The poem Telémaco on the island of Calipso has 540 octaves and is probably the best work of its author Jose Bermudez de la Torre and Solier, public man and poet whose performance covers the second half of the XVII and the first half of the XVIII, in the capital of the Viceroyalty of Peru, Lima or city of the Kings.
The geographic scope of this poem is the island of Ogigia and its protagonists are Telemachus, Eucaris and Calypso. Telemachus and Mentor are shipwrecked and arrive on this island, Calypso receives them and falls in love with the son of Ulysses-Telemachus - whose father she had loved before. Telemachus feels love for the nymph Eucaris, and this one corresponds to him. Calypso is warned of these loves matched by Venus, through jealousy. Mentor and Minerva convince Telemachus that he must return to rule his kingdom of Ithaca. Telemachus leaves the island and Eucaris awaits him for several years until a fortune teller reveals the truth: Telemachus has rescued Antiope from the power of Aristeo and has married her. Eucaris, desperate, dies.
The author's treatment of the work rests on several sentimental triangles: we must not forget that it is a love epic, as we are warned in its title. In the past, it is the one that is formed with Penelope-Ulysses-Calipso, at present of the poem are two: Telemaco-Calipso-Eucaris and Telemaco-Eucaris-Antíope; in a future that is frustrated, would have been Telemaco-Antiope-Aristeo.
This poem reminds us of the Aeneid and Homeric poems, which by the way are the major models of the Renaissance poets. The narrative thread runs according to the lyrical scenes, which in addition to the to Greco-Roman mythology, are assured by the appearance of elements of nature, which is often synthesized in the final verse of the octave in four or five words, thus condensing the poetic content of the stanza. The volume, dated in 1728, containing the manuscript text of this poem could have belonged to the Library of José Bermúdez, is believed by the care that shows the binding on parchment and especially by the engravings that are inserted in the tome, extracted from a French edition of the Télémaque de Fenelón. In addition, there is the fact that Philip V, King of Spain, died in 1746 - the same year as José Bermúdez - is mentioned in manuscript gloss inserted in the volume referred to, as a reigning monarch. Luis A. Sánchez, a Peruvian literary critic, tells us that Mr. Ricardo Vegas García presented him with the manuscript of this poem, which he had obtained in 1922 in the city of Ayabaca, Piura, in the north of Peru. by the description of the same and especially of its engravings is the same that currently exists in the National Library of Peru, and that is used for this edition. We must now refer to the similarities presented by two poems from the Peruvian viceroyal age: "Demofonte y Filis", attributed by Fr. Rubén Vargas Ugarte SJ- Peruvian investigator and historian- to Lorenzo de las Llamosas ** - author a 17th-century Peruvian viceroyal, and "Telemachus on the island of Calipso", by the undoubted authorship of José Bermúdez de la Torre and Solier.
For the poem Demofonte, Fr. Vargas Ugarte points out the existence of four manuscripts, three of them in Ecuadorian libraries and the fourth in his possession. The fourth manuscript must have been lost, since it is not among the books left by Fr. Vargas Ugarte upon his death. One of the three manuscripts in Ecuador carries the date of 1730, which could be the date on which the copy was made, the other two lack this indication.
The Telemachus, in a manuscript that is in the National Library of Peru, under the symbol C 1658, and there are innumerable news and on the authenticity of both the text and its author. As to the evident similarity that exists between both poems, and that is not limited to subject or approach, but to the existence of a large number of identical stanzas, we must remember that Lorenzo de las Llamosas moves away definitively from the Viceroyalty of Peru in 1691, to Spain; and until the year 1705, when all we have of him ceases, enjoys the palace favor in Madrid and gives to the printing press several books, even there is a second edition of one of them, with which it is clear that he had no difficulty in publishing his works.
As there is security in the authorship of José Bermúdez de la Torre, for Telemaco, in the current state of investigations, Demofonte should be considered as an anonymous author.
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