While the reader can certainly enjoy Cesar Vallejo’s poetry on first reading, it is impossible to fully understand or appreciate it in isolation. It is necessary to know something about his life and the history of his time to fully grasp the content and to read much of the rest of his work to understand his heart. These three poems are three threads in a tapestry of life written in poetry by Vallejo. While the work of all poets is interconnected, because they draw upon the past, and each other, to create the future, Vallejo’s work is almost an inner monologue of the poet’s social, spiritual and literary development.
Dead Idyll, upon first reading, seems to be a poem to a lost love, and a close reading communicates that she is dead. In looking at the original Spanish text, I had an uneasy feeling about the translation of the verbs. I managed to uncover a different translation, which I like better because it uses the conditional tense in the first line. My own interpretation would fall between the two translations, as the first one is careful to preserve the form, while the second concentrates upon meaning, but adds words that are not there to enhance the theme. One example is the word “showing” which the translator puts inline five to modify hands. I would leave this out and use: hands that would contritely iron the afternoon.
The first translator is too literal and misses some of the tone, which the more recent translation is too complicated and loses some of the power, especially when concrete images are softened. I believe that the translation should be something in between, such as: “Whose hands in an act of contrition ironed the afternoon” Both translators are constrained by form. My own translation of the meaning would lose the form.
I think the translation using present tense in “Where are her hands” is correct, since he is asking where they are, now that the rain is taking even his desire to live. Since Vallejo was very concerned with form, though he did modify the rhythm of the sonnet, the translation must honor this. Vallejo tells us that he is without desire: “my blood dozes, like weak cognac”. We assume that this woman died, and that his blood was “hot” while she lived. Perhaps she contritely ironed the afternoon after morning sex. The woman is likely a combination of Maria Sandoval, who died young of tuberculosis (Hart in Eshelman 689-699), and Zoila Quadra, a young girl who inspired his attempted suicide when their affair ended. There may even be elements of his mother and sisters in the poem.
Vallejo says more with imagery than with words. He sticks to a modified sonnet form and manages iambic pentameter with a little poetic license. He actually talks about this in the poem “I pursue a form”, as he says he “(pursues) a bud of thought that seeks to be a rose”. However, I would have translated Estilo as pen, and the first line would read: “I pursue a form which does not find my pen”.
Vallejo describes his thoughts as delivered to his lips by a goddess, Venus de Milo, using personification. He says that the light which illuminates his soul is a quiet reflection. Since the reflection is not what it reflects, the word gets away. He finds only what he sees and hears in the still night: the music of the flute, the drowsiness of late night, the sighing sound of the fountain under the window of his “Sleeping Beauty” and a curious swan which seems to question him. The last line uses descriptive verbs to create an image of a swan making the characteristically graceful movement of the neck which looks like it is asking a question. It is a fitting ending to the poet’s thoughts about his inability to write what he feels. His style is Avant-guard, using plain language to convey concrete imagery with power.
The rhythm of this poem deviates from the standard iambic pentameter of the sonnet form, and his use of very simple language made Vallejo quite influential at a time when poetry was changing. He had only had personal contact with local poets at this time. However, he was reading other poets and his work has echoes of Ezra Pound and T.S. Eliot. The content of these two poems is not political, but we can see a change in the last poem, The Grandfather.
The woman in The Grandfather is probably a combination of Vallejo’s mother and a lover, Otilio. (Eshelman 689-699) He was likely of mixed heritage. The Peruvian power brokers were extremely proud of their pure Spanish blood and Vallejo has introduced early terrible treatment of the workers. He became involved in the socialist/communist movement. His words in this poem show us how he felt about racial discrimination, as the subject of the poem is unaware of her mixed blood.
In the first line we read “her northern eyes”, telling us that the woman was probably claiming Castilian heritage, and may even have had blue eyes. She “lives close to the rhythm of her European blood,” which tells us that she is higher class. In Peru at that time, the middle and upper classes were small and elite. He finishes this image with a startling image of a black beating on a harsh-sounding drum. Vallejo describes her very European looks, with an aquiline nose, a small mouth and very pale white skin. Vallejo shows here that the pride this woman takes in her heritage is mistaken since she has black blood as close as her “fleeing grandfather” (an escaped slave?). He points out that her hair may be blond, but that it is kinky. That Vallejo describes her flesh as it “quivers, naked and gleaming,” points more to a lover than his mother, so he has, again, mixed women into one for the subject of his poem.
He calls her “my lady,” suggesting status, and then mentions the flowers she should see in her “mysterious veins”, all from different places, including Asia (the lotus), which is curious. The flowers may symbolize the women in her family, and Vallejo’s impression that they are all beautiful. He is saying that she should value her heritage, including that mixture to which she will not admit, or of which she does not know.
The last few lines of the sonnet tell us about the grandfather “who kinked forever” her yellow hair. Vallejo describes the image of her “fleeing grandfather” as a “sweet dark shadow” close to the calm shore. This is a hint that the grandfather was an escaped slave. The poem addresses the prejudice of the society, of ruling families and expresses Vallejo’s lack of comprehension of the reason for the prejudice. So we understand that he believed the mixed blood was good, a benefit to inhabitants of a less than temperate zone.
This poem is not romantic. It is an admonishment to the ruling class that they are ignoring their beneficial mixed blood. He describes a very beautiful woman and says that she fails to value that mixed blood that makes her desirable. “Row in the live waters” is an image of her past, a river upon which float the flowers of her ancestry. The entire poem is written just to create the single image of a proud Castilian woman and a strong black lover in the reader’s mind, a symbol of the women of the entire ruling class.
Vallejo’s new use of the sonnet with plain language and somewhat different rhythms shows us why he became such a prominent figure in the literary scene of his time. Vallejo was on the very begging edge of the Avant-guard movement which eventually took over the literary world. We can see a resemblance to the contemporary Avant-guard poets like Pound and Eliot and, eventually, Guinsburg. His words are not flowery and he uses the sonnet form but changes the meter. It is good that the original Spanish is included in most publications since we do lose quite a lot in translation. Some translations adhere to the form and work the content to fit, while others stay faithful to the content and the form is subverted. It is not possible to translate these poems without losing one or the other. While I enjoy hearing the sounds of the original form, the translations which adhere to the content are more important to me, because the form is simply not as important as the content. Being able to read this work in the original form allows even those readers whose Spanish is limited to understand and enjoy the beauty of these poems, including the Spanish form.
Works Cited
Eshelman, Clayton, ed. Translator. The Complete Poetry, a Bilingual Edition. Casar Vallejo. University of California Press. 689-699. 2007.
Hart, Steven M. A Chronology of Cesar Vallejo’s Work, in Eshelman, Appendix, 2007.