José María Arguedas

José María Arguedas

(1911, Apurímac – 1969, Lima). Writer, translator, poet, anthropologist and teacher, Arguedas is recognized as one of the most notable figures of twentieth-century Peruvian letters for his intimate portraits (written in Spanish and Quechua) of the Andean-Runa world. His best-known novels include Deep Rivers (1958) and his last work, The Fox From Up Above and the Fox From Down Below (posthumously published, 1971). Arguedas also wrote memorable stories set in the Andean highlands, among them “La agonía de Rasu Ñiti” (1962, translated into runasimi as “Rasu ñitipa wañuynin” by Washington Córdova Huamán) and “El Sueño del Pongo”, “Pongoq mosqoynin”, 1965, Spanish-Runasimi bilingual edition. Arguedas’s poetry —written in Runasimi and later translated into Spanish by the author or by other Peruvian writers— has received relatively less attention than his narrative work, although his most widespread and celebrated poem “Tupac Amaru kamaq taytanchisman: haylli-taki” (1962) has been published in several editions and been the subject of various literary studies. We include below, audio recordings of Arguedas reading the story “Pongoq mosqoynin”, his poem “Tupac Amaru kamaq taytanchisman”, as well as a recording of the Peruvian poet Ugo Facundo Carrillo Cavero reading the beautiful song-poem taki) “Cilili Wayta” (“Cilili, beautiful flower”) which Arguedas collected, translated, and published in his Canto Kechwa collection in 1938.