César Vallejo
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Image:Cesar vallejo.jpg César Abraham Vallejo Mendoza (March 16 1892 – April 15 1938) was a Peruvian poet. Although during his lifetime he published only three books of poetry, he is nonetheless considered one of the great poetic innovators of the 20th century. Always a step ahead of the literary currents, each of his books was distinct from the others and, in its own sense, revolutionary.
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Life
César Vallejo was born the youngest of eleven children in Santiago de Chuco, a remote village in the Andes of Peru. He studied literature in the Universidad de la Libertad in Trujillo. The poet dropped out of the university several times, working at a sugar plantation where he saw firsthand the exploitation of agrarian workers, a sight that would influence his politics and aesthetics. Vallejo received a masters degree in Spanish literature in 1915.
Later, Vallejo moved to Lima, where he lived a Bohemian lifestyle, meeting important members of the intellectual left, and working as a tutor and then a professor. The poet suffered a number of calamities in the years leading up to the publication of Los Heraldos Negros: He lost his teaching post after having refused to marry a woman with whom he had an affair; his lover died of a failed abortion which he had forced her to undergo; his mother died in 1920; and he was imprisoned for 105 days after returning home to Santiago de Chuco and igniting a scandal there.
After publishing Trilce in 1923, the poet, having lost another professorship in Lima, emigrated to Europe, where he lived until his death in Paris in 1938. He is interred in the Cimetière du Montparnasse in Paris, France.
Works
Los heraldos negros (1918)
Los heraldos negros (The black heralds) is a book with traces of Spanish Modernism in the structure of its poems. In it, the poet confronts existential anguish, personal guilt, and pain, writing famously, Hay golpes en la vida tan fuertes..., yo no sé ("There are blows in life, so hard... I don't know") and Yo nací un día / que Dios estuvo enfermo ("I was born on a day / when God was sick"). The book of poetry sold relatively few copies, but was critically well received.
Trilce (1922)
Trilce, published in 1922, anticipated much of the avant-garde movement that would develop in the 1920s and 30s. Vallejo's book takes language to a radical extreme, inventing words, stretching syntax, using automatic writing and other techniques now known as "surrealist" (though he did this before the Surrealist movement began). The book put Latin America at the center of the Avant-garde. Like James Joyce's Finnegan's Wake and Vicente Huidobro's Altazor, Trilce borders on inaccessibility.
Poemas humanos (1939)
Poemas humanos (Human poems), published by the poet's wife after his death, is a leftist work of political, social poetry.
Plays
Vallejo wrote five plays, none of which were staged or published during his lifetime.
Mampar is the subject of a critical letter from producer Louis Jouvet which says, in summary, "Interesting, but terminally flawed". The text itself is lost, assumed to have been destroyed by Vallejo.
Lock-Out (1930, written in French; a Spanish translation by Vallejo himself is lost) deals with a labour struggle in a foundry.
Entre las dos orillas corre el río (1930s) was the product of a long and difficult birth. Titles of earlier versions include Varona Polianova, Moscú contra Moscú, El juego del amor, del odio y de la muerte and several variations on this latter title.
Colacho hermanos o Presidentes de América (1934). Satire displaying Peruvian democracy as a bourgeois farce under pressure from international companies and diplomacy.
La piedra cansada (1937).
Novel
Tungsteno (1931). A social realist novel depicting the oppression of native Peruvian miners and their communities by a foreign-owned tungsten mine.
Selected Works Available in English
"The Complete Poetry of César Vallejo" (Edited and Translated by Clayton Eshleman. With a Foreword by Mario VArgas Llosa, an Introduction by Efrain Kristal, and a Chronology by Stephen M. Hart), University of California Press, ISBN 0520245520
"The Complete Posthumous Poetry of César Vallejo" (Translators: Clayton Eshleman and José Rubia Barcia), University of California Press ISBN 0-520-04099-6
Trilce (Translators: Michael Smith, Valentino Gianuzzi). Shearsman Books ISBN 0907562728
The Complete Later Poems 1923-1938 (Translators: Michael Smith, Valentino Gianuzzi). Shearsman Books ISBN 0907562736
The Black Heralds (Translator: Rebecca Seiferle) Copper Canyon Press ISBN 1556591993
Miscellany
The American Dramatist, actor, and short story writer Sam Shepard writes that Cesar Vallejo is his favorite poet in "Cruising Paradise." His previous book of stories "Motel Chronicles," also begins with an inscription from a Vallejo poem.
External links
- Three of Vallejo's poems translated into English, plus a brief biography
- Universidad César Vallejo: Peruvian University named in his honor
- Review of "Antología poética" by Cesar VallejoA Peace Corps Volunteer who served in Peru reviews "Antología poética" by Cesar Vallejo