César Alfredo Miró-Quesada Bahamonde

 

 

César Alfredo Miró-Quesada Bahamonde

Encyclopedia Wikipedia

(Lima, June 7, 1907 –  November 8, 1999)

Was a Peruvian writer and composer. He wrote novels, short stories, plays, essays, and poetry.

 

César Miró-Quesada was born on June 7, 1907, in the Miraflores district of Lima.

 His parents were Alfredo Miró-Quesada Carassa and Rosa Mercedes Bahamonde Polo. Despite being a member of the Miró Quesada family, for personal reasons he only used the surname Miró, unlike his brother, former minister Fernando Miró Quesada Bahamonde.

 

He attended the Jesuit schools of San Agustín and La Inmaculada. He used to skip classes at the Jesuit school to go to the National Library and immerse himself in its books. At the age of 15, he published the school newspaper "Relámpago" and shortly afterward, he published the newspaper "Relámpago." Some time later, he published his first poems in the magazine "Amauta." He was a friend of José Carlos Mariátegui, although he only discussed art and literature with him as he did not sympathize with his political ideas.

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In May 1927, he was arrested along with Jorge Basadre, accused of plotting against President Augusto B. Leguía. He was taken prisoner to San Lorenzo Island, where he would spend his birthday, and a month later, he, like Basadre, was deported to Montevideo. Basadre would later say that the plot never existed. In Paris, in 1929, he met and befriended César Vallejo.

 

In 1932, with Calonge and Castillo, they formed the trio "Sudamericano," which disbanded after a tour of Chile. In 1936, he wrote the waltz "Se va la Paloma," with music by Filomeno Ormeño, which pays homage to the traditional procession of the Virgen del Carmen in the Barrios Altos of Lima.

 

In Los Angeles, United States United, he received an offer to film a movie depicting the desire of Latin Americans living in the U.S. to return to their homeland. The film would be called "Gypsies in Hollywood," and César Miró was in charge of writing the script, but after he had already begun writing it, the entrepreneur who was going to finance the film became discouraged from pursuing it. At that time, César Miró composed the lyrics and music for a song for the film. Upon returning to Lima in 1943, Jesús Vásquez premiered the song, and from the moment he began to sing the first verses, it was known that a new glorious page had been written for the Creole song... "Everyone returns to the land where they were born, / to the incomparable spell of its sun, / everyone returns to the corner where they lived, / where perhaps more than one love flourished..."

 

The tondero "Malabrigo" would suffer a similar fate to that of "Todos Vuelven." When he and José María Arguedas wanted to To film a movie portraying the lives of fishermen, searching for a suitable harbor, they arrived at the port of Malabrigo. This movie couldn't be filmed either; the song "Al Puerto" (To the Port) had already been composed, and with music by Alcides Carreño, it would become popular.

 

Julio Villanueva of the newspaper El Comercio on June 7, 1997, interviewed him on the occasion of his 90th birthday. There he pointed out that gossip had it that he had shortened his last name as an act of rebellion against his family, who owned the newspaper, which was not true. In the United States, they used to call him "Míster Quesada," so, tired of this situation, he went by the name César Miró and signed his articles in El Comercio with that name.

 

In Mexico, he used to sing "Todos Vuelven" (Everyone Comes Back) with Peruvian friends, who would end up in tears. He couldn't understand how he could touch on the feeling of nostalgia for a distant land, especially Peru, without intending to.

 

The most popular versions of "Todos Vuelven" were those by Jesús Vásquez and Los Chalanes del Perú in the 1990s. Rubén Blades also made a salsa-rhythm arrangement for "Todos Vuelven" that he disliked because he considered it a loss of poetic meaning. Blades, during a visit to Lima, asked him to forgive him for having made some changes to the lyrics and rhythm; César Miró told him not to worry, that later the people would change what Blades had done.

 

The Peruvian pianist and composer Alfonso de Silva dedicated his last poem to Miró before his death in 1937: "I forgive myself for having been only an attempt at Eternity... You are almost as good as my attempt at having been" (taken from Caretas magazine, December 19, 2002).

 

He compiled and wrote the prologue for the first edition of César Vallejo's Complete Poems (1918-1938), published by Edición Losada—in its collection Poets of Spain and America—of Buenos Aires, in May. 1949 (the second edition was published in June 1953 despite the objections of Vallejo's widow, Georgette de Vallejo).

 

A great communicator, he worked in newspapers, radio, and television, demonstrating his outstanding talent, eventually becoming Director of Radio Nacional del Perú.

 

He was President for Life of the APDAYC (National Association of Peruvian Languages), a member of the Peruvian Academy of Language and the Bolivarian Society. He was also the Peruvian ambassador to Peru.

Song Todos vuelven

Todos vuelven

César Miró

 

Todos vuelven a la tierra en que nacieron,

al embrujo incomparable de su sol,

todos vuelven al rincón donde vivieron,

donde acaso floreció más de un amor.

 

Bajo el árbol solitario del pasado

cuántas veces nos ponemos a soñar,

todos vuelven por la ruta del recuerdo,

pero el tiempo del amor no vuelve más.

 

El aire que trae en sus manos

la flor del pasado, su aroma de ayer,

nos dice muy quedo al oído

su canto aprendido del atardecer.

Nos dice con voz misteriosa,

de nardo y de rosa,

de luna y de miel,

que es grande el amor de la tierra,

que es triste la ausencia

que deja el ayer.

 

 

Autor(es): César Miró, Alcides Carreño

 

With affection,

Ruben