Pedro Salinas: Salutation and exegesis

Abstract

These words reiterate the public tribute to the applause that Pedro Salinas has received here. Not without emotion have we returned to the physical presence of this great poet of eternal Spain, after a few years since he was given the intellectual delight of listening, in Washington, to his busy word of poetry and talent, which springs from a prodigious amalgamation of mastery of language and living thought. We remember how there, in the capital of the Union, which in its pilgrimage Spanish journey is with Baltimore, its center of intellectual activity, one night in February 1942, gathered in a stately club near the White House, we talked over Peru long hours. Men of letters, friends, gentle officials from the State Department's Division of Cultural Relations were in a circle. We talked about the poetry of Peru and America, we exchanged estimating phrases, and as in a beam of enchantment for the nostalgic traveler who was leaving Peru for the first time, Salinas turned his deep knowledge of César Vallejo, his graceful intuition of other poets of Peru like José María Eguren, Mar tín Adán or Xavier Abril, or the mastery of our classics and modern ones like Garcilaso de la Vega and Ricardo Palma.