Controversy About His Life and Works
Lately a few supposed new information on Blas Valera's biography have started to circulate. The most controversial one talks about "Nueva Crónica y Buen Gobierno" (A new Chronic and a Good Government), of Felipe Guaman Poma de Ayala. According to specialist Laura Laurencich Minelli, there are three sheets of paper with drawings in the "Historia et Rudimenta Linguae Piruanorum" that have the signature of an "Italian Jesuit", Blas Valera. According to Minelli, these drawings were made before 1618, that is to say, some years after the official death of Valera.
Apparently, the objective of Valera in Europe was to tell the Pope the truth about the conquest of Peru made by Pizarro, who would have poisoned Atahualpa's soldiers with a mixture of arsenic and wine. This fact was told to Valera by another conqueror, his own father, Luis Valera. The general of the Compañía, Claudio Aquaviva, didn't agree with Valera's intentions, for this reason he was declared a dead person and was exiled. He went to Spain, where he supposedly shared part of his works with the Inca Garcilaso de la Vega.
Later, it is said that Valera returned to Peru secretly with the intention of publishing his version of the Peruvian conquest. he got in touch with other two Jesuits: Joan Antonio Cumis and Joan Anello Oliva. To carry out their intention, the three of them had to hide the identity of the real author, so they used the name of Huaman Poma de Ayala. When he carried out his assignment, Blas Valera would have returned to Spain in 1618, where he supposedly died a little time later.
The enigma of knowing who was the real writer of "Nueva Crónica y Buen Gobierno" and also about the biographical mess of Blas Valera have not still been solved.
Read more about this topic: Blas Valera
Famous quotes containing the words controversy, life and/or works:
“And therefore, as when there is a controversy in an account, the parties must by their own accord, set up for right Reason, the Reason of some Arbitrator, or Judge, to whose sentence, they will both stand, or their controversy must either come to blows, or be undecided, for want of a right Reason constituted by Nature; so is it also in all debates of what kind soever.”
—Thomas Hobbes (1579–1688)
“The world is upheld by the veracity of good men: they make the earth wholesome. They who lived with them found life glad and nutritious. Life is sweet and tolerable only in our belief in such society.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“The works of women are symbolical.
We sew, sew, prick our fingers, dull our sight,
Producing what? A pair of slippers, sir,
To put on when you’re weary or a stool
To stumble over and vex you ... “curse that stool!”
Or else at best, a cushion, where you lean
And sleep, and dream of something we are not,
But would be for your sake. Alas, alas!
This hurts most, this ... that, after all, we are paid
The worth of our work, perhaps.”
—Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1806–1861)