An unknown poetess of Huanuco, Peru, who signed herself "Amarilis," wrote a clever silva in praise of Lope, which the latter answered in the epistle Belardo á Amarilis. This silva of "Amarilis" is the best poetic composition of the early colonial period. Another poetess of the period, also anonymous, wrote in terza rima a Discurso en loor de la poesía, which mentions by name most of the Peruvian poets then living.
Toward the close of the sixteenth century and in the early decades of the seventeenth century, several Spanish scholars, mostly Andalusians of the Sevillan school, went to Peru, and there continued literary work. Among these were Diego Mexía, who made the happiest of Spanish translations of Ovid's Heroides; Diego de Ojeda, the best of Spanish sacred-epic poets, author of the Cristiada; Juan Gálvez; Luis de Belmonte, author of La Hispálica; Diego de Avalos y Figueroa whose Miscelánea austral (Lima, 1603) contains a long poem in ottava rima entitled Defensa de damas; and others. These men exerted great influence, and to them was largely due the peculiarly Andalusian flavor of Peruvian poetry.
The best Gongoristic Poetics came from Peru. This is the Apologético en favor de D. Luis de Góngora (Lima, 1694), by Dr. Juan de Espinosa Medrano.
In the eighteenth century the poetic compositions of Peru were chiefly "versos de circunstancias" by "poetas de ocasión." Many volumes of these were published, but no one reads them to-day. Their greatest fault is excessive culteranism, which survived in the colonies a half-century after it had passed away from the mother country. The most learned man of the eighteenth century in Peru was Pedro de Peralta Barnuevo, the erudite author of some fifty volumes of history, science and letters. His best known poem is the epic Lima fundada (Lima, 1732). He wrote several dramas, one of which, Rodoguna, is Corneille's play adapted to the Spanish stage, and has the distinction of being one of the first imitations of the French stage in Spanish letters. All in all, the literary output of Peru during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries is disappointingly small in quantity and poor in quality, in view of the important position held by this flourishing colony. The Peruvian writers, then and now, lack in sustained effort.
During and immediately following the revolutionary period, the greatest poet is Olmedo, who was born and educated in Peru and became a citizen first of the primitive Colombia and then of Ecuador, only as his native city, Guayaquil, formed a part of one political division after another. It is customary, however, to consider Olmedo a poet of Ecuador, and it is so done in this volume.
After Olmedo, the commanding figure among the classical poets of Peru is Felipe Pardo y Aliaga (1806-1868). Pardo was educated in Spain, where he studied with Alberto Lista. From his teacher he acquired a fondness for classical studies and a conservatism in letters that he retained throughout his life. In his later years he was induced to adopt some of the metrical forms invented or revived by the romanticists, but in spirit he remained a conservative and a classicist. He had a keen sense of wit and a lively imagination which made even his political satires interesting reading. Besides his Poesías y escritos en prosa (Paris, 1869), Pardo left a number of comedies portraying local types and scenes which are clever attempts at imitation of Spanish drama. As with all the earlier poets of Spanish America, literature was only a side-play to Pardo, although it probably took his time and attention even more than the law, which was his profession. A younger brother, José (1820-1873), wrote a few short poems, but his verses are relatively limited and amateurish. Manuel Ascensión Segura (1805-1871) wrote clever farces filled with descriptions of local customs, somewhat after the type of the modern género chico (Artículos, poesías y comedias, Lima, 1866).
The romantic movement came directly from Spain to Peru and obtained a foothold only well on toward the close of the first half of the century. The leader of the Bohemian romanticists of Lima was a Spaniard from Santander, Fernando Velarde. Around him clustered a group of young men who imitated Espronceda and Zorrilla and Velarde with great enthusiasm. For an account of the "Bohemians" of the fourth and fifth decades in Lima [Numa Pompilio Llona (b. 1832), Nicolás Corpancho (1830-1863), Luis Benjamín Cisneros (b. 1837), Carlos Augusto Salaverry (1830-1891), Manuel Ascensión Segura (b. 1805), Clemente Althaus (1835-1881), Adolfo García (1830-1883), Constantino Carrasco (1841-1877) and others, see the introduction to the Poesías (Lima, 1887) of Ricardo Palma (1833-___: till 1912 director of the national library of Peru).]
Not often could the romanticists of America go back to indigenous legend for inspiration as their Spanish cousins so often did; but this Constantino Carrasco undertook to do in his translation of the famous Quichua drama, Ollanta. It was long claimed, and many still believe, that this is an ancient indigenous play; but to-day the more thoughtful critics are inclined to consider it an imitation of the Spanish classical drama, perhaps written in the Quichua language by some Spanish priest (Valdés?). The 8-syllable lines, the rime-scheme and the spirit of the play all suggest Spanish influence. In parenthesis it should be added that Quichua verse is still cultivated artificially in Peru and Ecuador.
The two men of that generation who have most distinguished themselves are Pedro Paz-Soldán y Unanue, "Juan de Arona" (1839-1894), a poet of satire and humor; and Ricardo Palma (1833-___) a leading scholar and literary critic, best known for his prose Tradiciones peruanas (Lima, 1875 and 1899).
The strongest representative of the present-day "modernistas" in Peru is José Santos Chocano (1867-___), a disciple of Darío. Chocano writes with much grandiloquence. His many sonnets are mostly prosaic, but some are finished and musical (cf. La magnolia). He is more Christian (cf. Evangeleida) than most of his contemporaries, and he sings of the conquistadores with true admiration [cf. En la aldea, Lima, 1895; Iras santas, Lima, 1895; Alma América (Prólogo de Miguel de Unamuno), Madrid, 1906; La selva virgen, Paris, 1901; Fiat lux, Paris, 1908].