José Santos Chocano , 1875-1934, Peruvian poet and one of the leaders of modernismo . During a life of Latin-American wandering, Chocano was closely linked both to brutal dictatorships and idealist revolutionaries. His most popular volume, Alma América [the soul of America] (1906) led Rubén Darío, the greatest of the modernistas, to develop native themes. Well-known collections of his poetry are Fiat Lux (1908) and Primicias de oro de Indias [first fruits of gold from the Indies] (1934). Having killed a political enemy, the writer Edwin Elmore, Chocano moved to Chile where he was himself murdered by a lunatic.
Bibliography: See his collected poems, tr. by E. Underwood (1935).
Author not available, CHOCANO, JOSÉ SANTOS.,
The Columbia Encyclopedia, Sixth Edition 2008
The Columbia Encyclopedia, Sixth Edition. Copyright 2008 Columbia University Press
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