Magazine Paginas de Anarkos, this treasure of poetry was the journal for the most prestigious Poets and artists of the time. It had illustrations by masters like Santiago Martinez Delgado
Santiago Martínez Delgado
Santiago Martínez Delgado was a Colombian painter, sculptor, art historian and writer. He established a reputation as a prominent muralist during the 1940s and is also known for his watercolors, oil paintings, illustrations and woodcarvings....
.
He was never a prolific poet; in later years, he abandoned original poetry almost entirely, concentrating on translations. One of these was Catay (1928; “Cathay”), which he translated from Franz Toussaint's La Flute de Jade (“The Jade Flute”), a French translation of an anthology of Chinese poems. He translated La balada de la cárcel de Reading (1932; “The Ballad of Reading Gaol”) from the English poem by the 19th-century writer Oscar Wilde. He also turned more frequently to writing essays, many of which are collected in Panegíricos, discursos y artículos (1933; “Panegyrics, Speeches, and Articles”).