Background
José Eustasio Rivera was born on February 19, 1888, in Neiva, Colombia. His parents were Eustasio Rivera Escobar and Catalina Salas.
Bogotá, Colombia
Rivera graduated from National University of Colombia in 1917.
(This volume provides a facing page translation into Engli...)
This volume provides a facing page translation into English of one of the classic books of modern Spanish-American poetry, the "Tierra de Promision" ("Promised Land") by the Colombian Jose Eustasio Rivera.
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0773482776/?tag=2022091-20
José Eustasio Rivera was born on February 19, 1888, in Neiva, Colombia. His parents were Eustasio Rivera Escobar and Catalina Salas.
Rivera received a scholarship to enter the Escuela Normal Superior de Bogotá in 1906. Graduating from a teachers’ college in Bogota at the age of twenty, Rivera received a law degree from the National University of Colombia eight years later.
Rivera established himself both as a lawyer and as a member of Bogota’s intellectual community, publishing a collection of sonnets, Tierra de promision, in 1921.
The following year he traveled to the Colombian jungle as secretary of a congressional committee investigating a border dispute between his country and Venezuela, an experience that provided the inspiration for his novel The Vortex. While in the jungle, Rivera contracted beriberi, and it was during his convalescence that he wrote The Vortex, he published the novel in 1924.
Displaying Rivera’s literary talents as well as his keen powers of perception, The Vortex has been described by L. H. Titterton in the New York Times Book Review as an admirable combination of “stark realism . . . [and] lyrical romanticism.” The Vortex has long been appreciated as both a richly descriptive regional novel and a compelling, romantic adventure story.
(This volume provides a facing page translation into Engli...)
In his novel La vorágine (The Vortex), Rivera sought to portray the dramatic conflict between human beings and the South American jungle, which is described by Rivera’s protagonist as a “green hell.” Some critics have therefore argued that Rivera viewed the jungle as a hostile environment which inflicts physical and mental pain on its human inhabitants and evokes savage behavior.