Jose Eusebio Caro (1817-1853) was a writer, poet and politician from New Granada. He served as a soldier and combatant in several political battles of the time and also stood out for the development of his literary work, which was framed within the lines of romanticism and political reflection..
Caro's literature was characterized by the use of a cultured and expressive language, loaded with sound and rhythm. In his verses the love and respect for the country were notorious. The general content of his work was related to life, love, family relationships, national themes and religion..
Although Eusebio Caro published several articles in prose in newspapers such as Civilization Y The Granada, it was his poetry that made him famous. Some of his most outstanding poems were: Coming to the city, After twenty years, Appearance, Farewell to the homeland, A tear of happiness Y Be with you.
Article index
José Eusebio Caro Ibáñez was born on March 5, 1817 in Ocaña, Santander, in times of the former Viceroyalty of Nueva Granada, now Colombia. He came from a cultured family and a middle socioeconomic level. His parents were Antonio José Caro and Nicolasa Ibáñez y Arias. The writer's childhood was marked by different civil-military conflicts.
Caro received the first teachings from her father and grandfather Francisco Javier. Eusebio suffered the loss of his grandfather and father during the years of his school training, between 1827 and 1830. After those events, he entered the José M. Triana school and completed his training..
Caro began studying law at the Colegio de San Bartolomé after completing secondary education and high school. The young Eusebio did not manage to graduate because he got distracted intervening in politics.
José Eusebio Caro had a taste for letters and literature from his early years of educational training. So when he was nineteen years old he founded the weekly The National Star, together with his friend José Joaquín Ortiz.
Caro posted on the pages of The National Star his first verses and several articles of political and social content. The writer reflected the reality of the nation in reflective essays.
José Eusebio Caro began military activities in 1840 when he joined the ranks of General Pedro Alcántara Herrán to fight in the different conflicts originated for political reasons..
At the same time, the writer founded the newspaper The Granada and, from that conservative rostrum, questioned the actions and ideals of liberal politicians.
Caro paused in her military career to make way for love. For a time he had a dating relationship with a young woman named Blasina Tobar Pinzón. On February 3, 1843, the couple married in Bogotá and as a result of love, two children were born: Miguel Antonio Caro Tobar (president of Colombia in 1892) and Margarita Caro Tobar..
Eusebio was elected deputy to Congress for the Conservative bloc the same year that he married Blasina Tobar.
The conservative thinking of José Eusebio Caro led him to devise and create the Colombian Conservative Party together with the lawyer and journalist Mariano Ospina Rodríguez. The organization laid the foundations in the times of the civil war between 1840 and 1843.
Now, the official foundation of the Conservative Party took place on October 4, 1849. Caro and Ospina made it public with the disclosure of the "Conservative Program of 1849" in the pages of the weekly Civilization. In its beginnings, the political institution was guided by the philosophical ideals of Aristotle, Saint Thomas and Saint Augustine..
The ideal of the Conservative Party was consistent with Caro's personality. It was based on the logical perception of existence, society and God around the functions of political life. Its main precepts were: Christian ethics, legality, freedom against oppressive powers and security.
José Eusebio Caro was active in politics in the mid-19th century. At that time he served as treasurer of public goods, was head of the National Credit office and served as Minister of Finance..
Along with his political career, the writer continued the development of his literary and journalistic activities. Caro created the weekly Civilization in 1849 in the company of Mariano Ospina Rodríguez. There he criticized the governor of Cundinamarca and that earned him an arrest warrant, but when he found out, he left the country through the Llanos region in 1850..
The poet went into exile in New York City in the United States from 1850 to 1852. There he devoted himself to journalism and wrote several poems. Although Caro tried to spread his poetic work from North America to his country and the rest of the continent, he could not due to the communication limitations that existed in the 19th century.
The writer spent the last decade of his life dedicated to politics and literature, and developed much of his poetic work during the two years he lived in New York. Eusebio decided to return to his country in 1852 through the city of Santa Marta, and on the way he fell ill with yellow fever.
José Eusebio Caro died on January 28, 1853 in the aforementioned Santa Marta at the age of thirty-six..
José Eusebio Caro's literary style was characterized mainly by being within the ranks of romanticism. This meant that his work was full of feelings and expressiveness. The writer used both in his verses and in his prose a cultured and emotional language.
Caro's poetic work was charged with feelings and vitality. Although the poetry of this writer belonged to romanticism, it also presented traits of the neoclassical current and looked to modernism.
Eusebio's verses were characterized by their beauty, melancholy and strength. The reflection and depth of life were exposed by the intellectual from New Granada.
The meter and loudness of his poems were influenced by his reading of the Spanish, English and French classics. Regarding the theme of his poetic work, José Eusebio Caro wrote about life, women, family, homeland and the ideal of freedom.
Caro's prose texts were characterized by the use of well-crafted language. The writer gave his newspaper articles sagacity, strength, depth and critical thinking. The severity with which he dealt with political and social issues made him win several enemies.
José Eusebio Caro developed several works of philosophical content focused on the Christian faith and nature, which he left unfinished. Most of his prose was published in newspapers The Grenadian Y Civilization.
José Eusebio Caro's literary production was developed in three phases. In the first of them the writer reflected in his verses a lot of imagination, focused on loneliness.
Later his poetry became more reflective and intimate when the author went out in search of the mysteries of life and the world. And finally his poems were more sober and rational.
- My lyre.
- Coming to town.
- After twenty years.
- Appearance.
- The national star.
- Farewell to the fatherland.
- The Outlaw's Ax.
- The poor.
- A tear of happiness.
- Hector.
- In the mouth of the last Inca.
- Be with you.
- The hammock of exile.
- The high seas.
- Marriage proposal and nuptial blessing.
- Freedom and socialism.
- On frivolity.
- Philosophy of Christianity. Incomplete.
- "Letter to Mr. José Rafael Mosquera on the general principles of social organization that should be adopted in the new Constitution of the Republic." Essay published in The Grenadian in 1842.
- "The conservative party and its name." Essay work published in the weekly Civilization in 1847.
- "Letter to Dr. Joaquín Mosquera, on the utilitarian principle taught as moral theory in our schools, and on the relationship between doctrines and customs." Newspaper article with political content.
- Social science. Incomplete.
- The need for expansion.
- History of March 7, 1849.
- The moral question.
- Booklets.
- Poems by Caro and Vargas Tejada (1857).
- Selected works in prose and verse (1873).
- Poetry (1886).
- Anthologies: verses and prose (1951).
- Epistolary (1953).
It was one of the prose texts that José Eusebio Caro wrote. The text focused on his philosophical thinking in relation to man and life. The author carried out a thoughtful and profound work regarding the vital and instinctive need of the human being to go for more, to achieve everything that is proposed because he knows that he deserves it.
"There is in man a principle, a need, an instinct, recognized by all religions and by all philosophies, a sign that reveals the spirituality of the human soul, and the impulsive origin of the progress and errors of humanity on earth ...
“That principle is the need for expansion; the need that man feels ... to expand, to enlarge, to rise and rise in all senses, to broaden the horizon of his sight as well as that of his intelligence ... ".
"Oh! I'm already tired of pride,
I am already tired of reason;
Let me, well, I spoke by your side
which only the heart speaks!
I will not speak to you of great things;
I rather want to see you and shut up,
don't count the hateful hours,
and laugh hearing you speak!
… What is said here
call
but not knowing fear,
and with the Eva who loves each other,
live ignorance and love?
Oh! more with everything so happens to us,
with the country and the youth
with our home and old house,
with innocence and virtue ... ".
"Away, oh! of the sacrum
that rocking my crib saw,
I, unhappy outlaw, drag
my misery and pain.
Reclined on the high stern
from the ship that flees fast,
our mountains go look
sunlit.
Goodbye, homeland, my homeland,
I still can't hate you; goodbye!
To your mantle, like a child,
it clung to me in my affliction;
your hand more angry
he tore it from my hands;
and in your fury ignoring
my sob and my cry,
beyond the sea your arm
from a giant he threw me.
... of today and more, wandering sad
by antipode region,
with my cry to the passenger
I will ask for the bread of pain;
from one door to another the knock
it will sound from my cane ... ".
“My night lamp is out;
I am only silent and in darkness;
no clock, no rumor is heard
through the city that surrounds me.
… Everything disappears: deaf, blind,
dead, man among man concentrates;
and in glory and solitude before herself
suddenly the human soul appears ...
In vain I widen my eyes more and more,
in vain my ears are alert;
I only hear the hum of silence,
I just watch the darkness thicken ... ".
- "Blood I must cry, cry my eyes, thinking of my father in existence".
- "Social peace, the objective of every society, is achieved by putting the individual in better conditions to resist than to attack".
- "An angel was ... God showed him one day".
- “Man is an unlit lamp; all his light will be given to him by death ".
- "Go back to my past life, get ecstatic in nothingness, and cry without knowing why!".
- “I want once to be with you, which God the soul formed you; treat you like an old friend who in our childhood loved us ... ".
- “The perfume of the homeland still sucks on his button! My bone will cover with his shadow; and then I will sleep my last dream of its leaves to the rumor ".
- "You see me sad wandering among the black graves, with moistened crying eyes, my orphanhood and misery lamenting".
- "Only your trunk hears my moans, only your foot collects my tears".
- “Far away I am going to die from my expensive father's bed, far away, oh! of those clothes that I loved, that loved me ".
Yet No Comments