Book Description
This first translation of the complete poetry of Peruvian César Vallejo (1892-1938) makes available to English speakers one of the greatest achievements of twentieth-century world poetry. Handsomely presented in facing-page Spanish and English, this volume, translated by National Book Award winner Clayton Eshleman, includes the groundbreaking collections The Black Heralds (1918), Trilce (1922), Human Poems (1939), and Spain, Take This Cup from Me (1939).
Vallejo's poetry takes the Spanish language to an unprecedented level of emotional rawness and stretches its grammatical possibilities. Striking against theology with the very rhetoric of the Christian faith, Vallejo's is a tragic vision--perhaps the only one in the canon of Spanish-language literature--in which salvation and sin are one and the same. This edition includes notes on the translation and a fascinating translation memoir that traces Eshleman's long relationship with Vallejo's poetry. An introduction and chronology provide further insights into Vallejo's life and work. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (3)

Duende
Vallejo not only does not wear out but grows more relevant as we move forward from his death. His poetry is filled with sense switching and fantastic metaphors that serve to unhinge your thought process from linear, logical, to a mystic, hallucinatory world where The Book of Revelations seems to be rewritten in your presence.

Fabolous
Cesar Vallejo is a poet for all times, interconnected to the stars - and the earth. The translation of his poems in this book seems to be very adequate.

"Poemas Humanos" by César Vallejo
La poesía del peruano César Vallejo, representa, en sí misma, toda una antología del dolor humano; de la pobreza exacerbada; del sufrimiento peesonal y ajeno; y de la más pura, limpia y sencilla esperanza de la vida.A través de un particularísimo estilo y prosa, Vallejo nos remie a un mundopoético nunca antes visto en Latino américa y en la misma Europa. Un estiloque surge de la sangre, de los huesos, del estómago vacío y ansioso; delalma dolida, maltratada y sorprendida. La poesís de César Vallejo nos dejasin aliento y nos coje un dedo; nos jala las orejas, nos sacude el corazóny erecta nuestro deseo de ser buenos, simples, tal vez sufridos. Creo quees un libro que todo amante de la buena poesía debe tener cerca de su cama,escritorio, maleta... debe ser llevado, primordialmente, en lasprofundidades del intelecto y del espíritu. En los huesos, la carne, lasangre y los momentos diarios. Resulta muy difícil tratar de expresar tantaadmiración en tan poco espacio. Valga mi tiempo, lectura, poesía yadmiración a este enorme sencillo hombre mundano, César Vallejo. ... Read more

Book Description
César Vallejo, original innovator and creator, is one of the most important Spanish American poets of the 20th century, whose popularity and universality in Spanish and Latin American Literatures are widely recognized. In addition to his poetic work, Vallejo also wrote theater, journalistic essays and fiction. However, compared with the critical studies of his poetry, there is very little analysis of his other work available. Vallejo's prose fiction, complement and projection of his poetic work, has rarely been studied but it merits close examination. When Vallejo's prose is contextualized chronologically, aesthetically and ideologically, a significantly richer reading ofboth his prose and poetry is enabled, whichcontributes to a deeper understanding of the author's literary intentions. In El Tungsteno and in Paco Yunque, in addition to the author's concerns about social and ideological themes, the reader can see the aesthetic conception of a politically committed art and the ways in which the author, who was never neutral, either in the political or in the social sphere, utilized fiction as a medium to engage the reader and awaken his conscience. At the same time, Vallejo was preoccupied with showing the dynamics within the narrative structure through which the different narrative levels are permeated by one primary thematic relationship: corruption. For this reason, from the moment these two texts were first published, Peruvian, as well as foreign, critics recognized their importance in expressing the artistic vision through which Vallejo denounced the corruption and destruction that pervaded all levels of society, a corruption and destruction provoked by the politics of environmental and human destruction and manipulation that industrialized nations imposed upon countries with deficient social and political infrastructures. In Paco Yunque, Vallejo also underlines the sociocultural problem that is created when a deviant masculinity develops in members of the upper classes, revealing endemic evils of a society which have their origin in homes and schools, and which have consequences for the entire country. This edition, by Prof. Flor María Rodrígues-Arenas, includes a detailed introductory analysis and footnotes that allowthe reader to better comprehend the text and understand its importance within Hispanic American literature. ... Read more

Book Description

Throughout his life, Cesar Vallejo (1892–1938) focused on human suffering and the isolation of people victimized by inexplicable forces. One of the great Spanish language poets, he merged radical politics and language consciousness, resulting in the first examples of a truly new world poetry.

The Black Heralds is Vallejo's first book and contains a wide range of poems, from love sonnets in which he struggles to free his erotic life from the bounds of Spanish Catholicism to the linguistically inventive sequence, "Imperial Nostalgias," where he parodies with considerable savagery the pastoral romanticism of Indian and rural life.

In this bilingual volume, translator Rebecca Seiferle attempts to undo the "colonization" of Vallejo in other translations. As Seiferle writes in her introduction: "Reading and translating Vallejo has been a long process of trying to meet him on his own terms, to discover what those terms were within the contexts of his particular time and, finally, taking his word for it."

from "Our Bread"

And in this frigid hour, when the earth
smells of human dust and is so sad,
I want to knock on every door
and beg forgiveness of I don't know whom,
and bake bits of fresh bread for him,
here, in the oven of my heart...!

Cesar Vallejo (1892–1938) was born in Peru to a family of mixed Spanish and native descent. He wrote two books of poetry, the second of which was partly composed during a short prison term. Disappointed by the reception of his poetry in his own country, Vallejo moved to Paris, where he became active in Marxist politics and the antifascist campaign in Spain, while publishing essays, political -articles, a play, and short stories. Vallejo died in Paris, in utter poverty, on the day Franco's armies entered Madrid.

Customer Reviews (2)

The Poet of Suffering
I have not read Ms. Seiferle's translation of Los Heraldos Negros (so please ignore the rating) but I have read her translation of Trilce: this is much better than either of the others I have by David Smith and Clayton Eshelman, which would lead one to reasonably believe that her version of Vallejo's first work would exhibit most if not all of the same qualities: a receptive tenderness toward Poetic as opposed to Literal meanings, and, a rhythmic intuitiveness neccessary to good translation; something Mr. Eshelman is sadly lacking in his own work on this great Poet (Smith hardly bears up to any scrutiny at all, being non-poet, although well intentioned).But I did want to clarify two things for the uninitiated about Vallejo himself and this work: 1) Los Heraldos Negros did have another English Language publication, contrary to what the book review above is telling you: in 1990, by Latin American Literary Review Press (Richard Schaaf & Kathleen Ross were the translators).2) Vallejo's Marxist beliefs are nowhere to be found in his poetry.This is the sort of thinking one associates with people who are only marginally aware of what Vallejo is trying to say and who thus confuse it with his later activities while in France (Los Heraldos Negros was composed Before the move, not after).The best advice here is to ignore Vallejo's public pronouncements at all times and concentrate instead upon his Poems; these will tell you what he actually thinking as well as why.You will also avoid the embarassment of linking it to any sort of politics or theory.Suffering is Vallejo's political affiliation, his literary theory, not the Marxism he was later drawn to because he could not bear to live in a world completely devoid of all practical hope. We should always bear this in mind when we recall his poetry: that he could not live without love (hope) and so chose to devote himself to Marxism because it seemed to him (then) as the best hope for a just future.That it was not only deepens the sweet/sad content (trilce) of his indisputably great poetry.

Vallejo's Language of Arrest
Readers who first encounter the militant, intellectual Vallejo stumble, as must have the first patrons of Picasso's *Guernica*, into a territory where radical politics and language consciousness cannot be divided.Famous forhis revulsion at the capitalist conscious (or lack of one), Vallejo'spoetry--from its most profane to its most threateningly lyrical--is anhardline education in the Marxist point of view.Middle class comfort,with its notion of safety, self-destructs on contact with Vallejo's"auroral dagger"; even in translation his verse splices the"burning coals" of the lip with the deliberate confusion ofsyntax and the extremities of diction.

When Vallejo proclaims "mylip/will split open into a hundred sacred petals./Tilda will hold thedagger/the flower-killing and auroral dagger!" ("BurningCoals") he places the speaker under intellectual and emotional arrest. Often with Vallejo there is no where to go but into the terrible dwellingsof all experience and a life that struggles toward the new--fusing politicsand romance, invention and lyric.The reader, very likely the middle classreader or writer under accusation, is faced with the impossible:syntaxlures the reader into suffering.Diction becomes "a pariah'sneurasthenic song," a verse of the nerve ("Leaves ofEbony").The reader is placed on the rack of what Vallejo himselfcalls a "multisense of sweet unbeing" ("For the ImpossibleSoul of My Beloved") .

For the reader interested in poetry thatworks the ideals of politic and word into dangerously parabolic axes, theplace to start is *The Black Heralds*.For the Marxist Vallejo withsomething to teach us now, the heart's language and the mind's dialecticarc into the Peruvian's "sublime parabola of love." ("Forthe Impossible Soul...")Perhaps Peru's greatest Modernist hassomething to teach us yet about the true springs of Idealism. ... Read more

Book Description
César Vallejo is one the greatest poets of the twentieth century. His first publication, in his native Peru, was a book called "The Black Heralds", a fine collection of lyric poems in a largely symbolist style. This was followed by the book by which he is best known, "Trilce" (1922), which has become one of the monuments of the Hispanic 'vanguardia'. After "Trilce", now resident in Europe, Vallejo wrote stories, essays, a novel, and several plays, but did not collect any of his subsequent poems for book publication. Since his death, these poems have usually been referred to as the "Poemas humanos" after the title of one of the posthumous volumes.This Selected Poems draws on both of the volumes published by Shearsman Books in 2005: "Trilce" and the "Complete Later Poems 1923-1938", and adds to this selection a group of early poems from "The Black Heralds", thus giving an overview of the author's career and a sample of the whole range of his remarkable work.The translations are by the prize-winning Irish poet-translator, Michael Smith, and the Peruvian scholar, Valentino Gianuzzi. ... Read more

Book Description
"Chilean Pablo Neruda is Latin America's greatest poet and one of the finest ever to have written in the Spanish language. The Peruvian poet César Vallejo, part Indian and born in a mining village, ranks not far below Neruda. Robert Bly is one of America's foremost poets, and a translator of uncommon brilliance. The combination makes for a priceless volume." -Long Beach Press Telegram ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

sublime
I found this collection very satisfying on several levels.First the translations are excellent, successfully capturing both concrete and abstract elements of both poets.Second, the careful selection by Mr. Bly of poems wonderfully illustrates the best elements of each poet, the abstract genius of Neruda and the passion of Vallejo.Third; this collection is bilingual and even if one does not speak spanish, reading and listening to the poems in the native language allows one to appreciate the rhyme schemes, tempos, alliteration etc.

Neruda and Vallejo-Selected Poems - Robert Bly, et al editor
I recently finished reading this powerful collection of works, and enjoyed it immensely. Bly does a marvellous job of capturing the mood and power of these poets, and the biographical pieces were interesting and to thepoint.

This collection is also bilingual, which is a great plus even ifyou only listen for the sound of the poetic line.

I would highlyrecommend it for those who have not experienced either of these fine poets.It left me hungry for more of their work. ... Read more

Book Description
Book in Spanish ... Read more

Product Description
Esta es la mejor edicion que existe de la obra de vallejo. Incluye no solo varios ensayos escritos por agudos criticos sino tambien obra inedita del poeta peruano. ... Read more

Book Description
Cesar Vallejo was born in Peru in 1892. In 1921 he spent three months in prison where he wrote some of the poems in Trilce. In 1923 he left for Paris, where he co-founded a cell of the Peruvian Communist Party. He traveled to Russia, and to Spain during the Spanish Civil War. He died in Paris in 1938, in absolute poverty, devastated by the fall of the Spanish Republic.

Trilce, published the same year as Eliot's Waste Land and also masterpiece of early modernism, is a ground-breaking work that has had an indelible effect on all subsequent poetry in its language. It contains 77 poems considered to be Vallejo's most complex and radical work. ... Read more

Product Description
Biography of Cesar Vallejo ... Read more

Book Description
This digital document is an article from Variaciones Borges, published by Thomson Gale on January 1, 2007. The length of the article is 8950 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

Citation Details
Title: El dialogo Borges-Vallejo: un silencio elocuente.(Jorge Luis Borges y Cesar Vallejo)(Critical essay)
Author: Pedro Granados
Publication: Variaciones Borges (Magazine/Journal)
Date: January 1, 2007
Publisher: Thomson Gale
Volume: 23Page: 183(24)

Article Type: Critical essay

Distributed by Thomson Gale ... Read more