The ajayu-watan, germinal death and the return of the deceased son in the poem “Epopeya del qe buelbe” by Gamaliel Churata

Abstract

This essay focuses on analyzing two fundamental epistemological motifs within Gamaliel Churata’s poetic universe: the ahayu-watan and its conceptually linked notion of “germinal death”. To achieve this, a close reading will be conducted of the poem “Epopeya del qe buelbe”, published in 1928, in the avant-garde Arequipa-based journal Chirapu. From the avant-garde rupture with Spanish through the predominance of a phonetic orthography that evokes the tonalities and structures of Quechua and Aymara, the poem explores Andean philosophy’s conception of death not as an absolute end, but as the cyclical complement of eternity.