The figure of a poet and the nature of poetry in Manuel González Prada's aphoristics: A first approach to "Memoranda"

• Autor: Mudarra Montoya, Américo
• Formato: artículo
• Fecha de Publicación: 2018
• Institución: Academia Peruana de la Lengua
• Repositorio: Boletín de la Academia Peruana de la Lengua
• Lenguaje: español
• OAI Identifier: oai:ojs.revistas.apl.org.pe:article/175
• Enlace del recurso: https://revistas.apl.org.pe/index.php/boletinapl/article/view/175
• Nivel de acceso: acceso abierto
• Materia: González Prada; El tonel de Diógenes; Memoranda; aphorisms; aforismos

Manuel González Prada (Lima, 1844-1918) is known for his essay production and poetry, as well as for his transcendence in Peruvian political thought. He also explored the narrative and the aphoristics. His book El tonel de Diógenes (The Barrel of Diogenes), published posthumously in 1945, is a clear proof of this. Precisely, a section of El tonel de Diógenes entitled «Memoranda» is made up of more than two hundred aphorisms. Some of his scholars have considered these notes or loose notes useful to unravel González Prada’s ideology. Given that in several of these short texts, the author shares his impressions of poetry, the poet and literary creation, the aim of this paper is to systematize these impressions in order to identify the underlying poetics in those texts, so that links can be established with the rest of his work.