César Vallejo
[Pre-modern Peru included regions now located in Bolivia, Brazil, and Chile. That Andean world was a rich find for Europeans who enslaved indigenous people to the tasks of rugged and poisonous mining. The central city of the Chimu kingdom had been the city of Chan-Chan, whose ruins are located near Trujillo, where Vallejo attended university and later was briefly imprisoned.]
[The quote reads “I was born on a day God was sick".]
[Rubén Dario (January 18, 1867 -- February 6, 1916) was a Nicaraguan poet and journalist and champion of the Modernist Movement in Spanish poetry. Neruda and Vallejo recognized him as a key influence on their early work. Dario remains especially beloved among readers of Spanish poetry.]
[The Black Heralds (1919) and Trilce (1922) are the only collections of poetry published during Vallejo's lifetime. All the rest has been gathered posthumously, with the help of Georgette Vallejo, the poet’s widow.]
[It is unlikely that Vallejo was acquainted with the writings of Franz Kafka (1883-1924), but the Peruvian’s work bears some striking resemblance to this master of anxiety and absurdity.]
[Vallejo was devoted to his mother, a figure of protection and care in several of his poems. Her death in 1918 was a severe blow. His mother’s features display the poet’s Chimu heritage.]
We associate Peru with images of colorful clothing, strikingly odd hats, brilliant mountain ranges, and llamas. A complete picture would include salt mining (pictured here) and poisonous work in the silver and nitrate mines. Vallejo grew up in the midst of all of this. Yet his poems, unlike those of Neruda, only rarely mention any of this and hardly depict nature at all. Despite his origins, Vallejo was an urban writer with little nostalgia for a lost paradise.
[Young Vallejo traveled in a crowd of writers and intellectuals in the city of Trujillo. A figure encouraging suspicion, Vallejo was imprisoned for 105 days, a shock that changed him forever. In the late 1920s in the struggle for the Spanish Republic, Vallejo became a Communist, traveled to Moscow, and wrote a primer on the emergence of the Soviet state.]
[Augusto B. Leguia, was President of Peru from 1919-1930. He brought order to a chaotic political scene, declaring a revolution and re-writing the nation’s constitution. He then ruled as a dictator, disregarding the liberal constitution he had authored. The ruling interests did well in those years, and Peru to this day continues to struggle over the proper distribution of its natural wealth.
[Lima, Peru, where Vallejo lived for a time, was a modern city where middle class people preferred modern European costumes and streetcars over colorful shawls and llamas.]
[The Paseo Pizarro in Trujillo, Peru" a crowded Street in the picturesque city where Vallejo, a country-boy, first experienced the city.]
Caesar Vallejo: Poetry in Peru by Stephen Zelnick
César Vallejo was born in the remote mountain village of Santiago de Chuco in 1892. He was the youngest of twelve children. He received a degree in Literature in 1915 from the University of Trujillo. In 1921, he was imprisoned and wrote his masterpiece, Trilce (1922), while incarcerated. Soon after his release, Vallejo left Peru, never to return. He died in Paris in 1938.
Before Peru was a nation with territorial boundaries, it was a Spanish dream of wealth and plunder. The Andean region, with its picturesque mountains, people, and creatures, was a maze of mines — silver, salt, guano, nitrates — and a few gleaming cities. At one time in Europe, something splendid was called “the real Peru.” By the time César Vallejo was born in 1892, that golden age was gone, along with Simon Bolivar’s quest for independence (1808–1830). What remained was squalor, political terror, and the violence of mines draining the life from its people.
César Vallejo would seem an unlikely figure to become a notable innovator in the history of Spanish poetry and later a member of the Paris art scene. His grandfathers were Catholic priests; his grandmothers, Chimu “Indians.” The youngest of twelve children, César was raised in a strict Catholic family. Vallejo was culturally adrift, a child of Europe in education, Chimu in appearance, and Peruvian in circumstance. A talented student, he was constantly leaving school for lack of funds. He studied Literature and European philosophy, but also medicine. Brilliant and broke, Vallejo worked briefly as an accountant at the mines, a witness to the harshness of the miners’ lives and the cruelty of the owners’ peonage system. Tutoring the pampered children of the wealthy was humiliating. Vallejo fell in love in the wrong places, with the daughters of families who could see only his Chimu features. When his beloved Otilia’s pregnancy became evident, she was whisked away to safety by her family.
In 1921, life turned fully against him. His mother had died, as had several of his dearest siblings. His poetry was hooted off the stage in a local theatre. Then he was arrested as a political terrorist and tossed into prison without formal charge or sentence. In that grim setting, Vallejo translated the alienated and deranged voice of modernity into Spanish. Vallejo’s masterpiece, Trilce (1922), is one of those eruptions of new style and sensibility that go unnoticed at first and then change everything. Vallejo fled Peru forever in 1923 and found his way to Madrid and Paris, where he joined such luminaries as Lorca, Dali, Buñuel, Neruda, and Picasso. His caricature — that sad fellow, chin propped on palm — has become an image of mid-1930s pain, of the defeat of culture and dignity in the Spanish Civil War.
Vallejo has often been compared with Charlie Chaplin in that famous pose of existential gloom. To understand what is special about Vallejo’s work, it may help to begin with a poem by the Nicaraguan Ruben Dario, himself an innovator and an inspiration to both Neruda and Vallejo.
Alla Lejos
Far Away
Buey que vi en mi niñez echando vaho un día
Ox of my childhood, steaming in
bajo el nicaragüense sol de encendidos oros,
the burning gold of Nicaragua’s sun,
en la hacienda fecunda, plena de la armonía
on rich plantation fields of tropical
del trópico; paloma de los bosques sonoros
harmony; dove of woods, with sounds
del viento, de las hachas, de los pájaros y toros
of the breeze, of axes, of birds, and wild
salvajes, yo os saludo, pues sois la vida mía.
bulls, I salute you both; you are my life.
Pesado buey, tú evocas la dulce madrugada
Great ox, you evoke the sweet morn
que llamaba a la ordeña de la vaca lechera,
that calls the cows for milking,
cuando era mi existencia toda blanca y rosada;
when all my life was white and rose;
y tú, paloma arrulladora y montañera,
and you, cooing mountain dove,
significas en mi primavera pasada
mark in the springtime of my past
todo lo que hay en la divina Primavera.
all that is of the divine Springtime.
[All translations by Stephen Zelnick]
Here is what most poetry readers expect: rhyme, easy hexameters, and poetic diction. Organized around the contrast between the weighty ox and the mercurial dove, “Far Away” is a masterpiece of compression and craft. The poem notes the loss of our “white and rose” life to a sour world of experience and assures us that childhood’s blessings are preserved in memory and in heaven’s prospect. Memory and hope enhance what seems lost, an old theme gracefully realized. Vallejo’s “Black Heralds” is otherwise:
Los Heraldos Negros
Black Heralds
Hay golpes en la vida tan fuertes . . . ¡Yo no sé!
There are blows in life so fierce ... I don’t know!
Golpes como del odio de Dios; como si ante ellos,
Blows as if from God’s hatred; as though before them
la resaca de todo lo sufrido se empozara en el alma.
the undertow of all one has suffered pooled in the soul.
¡Yo no sé!
I don’t know!
Son pocos; pero son . . . abren zanjas oscuras
They are few; but they exist ... they open dark trenches
en el rostro más fiero y en el lomo más fuerte.
in the fiercest face and in the strongest back.
Serán talvez los potros de bárbaros Atilas;
Perhaps they are the colts of barbarous Attilas,
o los heraldos negros que nos manda la Muerte.
or the black heralds Death sends us.
Son las caídas hondas de los Cristos del alma,
They are the deep falls of the Christs of the soul,
de alguna fe adorable que el Destino blasfema.
of some adorable faith that Destiny blasphemes.
Esos golpes sangrientos son las crepitaciones
Those bloody blows are the cracklings
de algún pan que en la puerta del horno se nos quema.
of some loaf burning for us in the oven door.
Y el hombre ... pobre ... ¡pobre!
And man ... poor man ... poor man!
Vuelve los ojos,
turns his eyes,
como cuando por sobre el hombro
as when, over the shoulder,
nos llama una palmada;
a tap calls to us;
vuelve los ojos locos,
he turns his crazed eyes,
y todo lo vivido
and all that has been lived
se empoza, como charco de culpa,
pools up, like a puddle of guilt,
en la mirada.
in the gaze.
Hay golpes en la vida, tan fuertes ... ¡Yo no sé!
There are blows in life, so fierce ... I don’t know!
“Black Heralds” is a harrowing poem. The images are photographically specific and erupt without structural permission: that bit of bread left smoking on the oven’s door, or the casual tap on the shoulder that reminds us of our guilt. It lacks rhyme and has no cohering design. Most shocking of all, the poem frustrates our wish for consolation. It is supposed to sum up neatly, like those honoured sonnets, with an octave’s worth of problem and a sestet’s worth of solution. Vallejo’s “I don’t know” is a blank, urban gesture, an offhand shrug. This is speech from a Beckett play: irregular, built on erupting thoughts and grim reflections. Vallejo’s urban immediacy rejects sonorous poetry in favour of an urgent voice.
“The Grown-ups” is autobiographical, naming Vallejo’s lost siblings and depicting his mother’s death as abandonment. The poem resembles a Kafka monologue, where the speaker knows the truth but chatters on to evade his fears. The line “obedient, and without a choice” sums up the absurdity. Instead of lyric lament, Vallejo gives us neurotic narrative, dark warnings peeking out from behind the child’s sweet imaginings: lollipop ships eclipsed by the horror image of passers-by doubled over in pain and “twanging” their terror along the darkened streets. The odd word “gangueando” haunts us.
Las personas mayores
The Grown-ups
¿a qué hora volverán?
When will they come back?
Da las seis el ciego Santiago,
Blind Santiago, the church bell, already
y ya está muy oscuro.
tolls six and it’s very dark.
Madre dijo que no demoraría.
Mother said she would not be late.
Aguedita, Nativa, Miguel,
Aguedita, Nativa, Miguel,
cuidado con ir por ahí, por donde
take care where you go, along where
acaban de pasar gangueando sus memorias
people pass twanging their memories,
dobladoras penas,
doubled over in pain,
hacia el silencioso corral, y por donde
toward the silent coops, where
las gallinas que se están acostando todavía,
the hens, still settling down,
se han espantado tanto.
have been rudely startled.
Mejor estemos aquí no más.
Better we stay here, no more than this.
Madre dijo que no demoraría.
Mother said she would not be long.
Ya no tengamos pena. Vamos viendo
Still, we shouldn’t worry. Let us watch
los barcos ¡el mío es más bonito de todos!
the boats — mine is the prettiest of all!
con los cuales jugamos todo el santo día,
with which we play all the blessed day,
sin pelearnos, como debe de ser:
without quarrelling, just as it should be:
han quedado en el pozo de agua, listos,
they have remained in the water pit, ready,
fletados de dulces para mañana.
freighted with sweets for tomorrow.
Aguardemos así, obedientes y sin más
Let us wait thus, obedient and with no
remedio, la vuelta, el desagravio
remedy, for their return, for the redress
de los mayores siempre delanteros,
of the grown-ups, always going ahead,
dejándonos en casa a los pequeños,
leaving us little ones at home,
como si también nosotros
as if we also
no pudiésemos partir.
could not leave.
Aguedita, Nativa, Miguel?
Aguedita, Nativa, Miguel?
Llamo, busco al tanteo en la oscuridad.
I call, I grope in the dark.
No me vayan a haber dejado solo,
They surely cannot have left me alone,
y el único recluso sea yo.
and I be the only prisoner.
(Trilce, III)
“The Suit I Wore Tomorrow” continues this drama of maternal abandonment and of hope fragmented in pain. Time disorganizes; mother becomes lover becomes god; everyday acts and objects acquire existential significance, and sentiment is dislodged from context. In place of a poem shaped into consequent meaning, we have a deranged dream, where Vallejo’s beloved Otilia Villanueva merges with the caring mother before acquiring the force of a protective god, clung to with dwindling faith.
El traje que vestí mañana
The Suit I Wore Tomorrow
no lo ha lavado mi lavandera:
my laundress has not washed it:
lo lavaba en sus venas otilinas,
she was washing it in her Otilian veins,
en el chorro de su corazón, y hoy no he
under the jet of her heart, and today I have not
de preguntarme si yo dejaba
stopped to ask myself whether I left
el traje turbio de injusticia.
the suit sullied with injustice.
Ahora que no hay quien vaya a las aguas,
Now that there is no one to go to the waters,
en mis falsillas encañona
to set piping in my facings,
el lienzo para emplumar, y todas las cosas
the linen to be feathered, and all the things
del velador de tanto qué será de mí,
of the keeper of so much “what will become of me,”
todas no están mías a mi lado.
none of them are mine at my side.
Quedaron de su propiedad,
They remained her property,
fratesadas, selladas con su trigueña bondad.
pressed and sealed with her wheat-brown goodness.
Y si supiera si ha de volver;
And if I knew whether she would return;
y si supiera qué mañana entrará
and if I knew on what morning she would come in
a entregarme las ropas lavadas, mi aquella
to hand me my washed clothes, that
lavandera del alma.
laundress of my soul.
Que mañana entrará
That tomorrow she would enter,
satisfecha, capulí de obrería, dichosa
contented, brown-berry of labour, happy
de probar que sí sabe, que sí puede
to prove that she knows, that she can
¡CÓMO NO VA A PODER!
HOW COULD SHE NOT!
azular y planchar todos los caos.
blue and iron out all the chaos.
(Trilce, VI)
The logic of time breaks down from the opening lines, as do the identities in this Freudian dream. The laundress is a sustaining source of life itself, washing his clothes pure with her blood; but she is also his beloved Otilia and Christ, who alone washes away injustices with His blood. And all this is figured, as in a mad dream out of Oliver Sacks, as a suit of clothes, a public display that hides and exposes our psychic drama.
The second stanza is clotted with the close specifics of tailoring, the speaker’s wandering consciousness unable to resist distraction. In place of anxiety faced directly, we have the technical detail of finishing work applied to a linen handkerchief. My translation simplifies terms like “falsillas encañona” (with the idea of “false or deceptive detail added from underneath”) and “emplumar” (literally “to feather”), terms a tailor would readily grasp. This distraction cannot, however, stave off the plaint of misery, “qué será de mí” (“what will become of me?”), the fear that the caretaker has abandoned him, a terror he cannot suppress.
The “laundress of my soul” is the source of care and abundance, the “wheat-brown goodness” of grain and the “brown-berry” fruitfulness he hopes will feed his life. The poem concludes in shrill self-assurance, not only that she is capable of “ironing out all the chaoses” but that she is ever near and ready to tend his needs. The wish, however, is bound by qualification: if she comes, he is sure she can accomplish utterly impossible things, tasks that would challenge the gods, let alone a mother armed only with iron and bleach.
For Vallejo, our inner life is devilled by uncertainty and tests our faith. We are tossed into life without cause or purpose and tormented by drives and emotions that overwhelm our efforts at rational ordering. At the heart of this cruel joke is the sexual act and the inability of men to make sense of it. Like death, any way we choose to look at it leaves us baffled. In “Vusco Volvvver” language dissolves, enacting the absurdity of mind chasing nature and stumbling about in the effort to voice the unthinkable.
Vusco volvvver de golpe el golpe.
I vant to rreturn blow for blow.
Sus dos hojas anchas, su válvula
Her two wide-folded leaves, her vavulva
que se abre en suculenta recepción
that opens up in succulent reception
de multiplicando a multiplicador,
from multiplied to multiplier,
su condición excelente para el placer,
her condition excellent for pleasure,
todo avía verdad.
all fully prepared.
Busco volvver de golpe el golpe.
I wann to rreturn blow for blow.
A su halago, enveto bolivarianas fragosidades
At her caress, to tempt Bolivarian risks
a treintidós cables y sus múltiples,
at thirty-two tow-lines and their multiples,
se arrequintan pelo por pelo
arranged thread by thread about
soberanos belfos, los dos tomos de la Obra,
superb lips, two tomes of the collected Works,
y no vivo entonces ausencia,
and live, then, neither absent
ni al tacto.
nor to touch.
Fallo volver de golpe el golpe.
Phallung to return blow for blow.
No ensillaremos jamás el toroso Vaveo
we never mount the bullish Drooel
de egoísmo y de aquel ludir mortal
of egoism and that mortal chafe
de sábana,
of the bed-sheet,
desque la mujer esta
from what woman is ...
¡cuánto pesa de general!
goodness, how much she weighs!
Y hembra es el alma de la ausente.
And female is the soul of absence.
Y hembra es el alma mía.
And female is my soul.
(Trilce, IX)
This phantasmagoria of explosive puns recalls James Joyce. The bent word unleashes possibilities hidden in the supposed reality to which language sentences us. In the opening lines, we have three words that do not exist: “vusco”, “volvvver”, and “válvula”. While Spanish is meticulous with vowel sounds, its consonants vary; the b/v distinction lands somewhere between. So “busco” becomes “vusco”, a joke played throughout the poem. “Volver” means to return, or “turn again”, so “volvvver” becomes a visual pun. “Válvula” collapses “valve” and “vulva”, an example of the poem’s strategy of confusing intimate bodily structures with machine parts. Later “Fallo” (“I fail”) implicates “falo” (“phallus”) in a stanza imagining the adventures of that slavering bullish apparatus in the “mortal chafe of the bed-sheet” — sábana (“sheet”) is also the savannah where “toro” is more at home and at ease.
The poem employs the language of engineering and mathematics, of mechanisms and machines, yet the terms are salacious and confusing — does that say what I think it says? We are accustomed to clinical and clowning mentions of vaginas, but imagine the shock in a reticent Spanish community, church-ridden and unfamiliar with our smutty frankness. Vallejo had been a medical student, and his poems reflect his technical account of the body, but this poem goes further. Here the mind stumbles in figuring the force of the sexual body and the body’s shocking reality. This struggle culminates in the speaker’s surprise at the weight of the female body. This is not a comment about hefty women but about the dislocation of the pornographic imagination, where bodies become parts and sex becomes idealized and weightless, far from the luxuriant fact of the female body.
Vallejo’s arrest and imprisonment shocked him. Although he later became an active Communist, in 1921 he was not political. He enjoyed the intellectual and artistic circles of the towns, but his bohemian appearance made him a subject of suspicion among the mine owners, who targeted the long-haired fellow with dark features as an outside agitator. When a department store in Trujillo burned down, Vallejo was arrested. His imprisonment in a dank prison, among criminals and madmen, without trial or sentence, terrified him. The world seemed accidental and deadly, and he himself frail and powerless. “The Four Walls” tells his story of despair.
Oh las cuatro paredes de la celda.
Oh the four walls of the cell.
Ah las cuatro paredes albicantes
Ah the four whitened walls
que sin remedio dan al mismo número.
that remorselessly number the same.
Criadero de nervios, mala brecha,
Nursery of nerves, evil arrangement,
por sus cuatro rincones cómo arranca
along its four corners as it tears
las diarias aherrojadas extremidades.
at my daily fettered limbs.
Amorosa llavera de innumerables llaves,
Loving jaileress of the countless keys,
si estuvieras aquí, si vieras hasta
if only you were here, here to see
qué hora son cuatro estas paredes.
what hour these four walls become.
Contra ellas seríamos contigo, los dos,
Against them we would be, with you, the two of us,
más dos que nunca. Y ni lloraras,
more than ever two. And would you not weep,
di, libertadora!
speak, liberator!
Ah las paredes de la celda.
Ah, the walls of the cell.
De ellas me duele entretanto, más
From them there hurts me, meanwhile, even more
las dos largas que tienen esta noche
the two long walls that tonight possess
algo de madres que ya muertas
something of mothers who, already dead,
llevan por bromurados declives,
lead, through bromidic slopes,
a un niño de la mano cada una.
a child by the hand, each one.
Y sólo yo me voy quedando,
And only I am left behind,
con la diestra, que hace por ambas manos,
with my right hand, which serves for both hands,
en alto, en busca de terciario brazo
raised high, in search of a third arm
que ha de pupilar, entre mi dónde y mi cuándo,
that must tutor, between my where and my when,
esta mayoría inválida de hombre.
this crippled majority of man.
(Trilce, XVIII)
These themes are familiar: abandonment, the appeal to a rescuing mother, the sense of impending madness, loneliness, and the claim of being reduced to a “crippled manhood.” Several other poems in Trilce and after dramatize this helplessness, and recall Kafka’s theme of interrogation, which was becoming more than a literary trope as the century devolved into its grim politics. “Payroll of Bones” dramatizes a moment of terror under interrogation by a power answerable to no standard of reason.
Nómina de huesos
Payroll of Bones
Se pedía a grandes voces:
They demanded, shouting in mighty voices:
--Que muestre las dos manos a la vez.
--Let him show both hands at the same time.
Y esto no fue posible.
And this was not possible.
--Que, mientras llora, le tomen
--While he weeps, let them take
la medida de sus pasos.
the measure of his paces.
Y esto no fue posible.
And this was not possible.
--Que piense un pensamiento idéntico,
--Let him think an identical thought
en el tiempo en que un cero permanece inútil.
at the same time in which
a zero remains useless.
Y esto no fue posible.
And this was not possible.
--Que haga una locura.
--Let him do something crazy.
Y esto no fue posible.
And this was not possible.
--Que entre él y otro hombre semejante
--Let a crowd of men resembling him
a él, se interponga una muchedumbre
come between him and another
de hombres como él.
man just like him.
Y esto no fue posible.
And this was not possible.
--Que le comparen consigo mismo.
--Let them compare him with himself.
Y esto no fue posible.
And this was not possible.
--Que le llamen, en fin, por su nombre.
--Let them call him, at last, by his name.
Y esto no fue posible.
And this was not possible.
This Kafkaesque inquisition reduces the accused to a nameless, irrational thing before the mighty voices of power, voices that respect no standard of sanity or compassion. In “Y no me digan nada” (“Don’t Say Anything to Me”), the effort of the accused to fight back disintegrates into ludicrous comic gestures.
Y no me digan nada
Don’t Say Anything to Me
Y no me digan nada,
And don’t say anything to me,
que uno puede matar perfectamente,
since one can kill perfectly,
ya que, sudando tinta,
since, sweating printer’s ink,
uno hace cuanto puede, no me digan ...
one does what one can; don’t say anything to me ...
Volveremos, señores, a vernos con manzanas,
We will meet again, good sirs, with apples;
tarde la criatura pasará,
late the creature will pass by;
la expresión de Aristóteles armada
the expression of Aristotle armed
de grandes corazones de madera,
with great hearts of wood;
la de Heráclito injerta en la de Marx,
that of Heraclitus grafted onto that of Marx,
la del suave sonando rudamente ...
that of the gentle one sounding roughly ...
Es lo que bien narraba mi garganta:
That is what my throat was telling so well:
uno puede matar perfectamente.
one can kill perfectly.
Señores,
Good sirs,
Caballeros, volveremos a vernos sin paquetes;
Gentlemen, we will meet again without packages;
hasta entonces exijo, exigiré de mi flaqueza
until then I demand, I will demand of my weakness,
el acento del día, que,
the accent of the day, which,
según veo, estuvo ya esperándome en mi lecho.
as I see it, was already waiting for me in my bed.
Y exijo del sombrero la infausta analogía,
And I demand of the hat its ill-fated analogy,
del recuerdo,
of memory,
ya que, a veces, asumo con éxito,
since, at times, I assume with success
mi inmensidad lloranda,
my immensity of weeping;
ya que, a veces, me ahogo en la voz de mi vecino
since, at times, I drown in my neighbor’s voice
y padezco
and suffer,
contando en maíces los años,
counting the years in kernels of corn,
cepillando mi ropa al son de un muerto
brushing my clothes to the sound of a dead man
o sentado borracho en mi ataúd ...
or sitting drunk in my coffin ...
The accused opens with threats, warning his tormentors with violence in an impersonal gangster voice (“one can kill perfectly”). But his oration disintegrates into a clownish, baggy-pants harangue, invoking the great philosophers, back-pedalling in defense of his rhetoric, and finally admitting his own powerlessness. Faced with the force of law, of police, and of the state, the citizen has no choice but to be obedient or appear ridiculous, even to himself.
Vallejo’s complaint extends beyond social justice. Our culture fails to reconcile drives and passions, with tragic results. But there is a deeper ill: the failure of religious faith to stand against our humiliations and suffering. For Vallejo, this “pain without end” results from “being born this way, without cause.” This gentle poem of failed love runs off the rails and ends in existential despair.
Se acabó el extraño, con quien, tarde
It’s over with that stranger with whom,
la noche, regresabas parla y parla.
late at night, you returned jabbering.
Ya no habrá quien me aguarde,
Now there will be no one waiting for me,
dispuesto mi lugar, bueno lo malo.
my place prepared, for better or worse.
Se acabó la calurosa tarde;
The warm afternoon is over;
tu gran bahía y tu clamor; la charla
your great bay and your clamour; the chatter
con tu madre acabada
with your all-too-perfect mother
que nos brindaba un té lleno de tarde.
who brought us a tea full of afternoon.
Se acabó todo al fin: las vacaciones,
Everything ended at last: the holidays,
tu obediencia de pechos, tu manera
your obedient breasts, your way
de pedirme que no me vaya fuera.
of asking me not to go away.
Y se acabó el diminutivo, para
And the diminutive ended too, for
mi mayoría en el dolor sin fin,
my majority in pain without end,
y nuestro haber nacido así sin causa.
and our having been born thus, without cause.
(Trilce, XXXIV)
In this tidy sonnet, a form unusual for Vallejo, perspective shifts confusingly. What ought to be a triumph, the rival discarded, instead invites an unpleasant reflection in which the victor realizes the emptiness of his prize. The courtship is a barren charade of pleasantries, of polite tea “full of afternoon.” Even the sexual allure is obedient to recipe, as is the little drama of her pleading. Instead, his victory brings cosmic disgust.
This theme of the fierce gravity of social convention, of lost souls condemned to mechanical ritual, receives Vallejo’s comic treatment in “Height and Hair”:
Altura y pelos
Height and Hair
¿Quién no tiene su vestido azul?
Who doesn’t have his corporate blue suit?
¿Quién no almuerza y no toma el tranvía,
Who doesn’t breakfast and take the tram
con su cigarrillo contratado y su dolor de bolsillo?
with his assigned cigarette and his pocket
full of pain?
¡Yo que tan sólo he nacido!
I who was born so alone!
¡Yo que tan sólo he nacido!
I who was born so alone!
¿Quién no escribe una carta?
Who doesn’t write a postcard?
¿Quién no habla de un asunto muy importante,
Who doesn’t talk of “a very important matter,”
muriendo de costumbre y llorando de oído?
dying by formula and crying by ear?
¡Yo que solamente he nacido!
I who only was born!
¡Yo que solamente he nacido!
I who only was born!
¿Quién no se llama Carlos o cualquier otra cosa?
Who is not named Carlos, or some damn thing?
¿Quién al gato no dice gato gato?
Who on seeing a cat does not say “kitty, kitty”?
¡Ay! yo que tan sólo he nacido solamente!
Ah! I who was only born so alone!
¡Ay! yo que tan sólo he nacido solamente!
Ah! I who was only born so alone!
Vallejo’s is a familiar romantic complaint: the alert and sensitive soul, appalled at the mechanical responses of the conventional world. His mockery, however, is enjoyable, as in “Who is not named Carlos, or some damn thing? / Who on seeing a cat does not say ‘kitty, kitty’?” This is a 19th-century theme (Wordsworth, Melville, Dostoevsky, et al.), the lonely artist-philosopher stranded among wax figures incapable of discovering their souls. But Vallejo finds a way to treat this in a crisp little comedy.
The spirit has been tricked into empty imitation; far worse, “Hope Cries Amidst Cottons” offers a chill image of the struggle for faith in a world of accident, injustice, and pain:
Esperanza plañe entre algodones
Hope Cries Amidst Cottons
Aristas roncas uniformadas
A persistent hoarse rasp
de amenazas tejidas de esporas magníficas
of menacing tissue woven from splendid spores
y con porteros botones innatos.
and with built-in porters and messengers.
¿Se luden seis de sol?
Do they scratch at six in the morning?
Natividad. Cállate, miedo.
Nativity. Be silent, fear.
Cristiano espero, espero siempre
Like a Christian I wait, I wait always
de hinojos en la piedra circular que está
on bended knee upon this circular rock
en las cien esquinas de esta suerte
in the hundred corners of this luck
tan vaga a donde asomo.
so vague wherever I appear.
Y Dios sobresaltado nos oprime
And God, startled, presses upon us
el pulso, grave, mudo,
the pulse, grave, mute,
y como padre a su pequeña,
and like a father to his little daughter,
apenas,
barely,
pero apenas, entreabre los sangrientos algodones
but barely opens the bloody cottons
y entre sus dedos toma a la esperanza.
and between his fingers takes up hope.
Señor, lo quiero yo ...
Lord, I want this ...
Y basta!
And enough!
(Trilce, XXXI)
This is a scene Vallejo, the medical student, likely witnessed in hospitals in Peru crammed with victims of tuberculosis, the dread disease that took his brothers and sister. Mentions of Christianity are rare in his poetry, but here the speaker prays on bended knee, placed on the earth, “this circular rock,” for no reason and in a world where luck always fails. He imagines God the Father plucking hope from the bloody cotton and comforting his little daughter. The prayer is terse but certain.
Vallejo writes occasionally about being a poet. In one of his interrogation poems, he threatens his tormentors with printers’ ink, his writing a weapon against madness. “Qué me da” reflects the uncertainty of his powers and his confusion, wielding his craft with only limited control, in a state of ongoing absurdity, in a middle condition in which he is only partially alive and awake and in the world.
¿Qué me da?
What Gives?
¿Qué me da, que me azoto con la línea
What’s got into me, that I whip myself with the line
y creo que me sigue, al trote, el punto?
and believe the period comes trotting after me?
¿Qué me da, que me he puesto
What’s got into me, that I have placed
en los hombros un huevo en vez de un manto?
an egg on my shoulders instead of a cloak?
¿Qué me ha dado, que vivo?
What’s gotten into me, that I live?
¿Qué me ha dado, que muero?
What’s gotten into me, that I die?
¿Qué me da, que tengo ojos?
What’s got into me, that I have eyes?
¿Qué me da, que tengo alma?
What’s got into me, that I have a soul?
¿Qué me da, que se acaba en mí mi prójimo
What’s got into me, that my neighbour ends in me
y empieza en mi carrillo el rol del viento?
and the role of the wind begins in my cheek?
¿Qué me ha dado, que cuento mis dos lágrimas,
What’s gotten into me, that I count my two tears,
sollozo tierra y cuelgo el horizonte?
sob the earth, and hang the horizon?
¿Qué me ha dado, que lloro de no poder llorar
What’s gotten into me, that I cry at not being able to cry
y río de lo poco que he reído?
and laugh at how little I have laughed?
¿Qué me da, que ni vivo ni muero?
What’s got into me, that I neither live nor die?
In his early and best-known work, César Vallejo is a morose clown, mixing his dreadful certainties of darkness with the casual chatter of everyday life. His art is compact and tense, in language impatient with fancy dress. This is no languid tea-party filled with afternoon. He does not hide his distress in romantic notions of nature and lost gardens, of sonorous language and classical evocations. We are ill-made creatures who strive for order and consequence, and both the struggle and the failure take form out there in the brusque language of the streets and in the swarm of gestures of thought that stage the interior drama of our fractured being.
In the Paris years that follow, Vallejo turns to the European crisis, his promise of Communism, and the bloody struggle in Spain to construct a human future. But that is another story for another time.
Bibliography
Brosens, Peter, and Jessica Woodworth. *Altiplano: Fragments of Grace*. Bo Films, 2009. [This lovely film evokes the beauty and pain of the Andean “high plains.”]
Eshelman, Clayton, and José Rubia Barcia. *César Vallejo: The Complete Posthumous Poetry*. University of California Press, 1980. [Winner of the 1979 National Book Award, this extraordinary collection rescues Vallejo’s unpublished works and puts them in good order. The translations are excellent and bold, and reflect the hard work involved in reconstructing Vallejo’s difficult language and local usage.]
Gonzalez Vlaña, Eduardo. *César Vallejo’s Season in Hell*. Translation by Stephen M. Hart et al. Axiara Editions, 2015. [A novel that reconstructs Vallejo’s experiences during his Peruvian years, especially his imprisonment. Sources for these events are scant, but this powerful book is imaginative and convincing.]
Malanga, Gerard. *Malanga Chasing Vallejo*. Three Rooms Press, 2014. [Malanga’s translations, like my own, attempt to make Vallejo more accessible, and sometimes sacrifice his complexity in order to offer an easier reading experience. Malanga’s work is intelligent and graceful.]
Smith, Michael, and Valentine Gianuzzi. *César Vallejo: The Complete Poems*. Shearsman Books, 2012. [This is now the definitive collection and translation in English, and includes not only the posthumous work but Vallejo’s published work as well. The translations are precise and often creative. The book’s apparatus is particularly helpful.]
All translations are by Stephen Zelnick, Emeritus Professor, Temple University, with a great debt to previous translators. Join the Neruda Seminar on Facebook for continuing discussion of Latin American poetry.
Before Peru was a nation with territorial boundaries, it was a Spanish dream of wealth and plunder. The Andean region, with its picturesque mountains, people, and creatures, was a maze of mines — silver, salt, guano, nitrates — and a few gleaming cities. At one time in Europe, something splendid was called “the real Peru.” By the time César Vallejo was born in 1892, that golden age was gone, along with Simon Bolivar’s quest for independence (1808–1830). What remained was squalor, political terror, and the violence of mines draining the life from its people.
César Vallejo would seem an unlikely figure to become a notable innovator in the history of Spanish poetry and later a member of the Paris art scene. His grandfathers were Catholic priests; his grandmothers, Chimu “Indians.” The youngest of twelve children, César was raised in a strict Catholic family. Vallejo was culturally adrift, a child of Europe in education, Chimu in appearance, and Peruvian in circumstance. A talented student, he was constantly leaving school for lack of funds. He studied Literature and European philosophy, but also medicine. Brilliant and broke, Vallejo worked briefly as an accountant at the mines, a witness to the harshness of the miners’ lives and the cruelty of the owners’ peonage system. Tutoring the pampered children of the wealthy was humiliating. Vallejo fell in love in the wrong places, with the daughters of families who could see only his Chimu features. When his beloved Otilia’s pregnancy became evident, she was whisked away to safety by her family.
In 1921, life turned fully against him. His mother had died, as had several of his dearest siblings. His poetry was hooted off the stage in a local theatre. Then he was arrested as a political terrorist and tossed into prison without formal charge or sentence. In that grim setting, Vallejo translated the alienated and deranged voice of modernity into Spanish. Vallejo’s masterpiece, Trilce (1922), is one of those eruptions of new style and sensibility that go unnoticed at first and then change everything. Vallejo fled Peru forever in 1923 and found his way to Madrid and Paris, where he joined such luminaries as Lorca, Dali, Buñuel, Neruda, and Picasso. His caricature — that sad fellow, chin propped on palm — has become an image of mid-1930s pain, of the defeat of culture and dignity in the Spanish Civil War.
Vallejo has often been compared with Charlie Chaplin in that famous pose of existential gloom. To understand what is special about Vallejo’s work, it may help to begin with a poem by the Nicaraguan Ruben Dario, himself an innovator and an inspiration to both Neruda and Vallejo.
Alla Lejos
Far Away
Buey que vi en mi niñez echando vaho un día
Ox of my childhood, steaming in
bajo el nicaragüense sol de encendidos oros,
the burning gold of Nicaragua’s sun,
en la hacienda fecunda, plena de la armonía
on rich plantation fields of tropical
del trópico; paloma de los bosques sonoros
harmony; dove of woods, with sounds
del viento, de las hachas, de los pájaros y toros
of the breeze, of axes, of birds, and wild
salvajes, yo os saludo, pues sois la vida mía.
bulls, I salute you both; you are my life.
Pesado buey, tú evocas la dulce madrugada
Great ox, you evoke the sweet morn
que llamaba a la ordeña de la vaca lechera,
that calls the cows for milking,
cuando era mi existencia toda blanca y rosada;
when all my life was white and rose;
y tú, paloma arrulladora y montañera,
and you, cooing mountain dove,
significas en mi primavera pasada
mark in the springtime of my past
todo lo que hay en la divina Primavera.
all that is of the divine Springtime.
[All translations by Stephen Zelnick]
Here is what most poetry readers expect: rhyme, easy hexameters, and poetic diction. Organized around the contrast between the weighty ox and the mercurial dove, “Far Away” is a masterpiece of compression and craft. The poem notes the loss of our “white and rose” life to a sour world of experience and assures us that childhood’s blessings are preserved in memory and in heaven’s prospect. Memory and hope enhance what seems lost, an old theme gracefully realized. Vallejo’s “Black Heralds” is otherwise:
Los Heraldos Negros
Black Heralds
Hay golpes en la vida tan fuertes . . . ¡Yo no sé!
There are blows in life so fierce ... I don’t know!
Golpes como del odio de Dios; como si ante ellos,
Blows as if from God’s hatred; as though before them
la resaca de todo lo sufrido se empozara en el alma.
the undertow of all one has suffered pooled in the soul.
¡Yo no sé!
I don’t know!
Son pocos; pero son . . . abren zanjas oscuras
They are few; but they exist ... they open dark trenches
en el rostro más fiero y en el lomo más fuerte.
in the fiercest face and in the strongest back.
Serán talvez los potros de bárbaros Atilas;
Perhaps they are the colts of barbarous Attilas,
o los heraldos negros que nos manda la Muerte.
or the black heralds Death sends us.
Son las caídas hondas de los Cristos del alma,
They are the deep falls of the Christs of the soul,
de alguna fe adorable que el Destino blasfema.
of some adorable faith that Destiny blasphemes.
Esos golpes sangrientos son las crepitaciones
Those bloody blows are the cracklings
de algún pan que en la puerta del horno se nos quema.
of some loaf burning for us in the oven door.
Y el hombre ... pobre ... ¡pobre!
And man ... poor man ... poor man!
Vuelve los ojos,
turns his eyes,
como cuando por sobre el hombro
as when, over the shoulder,
nos llama una palmada;
a tap calls to us;
vuelve los ojos locos,
he turns his crazed eyes,
y todo lo vivido
and all that has been lived
se empoza, como charco de culpa,
pools up, like a puddle of guilt,
en la mirada.
in the gaze.
Hay golpes en la vida, tan fuertes ... ¡Yo no sé!
There are blows in life, so fierce ... I don’t know!
“Black Heralds” is a harrowing poem. The images are photographically specific and erupt without structural permission: that bit of bread left smoking on the oven’s door, or the casual tap on the shoulder that reminds us of our guilt. It lacks rhyme and has no cohering design. Most shocking of all, the poem frustrates our wish for consolation. It is supposed to sum up neatly, like those honoured sonnets, with an octave’s worth of problem and a sestet’s worth of solution. Vallejo’s “I don’t know” is a blank, urban gesture, an offhand shrug. This is speech from a Beckett play: irregular, built on erupting thoughts and grim reflections. Vallejo’s urban immediacy rejects sonorous poetry in favour of an urgent voice.
“The Grown-ups” is autobiographical, naming Vallejo’s lost siblings and depicting his mother’s death as abandonment. The poem resembles a Kafka monologue, where the speaker knows the truth but chatters on to evade his fears. The line “obedient, and without a choice” sums up the absurdity. Instead of lyric lament, Vallejo gives us neurotic narrative, dark warnings peeking out from behind the child’s sweet imaginings: lollipop ships eclipsed by the horror image of passers-by doubled over in pain and “twanging” their terror along the darkened streets. The odd word “gangueando” haunts us.
Las personas mayores
The Grown-ups
¿a qué hora volverán?
When will they come back?
Da las seis el ciego Santiago,
Blind Santiago, the church bell, already
y ya está muy oscuro.
tolls six and it’s very dark.
Madre dijo que no demoraría.
Mother said she would not be late.
Aguedita, Nativa, Miguel,
Aguedita, Nativa, Miguel,
cuidado con ir por ahí, por donde
take care where you go, along where
acaban de pasar gangueando sus memorias
people pass twanging their memories,
dobladoras penas,
doubled over in pain,
hacia el silencioso corral, y por donde
toward the silent coops, where
las gallinas que se están acostando todavía,
the hens, still settling down,
se han espantado tanto.
have been rudely startled.
Mejor estemos aquí no más.
Better we stay here, no more than this.
Madre dijo que no demoraría.
Mother said she would not be long.
Ya no tengamos pena. Vamos viendo
Still, we shouldn’t worry. Let us watch
los barcos ¡el mío es más bonito de todos!
the boats — mine is the prettiest of all!
con los cuales jugamos todo el santo día,
with which we play all the blessed day,
sin pelearnos, como debe de ser:
without quarrelling, just as it should be:
han quedado en el pozo de agua, listos,
they have remained in the water pit, ready,
fletados de dulces para mañana.
freighted with sweets for tomorrow.
Aguardemos así, obedientes y sin más
Let us wait thus, obedient and with no
remedio, la vuelta, el desagravio
remedy, for their return, for the redress
de los mayores siempre delanteros,
of the grown-ups, always going ahead,
dejándonos en casa a los pequeños,
leaving us little ones at home,
como si también nosotros
as if we also
no pudiésemos partir.
could not leave.
Aguedita, Nativa, Miguel?
Aguedita, Nativa, Miguel?
Llamo, busco al tanteo en la oscuridad.
I call, I grope in the dark.
No me vayan a haber dejado solo,
They surely cannot have left me alone,
y el único recluso sea yo.
and I be the only prisoner.
(Trilce, III)
“The Suit I Wore Tomorrow” continues this drama of maternal abandonment and of hope fragmented in pain. Time disorganizes; mother becomes lover becomes god; everyday acts and objects acquire existential significance, and sentiment is dislodged from context. In place of a poem shaped into consequent meaning, we have a deranged dream, where Vallejo’s beloved Otilia Villanueva merges with the caring mother before acquiring the force of a protective god, clung to with dwindling faith.
El traje que vestí mañana
The Suit I Wore Tomorrow
no lo ha lavado mi lavandera:
my laundress has not washed it:
lo lavaba en sus venas otilinas,
she was washing it in her Otilian veins,
en el chorro de su corazón, y hoy no he
under the jet of her heart, and today I have not
de preguntarme si yo dejaba
stopped to ask myself whether I left
el traje turbio de injusticia.
the suit sullied with injustice.
Ahora que no hay quien vaya a las aguas,
Now that there is no one to go to the waters,
en mis falsillas encañona
to set piping in my facings,
el lienzo para emplumar, y todas las cosas
the linen to be feathered, and all the things
del velador de tanto qué será de mí,
of the keeper of so much “what will become of me,”
todas no están mías a mi lado.
none of them are mine at my side.
Quedaron de su propiedad,
They remained her property,
fratesadas, selladas con su trigueña bondad.
pressed and sealed with her wheat-brown goodness.
Y si supiera si ha de volver;
And if I knew whether she would return;
y si supiera qué mañana entrará
and if I knew on what morning she would come in
a entregarme las ropas lavadas, mi aquella
to hand me my washed clothes, that
lavandera del alma.
laundress of my soul.
Que mañana entrará
That tomorrow she would enter,
satisfecha, capulí de obrería, dichosa
contented, brown-berry of labour, happy
de probar que sí sabe, que sí puede
to prove that she knows, that she can
¡CÓMO NO VA A PODER!
HOW COULD SHE NOT!
azular y planchar todos los caos.
blue and iron out all the chaos.
(Trilce, VI)
The logic of time breaks down from the opening lines, as do the identities in this Freudian dream. The laundress is a sustaining source of life itself, washing his clothes pure with her blood; but she is also his beloved Otilia and Christ, who alone washes away injustices with His blood. And all this is figured, as in a mad dream out of Oliver Sacks, as a suit of clothes, a public display that hides and exposes our psychic drama.
The second stanza is clotted with the close specifics of tailoring, the speaker’s wandering consciousness unable to resist distraction. In place of anxiety faced directly, we have the technical detail of finishing work applied to a linen handkerchief. My translation simplifies terms like “falsillas encañona” (with the idea of “false or deceptive detail added from underneath”) and “emplumar” (literally “to feather”), terms a tailor would readily grasp. This distraction cannot, however, stave off the plaint of misery, “qué será de mí” (“what will become of me?”), the fear that the caretaker has abandoned him, a terror he cannot suppress.
The “laundress of my soul” is the source of care and abundance, the “wheat-brown goodness” of grain and the “brown-berry” fruitfulness he hopes will feed his life. The poem concludes in shrill self-assurance, not only that she is capable of “ironing out all the chaoses” but that she is ever near and ready to tend his needs. The wish, however, is bound by qualification: if she comes, he is sure she can accomplish utterly impossible things, tasks that would challenge the gods, let alone a mother armed only with iron and bleach.
For Vallejo, our inner life is devilled by uncertainty and tests our faith. We are tossed into life without cause or purpose and tormented by drives and emotions that overwhelm our efforts at rational ordering. At the heart of this cruel joke is the sexual act and the inability of men to make sense of it. Like death, any way we choose to look at it leaves us baffled. In “Vusco Volvvver” language dissolves, enacting the absurdity of mind chasing nature and stumbling about in the effort to voice the unthinkable.
Vusco volvvver de golpe el golpe.
I vant to rreturn blow for blow.
Sus dos hojas anchas, su válvula
Her two wide-folded leaves, her vavulva
que se abre en suculenta recepción
that opens up in succulent reception
de multiplicando a multiplicador,
from multiplied to multiplier,
su condición excelente para el placer,
her condition excellent for pleasure,
todo avía verdad.
all fully prepared.
Busco volvver de golpe el golpe.
I wann to rreturn blow for blow.
A su halago, enveto bolivarianas fragosidades
At her caress, to tempt Bolivarian risks
a treintidós cables y sus múltiples,
at thirty-two tow-lines and their multiples,
se arrequintan pelo por pelo
arranged thread by thread about
soberanos belfos, los dos tomos de la Obra,
superb lips, two tomes of the collected Works,
y no vivo entonces ausencia,
and live, then, neither absent
ni al tacto.
nor to touch.
Fallo volver de golpe el golpe.
Phallung to return blow for blow.
No ensillaremos jamás el toroso Vaveo
we never mount the bullish Drooel
de egoísmo y de aquel ludir mortal
of egoism and that mortal chafe
de sábana,
of the bed-sheet,
desque la mujer esta
from what woman is ...
¡cuánto pesa de general!
goodness, how much she weighs!
Y hembra es el alma de la ausente.
And female is the soul of absence.
Y hembra es el alma mía.
And female is my soul.
(Trilce, IX)
This phantasmagoria of explosive puns recalls James Joyce. The bent word unleashes possibilities hidden in the supposed reality to which language sentences us. In the opening lines, we have three words that do not exist: “vusco”, “volvvver”, and “válvula”. While Spanish is meticulous with vowel sounds, its consonants vary; the b/v distinction lands somewhere between. So “busco” becomes “vusco”, a joke played throughout the poem. “Volver” means to return, or “turn again”, so “volvvver” becomes a visual pun. “Válvula” collapses “valve” and “vulva”, an example of the poem’s strategy of confusing intimate bodily structures with machine parts. Later “Fallo” (“I fail”) implicates “falo” (“phallus”) in a stanza imagining the adventures of that slavering bullish apparatus in the “mortal chafe of the bed-sheet” — sábana (“sheet”) is also the savannah where “toro” is more at home and at ease.
The poem employs the language of engineering and mathematics, of mechanisms and machines, yet the terms are salacious and confusing — does that say what I think it says? We are accustomed to clinical and clowning mentions of vaginas, but imagine the shock in a reticent Spanish community, church-ridden and unfamiliar with our smutty frankness. Vallejo had been a medical student, and his poems reflect his technical account of the body, but this poem goes further. Here the mind stumbles in figuring the force of the sexual body and the body’s shocking reality. This struggle culminates in the speaker’s surprise at the weight of the female body. This is not a comment about hefty women but about the dislocation of the pornographic imagination, where bodies become parts and sex becomes idealized and weightless, far from the luxuriant fact of the female body.
Vallejo’s arrest and imprisonment shocked him. Although he later became an active Communist, in 1921 he was not political. He enjoyed the intellectual and artistic circles of the towns, but his bohemian appearance made him a subject of suspicion among the mine owners, who targeted the long-haired fellow with dark features as an outside agitator. When a department store in Trujillo burned down, Vallejo was arrested. His imprisonment in a dank prison, among criminals and madmen, without trial or sentence, terrified him. The world seemed accidental and deadly, and he himself frail and powerless. “The Four Walls” tells his story of despair.
Oh las cuatro paredes de la celda.
Oh the four walls of the cell.
Ah las cuatro paredes albicantes
Ah the four whitened walls
que sin remedio dan al mismo número.
that remorselessly number the same.
Criadero de nervios, mala brecha,
Nursery of nerves, evil arrangement,
por sus cuatro rincones cómo arranca
along its four corners as it tears
las diarias aherrojadas extremidades.
at my daily fettered limbs.
Amorosa llavera de innumerables llaves,
Loving jaileress of the countless keys,
si estuvieras aquí, si vieras hasta
if only you were here, here to see
qué hora son cuatro estas paredes.
what hour these four walls become.
Contra ellas seríamos contigo, los dos,
Against them we would be, with you, the two of us,
más dos que nunca. Y ni lloraras,
more than ever two. And would you not weep,
di, libertadora!
speak, liberator!
Ah las paredes de la celda.
Ah, the walls of the cell.
De ellas me duele entretanto, más
From them there hurts me, meanwhile, even more
las dos largas que tienen esta noche
the two long walls that tonight possess
algo de madres que ya muertas
something of mothers who, already dead,
llevan por bromurados declives,
lead, through bromidic slopes,
a un niño de la mano cada una.
a child by the hand, each one.
Y sólo yo me voy quedando,
And only I am left behind,
con la diestra, que hace por ambas manos,
with my right hand, which serves for both hands,
en alto, en busca de terciario brazo
raised high, in search of a third arm
que ha de pupilar, entre mi dónde y mi cuándo,
that must tutor, between my where and my when,
esta mayoría inválida de hombre.
this crippled majority of man.
(Trilce, XVIII)
These themes are familiar: abandonment, the appeal to a rescuing mother, the sense of impending madness, loneliness, and the claim of being reduced to a “crippled manhood.” Several other poems in Trilce and after dramatize this helplessness, and recall Kafka’s theme of interrogation, which was becoming more than a literary trope as the century devolved into its grim politics. “Payroll of Bones” dramatizes a moment of terror under interrogation by a power answerable to no standard of reason.
Nómina de huesos
Payroll of Bones
Se pedía a grandes voces:
They demanded, shouting in mighty voices:
--Que muestre las dos manos a la vez.
--Let him show both hands at the same time.
Y esto no fue posible.
And this was not possible.
--Que, mientras llora, le tomen
--While he weeps, let them take
la medida de sus pasos.
the measure of his paces.
Y esto no fue posible.
And this was not possible.
--Que piense un pensamiento idéntico,
--Let him think an identical thought
en el tiempo en que un cero permanece inútil.
at the same time in which
a zero remains useless.
Y esto no fue posible.
And this was not possible.
--Que haga una locura.
--Let him do something crazy.
Y esto no fue posible.
And this was not possible.
--Que entre él y otro hombre semejante
--Let a crowd of men resembling him
a él, se interponga una muchedumbre
come between him and another
de hombres como él.
man just like him.
Y esto no fue posible.
And this was not possible.
--Que le comparen consigo mismo.
--Let them compare him with himself.
Y esto no fue posible.
And this was not possible.
--Que le llamen, en fin, por su nombre.
--Let them call him, at last, by his name.
Y esto no fue posible.
And this was not possible.
This Kafkaesque inquisition reduces the accused to a nameless, irrational thing before the mighty voices of power, voices that respect no standard of sanity or compassion. In “Y no me digan nada” (“Don’t Say Anything to Me”), the effort of the accused to fight back disintegrates into ludicrous comic gestures.
Y no me digan nada
Don’t Say Anything to Me
Y no me digan nada,
And don’t say anything to me,
que uno puede matar perfectamente,
since one can kill perfectly,
ya que, sudando tinta,
since, sweating printer’s ink,
uno hace cuanto puede, no me digan ...
one does what one can; don’t say anything to me ...
Volveremos, señores, a vernos con manzanas,
We will meet again, good sirs, with apples;
tarde la criatura pasará,
late the creature will pass by;
la expresión de Aristóteles armada
the expression of Aristotle armed
de grandes corazones de madera,
with great hearts of wood;
la de Heráclito injerta en la de Marx,
that of Heraclitus grafted onto that of Marx,
la del suave sonando rudamente ...
that of the gentle one sounding roughly ...
Es lo que bien narraba mi garganta:
That is what my throat was telling so well:
uno puede matar perfectamente.
one can kill perfectly.
Señores,
Good sirs,
Caballeros, volveremos a vernos sin paquetes;
Gentlemen, we will meet again without packages;
hasta entonces exijo, exigiré de mi flaqueza
until then I demand, I will demand of my weakness,
el acento del día, que,
the accent of the day, which,
según veo, estuvo ya esperándome en mi lecho.
as I see it, was already waiting for me in my bed.
Y exijo del sombrero la infausta analogía,
And I demand of the hat its ill-fated analogy,
del recuerdo,
of memory,
ya que, a veces, asumo con éxito,
since, at times, I assume with success
mi inmensidad lloranda,
my immensity of weeping;
ya que, a veces, me ahogo en la voz de mi vecino
since, at times, I drown in my neighbor’s voice
y padezco
and suffer,
contando en maíces los años,
counting the years in kernels of corn,
cepillando mi ropa al son de un muerto
brushing my clothes to the sound of a dead man
o sentado borracho en mi ataúd ...
or sitting drunk in my coffin ...
The accused opens with threats, warning his tormentors with violence in an impersonal gangster voice (“one can kill perfectly”). But his oration disintegrates into a clownish, baggy-pants harangue, invoking the great philosophers, back-pedalling in defense of his rhetoric, and finally admitting his own powerlessness. Faced with the force of law, of police, and of the state, the citizen has no choice but to be obedient or appear ridiculous, even to himself.
Vallejo’s complaint extends beyond social justice. Our culture fails to reconcile drives and passions, with tragic results. But there is a deeper ill: the failure of religious faith to stand against our humiliations and suffering. For Vallejo, this “pain without end” results from “being born this way, without cause.” This gentle poem of failed love runs off the rails and ends in existential despair.
Se acabó el extraño, con quien, tarde
It’s over with that stranger with whom,
la noche, regresabas parla y parla.
late at night, you returned jabbering.
Ya no habrá quien me aguarde,
Now there will be no one waiting for me,
dispuesto mi lugar, bueno lo malo.
my place prepared, for better or worse.
Se acabó la calurosa tarde;
The warm afternoon is over;
tu gran bahía y tu clamor; la charla
your great bay and your clamour; the chatter
con tu madre acabada
with your all-too-perfect mother
que nos brindaba un té lleno de tarde.
who brought us a tea full of afternoon.
Se acabó todo al fin: las vacaciones,
Everything ended at last: the holidays,
tu obediencia de pechos, tu manera
your obedient breasts, your way
de pedirme que no me vaya fuera.
of asking me not to go away.
Y se acabó el diminutivo, para
And the diminutive ended too, for
mi mayoría en el dolor sin fin,
my majority in pain without end,
y nuestro haber nacido así sin causa.
and our having been born thus, without cause.
(Trilce, XXXIV)
In this tidy sonnet, a form unusual for Vallejo, perspective shifts confusingly. What ought to be a triumph, the rival discarded, instead invites an unpleasant reflection in which the victor realizes the emptiness of his prize. The courtship is a barren charade of pleasantries, of polite tea “full of afternoon.” Even the sexual allure is obedient to recipe, as is the little drama of her pleading. Instead, his victory brings cosmic disgust.
This theme of the fierce gravity of social convention, of lost souls condemned to mechanical ritual, receives Vallejo’s comic treatment in “Height and Hair”:
Altura y pelos
Height and Hair
¿Quién no tiene su vestido azul?
Who doesn’t have his corporate blue suit?
¿Quién no almuerza y no toma el tranvía,
Who doesn’t breakfast and take the tram
con su cigarrillo contratado y su dolor de bolsillo?
with his assigned cigarette and his pocket
full of pain?
¡Yo que tan sólo he nacido!
I who was born so alone!
¡Yo que tan sólo he nacido!
I who was born so alone!
¿Quién no escribe una carta?
Who doesn’t write a postcard?
¿Quién no habla de un asunto muy importante,
Who doesn’t talk of “a very important matter,”
muriendo de costumbre y llorando de oído?
dying by formula and crying by ear?
¡Yo que solamente he nacido!
I who only was born!
¡Yo que solamente he nacido!
I who only was born!
¿Quién no se llama Carlos o cualquier otra cosa?
Who is not named Carlos, or some damn thing?
¿Quién al gato no dice gato gato?
Who on seeing a cat does not say “kitty, kitty”?
¡Ay! yo que tan sólo he nacido solamente!
Ah! I who was only born so alone!
¡Ay! yo que tan sólo he nacido solamente!
Ah! I who was only born so alone!
Vallejo’s is a familiar romantic complaint: the alert and sensitive soul, appalled at the mechanical responses of the conventional world. His mockery, however, is enjoyable, as in “Who is not named Carlos, or some damn thing? / Who on seeing a cat does not say ‘kitty, kitty’?” This is a 19th-century theme (Wordsworth, Melville, Dostoevsky, et al.), the lonely artist-philosopher stranded among wax figures incapable of discovering their souls. But Vallejo finds a way to treat this in a crisp little comedy.
The spirit has been tricked into empty imitation; far worse, “Hope Cries Amidst Cottons” offers a chill image of the struggle for faith in a world of accident, injustice, and pain:
Esperanza plañe entre algodones
Hope Cries Amidst Cottons
Aristas roncas uniformadas
A persistent hoarse rasp
de amenazas tejidas de esporas magníficas
of menacing tissue woven from splendid spores
y con porteros botones innatos.
and with built-in porters and messengers.
¿Se luden seis de sol?
Do they scratch at six in the morning?
Natividad. Cállate, miedo.
Nativity. Be silent, fear.
Cristiano espero, espero siempre
Like a Christian I wait, I wait always
de hinojos en la piedra circular que está
on bended knee upon this circular rock
en las cien esquinas de esta suerte
in the hundred corners of this luck
tan vaga a donde asomo.
so vague wherever I appear.
Y Dios sobresaltado nos oprime
And God, startled, presses upon us
el pulso, grave, mudo,
the pulse, grave, mute,
y como padre a su pequeña,
and like a father to his little daughter,
apenas,
barely,
pero apenas, entreabre los sangrientos algodones
but barely opens the bloody cottons
y entre sus dedos toma a la esperanza.
and between his fingers takes up hope.
Señor, lo quiero yo ...
Lord, I want this ...
Y basta!
And enough!
(Trilce, XXXI)
This is a scene Vallejo, the medical student, likely witnessed in hospitals in Peru crammed with victims of tuberculosis, the dread disease that took his brothers and sister. Mentions of Christianity are rare in his poetry, but here the speaker prays on bended knee, placed on the earth, “this circular rock,” for no reason and in a world where luck always fails. He imagines God the Father plucking hope from the bloody cotton and comforting his little daughter. The prayer is terse but certain.
Vallejo writes occasionally about being a poet. In one of his interrogation poems, he threatens his tormentors with printers’ ink, his writing a weapon against madness. “Qué me da” reflects the uncertainty of his powers and his confusion, wielding his craft with only limited control, in a state of ongoing absurdity, in a middle condition in which he is only partially alive and awake and in the world.
¿Qué me da?
What Gives?
¿Qué me da, que me azoto con la línea
What’s got into me, that I whip myself with the line
y creo que me sigue, al trote, el punto?
and believe the period comes trotting after me?
¿Qué me da, que me he puesto
What’s got into me, that I have placed
en los hombros un huevo en vez de un manto?
an egg on my shoulders instead of a cloak?
¿Qué me ha dado, que vivo?
What’s gotten into me, that I live?
¿Qué me ha dado, que muero?
What’s gotten into me, that I die?
¿Qué me da, que tengo ojos?
What’s got into me, that I have eyes?
¿Qué me da, que tengo alma?
What’s got into me, that I have a soul?
¿Qué me da, que se acaba en mí mi prójimo
What’s got into me, that my neighbour ends in me
y empieza en mi carrillo el rol del viento?
and the role of the wind begins in my cheek?
¿Qué me ha dado, que cuento mis dos lágrimas,
What’s gotten into me, that I count my two tears,
sollozo tierra y cuelgo el horizonte?
sob the earth, and hang the horizon?
¿Qué me ha dado, que lloro de no poder llorar
What’s gotten into me, that I cry at not being able to cry
y río de lo poco que he reído?
and laugh at how little I have laughed?
¿Qué me da, que ni vivo ni muero?
What’s got into me, that I neither live nor die?
In his early and best-known work, César Vallejo is a morose clown, mixing his dreadful certainties of darkness with the casual chatter of everyday life. His art is compact and tense, in language impatient with fancy dress. This is no languid tea-party filled with afternoon. He does not hide his distress in romantic notions of nature and lost gardens, of sonorous language and classical evocations. We are ill-made creatures who strive for order and consequence, and both the struggle and the failure take form out there in the brusque language of the streets and in the swarm of gestures of thought that stage the interior drama of our fractured being.
In the Paris years that follow, Vallejo turns to the European crisis, his promise of Communism, and the bloody struggle in Spain to construct a human future. But that is another story for another time.
Bibliography
Brosens, Peter, and Jessica Woodworth. *Altiplano: Fragments of Grace*. Bo Films, 2009. [This lovely film evokes the beauty and pain of the Andean “high plains.”]
Eshelman, Clayton, and José Rubia Barcia. *César Vallejo: The Complete Posthumous Poetry*. University of California Press, 1980. [Winner of the 1979 National Book Award, this extraordinary collection rescues Vallejo’s unpublished works and puts them in good order. The translations are excellent and bold, and reflect the hard work involved in reconstructing Vallejo’s difficult language and local usage.]
Gonzalez Vlaña, Eduardo. *César Vallejo’s Season in Hell*. Translation by Stephen M. Hart et al. Axiara Editions, 2015. [A novel that reconstructs Vallejo’s experiences during his Peruvian years, especially his imprisonment. Sources for these events are scant, but this powerful book is imaginative and convincing.]
Malanga, Gerard. *Malanga Chasing Vallejo*. Three Rooms Press, 2014. [Malanga’s translations, like my own, attempt to make Vallejo more accessible, and sometimes sacrifice his complexity in order to offer an easier reading experience. Malanga’s work is intelligent and graceful.]
Smith, Michael, and Valentine Gianuzzi. *César Vallejo: The Complete Poems*. Shearsman Books, 2012. [This is now the definitive collection and translation in English, and includes not only the posthumous work but Vallejo’s published work as well. The translations are precise and often creative. The book’s apparatus is particularly helpful.]
All translations are by Stephen Zelnick, Emeritus Professor, Temple University, with a great debt to previous translators. Join the Neruda Seminar on Facebook for continuing discussion of Latin American poetry.