Para leer a Guillermo Valencia después de Guillermo Valencia (Crítica)

Abstract

El autor se propone leer al poeta colombiano Guillermo Valencia al margen de la pasión que su credo parnasiano y su rol de hombre público despertaron en un primer momento, y del odio posterior de sus opositores estéticos y contradictores políticos –que lo acusan de posturas conservadoras y aristocratizantes. Su obra literaria y su obra política han sido leídas de manera que la una justifica a la otra, y viceversa. El autor defiende el aporte de Valencia a la modernidad literaria colombiana como traductor y difusor de poesía alemana, inglesa y francesa, así como de obras en chino y árabe. Plantea también que su obra poética debe estudiarse en función de sus logros en el lenguaje, y del vínculo que representa entre la tradición poética colombiana y la producción actual.

The author aims to read the Colombian poet Guillermo Valencia at the edge of the passion that his Parnassian creed and his role as a public man initially aroused, and of the hate that would come later from his aesthetic opponents and political opponents, who accused him of assuming conservative and aristocratic postures. His literary and political work has been read in such a way that one justifies the other and vice versa. The author defends Valencia’s contribution to Colombian literary modernity as translator and diffuser of German, English and French poetry, as well as works in Chinese and Arabic. He also suggests that his poetic work ought to be studied based on his achievements in language, and of the link, which is represented between Colombian poetic tradition and current production.