"Aboriginal and Wild"

Many a Peruvian wept in silence, many another sobbed aloud, as Jose Santos Chocano, "The Poet of America," the literary idol of Peru, was sentenced last week to three years' imprisonment for killing one of his enemies in what he alleged to be self-defense. While his countrymen sympathize, callous-minded foreigners may think that for Jose to have reached the age of 51 and have thus far escaped assassination or the gallows is a miracle.

At 19 he was already in jail for participating in an unsuccessful revolution. From his cell he sent forth a manuscript whose seering verses he ordered printed in red ink. He called it Iras Santas (Sacred Furies). Peru was staggered by the sheer brutal power of this song of vengeance, this envenomed protest against civilization and its shams. Jose, bounding from his cell into the apogee of fame, became in his own words "the singer of America, a poet aboriginal and wild."

In 1920 he was rescued from a sentence of execution arising out of his unquenchable revolutionary activities by a popular demonstration without its like in the history of Peru. His official "coronation" at Lima as "Poet of America" followed amid a general public festival. President Leguia, "the bantam Mussolini of Peru" (TIME, Dec. 7), bestowed upon him a golden laurel crown. With unique audacity he suggested that "the crown would be improved by the addition of a sufficient number of emeralds to give it a leafy green appearance." A subscription was raised. The emeralds were added. . . .

Last November, Edwin Elmore, famed Peruvian publicist, once the revolutionary ally of Jose, fell a-quarreling with him in the doorway of a newspaper office at Lima. What occurred is uncertain. Poet Jose alleges that he, attacked by unarmed Publicist Elmore, drew his ever-ready revolver and killed in self-defense.