Csar Vallejo - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

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Csar Vallejo
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Csar Abraham Vallejo Mendoza (March 16, 1892 April 15, 1938) was a Peruvian poet, writer, playwright, and journalist. Although he published only three books of poetry during his lifetime, he is considered one of the great poetic innovators of the 20th century in any language. He was always a step ahead of literary currents, and each of his books was distinct from the others, and, in its own sense, revolutionary. Thomas Merton called him "the greatest universal poet since Dante". The late British poet, critic and biographer Martin Seymour-Smith, a leading authority on world literature, called Vallejo "...the greatest twentieth-century poet in any language." He was a member of the intellectual community called North Group formed in Trujillo city. Clayton Eshleman and Jos Rubia Barcia's translation of The Complete Posthumous Poetry of Csar Vallejo won the National Book Award for translation in 1979.
Born

Csar Vallejo

Peruvian poet Cesar Vallejo Csar Abraham Vallejo Mendoza March 16, 1892 Santiago de Chuco, La Libertad, Peru April 15, 1938 (aged 46) Paris, France Poet, writer, journalist Peruvian Los Heraldos Negros, Trilce

Contents
1 Biography 2 Works 2.1 Los Heraldos Negros (1919) 2.2 Trilce (1922) 2.3 Espaa, Aparta de M Este Cliz (1937) 2.4 Poemas Humanos (1939) 2.5 Plays 2.6 Novels 2.7 Non-ction 3 Miscellany 4 Selected works available in English 5 See also 6 References 7 Further reading 8 External links
Died Occupation Nationality Notable work(s)

Biography
Csar Vallejo was born the youngest of eleven children in Santiago de Chuco, a remote village in the Peruvian Andes. He studied literature at National University of Trujillo in Trujillo. Lack of funds forced him to withdraw from his studies for a time and work at a sugar plantation, the Roma Hacienda, where he
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witnessed the exploitation of agrarian workers rsthand, an experience which would have an important impact on his politics and aesthetics. Vallejo received a BA in Spanish literature in 1915, the same year that he became acquainted with the bohemia of Trujillo, in particular with APRA co-founders Antenor Orrego and Victor Raul Haya de la Torre. In 1916 Vallejo moved to Lima, where he studied at National University of San Marcos, read, worked as a schoolteacher, and came into contact with artistic and political avant-garde. While in Lima, he also produced his rst poetry collection, Los Heraldos Negros. Despite its publication year of 1918, the book was actually published a year later. It is also heavily inuenced by the poetry and other writings of fellow Peruvian Manuel Gonzlez Prada, who had only recently died. Vallejo then suffered a number of calamities over the next few years: he refused to marry a woman with whom he had an affair and thus lost his teaching post, his mother died in 1920, and he went to prison for 105 days for alleged intellectual instigation of a partisan skirmish in his hometown, Santiago de Chuco, in 2007 the Judiciary of Peru vindicated Vallejo's memory in a ceremony calling to the poet unfair accused.[1] Nonetheless, 1922 he published his second volume of poetry, Trilce, which is still considered one of the most radically avant-garde poetry collections in the Spanish language. After publishing the short story collections Escalas melograadas and Fabla salvaje in 1923, Vallejo emigrated to Europe under the threat of further incarceration and remained there until his death in Paris in 1938.

Monument to Csar Vallejo at National University of San Marcos, where he studied.

His European years found him living in dire poverty in Paris, with the exception of three trips to the USSR and a couple of years in the early 1930s spent in exile in Spain. In 1926 he met his rst French mistress, Henriette Maisse, with whom he lived until a breakup in October 1928. In 1927 he had formally met Georgette Marie Philippart Travers (see Georgette Vallejo), whom he had seen when she was 17 and lived in his neighborhood. This was also the year of his rst trip to Russia. They eventually became lovers, much to the dismay of his mother. Georgette traveled with him to Spain the end of December 1930 and returned in January 1932. In 1930 the Spanish government awarded him a modest author's grant. When he returned to Paris, he also went on to Russia to participate in the International Congress of Writers' Solidarity towards the Soviet Regime (not to be confused with the First Congress of Soviet Writers of 1934, which solidied the parameters for Socialist Realism). Back in Pars Vallejo married Georgette Philippart in 1934. His wife remained a controversial gure concerning the publication of Vallejo's works for many years after his death.

A regular cultural contributor to weeklies in Lima, Vallejo also sent sporadic articles to newspapers and magazines in other parts of Latin America, Spain, Italy, and France. His USSR trips also led to two books of reportage he was able to get published early in the 1930s. Vallejo also prepared several theatrical
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Monument to Csar Vallejo in Lima. The engraving in Spanish quotes Vallejo "There is, brothers, very much to do."

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works never performed during his lifetime, among them his drama Colacho Hermanos, o Los Presidentes de America, which shares content with another work he completed during this period, the socialist-realist novel El Tungsteno. He even wrote a children's book, Paco Yunque. After becoming emotionally and intellectually involved in the Spanish Civil War, Vallejo had a nal burst of poetic activity in the late 1930s, producing two books of poetry (both published posthumously) whose titles and proper organization remain a matter of debate: they were published as Poemas humanos and Espaa, aparta de m este cliz. He died on April 15, 1938,[2] of an unknown illness now thought to have been a form of malaria,[citation needed] an event ctionalized in Roberto Bolao's novel Monsieur Pain. Originally buried in the proletarian Montrouge cemetery, Vallejo's remains are now in the Cimetire du Montparnasse in Paris.

Works
Los Heraldos Negros (1919)
Los Heraldos Negros (The Black Messengers) was completed in 1918, but not published until 1919. Robert Bly, in the 1993 edited volume Neruda and Vallejo: Selected Poems, describes it as "a staggering book, sensual, prophetic, affectionate, wild," and as "the greatest single collection of poems I have ever read." The title is likely suggestive of the four horsemen of the apocalypse, as the book itself touches on topics of religiosity, life and death. Poem:The black heralds[3] There are blows in life, so powerful . . . I don't know! Blows as from Gods hatred; as if before them, the backlash of everything suffered were to dam up in the soul . . . I dont know! They are few; but they are . . . They open dark furrows in the ercest face and in the strongest side. Maybe they could be the horses of barbarous Attilas; or the black heralds Death sends us. They are the deep abysses of the soul's Christs, of some revered faith Destiny blasphemes. Those gory blows are the cracklings of a bread that burns-up on us at the oven's door. And man . . . Poor . . . poor! He turns his eyes, as when a slap on the shoulder calls us; he turns his crazed eyes, and everything lived is dammed up, like a pond of guilt, in his gaze. There are blows in life, so powerful . . . I don't know!

Trilce (1922)
Trilce, published in 1922, anticipated much of the avant-garde movement that would develop in the 1920s and 1930s. 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
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movement began). The book put Latin America at the center of the Avant-garde. Like James Joyce's Finnegans Wake, Trilce borders on inaccessibility.

Espaa, Aparta de M Este Cliz (1937)

In Espaa, aparta de m este cliz (Spain, Take This Chalice from Me), Vallejo takes the Spanish Civil War (193639) as a living representation of a struggle between good and evil forces, where he advocates for the triumph of mankind symbolised in the salvation of the Second Spanish Republic (193139) that was being attacked by fascist allied forces led by General Franco. In 1994 Harold Bloom included Espaa, Aparta de M Este Cliz in his list of inuential works of the Western Canon.

Poemas Humanos (1939)

Poemas Humanos (Human Poems), published by the poet's wife after his death, is a leftist work of political, socially oriented poetry. Although a few of these poems appeared in magazines during Vallejo's lifetime, almost all of them were published posthumously. The poet never specied a title for this grouping, but while reading his body of work his widow found that he had planned a book of "human poems", which is why his editors decided on this title. Of this the poet's last written work, it was said[4]"... after a long silence, as if the presentiment of death might have urged him, he wrote in a few months the Poemas humanos."

Plays
Vallejo wrote ve 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 awed". 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 ro (1930s) was the product of a long and difcult birth. Titles of earlier versions include Varona Polianova, Mosc contra Mosc, El juego del amor, del odio y de la muerte and several variations on this latter title. Colacho hermanos o Presidentes de Amrica (1934). Satire displaying Peruvian democracy as a bourgeois farce under pressure from international companies and diplomacy. La piedra cansada (1937).

Novels
El tungsteno (1931). A social realist novel depicting the oppression of native Peruvian miners and their communities by a foreign-owned tungsten mine. Towards the kingdom of the Sciris (1928) is a historic short story dealing with the Incan theme. Fabla Salvaje (1924) Literally 'Wild Language', is a short novel which follows the insanity of a character who lives in the Andes.
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The children's book, "Paco Yunque", was rejected in Spain in 1930 for being too violent for children. But after it was published in Peru in the 1960s, it became mandatory reading in the elementary schools in Peru.

Non-ction
Rusia en 1931, reexiones al pie del Kremlin (Russia in 1931, reections on foot of the Kremlin), rst published in 1931, is a journalistic work describing Vallejo's impressions of the new socialist society that he saw being built in Soviet Russia. Rusia ante el II Plan Quinquenal is a second work of Vallejo's chronicles of his travels in Soviet Russia, focusing on Joseph Stalin's second Five Year Plan. The book, originally written in 1931, was not published until 1965.

Miscellany

Monument to Csar Vallejo in the Jesus Maria District of Lima, Peru.

The American dramatist, actor, and short story writer Sam Shepard writes in Cruising Paradise that Cesar Vallejo is his favorite poet. Shepard's previous book of stories and poems, Motel Chronicles, begins with an inscription from a Vallejo poem, "...never did far away charge so close." American poet Joe Bolton adapted several sections of Trilce in his book Days of Summer Gone (Galileo Press, 1990). American poet Charles Bukowski wrote a poem about Vallejo in his book What matters most is how well you walk through the re. The Puerto Rican poet and novelist Giannina Braschi pays homage to Cesar Vallejo's "Los Heraldos Negros" in the poetry trilogy "Empire of Dreams" (Yale, 1994). The Swedish movie Songs from the Second Floor (2000) quotes Cesar Vallejo's work as a recurring motif. "Csar Vallejo Xxviii", Folkways Records, ASIN B000UXU4ZI, January 1, 1960

Selected works available in English

The Complete Poetry of Csar 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 0-520-24552-0 (shortlisted for the 2008 International Grifn Poetry Prize) The Complete Posthumous Poetry of Csar Vallejo (Translators: Clayton Eshleman and Jos Rubia Barcia), University of California Press ISBN 0-520-04099-6 Trilce (Translators: Michael Smith, Valentino Gianuzzi). Shearsman Books. ISBN 0-907562-72-8

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The Complete Later Poems 19231938 (Translators: Michael Smith, Valentino Gianuzzi). Shearsman Books. ISBN 0-907562-73-6 The Black Heralds (Translator: Rebecca Seiferle) Copper Canyon Press ISBN 1-55659-199-3 Trilce (Translator: Rebecca Seiferle) Sheep Meadow Press. ISBN 1-878818-12-0 The Black Heralds (Translator: Barry Fogden) Allardyce, Barnett Publishers. ISBN 0-907954-23-5 The Black Heralds (Translators: Richard Schaaf and Kathleen Ross) Latin American Literary Review Press. ISBN 0-935480-43-9 Trilce (Translator: Dave Smith) Mishima Books. ISBN 0-670-73060-2 Autopsy on Surrealism (Translator: Richard Schaaf) Curbstone Press. ISBN 0-915306-32-8 Cesar Vallejo (Translators: Gordon Brotherstone and Edward Dorn) Penguin. ISBN 0-14-042189-0 Neruda and Vallejo: Selected Poems (Translators: Robert Bly and James Wright) Beacon Press. ISBN 08070-6489-0 I'm going to speak of hope (Translator: Peter Boyle) Peruvian Consulate Publication. Cesar Vallejo: An Anthology of His Poetry (Introduction by James Higgins) The Commonwealth and International Library. ISBN 0-08-015761-0 Selected Poems of Cesar Vallejo (Translator: H. R. Hays) Sachem Press. ISBN 0-937584-01-0 Poemas Humanos, Human Poems, by Csar Vallejo, a bilingual edition translated by Clayton Eshleman. Copyright 1968. Grove Press, 1969, xxv + 326 pp. ISBN 84-376-0731-0. The Mayakovsky Case (Translator: Richard Schaaf) Curbstone Press. ISBN 0-915306-31-X Tungsten (Translator: Robert Mezey) Syracuse University Press. ISBN 0-8156-0226-X Songs of Home (Translators: Kathleen Ross and Richard Schaaf) Ziesing Brothers Book Emporium. ISBN 0917488-05-9 Spain Take This Cup from Me (Translator: Mary Sarko ) Azul. ISBN 1-885214-03-0 Spain, Let This Cup Pass from Me (Translator: Alvaro Cardona-Hine) Azul. ISBN 1-885214-42-1 Trilce (Selections from the 1922 Edition), Vols. 38/39 and 40/41 (Translator: Prospero Saiz) Abraxas Press. ISBN 0-932868-07-X Trilce (Homophonic translator: James Wagner). Calamari Press. ISBN 0-977072-32-0

See also
Peruvian literature
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List of Peruvian writers

References
1. ^ Judiciary of Peru (ed.). "(spanish) Reivindicacin de Vallejo" (http://historico.pj.gob.pe/CorteSuprema/documentos/BOLETIN_REFORMA_JUDICIAL_060508_9.pdf). Retrieved November 17, 2012. 2. ^ LATIN POETS UK (ed.). "Cesar Vallejo Tribute 2012" (http://latinosinlondon.wordpress.com/2012/04/16/cesarvallejo74/). Retrieved November 6, 2012. 3. ^ "The Black Heralds" (http://www.shearsman.com/archive/samples/2007/CVbhSampler.pdf). Retrieved December 21, 2012. 4. ^ Julio Caillet Bois, Antologa del la poesa hispanoamericano, Madrid: Aguilar S.A. Ediciones, 1965, p1246

Further reading
English Poetry in Pieces: Csar Vallejo and Lyric Modernity, Michelle Clayton, 2011 Csar Vallejo: A Critical Bibliography of Research, Stephen M Hart, 2002 Csar Vallejo: The Dialectics of Poetry and Silence, Jean Franco, 1976 The Catastrophe of Modernity: Tragedy and the Nation in Latin American Literature, Patrick Dove, 2004 The Poem on the Edge of the Word: the Limits of Language and the Uses of Silence, D.C. Niebylski, 1993 Vallejo, Xavier Abril, 1958 The Poetry and Poetics of Cesar Vallejo: the Fourth Angle of the Circle, Adam Sharman, 1997 Wounded Fiction: Modern Poetry and Deconstruction, Joseph Adamson, 1988 Homage to Vallejo, Christopher Buckley, 2006 Trilce I: a Second Look, George Gordon Wing, 1972 Neruda and Vallejo in Contemporary United States Poetry, Mark Jonathan Cramer, 1976 Vallejo on Language and Politics, Letras hispanas: Revista de literatura y cultura, Rolando Prez, 2008. http://letrashispanas.unlv.edu/vol5iss2/perez.htm; http://letrashispanas.unlv.edu/vol5iss2/perez.pdf Csar Vallejos Ars Potica of Nonsense: A Deleuzean Reading of Trilce. Dissidences: Hispanic Journal of Theory and Criticism, Rolando Prez, 2008. www.dissidences/4PerezVallejo.html Spanish Csar Vallejo, el poeta y el hombre / Ricardo Silva-Santisteban. Lima, 2010 Recordando a Vallejo: La Bohemia de Trujillo / Luis Alva Castro, Luis. www.Tribuna-us.com Ensayos vallejianos / William Rowe., 2006 Csar Vallejo al pie del orbe / Ivn Rodrguez Chvez., 2006 Alcance losco en Cesar Vallejo y Antonio Machado / Antonio Belaunde Moreyra., 2005 Csar Vallejo : estudios de potica / Jess Humberto Florencia., 2005 Poticas y utopas en la poesa de Csar Vallejo / Pedro Jos Granados., 2004 Csar Vallejo : muerte y resurreccin / Max Silva Tuesta., 2003 Csar Vallejo, arquitecto de la palabra, caminante de la gloria / Idelfonso Nio Albn., 2003 Algunos crticos de Vallejo y otros ensayos vallejianos / Csar Augusto Angeles Caballero., 2002 Csar Vallejo en la crtica internacional / Wilfredo Kapsoli Escudero., 2001 Csar Vallejo y el surrealismo / Juan Larrea., 2001
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Csar Vallejo y la muerte de Dios / Rafael Gutirrez Girardot., 2000 Csar Vallejo / Vctor de Lama., 2000 Recopilacin de textos sobre Csar Vallejo / Ral Hernndez Novs., 2000 Mi encuentro con Vallejo; Prlogo de Luis Alva Castro / Antenor Orrego. Bogot: Tercer Mundo Editores, 1989. ISBN 93-8601-224-7 Antenor Orrego y sus dos prlogos a Trilce / Manuel Ibez Rosazza. Trilce Editores: Trujillo, 1995 Csar Vallejo, Sus mejores obras. Ediciones Per: Lima, 1962 Csar Vallejo, vida y obra / Luis Mongui. Editora Per Nuevo: Lima, 1952 Csar Vallejo (18921938); Vida y obra, Revista Hispnica Moderna, New York, 1950.

External links
Works by or about Csar Vallejo (http://worldcat.org/identities/lccn-n79-120777) in libraries (WorldCat catalog) Human Potential: The Life and Work of Csar Vallejo (http://www.soundsandcolours.com/articles/peru/human-potential-the-life-and-work-of-cesar-vallejo/) Information about Vallejo from the Academy of American Poets (http://www.poets.org/poet.php/prmPID/30) Grifn Poetry Prize biography (http://www.grifnpoetryprize.com/awards-and-poets/shortlists/2008shortlist/clayton-eshleman/), including audio and video clips of Guillermo Verdecchia reading Clayton Eshleman's translation of Vallejo's Guitar Interview with Vallejo (http://theclaudiusapp.com/2-vallejo.html), the only extant interview with Vallejo, 1931. Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Csar_Vallejo&oldid=595990508" Categories: 1892 births 1938 deaths National University of San Marcos alumni People from La Libertad Region Peruvian poets Peruvian writers People of the Spanish Civil War Marxist writers Marxist poets Communist writers Communist poets Burials at Montparnasse Cemetery North Group (Trujillo) This page was last modied on 18 February 2014 at 06:30. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License; additional terms may apply. By using this site, you agree to the Terms of Use and Privacy Policy. Wikipedia is a registered trademark of the Wikimedia Foundation, Inc., a non-prot organization.

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