Poetry
Cielitos y diálogos patrióticos
Not translated into English
Bartolomé Hidalgo · 1816
Synopsis
The cielitos are quatrains of eight-syllable lines, sung to a refrain taken from a popular dance, which evoke with satirical irony the events of the war of independence, according to the Uruguayan Ministry of Culture. In the first dialogue, Ramón Contreras, a gaucho of the Guardia del Monte, arrives on horseback at the home of Jacinto Chano, foreman of an estancia; over maté, they take stock of ten years of revolution, the misery of the soldiers and widows, a justice that is not the same for everyone. Pisano reads in it the right that these plebeians claim to judge public affairs.
Context
The title brings together two forms. The cielitos, dance songs older than the author, become in his hands occasional pieces, from the cielito of independence in 1816 to those that hail the victory of Maipú or the taking of Lima. The dialogues, written in Buenos Aires from 1821, circulated on broadsheets, read aloud or passed from mouth to mouth, often without an author's name, according to Pisano. The Uruguayan ministry sees in it the work that set the direction of gauchesco literature. A Franciscan of Buenos Aires, Francisco de Paula Castañeda, answered him in his newspapers, reproaching him for his taste for equality.
Who it is for
Poems and dialogues in verse, in the Spanish of the Río de la Plata countryside; no French translation known.
Prizes and reception
The most original text of its author, the one that guided all of gaucho poetry, according to the Uruguayan government website.
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