She died as a great intellectual, but Peru only saw her as the daughter of Ricardo Palma: the reissue that does her justice

The second opportunity occurred months later, on March 22, after the repatriation of his remains. At the massive funeral, an aide-de-camp of President Óscar R. Benavides was present, as well as the Minister of Education, the mayor of Miraflores, her colleagues from the National Council of Women, representatives of the teaching profession, as well as renowned intellectuals, representatives of the labor movement and members of the family. There, in the heartfelt speeches, praise was repeated about the author’s “finesse” and “kindly grace,” but especially about her “filial devotion to her progenitor,” of whom she was “keeper and vestal.” . At those funerals of hers, few highlighted her literary achievements; no one remembered, for example, her membership in the Academy of Good Letters of Barcelona or her commission of the Order of Alfonso XII, granted only to intellectuals of high stature. His dedication to her care and the dissemination of her father’s work ultimately overshadowed her own achievements.

“That they saw her as a writer was like a concession for the enlightened elite of her time,” says the writer Giovanna Pollarolo, researcher in the work of Angélica Palma and responsible for the prologue of “Tiempos de la Patria Vieja”, the first national edition of a novel that comes to us a century late.

Old but current

Perhaps the title of the book may suggest to the contemporary reader a nostalgic celebration of the past, in the manner of an old-fashioned Creole waltz. Nothing could be further from that: “Times in the Old Homeland” was in its time a confrontation with that “New Homeland” that President Augusto B. Leguía tried to found, 100 years after independence.

Curiously, Pollarolo discovered the work of Angélica Palma in her studies for the Master’s Degree in Literature in San Marcos, from a press clipping from the newspaper El Comercio. Published on December 6, 1924, it reported on the ruling of the “Centenary Literary Contest”, taking note of the statements of the jury made up of Luis Varela Orbegoso, Juan B. de Lavalle and Luis Alberto Sánchez. “Two novels particularly caught our attention: ‘Por la estirpe’ and ‘Tiempos de la Patria Vieja’. “Both meet the required conditions of substance and form,” said the experts, who agreed to award the first prize ex aequo.

However, Pollarolo found it strange that, after such an expectant announcement, the winning novels have disappeared from our memory. The Leguiista government, responsible for the call, never published the books or delivered the promised financial prize.

“Tiempos de la Patria Vieja” came out of the press two years later, published by the Nuestra América label in Buenos Aires. Inscribed within the framework of the historical novel, following the model of Benito Pérez Galdós, it is the story of a Lima family, of old Spanish stock, won by independence: the son for patriotic fervor, the daughter for the love of a soldier of San Martin. Meanwhile, Don Rodrigo de Hinestrosa, the elderly father faithful to his king, is unable to understand the historical moment. The novel begins in the quiet family home and ends on the battlefield, where father and son fight on opposite sides.

Reading an invaluable copy, Pollarolo discovered that, unlike the official historiographical account, focused on an epic feat, Palma’s text tells of a feud between acquaintances, a civil war that tore Creole families from the inside.

Your own independence

But the novel opportunely published by the Maquinaciones label also has, for Pollarolo, a very personal link with the author’s own biography. According to the researcher, this novel about the break with the Old Regime helps Palma to define her emancipation from her own father, the famous traditionalist.

“She wrote for many years under the pseudonym Marianela in the magazine ‘Variedades’, without her father knowing,” recalls Pollarolo, who pays close attention to the testimonies of the time and the writer’s activity, making it clear that the author, after the death of his father, he learned to combine his role as “representative” and artist.

book sheet

“Times of the Old Homeland.”

Author: Angelica Palma

Editorial: Machinations

Pages: 176