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Pedro Manuel Nicolás Paz Soldán y Unanue (* Lima; May 29, 1839 - Ibid; January 5, 1895) was a poet, writer and journalist from Peru, the true founder of Peruvian lexicography with his Diccionario de peruanismos (1883-84). Satirical of the customs of his contemporaries and a fierce critic of other writers, he was recognized for the humor and criollismo of his writings.

He was also a diplomat and historian, as well as a translator of Virgil and Lucretius and a professor of literature and Greek at the National University of San Marcos. His pseudonym was Juan de Arona. Originally it was the name of the estate he inherited from his maternal grandfather José Hipólito Unanue y Pavón, located in Cañete. The sugar plantation seems to have been named after the Spanish town of Arona, which is a municipality in the Canary Islands.

Biography
He was the son of Pedro Paz Soldán Ureta and Francisca Unanue y de la Cuba. His paternal grandfather was a native of Carrión de los Condes, in Castile la Vieja, while his maternal grandfather was none other than the renowned Peruvian physician and independence hero José Hipólito Unanue y Pavón, from whom he inherited not only the San Juan de Arona estate, in the valley of Cañete, but also a splendid library. Hence he took the nickname Juan de Arona. He was a direct nephew of José Gregorio Paz Soldán y Ureta, Mateo Paz Soldán y Ureta, and Mariano Felipe Paz Soldán y Ureta. His uncle Mateo Paz Soldán y Ureta also excelled in the field of erudition, with the first major study of the Geography of Peru, which was published in 1860 by another of his uncles, equally erudite, Mariano Felipe Paz Soldán y Ureta.

He completed his early studies at the Carolino Convictorio, where the most select young men of the country studied, but the political upheavals of those years led the family to move to Cañete, where he was able to immerse himself in profitable readings, especially of the classics, and engage in Latin translations. "These were undoubtedly the most tranquil years of his existence," says Villarán, "at least as a whole and as long as he was not stirred by nostalgia and pessimism."

In Cañete he remained (except for sporadic trips to Arequipa or Iquique), until at the age of 18 he spent a whole year in the city of Valparaíso, to embark, in April 1859, for Europe in the longest and most profitable of his trips, which he always remembered for its "ineffable joys and inexhaustible teachings" (Villarán, p. 18). He arrived in London and from there went to Paris, then traveled overland to Spain, visiting San Sebastián, Bilbao, Valladolid until reaching Madrid in the middle of July. He spent six months in Spain, visiting recognized literati like Bretón de los Herreros and Ventura de la Vega, old classmates from the San Mateo school where the immortal creator of the character Goyito had studied. Arona then had his first contact with the Royal Spanish Academy. Bretón de los Herreros was Secretary of the Academy and promoted the candidacy of Felipe Pardo y Aliaga, who was appointed in 1860 corresponding member of the Madrid institution.

After a regular stay in Spanish lands, Arona embarked on an extensive journey that took him through France and Italy, from where he traveled to Egypt, visiting Alexandria and Cairo, and then Damascus and Istanbul before returning via Greece to Italy and France, from where he returned once again to Peru in early 1863, the year in which he published, precisely in Paris, his first book of poems, with a clearly romantic title: "Ruins".

Just in 1860, still in London, as he himself declares, Arona begins to conceive a work "on this ungrateful subject of provincialisms." In the young Arona were combined "memories of the homeland and vivacity of feelings," provisionally treating it as "Gallery of philological novelties." Also on that trip, he began to outline the descriptive poems that he would publish in Lima in 1867 under the title Cuadros y episodios peruanos, where he defends the use of Peruvianisms although some consider them "vulgar" and think that good style consists of introducing some flashy Hispanisms "dragged by the hairs from the banks of the Manzanares." At the end of the book, he includes an index of the "Peruvian terms" contained in the book, with a warning that already declares his intention to publish a complete lexicographical repertoire, which would not see the light until 1882.

Arona, a man of atrabilious and wayward character by nature, always showed interest and concern for language issues. In one of his numerous satirical poems, he distills a good proportion of bitterness regarding the situation, according to him, of the language.

The Dictionary of Peruvianisms
"The German dictionary / Is Moltke's army, / Without a lazy word; / In ours, thousands go /

Brought along as a tugboat. / So, although it afflicts / Our royal corporation, / The language that it engenders, / And to which it gives splendor and stability, / Is suffering from hemiplegia.''"

- Juan de Arona, Complete Poems

Arona fully meets the profile described by Ricardo Palma about those Americans "of the departing generation" who lived "in love with the language of Castile" and were "more papist than the Pope, if the phrase can be applied to language matters", because of "the mania we have for the purity of the language."

In his Cuadros y episodios peruanos he offers for the first time his conception of Peruvianism: "I understand by Peruvian term or Peruvianism not only those words that really are, because they are derived from Quechua or corrupted from Spanish, or invented by criollos with the help of the Castilian language, but also those that, although very genuine, refer to objects or customs so general among us and so uncommon in Spain that we can appropriate them and call them Peruvianisms as if they were not in the Dictionary of the Spanish Academy."

The announced dictionary will take its time, meanwhile Arona will be publishing some samples in Lima newspapers at the end of 1871 and beginning of 1872, confessing that although more than twenty years have passed since its inception until its final publication, his work came out incomplete compared to "perhaps less matured works", referring to those of Rufino José Cuervo and Zorobabel Rodríguez. With the impetuosity that characterized him, Arona then attacks the "provincialographers" of Spanish America who only accumulate words and expressions. His work does not deal, in reality, with all the Peruvianisms he had indicated in his Cuadros y episodios peruanos, since there are terms like aromo and frutilla that are not included in the repertoire. Arona justifies himself by proudly declaring, finally, that he only pays attention to the unknown and hidden Peruvianisms, since:

"The rest is a matter of mere vocabulary, which can be registered by any enthusiast."

His dictionary is, according to Carrión Ordóñez, rather a collection of literary sketches than a true lexicographical collection, although philological information abounds and it is undeniable that he was a precursor in the compilation and analysis of Americanisms and in the metalexicographical commentary of the works of his contemporaries.

Literary and Historiographical Works
When he returned to Cañete, the production of theatrical works by Manuel Nicolás Corpancho (who died in a shipwreck in Mexico) and other romantic writers had just subsided. Although Arona had a classicist tone formation, he integrated into the romantic movement with poems full of pain and despair, although in truth, as Jorge Villarán points out, he had no reasons for it, when his life unfolded outdoors "among smiling vegetation, pure atmosphere, a happy home, economic comfort" (p. 40). He married Cipriana Valle-Riestra in 1867 and two years later published the weekly "Saeta", which lasted only two months. He premiered at the Teatro Principal in Lima "Más menos y ni más ni menos", a comedy in one act and in verse. He collaborated in literary magazines and continued to write poetry copiously. Meanwhile, he worked as a literature teacher at the Guadalupe school and at the Faculty of Letters of San Marcos, also teaching Latin and Greek. With a large family to support and difficulties in managing the estate (which he finally lost to face a series of unpayable debts), he joined the diplomatic corps of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. In 1879 he was Chargé d'Affaires in Chile when the conflict broke out. He was then commissioned to Buenos Aires, where he began editing, in 1882, his Diccionario de peruanismos, which he completed in Lima the following year. He continued writing various poems while the misfortunes culminated in the death of his wife in 1886.

Member of the first Peruvian Academy of Language
"The aggressiveness of his character increased over time," says Villarán (p.47), and certainly misfortunes and disappointments soured his last years until they clouded him "reaching to commit undoubted mistakes." In 1887 the Peruvian Academy corresponding to the Spanish one was inaugurated, but Arona refused to participate until the terms of said "correspondence" were erased. Its first director would be Francisco García Calderón despite the fact that Ricardo Palma himself wished it to be Monsignor José Antonio Roca y Boloña. But Arona did not forgive that in a literary contest Monsignor had considered a poem of his in second place, declaring the first prize deserted. In his final years, his attacks on political and literary adversaries did not cease, lashing out at Palma, Matto de Turner and others, until his death on January 5, 1895. Even his greatest mentor cannot deny "the bellicosity of his temperament," although he also justifies it by "the drowsiness and envy he found everywhere" (p. 49), finding in Arona an undeniable "moral courage" for his independence and his loyalty "to the dictates of his conscience" (Villarán, 48 and 49).

Value of his work
Ventura García Calderón claimed not to know what conditions his admirably endowed spirit lacked to be the great writer he has not been" (quoted by Villarán, p. 99). Arona himself often showed distrust of his own worth, for in 1869 he confesses to be a "bad poet." And in the prologue to his Diplomatic Pages (1891) he laments:

"The Georgics remained in the first book, the Dictionary and the Immigration have not gone beyond the first edition and the projected diplomatic history was reduced to sketches or pages."

Arona was a mediocre author and even goes so far as to blame the public for his own flaws because instead of fostering or protecting writers "what it desires is to find everything done." Alberto Tauro del Pino portrays him "loyal to the truth, as it referred to the country and its people", highlighting his "deep nationalism." Villarán compares him to Larra and ends up highlighting his satirical vein, which stands out in the years of maturity in his newspaper El Chispazo (1891-1893):

"Arona criticizes by caricaturing, hence his humor and criticizes by punishing, his satire. Satirical by nature with that recognized Lima aptitude for satire that has made it undoubtedly the most genuine of our literary genres often hides in it under a festive appearance all its intense patriotic ebullition

." (p. 98) And so the romantic writer boasted of that "patriotism of words" spoken of by Manuel Atanasio Fuentes in 1866, which consisted above all "in grumbling, sotto voce, about the state of things".

Without a doubt his most important work, in addition to his historiographical contributions, is his Diccionario de peruanismos, not only for collecting an interesting vocabulary, but also for having outlined a first metalexicographical analysis in the field of American Spanish.

Works
Poetry
 * Ruinas. Paris, 1863.
 * ''Ensayos poéticos, 1850

Essays and Criticism Theater Various Translations Collaborations
 * ''La Matrona de Éfeso, 1872
 * ''Canción de los bomberos de Lima, 1866
 * Los Médanos. Poema pentasílabo. Lima, 1869. Second edition in 1883.
 * ''Sonetos y Chipazos, 1885
 * ''Canto a Lesseps, 1886
 * ''La venganza de la muerte (Poema filosófico), 1886
 * ''Las sombras inmortales de la patria, 1890
 * Poesías completas. Edition by Estuardo Núñez. Lima, Academia Peruana de la Lengua, 1976.
 * ''Estudios Literarios, 1867
 * ''La España tetuánica y la pinzonada, 1867
 * ''La inmigración en el Perú, 1891, Academia Diplomática del Perú, 1971
 * Cuadros y episodios peruanos. Lima, Imprenta de M. Noriega, 1867.
 * Vivir es defenderse. Dificultades de Basilio a través de la vida limeña y Diario de un pensador. Lima, 1884.
 * Memorias de un viajero peruano: apuntes y recuerdos de Europa y Oriente (1859-1863). Lima: Biblioteca Nacional del Perú, 1971.
 * El intrigante castigado. Comedia de costumbres. Original y en verso, escrita en dos actos, Lima, 1867.
 * Más, menos, y ni más ni menos. Juguete cómico en un acto y en verso. Lima, 1970.
 * Los Rotonautas. Lima, 1880.
 * Páginas diplomáticas del Perú. Lima, 1891. Edition and selection by Estuardo Núñez. Lima, Academia Diplomática del Perú, 1968.
 * Diccionario de peruanismos. Buenos Aires, 1882 - Lima, 1883. Edition by Estuardo Núñez, Lima, Peisa, 1974 (facsimile of the edition by Ventura García Calderón of 1937).
 * La Línea de Chorrillos: Descripción de Los Tres Principales Balnearios Marítimos que rodean a Lima...,1894.
 * ''Virgilio, Geórgicas, 1867
 * ''Poesía latina, Traducciones, 1883
 * El Chispazo newspaper appeared between October 1891 and June 1893.