José Ricardo Mazó (Pilar, 1927- Asunción, 1987), the
Paraguay
Paraguay (; ), officially the Republic of Paraguay ( es, República del Paraguay, links=no; gn, Tavakuairetã Paraguái, links=si), is a landlocked country in South America. It is bordered by Argentina to the south and southwest, Brazil to t ...
an poet, was born in
Pilar, in the department of
Ñeembucúbr>
He was a member of the Literary Academy of the
College of San Joséand of the Paraguayan Academia Universitaria. After completing his studies in San José, he studied in the
University of Texas at Austin
The University of Texas at Austin (UT Austin, UT, or Texas) is a public research university in Austin, Texas. It was founded in 1883 and is the oldest institution in the University of Texas System. With 40,916 undergraduate students, 11,075 ...
and subsequently worked as an Engineer and Geologist.
He is regarded as one of the ''Promoción del 50'', a group of 1950's poets, mainly from the Academia Universitaria and the Faculty of Philosophy in Asunción who wrote socially engaged poetry during
Alfredo Stroessner
Alfredo Stroessner Matiauda (; 3 November 1912 – 16 August 2006) was a Paraguayan army officer and politician who served as President of Paraguay from 15 August 1954 to 3 February 1989.
Stroessner led a coup d'état on 4 May 1954 with t ...
's dictatorship (1954–1989). His poem
ERA EL MES DE NIZAM... should perhaps be read in that light.
He translated the lecture notes on
Aesthetics
Aesthetics, or esthetics, is a branch of philosophy that deals with the nature of beauty and taste, as well as the philosophy of art (its own area of philosophy that comes out of aesthetics). It examines aesthetic values, often expressed t ...
that
Hegel
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (; ; 27 August 1770 – 14 November 1831) was a German philosopher. He is one of the most important figures in German idealism and one of the founding figures of modern Western philosophy. His influence extends a ...
had distributed in the
University of Berlin
Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin (german: Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, abbreviated HU Berlin) is a German public research university in the central borough of Mitte in Berlin. It was established by Frederick William III on the initiative ...
into Spanish as ''Introducción a la Estética de G.W:F. Hegel''.
Poetic work
''Briznas: suerte de antología'' (Scraps: A kind of Anthology), 1982, gathers together 73 poems written between the years 1940 and 1980. The book is organised into five parts:
# First poems;
# Empty hours;
# Return;
# The second solitude;
# Open bastion.
Solitude, absence, nostalgia, distance, boredom ... as well as a constant search for the self, a recurrent encounter with time, and fixation on an unceasing memory, are the dominant motifs of his poetry. In several of his poems, the poetic voice alludes to a mysterious angel.
Bibliography
* ''Briznas: suerte de antología'', Asunción: Perch, 1982. (Poetry, 2). 111 pp.
* ''Poesía 1'', Asunción: Academia Universitaria, 1953.
collaboration.* ''Introducción a la estética / Georg Wihelm Friedrich Hegel'', Ricardo Mazó (trans), Barcelona : Península, (1971, 2001),
References
* ''Poesía del Paraguay: antología desde sus orígenes'', Aramí (ed.), 2001, pp. 555–559 (an anthology of Paraguayan Poetry)
* ''Breve diccionario de la literatura paraguaya'', Méndez-Faith, Teresa, Asunción: El Lector, (Colección Literaria, 22; Biblioteca Paraguaya), 1996, p. 166, (a brief dictionary of Paraguayan Literature)
External links
A brief dictionary of Paraguayan Literature (in Spanish)
1927 births
1987 deaths
20th-century Paraguayan poets
Paraguayan male poets
People from Ñeembucú Department
20th-century male writers
University of Texas at Austin alumni
Paraguayan expatriates in the United States
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