On August 22, Vallejo's brother, Miguel, dies in Santiago de Chuco. Vallejo writes an elegy for him, "A mi hermano muerto ..." (Cultura Infantil, no. 33 [August 19171: 5), subsequently revised as "A mi hermano Miguel," the third poem of the "Canciones de hogar" section of Los heraldos negros.
On September 22, Vallejo is awarded a Bachelor of Arts in Philosophy and Letters at La Libertad University with a thesis titled "El Romanticismo en la poesia castellana," which is later published (Trujillo: Tipografia Olaya, 1915)-
1915-1916 A number of Vallejo's poems, early drafts of Los heraldos negros, appear in local magazines.
1916 Vallejo continues studying law in Trujillo, supporting his studies by teaching at the Colegio Nacional. He begins a love affair with Maria Rosa Sandoval, who inspires a number of the early love poems; she dies tragically young (Espejo, 44-45) of tuberculosis. 12
During this time Vallejo adopts the appearance of a literary dandy, wearing a smart suit and gloves and carrying a silver-capped cane (Izquierdo Rios, 107, 150). His cousin catches him lying under a tree in the countryside surrounding Santiago de Chuco, banging his head and muttering: "I want to write.... I want to write" (Izquierdo Rios, 50).
1917 Vallejo begins his third year of a law degree and continues to support himself by teaching. He reads foreign and local literary journals such as Cervantes, Colonida, La Esfera, and Espana, which would later inspire him to write avant-garde poetry.13
At a soiree organized for the painter Macedonio de la Torre on June io, Vallejo recites "Los heraldos negros," which would be the eponymous poem of his first collection.
From July to December he has a passionate love affair with Zoila Rosa Cuadra (whom he nicknames "Mirtho"), a fifteen-year-old girl; Espejo Asturrizaga believes that "Setiembre," "Heces," "Yeso," "El talamo eterno," and "El poeta a su amada" were inspired by this relationship (Espejo, 54-57)• When the relationship deteriorates, Vallejo attempts suicide by shooting himself; the gun has only one bullet in the barrel, and he survives (Espejo, 56-57).
On September 22 the Lima magazine Variedades publishes an ironic review of "El poeta a su amada," saying the poem would be best accompanied by an accordion, and advising those living in Trujillo to tie the author of the poem to a railway track; the article is accompanied by a graphic cartoon.14
1918 In January, Vallejo begins postgraduate study in the Humanities Department at Universidad Nacional Mayor de San Marcos in Lima.
In February he strikes up a friendship with Abraham Valdelomar and as a result gradually begins to make a name for himself in lima's literary circles. Later Valdelomar offers to write a foreword to Vallejo's collection of poems, but he falls ill and dies (on November 3, 1919) before he can follow through; Vallejo is moved by Valdelomar's premature death (Espejo, 84).
Vallejo is offered a teaching position at the prestigious Colegio Barrels in Lima in May. He takes over as head of the school on September 12, following the unexpected death of its director.
On August 8, Vallejo's mother dies of angina in Santiago de Chuco, an event that will inspire some of his most famous poems (Trilce XVIII, XXIII, XXVIII, LII, LVIII, LXV).
In October Vallejo begins a passionate affair with Otilia; Espejo Asturrizaga refuses to give her surname but states that she was the sister-in-law of a colleague at the Colegio Barrels. Espejo also surmises that the majority of the love poems in Trilce are based on that tempestuous affair (116-21), which would go on until August 192o. Espejo further speculatesbased on lines 17-18 of Trilce X ("Y los tres meses de ausencia. Y los nueve de gestacion")- that Otilia was pregnant when she left for San Mateo de Surco but that Vallejo would never know the truth (Espejo, 76).
1919 Vallejo is thrown out of the Colegio Barros in May because of his scandalous affair with Otilia; he refuses to marry her (see Trilce XXVII) and as a result comes to blows with Otilia's brother-in-law (Espejo, 75). Vallejo now has no job and no money-an early indication of Vallejo's impetuous nature, his tendency to sacrifice security on the altar of personal desire.
On July 23, Vallejo's Los heraldos negros (Lima: Souza Ferreira, 1918) is released and becomes available in Lima's bookshops. The delay in distribution, caused by Valdelomar's dilatoriness in providing a foreword, allows Vallejo to introduce some later poems, such as "Enereida" and "Los pasos lejanos."ls
In December Vallejo is invited, through an intermediary, to meet a young woman in a dark room who makes passionate love to him, but whose identity Vallejo never discovers (Espejo, 85).
r92o On July io Vallejo gives a poetry reading at his old school, the Colegio Nacional in Huamachuco. Because nobody claps afterward, Vallejo is said to have stated-with amazing egoism for the time-"Why don't you applaud me? I will be greater than Ruben Dario and one day will be proud to see America lying at my feet" (Espejo, 92). On July 18 Vallejo returns to Santiago de Chuco for the local celebrations of the patron of the village, Santiago (July 23 - August 2, 1920).
On August i the commercial premises of Carlos Santa Maria in Santiago de Chuco are burned to the ground. A bystander is shot by the police, and two policemen are killed by the crowd in retaliation.16 The Santa Maria family indicts Hector M. Vasquez, Pedro Lozada, Cesar Vallejo, and fifteen others. Legal accounts show that-despite an adroit campaign mounted by the Trujillo intelligentsia in defense of the poet-Vallejo was directly involved in the events leading up to the destruction of the Santa Maria premises.17
Vallejo flees to Antenor Orrego's house in Mansiche, just outside Trujillo. While in hiding he has a waking dream in which he witnesses his own death in Paris, surrounded by people he doesn't recognize (Espejo, 97-98). Obviously brought on by the stress of being hunted down by the police, this dream is remarkable because some of the details would be borne out by his death in Paris eighteen years later. The experience inspired what is arguably his most famous poem, "Black Stone on a White Stone."
On November 6 Vallejo is captured by the police and imprisoned in Trujillo Central Jail. While there he continues to write, composing some of the poems that would be collected in Trilce (I, II, XVIII, XX, XL, L, LVIII, LXI), as well as the short stories of Escalas.
On December 24 Vallejo's poem "Fabla de gesta" wins second prize (fifty libras) in the Poesia del Concurso. The first prize is later declared void.
1921 On February 26, thanks to a publicity campaign orchestrated by the University of Trujillo and influential figures such as the poet Percy Gibson, Vallejo is released on bail.
He moves from Trujillo to Lima on March 3o; six months later he is appointed to a teaching post at the Colegio Nacional de Nuestra Senora de Guadalupe in Lima.
On November 15 Vallejo's short story "Mas ally de la vida y la muerte" wins first prize (twenty libras) in the competition organized by the book club "Entre Nous."
1922 Variedades publishes "Mas ally de la vida y la muerte" on June 17-
In October Trilce is published by the Talleres Tipograficos de la Penitenciaria in lima, with a foreword by Vallejo's literary mentor, Antenor Orrego. The book title is inserted in proofs to replace the title Craneos de bronce. The collection elicits no reaction from local readership.
1923 On March 15 a collection of short stories, Escalas, is published by the Talleres Tipograficos de la Penitenciaria.
On May 16 Vallejo's novel Fabla salvaje is published by Coleccion de la Novela Peruana.
On June 17, with the lawsuit against him reopened in Trujillo, Vallejo embarks with Julio Galvez (Antenor Orrego's nephew) on the steamboat Oroya en route to Paris.
On July 13 Vallejo and Galvez arrive in Paris, where, with the exception of a year or so in Spain, Vallejo would live until his death. His first three years in Paris are plagued by poverty: he sometimes sleeps on park benches and cannot afford to buy new clothes.18
On July 28 Vallejo meets Alfonso de Silva in the Legaci6n Peruana; they become friends, and Vallejo accompanies Alfonso to various restaurants, where Alfonso plays violin for a few sous to pay for their meal. Silva would return to Lima in 1930; on hearing of
his death years later (Silva died on May 7, 1937), Vallejo wrote his famous poem "Alfonso, estas mirandome, lo veo...... 19
On October 26 Vallejo publishes his first article in the Trujillo newspaper El Norte. Between 1923 and 1930, he would write thirty-seven articles for this newspaper.20 As the articles show, Vallejo becomes gradually more immersed in the cultural scene in Paris, attending art exhibitions and concerts; conversing about art in cafes such as La Rotonde, Dome, Coupole, Select, and La Regence; and visiting Versailles and Fontainebleau.21
1923-1929 Vallejo writes the poems that Georgette would later group under the title Poemas en prosa in her 1968 facsimile edition of Vallejo's poetry.
1924 On March 24 Vallejo's father dies in Santiago de Chuco.
In September the Costa Rican sculptor Max Jimenez generously allows Vallejo to stay in his studio at 3, rue Vercingetorix. It is there that Vallejo poses for the Spanish sculptor Jose de Creeft. In Vicente Huidobro's house Vallejo meets the Spanish poet Juan Larrea, and they strike up a friendship. Later Vallejo also meets Pablo Neruda, who offers the following portrait in his memoirs: "Vallejo was shorter than I, he was thinner and bonier. He was also more Indian than I, with very dark eyes and a high, domed forehead. He had a beautiful Incan face saddened by a certain undeniable majesty. Vain like all poets, he liked it when others referred to his Indian features."22
In October Vallejo has an intestinal hemorrhage and is hospitalized in the Hopital de la Charite, an experience that inspires him to write "Las ventanas se han estremecido ..." (Poemas en prosa).
1925 In the spring Mariano H. Cornejo, the Peruvian ambassador in Paris, asks Vallejo to tutor his nephews and grandchildren. The post is short-lived, because one of Cornejo's nieces dies. Cornejo invites Vallejo to write an elegy for her, but despite the remuneration and favor offered in return, Vallejo declines, thereafter remaining an "unofficial writer," as he was to call himself.23
On March 16 Vallejo discovers that because of Pablo Abril de Vivero's intercession on his behalf, he has been awarded a grant of three hundred pesetas per month to study in Spain. He never intends to study there but travels to Madrid three times to claim the grant money (October 1925, July 1926, June 1927).
On June 2 Vallejo learns that he has been offered a monthly commission by the Bureau des Grands Journaux Iberoamericains, which assuages his financial worries for a time.
On July 17 Vallejo publishes his first article with the lima magazine Mundial, for which he will have written 127 articles by 1930.24
1926 Vallejo meets Henriette Maisse in May, and they become lovers (their relationship would last for eighteen months). Vallejo lives with Henriette at the Hotel de Richelieu, 20 rue Moliere, in room L9 on the fourth floor.25 Now the Hotel Louvre-Rivoli, the building has a plaque commemorating the fact that Vallejo once lived there.
On June 7, the High Court in Trujillo issues a warrant for Vallejo's arrest.
In July the first issue of an avant-garde magazine edited by Vallejo and Juan Larrea, Favorables-Paris-Poema, is published in Paris.26 On July io Vallejo publishes his first article in Variedades, a Lima magazine for which he will have written forty-one articles by 1930.27
In October the second (and, as it proved, final) issue of Favorables-Paris-Poema is published.28
In winter Vallejo notices a young girl, Georgette de Phillipart, sewing at the window of the apartment across the road from the Hotel de Richelieu, where he is living with Henriette. Because she sees Vallejo gesticulating, Georgette at first believes that he is a deaf-mute. But one day she hears his voice and exclaims to her mother that "the neighbor across from us can speak!" From that point on Georgette's interest in her Peruvian neighbor grows.29 Vallejo and Georgette, who is eighteen years old at the time (she was born on January 7, I9o8),30 exchange glances and then smiles; they begin to see each other in the Bois de Boulogne (Domingo Cordoba, 213). Once Georgette's mother, Mme. Marie Travers, a seamstress, discovers what is going on, however, she attempts to put an end to the nascent love affair, regarding Vallejo as a "drole d'etranger" (Domingo Cordoba, 213)-
1927 On March io Vallejo travels to Spain. Henriette moves out of the Hotel de Richelieu.
On May 5 Vallejo argues with Georgette and asks Henriette to come back to live with him, as he describes in a letter to Juan Larrea.31 He leaves the Hotel de Richelieu and goes with Henriette to live at the Hotel Mary, 32 rue Sainte-Anne (Domingo Cordoba, 41).
In June Vallejo goes to Madrid, where he stays with Xavier Abril in his apartment on Calle de la Aduana. He meets Juan Domingo Cordoba, and they become good friends (Domingo Cordoba, 35). Domingo Cordoba travels with Vallejo back to Paris, staying in an apartment near the hotel where Vallejo and Henriette are living; while there, Domingo Cordoba witnesses a heated argument between Vallejo and Henriette (Domingo Cordoba, 43)•
1927-1929 Vallejo begins studying Marxist theory and acquires books from I'Humanite, a left-wing bookstore in Paris. He reads works by Marx, Trotsky, Engels, Plekhanov, Luxembourg, Liebknecht, Lenin, Riazanov, Bukharin, Kurella, Stalin, and Lissargaray (Domingo Cordoba, 165-66). Initially-like many of the French Surrealists-a Trotskyist, Vallejo gradually begins to adopt a more hard-line Stalinist approach.32 But he does not spend all his time studying. On one occasion, when drunk, Vallejo insults and nearly comes to blows with a group ofArgentineans in a nightclub, and-when driving around in a coupe taxi with Domingo Cordoba and two of the More brothers33-he stands up and shouts obscenities at bystanders (Domingo Cordoba, 123-25).
1928-1935 Vallejo composes and types up the undated poems of Poemas humanos.34
1928 In July, suffering from poor health, Vallejo is advised by his doctor to go to the countryside to recuperate. Accompanied by Henriette and Domingo Cordoba, he stays in the house of Monsieur Nauty in Ris-Orangis (Seine-et-Oise), not far from Paris (Domingo Cordoba, 204-10).
On September 8, Vallejo learns that the Peruvian government has granted him free passage back to Peru. He accepts the money but spends it on a lavish tour of Europe, leaving on October i9, for Berlin. His itinerary is Paris-Berlin-Moscow-Budapest-Berlin-Paris; he arrives back in Paris on December a7.
On November 12 Georgette's mother dies, leaving Georgette with an inheritance of 280,000 francs (Domingo Cordoba, 144).
In late December Vallejo meets Georgette by chance in a charcuterie, and she tells him her mother has died. They decide to get back together. Vallejo asks Domingo Cordoba if he will act as go-between and persuade Henriette to leave. Domingo Cordoba refuses; instead, Georgette talks to her, putting an end to Henriette's involvement with Vallejo (Domingo Cordoba, 213-14).
On December 29 Vallejo, along with Armando Bazan, Juan J. Paiva, Eudocio Ravines, Jorge Seoane, and Demetrio Tello, set up a Peruvian Socialist Party cell in Paris and write to inform Jose Carlos Mariategui-who had recently (October 7, 1928) founded the Peruvian Communist Party in Lima-of their actions.
1929 In January, Vallejo moves into Georgette's apartment. Georgette has a prophetic experience when Vallejo first stays overnight: when folding up his suit she feels as if she is folding up a dead man's clothes.35 The following month they move to a new apartment on an adjoining street, at ii, avenue de l'Opera.
On February 3 Vallejo begins publishing articles in El Comercio, Lima's most prestigious daily, for which he will write twenty-three articles by '930.
In July Vallejo, Georgette, and Domingo C6rdoba travel to Brittany to stay at Ploumanach (Cote-du-Nord). While there, Vallejo and Domingo C6rdoba-neither of them strong swimmers-nearly drown while going for a swim in the sea (Domingo C6rdoba, 188).
In August Domingo Cordoba accompanies Vallejo to a clinic, where Georgette has an abortion (Domingo Cordoba, 227-28).
On September i9 Vallejo sets off on his second trip to the Soviet Union, this time with Georgette. Their itinerary, which has something of the Grand Tour about it, is Paris-BerlinMos cow- Leningrad- Prague-Cologne-Vienna-Budapest-Trieste-Venice-Florence-Rome-Pisa- Genoa-Nice-Paris. In Moscow Vladimir Mayakovsky takes Val
lejo to see Eisenstein's The Battleship Potemkin. Vallejo and Georgette also visit Lenin's tomb in Red Square.
1930 On January 2 Vallejo sends Luis Alberto Sanchez three poems in a letter: "Piedra negra sobre una piedra Blanca," "Altura y pelos," and one other (title not given) (Angel Flores, "Cronologia de viviencias y ideas," Los-6).
In February the biweekly review Bolivar, established by Pablo Abril in Madrid, begins to publish Vallejo's "Un reportaje en Rusia," which will later form Vallejo's travelogue Rusia en 1931: reflexiones at pie del Kremlin.
On April 9, at Gerardo Diego's suggestion, the second edition of Trilce is published by Jose Bergamin in Madrid (Compania Iberoamericana de Publicaciones). Bergamin writes a warm, insightful foreword.
In May Vallejo travels to Spain with Georgette. He meets up with Gerardo Diego, Rafael Alberti, and Pedro Salinas in the Cafe de Recoletos (Domingo C6rdoba, 189). He receives fifteen hundred pesetas in royalties for the second edition of Trilce (Domingo C6rdoba, 145). Vallejo goes with Domingo C6rdoba to Salamanca to meet Miguel de Unamuno, although they fail to arrange an interview (Domingo C6rdoba, 189).
On December 2, as a result of his political activities, Vallejo is expelled from France and is given until January 29, 1931, to leave. He and Georgette leave Paris on December 29 and move to Madrid, where they live in a modest house on Calle del Acuerdo.
1931 Vallejo begins writing for various newspapers such as La Voz and doing commissioned translations (such as Henri Barbusse, Elevacion [Madrid: Ulises, 19311, and Marcel Ayme, La calle sin nombre [Madrid: Editorial Cenit,1931[).36 He joins the Spanish Communist Party and teaches Marxist-Leninist theory in clandestine cells.
On March 7 Vallejo's novel El Tungsteno-the last few chapters of which were typed on Domingo C6rdoba's typewriter in Madrid in January (Domingo C6rdoba, 134) -is published by Editorial Cenit in Madrid.
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