Para leer a Guillermo Valencia, después de Guillermo Valencia

Abstract

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.