Juan Gonzalo Rose

 

Juan Gonzalo Rose

 

Paula Garcia

 (Translator

Juan Gonzalo Rose, one of the great Peruvian poets of the generation of 1950. He was born in Tacna in 1927 and died in Lima on April 12, 1983. Some of his poems were also put to music in voices as beautiful as the from Lucha Reyes or Tania Helfgott.

 

From among the poets of the 50s generation (in my judgment, the most decisive and influential in the sphere of Peruvian poetry), Juan Gonzalo Rose is, perhaps, the most popular and most deeply rooted in the hearts of the readers. He was not a hero whose poems were recited in the town squares, like Alejandro Romualdo’s. He was neither a constant reformist of words, like Jorge Eduardo Eielson, nor a daydreaming heir of surrealism, like Blanca Varela. Far from the mainstream trends that defined (and keep defining) the paths of Peruvian poetry, Juan Gonzalo Rose chose to follow the humblest and most difficult road to transit: that of a kind of poetry that dares to be sentimental without ceasing to be critical, personal without ceasing to be social, popular without ceasing to be cultured. Poet, adventurer and lover, Rose is a romantic without romanticism, in the same way that Belli is a classic without classicism and Eielson an innovator without innovation.

 

Rose’s originality makes him a difficult poet to follow without falling prey to clichés or shameless imitation. The same applies to his translation, which explains why nobody up to now has dared to undertake it. The wager of this challenge (and risk) was assumed by the young translator, Paola Garcia, whose talent and devotion has allowed her to make Juan Gonzalo Rose’s humoristic and skeptical (but never cynical) humility her own to broaden the shires where his word deserves to be read.

— Eduardo Chirinos

Biography

He was born in Barrios Altos, Lima, on January 10, 1927. At a very early age he was taken to Tacna by his parents, who had volunteered to educate Tacna children, on the eve of the long-awaited return of the city to the homeland. Peruvian, after being in the power of Chile for almost fifty years.1

 

He completed his primary education at the Tacna public school. In 1940 he began his secondary education at the Colegio Nacional Francisco Bolognesi,2 but in 1942 he was expelled for defending a classmate from abuse by one of the disciplinary inspectors.1

 

He moved to Lima, where he continued his secondary studies at Colegio Claretiano (1943) and at Colegio Nacional José María Eguren (1944).2

 

In 1945 he entered the Faculty of Letters of the Universidad Nacional Mayor de San Marcos. He began his political activism in Aprismo, but he distanced himself from this party when he realized that his co-religionists rejected the Puerto Rican delegates who had arrived in Peru in search of support for his independence. The APRA leadership accused these independence supporters of being communists. Rose then decided to join the Communist Youth.2

 

Due to his opposition to the dictatorship of Manuel A. Odría, in 1950 he was exiled to Mexico, where he collaborated in Humanismo and other literary publications. He returned to Peru in November 1956, benefiting from an amnesty facilitated by the change of government. He then dedicated himself to journalism.2

 

With a restless spirit, he toured several countries in America and Europe between 1963 and 1965, driven by his interest in observing human and cultural realities. Back in Peru, he dedicated himself to advertising promotion and composing song lyrics, which won several national contests and became popular songs through the voices of renowned performers.

 

In his last years, he went through severe mental depression and gave himself over to drinking and bohemian life. Alcoholism caused cirrhosis, which in turn led to bronchopneumonia, which was ultimately the cause of his death in 1983.

 

 

 

 

With affection,

Ruben