Peruvian Traditions
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Palma once wrote that he preferred to live in the past, a site of poetry, because the present was too prosaic.71He decries the loss of an experiential center under the withering march of modernity, which results in the marginalization of intellectual life and the collapse of categories of transcendental value. “Today, the life of the mind,” Palma wrote in 1874, “is mercantilism: God is such and such percent and its altar is egotism.”72In a devalued present dominated by commerce and rationalism, faith and wisdom have been lost, as well as the true measure of men. The forward–looking ideology of the present has “buried” the past, but Palma defiantly declares that “graves have their poetry.”73His role as a tradicionista is that of a puppeteer who disinters the dead and brings skeletons to life again by recovering the reservoirs of historical memory in popular culture, and by disdaining the narrative and scientific sensibility of the discourses of modernity (such as modern historiography). In the process, Palma inscribes the gregarious and witty voices of the City of Kings and adopts a narrative self that is mutable and plastic in its performativity: “That which History silences I divine, I comment the suras of the Koran; if I am an eremite, I am also a libertine; if I live with Christ, I am also living with Satan.”74The tradition, thus foregrounded against the depletions of modernity, encodes an expressive ethic that is free and emancipatory, but not one that is frivolous or escapist; Palma is clear that his writing is simply a humble offering (a “stone”) to national history (a “triumphal arch” yet to be built.)75 Each individual tradition is too small an offering to constitute monumental discourse; the tradition may provide the materials, or the incentive for a future national history, but for its irreverence, the aesthetic embodied by the tradition cuts against the grain of totalizing visions of the past, nationalist or otherwise.
In the end, the Peruvian Traditions speaks for itself as a critique of modernity and its formulas of narrative legitimation. In it Palma often dispenses with historical dates and names, and with the very notion that such “facts” are necessary for understanding the past. While skewering powerful colonial elites, the injustices and contradictions of the present also come under ironic fire, as a reminder that republican “progress” in Peru is often a mirage, or perhaps a mirror image of more primitive times. “Blessed be the nineteenth century, in which the principle of equality before the law is dogma, with no talk of laws or privileges” writes Palma in “Two Excommunications,” before deadpanning “The fact that dogma is frequently proven false in practice is none of my business.” Most of all, readers of Palma are struck by the perennial return to the richness of language itself as a template of cultural knowledge, narrative subversion, and historical memory. The past lives on in colloquial phrases, such as “Margarita’s wedding dress,” “a letter sings,” and “the judge’s three reasons,” vernacular emblems that Palma reconstructs, retracing the human stories that led up to the coining of a phrase that has outlived its original context.
Palma circumscribed the Peruvian Traditions within a literary project similar to that of the Latin American modernists: the quest for expressive freedom and beauty in a rapidly changing terrain of economic and cultural production. As such, Palma sought to make his traditions a “poetic” alternative to the prosaic nature of rationalism and commerce, which devalued historical memory in its quest for liberal progress. Rather than a paean to the colonial era as a place in time, the Peruvian Traditions is a call to a historicist aesthetic capable of evoking the past on a more human scale. To attack Palma for the preponderance of traditions that deal with colonial characters, and for his emphasis on their apparently mundane foibles, is to impoverish the artistry and complexity of the Peruvian Traditions and to negate the humorism that lies at the heart of the tradition as a form. As Julio Ortega notes, it isn’t that Palma accepts the world uncritically, but rather that he chooses to include his readers in the process of discovering the mending powers of literature and popular culture in the face of the arbitrariness of history and social hierarchies.76Regardless of what Palma can teach us about the past of Peru (that is very much), the enduring quality of his traditions has little to do with historiography and everything to do with the restorative powers of art. Palma himself put it best when he said: “For me, the tradition is not a light piece of work, but a true work of art.”77
This Edition of the Peruvian Traditions
The task of choosing a sampling of Palma’s traditions for English readers has been daunting for several reasons. On the one hand, the over 500 traditions that Palma published in his lifetime made narrowing the field for a single volume very difficult. Also, the large number of Spanish–language anthologies of the Peruvian Traditions, each with a particular flavor, do not necessarily provide a uniform list for deciding what should go in a volume such as this one. Finally, I was faced with the challenge of selecting traditions that lent themselves well to English translation. The difficulty of translating Palma cannot be overstated: The ubiquity of wordplay, colloquialism, and local speech threaten to deprive readers of English (or any language other than Spanish) from enjoying Palma’s Peruvian Traditions at all. Some traditions are entirely predicated on puns, proverbs, or other forms of linguistic invention that cannot be translated into English without completely extinguishing their wit. For example, in “El Virrey de la adivinanza,” a well–known tradition that is not contained in this volume, the punch line of the narrative comes at the end, as Viceroy Abascal is intimidated out of office when he receives three sacks: one containing salt, the second beans, and the third lime. In Spanish, these elements, “sal,” “habas,” and “cal,” phonetically spell out the phrase “sal Abascal,” which is a command form that means “leave Abascal!” In light of such challenges, I worked closely with Palma’s distinguished translator, Helen Lane, to identify traditions that would not lose their spark in English, as well as difficult traditions that we felt were worth a special effort. In the end, the wit and polish that make Palma one of the most distinctive writers in modern Latin America is everywhere evident in Lane’s masterful translation of the Spanish originals.
Besides selecting traditions that could be successfully translated into English, the present edition of the Peruvian Traditions reflects different criteria. Some of the most recognized traditions in Palma’s ouevre are included, such as “Friar Gómez’s Scorpion” and “An Adventure of the Poet–Viceroy” as well as attractive but lesser anthologized traditions, like “Between Garibaldi ...and Me.” Two of Palma’s earliest traditions are also included, “Consolación” and “Palla–Huarcuna,” in the interest of showing two early incarnations of the tradition; Palma himself was fond of these early pieces, and chose to include them in the first and tenth series, respectively. Most importantly, I have sought to share the pleasure that the Peruvian Traditions has given to generations of readers in the Spanish–speaking world with a new audience.
The translations in this volume are based on the Spanish Calpe edition of 1923,78which incorporated revisions that Palma had intended to make in his lifetime. Each tradition has been sequenced by series, not by historical period, as in the case of the 1953 Edith Palma edition of Palma’s complete traditions. For the convenience of the reader unfamiliar with the finer points of Peruvian history, principal historical personages and bibliographical sources have been glossed in the footnotes, which are cross–referenced when necessary to indicate where certain events and characters reappear or are further elucidated in separate traditions. Linguistic notes belong to Helen Lane, while historical and cultural glosses are by the editor. Palma’s own notes are labeled as such. For readers interested in reading the traditions by historical cluster, an appendix with such a listing has also been included. Finally, Palma frequently included fragments of poems or popular sayings in his traditions. In this edition, we have kept the rhymed couplets in the original Spanish, and provided translations in the footnotes. Otherwise, these poetic fragments appear in English in the main body of the text.
—Christopher Conway
All translations in this introduction, excepting those from the traditions contained in this volume, are my own. Many thanks to Desiree Henderson, Helen Lane, Julio Ortega, and Matthew Wyszynski for their invaluable support during the writing of this introduction.
1. Clements R. Markham, A History of Peru (New York: Greenwood Press, 1968), 432.
2. Markham, 471.
3. César Miró, Don Ricardo Palma; el patriarca de las Tradiciones (Buenos Aires: Editorial Losada, 1953), 129.
4. An extensive study of Palma’s move away from romantic historical fiction to the tradition can be found in Merlin D. Compton’s Ricardo Palma (Boston: Twayne Publishers, 1982), 36–62.
5. The word criollo has multiple meanings in the Latin American context. One well–known meaning is the generic concept of a Spaniard born in the New World. In literature, criollismo is associated with the early–twentieth–century fiction, particularly the regionalist novel (such as José Eustasio Rivera’s La vor– ágine and Rómulo Gallegos’s Doña Bárbara). However, in the Peruvian context, criollo has a more local and specific meaning. In Lima la horrible (Mexico: Ediciones Era, 1968), Sebastián Salazar Bondy writes: “Its current meaning is ...a native of Lima, or by extension, an inhabitant of the coast...who lives, thinks, and acts according to a set of national traditions and customs.... Therefore when literature, Christmas, politics, or verbigratia are described with the adjective of criollo they become local or are colored by localism,” 23–24. In Genio y Figura de Ricardo Palma (Buenos Aires: Editorial Universitaria de Buenos Aires, 1965), José Miguel Oviedo underlines the lisura (malice, coquetry) of the criollo, 150, 163. For the narrative heterodoxy of the speech of the criollo, see Alicia Andreu’s “Una nueva aproximación al lenguaje en las Tradiciones peruanas de Ricardo Palma,” Revista de Estudios Hispánicos, no. 2 (May 1989): 21–36.
6. Palma’s ubiquity in the Latin American and Spanish press is well known. During his exile in Chile (1860–1863), Palma published several traditions in the Revista de Sud América. His following in Buenos Aires was particularly strong, as indicated by many of his Argentinian correspondents and admirers. See Angélica Palma’s Ricardo Palma (Buenos Aires: Ediciones Condor, 1933), 87. In 1899, Palma wrote that English translations of his traditions had been well received in the United States and England. He added that the Atheneum of London had written a long article on his traditions. See “Epistolario,” Ricardo Palma, 1833–1933 (Lima: Sociedad de Amigos de Palma, 1934), 274.
7. Ricardo Palma, Epistolario, vol. I (Lima: Editorial Cultura Antártica), 57.
8. Other tradicionistas include Juana Manuela Gorriti (Argentina, 18181892), Luis Capella Toledo (Colombia, 1838–1896), Alvaro de la Iglesia y Santos (Cuba, 1859–1940), Miguel Luis Amunátegui (Chile, 1828–1888), and Artemio del Valle–Arispe (Mexico, 1888–1960). For a larger listing, discussion, and anthology of the Latin American tradicionistas, see Estuardo Nuñez, Ricardo Palma escritor continental: las huellas de Palma en los tradicionistas hispanoamericanos (Lima: Fondo Editorial, 1998).
9. Palma, Epistolario, 527. Palma also writes “...I don’t have a biography. In my existence there is nothing original or curious: nothing that singles me out nor that is worth telling,” 225.
10. Founded by Francisco Pizarro on the Feast of the Epiphany, Lima has historically been known as the “City of Kings.”
11. Raúl Porras Barrenechea, “Palma Romántico,” in Ricardo Palma, 1833–1933: 93. For traditions in which Pancho Sales appears see Ricardo Palma’s Tradiciones Peruanas completas (Madrid: Aguilar, 1953); “Pancho Sales, el verdugo,” 747–52; “Asunto concluido,” 891–92; “El rey del monte,” 903–7; “La venganza de un cura,” 1103–6. María Abascal appears in “María Abascal,” 954–58; and Juanita Breña in “Tauromaquía,” 46–53; “¡¡Buena laya de fraile!!,” 915–22; “Juana la Marimacho,” 922–23. Palma also met notable characters from the era of independence, such as Rosa Campuzano and Manuela Sáenz; see “The Protectress and the Liberatrix.”
12. Oviedo, 37. The traditions in which Aunt Catita or Granny are separately mentioned are: “¡Ahí viene el cuco!”; “Traslado a Judás (cuento disparatado de la tía Catita)”; “Croniquillas de mi abuela”; “La misa negra” (in this collection, “The Black Mass”) in Ricardo Palma’s Tradiciones peruanas completas, 667; 856-58; 1194–95; 833–35.
13. La bohemia de mi tiempo, Tradiciones peruanas completas, 1301.
14. Miró, 33.
15. La bohemia..., 1307. The humorous poet and playwright Manuel Ascensio Segura (1805–1871) was a popular member of the romantic circle, and Palma collaborated with him on the comedy El santo de Panchita, published in 1886 but composed some time in the 1840s.
16. Epistolario, 140. One of the recurring themes in Palma’s voluminous correspondence is his rejection of politics; see 134–39; 311–12.
17. Hector Bonilla, “Peru and Bolivia from Independence to the War of the Pacific,” The Cambridge History of Latin America, vol. III, ed. Leslie Bethell (Cambridge: New York: Cambridge University Press, 1984), 547–48.
18. David P. Werlich, Peru: A Short History (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1978), 87.
19. Werlich, 82.
20. Bonilla, 552.
21. Earlier, Palma had supported another alumnus of San Carlos, General Manuel Vivanco, who led an unsuccessful campaign against Castilla in 1856.
22. Oviedo, 64–65.
23. For Palma’s account of his participation in the coup against Castilla, see Guillermo Feliu–Cruz’s En torno de Ricardo Palma (Santiago: Prensas de la Universidad de Chile, 1933), 99–108.
24. Consider, for example, Palma’s view of Gálvez as a monumental hero, an “immaculate man” whose “austere virtue” makes him morally invincible to calumny, Feliu–Cruz, 108.
25. Bonilla, 560–61.
26. Miró, 93–94.
27. Miró, 97.
28. The commemoration of the veterans of Callao was a result of Palma’s participation in the siege, his loyalty to Gálvez, and also his own romanticism. As early as 1851, for example, when Palma was 18, he had been attracted to heroic martial themes; his third and final play, Rodil, celebrated the defense of Callao by the Spanish hero Rodil.
29. In a confidential letter to his friend Benjamin Vicuña Mackenna, Palma defended Balta and politely expressed his rejection of Manuel Pardo’s presidency: “Without being a political friend of Mr. [don] Manuel Pardo, I always admired his talent, his activity, and his energy,” Epistolario, 47.
30. He had six children, including Clemente, the author of Cuentos malévolos (1904) and Historietas malignas (1925) and his favorite, Angelica, author of nostalgic novels such as Vencida (1918) and Coloniaje romántico (1923).
31. Epistolario, 48. Palma wrote two substantive letters to Vicuña Mackenna defending his historical research on Bolívar, 43–52.
32. Palma felt that his problems with the Cáceres administration were a result of his friendship with President Miguel Iglesias. See his Epistolario, 124, 137–39, 156–57. Also, Angelica Palma’s Ricardo Palma (Buenos Aires: Editorial Tor, 1933), 101–2.
33. Epistolario, 134–37. In the elections of 1889, Palma at first rejected all candidates, but he came to believe that the election of President Morales Bermúdez was probably best, simply because he thought it would avert violence: 228, 231.
34. As far back as 1878, Palma had written for Piérola’s newspaper, “La Patria,” Angelica Palma, 80.
35. Peter Flindell Klarén, Peru: Society and Nationhood in the Andes (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000), 201.
36. Flindell Klaren, 198. Also, see Epistolario, 158.
37. José Carlos Mariátegui, Seven Interpretive Essays on Peruvian Reality, trans. Marjory Urquidi (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1971), 199.
38. Palma’s letters contain a wealth of commentary on his debates with the Royal Academy. In 1877 Palma wrote that he did not want to fracture Spanish with Latin American dialects, but rather to �
�enrich” the mother tongue with “general” Latin Americanisms, Epistolario, 29. A year later, when he was named the founding member of the Peruvian branch of the Spanish Royal Academy, Palma wrote that he hoped to serve the organization through the “preservation of the purity of the language” and the promotion of Spanish glory, 65. He also believed that the organization should only admit writers whose work was in Castilian, not “galli–speak,” 66. For more on strengthening the ties between Peru and Spain, see 71; 149–50; 359–60; 464.