Philosophy as creation (complex links between philosophy and poetry)

Abstract

First, I would like to express my deep satisfaction with this Honorary Doctorate, as it is a source of pride for me to receive such a relevant distinction from the dean, in terms of seniority and prestige, of all the Spanish-American universities, this beautiful and almost legendary University of San Marcos, which today welcomes me as part of its university community. This distinction, of which I feel so honoured, has allowed me to get to know this beloved country for the first time, which I had wanted to visit since my childhood and youth, since I have personal and even family ties to it. As I have been able to relate in a recent book of memoirs and confessions entitled El árbol de la vida (The Tree of Life), in which I talk about my first thirty-three years, and which concludes with the date of the change of regime in Spain and the beginning of the democratic transition, my entire childhood was tutored and guided by a maternal grandmother, Ana Puig-Mir de Sagnier, who was born in Guayaquil, where she lived until she was almost twenty; a very cultured woman, a lover of all the arts. My grandmother always considered Lima to be her favourite city; she had known it in her childhood, and she returned to visit it whenever she could. She was an Ecuadorian woman in love with Lima and Peru. And she certainly communicated those feelings to me, which however, through different misfortunes, prevented me from visiting this beloved country on different occasions.