Mariano Melgar Valdivieso was born on August 12, 1790 , in the cathedral of Arequipa, the lawyer Matías Banda baptizes Mariano Lorenzo Melgar, legitimate son of Juan de Dios Melgar and Andrea Valdivieso.
The birth could have occurred on the 8th (San Mariano's day) or the 10th (San Lorenzo's day); if the name is not only related to the Marian feast of the Assumption of the Virgin (August 15). On September 19, 1807, after completing his first studies at the school that operated in the convent of San Francisco in Arequipa, Mariano passed the entrance exam for the seminary of San Jerónimo in the same city, to study Theology. . After three years he is awarded a grace scholarship and is commissioned to temporarily serve the Grammar class .
On March 16, 1810 he appears as professor of Latinity and Rhetoric and on August 9 of the same year as professor of Physics and Mathematics. He receives minor orders on September 21 from the Bishop of Arequipa.
Early works by Mariano Melgar
On the occasion of the election of the constituent council in Arequipa, on December 9, 1812, Mariano Melgar wrote an ode, which would later be known as "Ode to freedom". On March 29 of the following year, Mariano Melgar dedicated his “Ode to Solitude” to José María Corbacho, his companion in the seminary and in the Society or Literary Tertulia of Arequipa. He passionately falls in love with his cousin in the second grade María Santos Corrales, to whom he dedicates the immortal “Letter to Silvia”. He travels to Lima with the purpose of obtaining a doctor's degree, although it has not been possible to determine if he achieved such an objective. In N° 32 (1813) of El Investigador appears the fable of him "The nightingale and the calesero", of undoubted political content. Back in Arequipa, the poet finds “Silvia” indifferent and, in order to forget about her, he dedicates himself to reading and translating Ovid, in addition to devoting himself to field work in the Majes Valley. From that stage must be born his poetic recurrence on the theme of abandonment, fundamental in the pre-Columbian lyric that, moving away from the colonial neoclassical forms, uses a native lyrical modality (the harawi or song of love theme), resulting in an authentic mestizo poetry. , whose verses would later be called "yaravíes", prefiguring romanticism. In the words of the critic Augusto Tamayo Vargas, "the yaraví is the Castilian decomposition of the primitive harawi, as a mestizo manifestation within Peruvian literature", which collects vernacular elements, turning them into poetic motifs.
Enlistment in the patriot forces
In 1914, in the first days of August, a revolution broke out in Cuzco under the inspiration of the Angulo brothers, led by Mateo García Pumacahua. Mariano Melgar, who was in Majes, enlists in Chuquibamba the patriotic forces that are going to join the army of Pumacahua in Arequipa . Given his preparation, he is appointed war auditor. On February 28, 1815, Vicente Angulo signs a peace offer in Ayaviri addressed to the royalist general Juan Ramírez, which is supposed to have been written by Mariano Melgar. On March 11 of the same year, after the defeat in Umachiri, the Arequipa poet was taken prisoner, being shot the next day (six days later Pumacahua would be hanged) . It is said that when the platoon chief officer tried to put a blindfold on Mariano Melgar, he rejected it saying:"Put it on you who are the deceived because America will be free before ten years."
Posthumous publication of his works
Most of Mariano Melgar's work has been published posthumously and classified, at the suggestion of Aurelio Miró Quesada and other specialists, as follows:philosophical poetry (odes and quatrains), civic poetry (odes and octaves), laudatory poetry ( odes, sonnets, octaves), love poetry (elegies, Provençal rhymes, sonnets, tenths, various songs, octaves, glosses), epistles, yaravíes, fables and epigrams, and translations and paraphrases. In 1827 the "Letter to Silvia" appeared in Ayacucho and in June of the same year El Republicano de Arequipa published five fables by Mariano Melgar . In 1831, in the same newspaper, one can read his Songs (only later, from 1861, would they be called “yaravíes” by Mariano Melgar). Two years later, in 1833, under the seal of the Government Printing Office, the translation of Ovid's Art of Forgetting was published, which Mariano Melgar called Remedio de amor. That same year, on September 16, the remains of Mariano Melgar arrive in Arequipa and the next day they are buried in the newly opened Apacheta cemetery.
In 1971 the Peruvian Academy of Language published a complete edition of both the poems and other texts by Mariano Melgar , and in 1995 Enrique Carrión Ordóñez dedicated a comprehensive biographical work to him.