José Luis Appleyard (5 May 1927 – 1998) was a

Paraguay Paraguay, officially the Republic of Paraguay, is a landlocked country in South America. It is bordered by Argentina to the Argentina–Paraguay border, south and southwest, Brazil to the Brazil–Paraguay border, east and northeast, and Boli ...

poet A poet is a person who studies and creates poetry. Poets may describe themselves as such or be described as such by others. A poet may simply be the creator (thought, thinker, songwriter, writer, or author) who creates (composes) poems (oral t ...

playwright A playwright or dramatist is a person who writes play (theatre), plays, which are a form of drama that primarily consists of dialogue between Character (arts), characters and is intended for Theatre, theatrical performance rather than just Readin ...

lawyer A lawyer is a person who is qualified to offer advice about the law, draft legal documents, or represent individuals in legal matters. The exact nature of a lawyer's work varies depending on the legal jurisdiction and the legal system, as w ...

journalist A journalist is a person who gathers information in the form of text, audio or pictures, processes it into a newsworthy form and disseminates it to the public. This is called journalism. Roles Journalists can work in broadcast, print, advertis ...

and

publisher Publishing is the activities of making information, literature, music, software, and other content, physical or digital, available to the public for sale or free of charge. Traditionally, the term publishing refers to the creation and distribu ...

Childhood and youth

He was born in

Asunción Asunción (, ) is the capital and the largest city of Paraguay. The city stands on the eastern bank of the Paraguay River, almost at the confluence of this river with the Pilcomayo River. The Paraguay River and the Bay of Asunción in the north ...

, the capital city of Paraguay. He completed his primary studies in "la Escuela Normal de Profesores". He attended high school at the Colegio de San José de Asunción, but finished at Colegio San Martín, de

Buenos Aires Buenos Aires, controlled by the government of the Autonomous City of Buenos Aires, is the Capital city, capital and largest city of Argentina. It is located on the southwest of the Río de la Plata. Buenos Aires is classified as an Alpha− glob ...

Argentina Argentina, officially the Argentine Republic, is a country in the southern half of South America. It covers an area of , making it the List of South American countries by area, second-largest country in South America after Brazil, the fourt ...

. He studied law at

Universidad Nacional de Asunción The Universidad Nacional de Asunción or Mbo'ehaovusu Tetãgua Paraguaygua, abbreviated UNA, anglicized as, The National University of Asuncion, is a public university founded in San Lorenzo, Paraguay. Founded in 1889, it is the oldest and most ...

and after graduating, he worked as a lawyer for approximately ten years. After this, he decided to dedicate himself to

journalism Journalism is the production and distribution of reports on the interaction of events, facts, ideas, and people that are the "news of the day" and that informs society to at least some degree of accuracy. The word, a noun, applies to the journ ...

and

poetry Poetry (from the Greek language, Greek word ''poiesis'', "making") is a form of literature, literary art that uses aesthetics, aesthetic and often rhythmic qualities of language to evoke meaning (linguistics), meanings in addition to, or in ...

First steps

He was one of the favourite disciples of César Alonso de las Heras, a priest in Colegio de San José. Father Alonso is a fundamental figure regarding the diffusion of Spanish

of what are called the '98 and '27 generations. He was also the mentor of numerous talented poets and writers, first from the Academia Literaria del Colegio de San José, and then from the Academia Universitaria, being president and active referent of this last. Appleyard was part of the so called "the fifties generation" in Paraguayan poetry, along with other icons like José María Gómez Sanjurjo, Ricardo Mazó and Ramiro Domínguez, amongst others. For almost two decades, he was part of the body of journalists for the ''La Tribuna'' newspaper of

. He was also "Boss of the Culture Area" and director of the cultural supplement published on Sundays. He was the editor of "Monólogos" an important column which influenced people and achieved great popularity by writing about subjects of interest at the time, such as "how people speak in Paraguay". Likewise, he worked in ''Ultima Hora'', the newspaper where "Desde el tiempo que vivo" his column, was one of the most expected by the thousands of readers. Being invited by many countries, such as the

United States The United States of America (USA), also known as the United States (U.S.) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It is a federal republic of 50 U.S. state, states and a federal capital district, Washington, D.C. The 48 ...

North America North America is a continent in the Northern Hemisphere, Northern and Western Hemisphere, Western hemispheres. North America is bordered to the north by the Arctic Ocean, to the east by the Atlantic Ocean, to the southeast by South Ameri ...

and

Germany Germany, officially the Federal Republic of Germany, is a country in Central Europe. It lies between the Baltic Sea and the North Sea to the north and the Alps to the south. Its sixteen States of Germany, constituent states have a total popu ...

, amongst others, he visited numerous nations in which he gave conferences, and chats and presented his poems.

Trajectory

He was President of the PEN Club del Paraguay and, being an important member of Academia Paraguaya de la Lengua Española, he was a secretary of this important cultural institution. The also poet and literary critique

Roque Vallejos Roque Vallejos (1943 in Asunción – 2 April 2006 in Asunción) was a poet, psychiatrist and essayist from Paraguay. Background He was a forensic surgeon in the High Court of Justice. He served as a member and the president of the Academia d ...

writes in the epilogue of the book "José-Luis Appleyard - Antología poética" published in 1996: "...He has poems of notable social sarcasm that

Rafael Barrett Rafael Ángel Jorge Julián Barrett y Álvarez de Toledo (1876–1910) was a Spanish journalist and writer, and a major figure in 20th century Paraguayan literature. Biography Rafael Barrett was born on 7 January 1876, in the Cantabrian city o ...

would have wanted to include in his "Moralidades actuales". So as in his poem "Hay un sitio" que that states in one of its fragments: There are

synonyms A synonym is a word, morpheme, or phrase that means precisely or nearly the same as another word, morpheme, or phrase in a given language. For example, in the English language, the words ''begin'', ''start'', ''commence'', and ''initiate'' are a ...

clear, translucent: / being free is growing without will / to steal is to rob, love is hate, / and to live is to die defenceless / loneliness is called company/ and betraying is to be loyal to your friends. / The news are old. All that's new/ has a dark old shining. Discreetly and with no violence, Appleyard faithfully and severely describes the state of spiritual and semantic emptiness of the words and the trapped feeling that the

dictatorship A dictatorship is an autocratic form of government which is characterized by a leader, or a group of leaders, who hold governmental powers with few to no Limited government, limitations. Politics in a dictatorship are controlled by a dictator, ...

carried within for more than thirty. A

that has based all his pieces on freedom couldn't –nor has tried to do so- defend a dogmatic moral that would have fatally led him to mere materialist doctrinism ".

Hugo Rodríguez-Alcalá Hugo Rodríguez-Alcalá (1917–2007) was a Paraguayan writer, essayist, poet, narrator and literature critic. Doctorate in Laws and Social Sciences by the National University of Asunción in 1943. He earned a Ph.D. in literature from the Univer ...

, a paraguayan literature investigator wrote in his book "Appleyard da a la estampa"... the best in his promotion:… Amongst those of the Academia Universitaria, Appleyard is the one who best fulfills the following subjects: the longing for lost times, the teen love, and the magic of childhood. All these subjects are mentioned in "Entonces era siempre", anthology of poems in which the poet reviews childhood".

Style

Appleyard himself, in a brief script of June 1981 that introduces his book "Tomado de la mano", expresses the following in relation to his poems:

Distinctions

In 1961 he won the Municipal Award of Theater with the poetic drama about the Paraguayan independence, "Aquel 1811". In 1997, he received Paraguay's National Prize for Literature for his book ''Cenizas de la vida''.

Last years

He died in

in 1998.

Works

Even though he has written many other brief pieces, most of his theatrical production remains inedited.

References

Sources

Centro Cultural de la República El Cabildo
* Diccionario Biográfico "FORJADORES DEL PARAGUAY", Primera Edición Enero de 2000. Distribuidora Quevedo de Ediciones. Buenos Aires, Argentina.

External links

Palabra VirtualPoemas-Poetas
* http://www.abc.com.py/seccion/poemasradio/ * http://www.poesiacastellana.es
Jose Luis Appleyard
recorded at the Library of Congress for the Hispanic Division's audio literary archive on January 13, 1983 {{DEFAULTSORT:Appleyard, Jose Luis 1927 births 1998 deaths 20th-century Paraguayan poets Paraguayan male poets Universidad Nacional de Asunción alumni Writers from Asunción Paraguayan male journalists Paraguayan dramatists and playwrights Male dramatists and playwrights 20th-century dramatists and playwrights 20th-century Paraguayan lawyers 20th-century Paraguayan male writers 20th-century Paraguayan journalists