Some of the prose poems that appear in Human Poems were written between 1923 and 1927, and even though Vallejo possibly had intended to publish them under the title "Nomina de huesos," ("Roster of bones"), the project never materialized. He published many articles-one of his few sources of income-in newspapers and journals. Tungsten (1930), his novel of social protest, set in a mining town in Peru, was published with some success, as were his accounts of his travel to the Soviet Union. In the 193os he worked on plays that were not produced or published in his lifetime.21
When the Spanish Civil War broke out in 1936 Vallejo participated in the Committees in Defense of the Spanish Republic. He was a Peruvian delegate to the Second International Congress of Anti-Fascist Writers in Defense of Culture in Spain. The congress was a momentous political and literary event. It was the only time that Cesar Vallejo, Pablo Neruda, Octavio Paz, Vicente Huidobro, Nicolas Guillen, and Alejo Carpentier (to mention just some of the Latin American participants) were in the same place at the same time.22 In 1937 Vallejo enjoyed one of his most productive years, writing some fifty poems to be included in the Human Poems and Spain, Take This Cup from Me. The following year, his health failed, and he died without seeing a new book of his poems in print since Trilce was published in 1922.
As Clayton Eshleman points out in his notes to this volume, the editorial problems associated with the posthumous poetry are insurmountable. We will never know with certainty which of the poems were actually finished and which Vallejo might have discarded. Nor will we know how he would have organized them into collections or if he had envisaged some poems that would give others their raison d'etre. And we will never know how many poems or drafts may have been lost or destroyed.
Many thoughtful critics and editors of Vallejo, including Roberto Paoli and Ricardo Gonzalez Vigil, have argued that the title Human Poems is an acceptable compromise for grouping most of the posthumous work, not just because this is how many of Vallejo's best poems have been known since 1939, when his widow first gave them that title, but also because the adjective human is an apt one for Vallejo. Other distinguished Vallejo critics and editors, including Ricardo SilvaSantisteban, disagree, arguing that the rubric is misleading because it groups many poems written from 1923 until 1938 that do not necessarily belong together.
Eshleman decided to follow Gonzalez Vigil's critical edition and call the posthumous poems Human Poems, while acknowledging that informed discussions and fresh research may yield results that affect the organization of future editions. Eshleman also followed editorial convention in considering the fifteen poems of Spain, Take This Cup from Me a separate entity.
HUMAN POEMS AND SPAIN, TAKE THIS CUP FROM ME
Many scholars, including Stephen M. Hart, believe that the posthumous work includes the most mature and enduring of Vallejo's poetry. Although parts of Human Poems exemplify an aesthetic akin to that of his first two books, most of the poems evince an attentiveness to history with a myriad of cultural and geographical references unavailable to Vallejo in his Peruvian years-including poems in which he expresses the outrageous discrepancy between intellectuality and human experience:
("A MAN WALKS BY ... ," HUMAN POEMS)
Collective angst and compassion epitomize much of the later posthumous verse, including poems in which Vallejo's expressions of concern are not intended to single out individuals but to convey representative types:
("STUMBLE BETWEEN TWO STARS," HUMAN POEMS)
Vallejo's religious language resurfaces in some of these poems, but now he is indifferent to the hereafter and in no mood to quarrel with supernatural entities. In this poetry, religious imagery is at the service of empathy, solidarity, and redemption in the here and now, as in the following poem in which Vallejo remembers his deceased friend Alfonso, a musician:
("ALFONSO: YOU ARE LOOKING AT ME, I SEE," HUMAN POEMS)
In Spain, Take This Cup from Me, as a Christ-like figure the atheist poet expresses his anguish over and solidarity with the Republicans in the heat of the Spanish Civil War, announcing his hope that human solidarity can enact the Resurrection:
("MASS," SPAIN, TAKE THIS CUP FROM ME)
It was because of Vallejo's commitment to the Republican cause as a Latin American Marxist that Louis Aragon gave a moving speech at his funeral that began the process of his gaining posthumous literary fame.
ON ESHLEMAN'S TRANSLATION
In recent years the English-reading public has been fortunate that some of the major corpuses of Hispanic poetry have become available in translation. Christopher Maurer's edition of the complete poetry of Federico Garcia Lorca is a great achievement in Hispanism; and thanks to Eliot Weinberger, a beautiful edition of the collected poetry of Octavio Paz is available. Neruda has also been graced by splendid translations, including those by Alastair Reid. Eshleman's own accomplishment as a translator takes a special place in this felicitous context. His Vallejo marks the first time that the complete poetry of a great Spanish-language poet has been translated in a volume by a single translator who is also a celebrated poet in his own right. Eshleman has been reading and translating Vallejo for almost five decades. The engaging account of this experience included as an appendix to this volume, his "Translator's Memoir," should be expanded into a book: it only hints at the considerable work, persistence, and personal sacrifice required to bring this book to completion, not to mention the many literary rewards that justified this rich odyssey. It has taken the prolonged concentration of a resourceful poet, devoted to the work of his counterpart, a poet who can see into the potentialities and attainments, and even the shortcomings, of the original work.
In his foreword to this volume Mario Vargas Llosa rightly places Vallejo in the category of wondrous, inexplicable poets. Better than anyone else, Eshleman knows that Vallejo can be impossible to paraphrase, interpret, or explain, but he also knows that his task as translator is not to resolve or simplify these perplexities but to transpose them with accuracy, if possible, or to find equivalences and invent parallels.
Eshleman renders Vallejo's paradoxes with ease and his linguistic unconventionalities with instinctual acumen. Thanks to Eshleman's successful translations, it has not been necessary for me to quote Vallejo in the Spanish in order to discuss the poems' complexities. Some of Vallejo's geometrical patterns can be reproduced as a matter of course, but the handling of his neologisms, and his arcane or coined words, is hardly straightforward and has defeated others who have tried. Eshleman invents equivalents that might enrich the English language itself, as when he translates Vallejo's neologism corazonmente (in "One pillar supporting solace") as "hearterially." When he translates espergesia as "epexegesis," he captures the power of this impossible word, which some interpreters have considered a neologism and others an elusive archaism.
Eshleman delivers, in an American idiom, Vallejo's impulse for verbal play. His onomatopoeic equivalences are often as stunning as his replication of Vallejo's shifting spellings and visual dispositions in a poem. In TrUce XXXII, Vallejo captures bodily and sensory functions through a combination of onomatopoeias, visual metaphors, and the distortion of conventional spelling. Eshleman matches Vallejo's original inventiveness:
Eshleman's formal achievements as a translator are all the more admirable given his search for a persuasive English version that can rise to Vallejo's humanity. One finds in these translations a sense of friendship and camaraderie that honors those poems by Vallejo in which the human will can bring those who have died back to life.
NOTES
i I would like to express my heartfelt gratitude to Clayton Eshleman, Remy Sutherland, and Michael Bell for careful readings of drafts and for their splendid suggestions in the preparation of this introduction. The Spanish sources for this edition come mostly from the splendid critical edition by Ricardo Gonzalez Vigil, in Cesar Vallejo, Obras completas, vol.,, Obra poetica (Lima: Banco de Credito del Peru, iggi). The other indispensable edition is the four-volume Poesia completa, edited by Ricardo Silva-Santisteba
n (Lima: Pontificia Universidad Catolica del Peru, 1997). This remarkable volume includes photographic reproductions of many of Vallejo's manuscripts and materials that are invaluable in reconstructing the gestation and reception of the poems. Stephen M. Hart's bibliography is also indispensable to any Vallejo scholar, as is his book on Vallejo and religion. See Stephen M. Hart (in collaboration with Jorge Cornejo Polar), Cesar Vallejo: A Critical Biography of Research (London: Tamesis, aooa). The books, essays, and editions by Andre Coyne, Americo Ferrari, Saul Yurkievich, Julio Ortega, Jean Franco, James Higgins, William Rowe, and Roberto Paoli are considered landmarks in Vallejo studies.
2 Rafael Gutierrez Girardot is the pioneer in the comparative study of Vallejo and Paul Celan. See his "Genesis y recepcion de la poesia de Cesar Vallejo," in Cesar Vallejo. Obra poetica, ed. Americo Ferrari (Madrid: Archivos, 1988), 523.
3 Jose Maria Arguedas, "Cesar Vallejo, el mas grande poeta del Peru," in Cesar Vallejo: Al pie del orbe, ed. Nestor Tenorio Requejo (Lambayeque, Peru: Universidad Nacional Pedro Ruiz Gallo, 1992), 11-12. All translations in this introduction, except for Clayton Eshleman's translations of Vallejo's poetry, are mine.
4 Ricardo Gonzalez Vigil, Cesar Vallejo (Lima: Editorial Brasa, 1995), 55-
5 According to some literary critics, Vicente Huidobro's Altazor is Trilce's only rival as the high point of the avant-garde in the Spanish language.
6 It has been argued that Dario's poetic revolution involved the transfer of French literary trends to Spanish America. But this is a misleading claim, for Dario's poetic innovations bred new forms that are unique to the Spanish language. Dario found harmonies and dissonances in his poetic lines that revolutionized the way poetry could be written in the idiom. See Ruben Dario's Selected Writings, edited by Ilan Stavans (New York: Penguin, 2005); and Songs of Life and Hope. Cantos de vida y esperanza, a bilingual edition, edited and translated by Will Derusha and Alberto Acereda (Durham: Duke University Press, 2004)-
7 Cesar Vallejo, El romanticismo en la poesia castellana (Lima: Juan Mejia Baca, 1954), 61.
8 Ricardo Silva-Santisteban quotes Orrego's recollection, underscoring the importance of exploring the connections between Vallejo and Golden Age poetry; see "Dos posibles reminiscencias en un poema de Vallejo," in Escrito en el agua (Lima: Editorial Colmillo Blanco, 1989).
9 Antonio Armisen, "Intensidad y altura: Lope de Vega, Cesar Vallejo y los problemas de la escritura poetica," Bulletin Hispanique, 88, nos. 3-4 (July-December, 1985): 297.
io See Estuardo Nunez, "Charles Baudelaire y el Peru," Alma Mater 13-14 (1997): 57-62.
11 Jose Pascual Buxo, Cesar Vallejo. Critica y contracritica (Mexico City: UNAM, 1992), 23. See also Enrique Diez Canedo and Fernando Fortun's anthology La poesia francesa moderna (Madrid: Renacimiento), 1913-
12 Cesar Vallejo, letter to Pablo Abril de Vivero, October 19, 1924, in Vallejo, Correspondencia completa, ed. Jesus Cabel (Lima: Pontificia Universidad Catdlica del Peru, 2002), 87-
13 Jose Carlos Mariategui, Seven Interpretive Essays on Peruvian Reality (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1971), 254-
14 Samuel Beckett, Waiting for Godot (New York: Grove Press, 1982), 28-29. In 1941, two years after the first publication of Vallejo's complete poetry, Octavio Paz co-edited an anthology including a respectable selection of Vallejo's poems, which would have been sufficient to inform Lucky's speech in Waiting for Godot. See Emilio Prados, Xavier Villau- rrutia, Juan Gil Albert, and Octavio Paz, eds., Laurel (Mexico City: Seneca, 1941)-
15 The only publication that came out of this collaboration, as far as I know, is Octavio Paz, ed., and Samuel Beckett, trans., Anthology of Mexican Poetry (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1958).
16 Cesar Vallejo, letter to Pablo Abril de Vivero February 8, 1926, in Vallejo, Correspondencia completa, 147.
17 I thank Clayton Eshleman for this point.
18 Luis Alberto Sanchez's note was published in Mundial, no. 129 (Nov. 3, 1922): 5; Clemente Palma's note in Variedades, no. 768 (Nov. 18, 1922): 6668. The last commentary is from the lesser-known C. Alberto Espinosa Bravo, published in Mundial, no. 270 (Aug. 14, 1925): 33• These three reviews are reproduced in the rich dossier of documents included in Ricardo Silva-Santisteban's edition of Trilce. See Cesar Vallejo, Poesia Completa II (Lima: Pontificia Universidad Catolica del Peru, 1997).
L9 Cesar Vallejo, letter to his brother, Victor Clemente, July '4, 1923, in Vallejo, Correspondencia complete, 57-
20 Cesar Vallejo, letter to Pablo Abril de Vivero, September 12,1927, in Vallejo, Correspondencia completa, 252-53•
21 See Cesar Vallejo's three-volume Teatro completo (Lima: Pontificia Universidad Catolica del Per(i, '999).
22 Gonzalez Vigil offers an account of these events in his Cesar Vallejo, 105.
Qui potest capere capiat
EL EVANGELIO
He who is able to receive it, let him receive it.
THE GOSPEL
LOS HERALDOS NEGROS
THE BLACK HERALDS
DESHOJACION SAGRADA
SACRED DEFOLIACITY
COMUNION
COMMUNION
NERVAZON DE ANGUSTIA
NERVE STORM OF ANGUISH
BORDAS DE HIELO
MAINSAILS OF ICE
NOCHEBUENA
CHRISTMAS EVE
ASCUAS
Para Domingo Parra del Riego
EMBERS
For Domingo Parra del Riego
MEDIALUZ
HALF-LIGHT
SAUCE
WILLOW
AUSENTE
ABSENT
AVESTRUZ
OSTRICH
BAJO LOS ALAMOS
Para Jose Eulogio Garrido
UNDER THE POPLARS
For Jose Eulogio Garrido
LA ARANA
THE SPIDER
BABEL
BABEL
ROMERIA
PILGRIMAGE
EL PALCO ESTRECHO
THE NARROW THEATER BOX
EL POETA A SU AMADA
THE POET TO HIS LOVER
VERANO
SUMMER
SETIEMBRE
SEPTEMBER
HECES
DREGS
IMPIA
IMPIOUS WOMAN
LA COPA NEGRA
THE BLACK CUP
DESHORA
INOPPORTUNELY
FRESCO
FRESCO
YESO
PLASTER
NOSTALGIAS IMPERIALES
I
II
IMPERIAL NOSTALGIAS
I
II
III
IV
III
IV
HOJAS DE EBANO
EBONY LEAVES
TERCETO AUT6CTONO
I
II
AUTOCHTHONOUS TERCET
I
II
III
III
ORACION DEL CAMINO
PRAYER ON THE ROAD
HUACO
HUACO
MAYO
MAY
ALDEANA
VILLAGE SCENE
IDILIO MUERTO
DEAD IDYLL
EN LAS TIENDAS GRIEGAS
IN THE GREEK TENTS
AGAPE
AGAPE
LA VOZ DEL ESPEJO
THE VOICE IN THE MIRROR
ROSA BLANCA
WHITE ROSE
LA DE A MIL
THE BIG ONE
EL PAN NUESTRO
Para Alejandro Gamboa
OUR BREAD
For Alejandro Gamboa
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