The Nettie Lee Benson Latin American Collection is thrilled to announce the acquisition of the archives of César Vallejo and Augusto Roa Bastos, two giants of Latin American letters. These archives augment the Benson’s already significant collection of materials that represent the region’s writers, thinkers, and intellectual leaders, making the library, and the UT campus, an invaluable resource for students, faculty, researchers from all corners of the globe.

By ADELA PINEDA FRANCO

Peruvian poet César Vallejo (1892–1938) is considered one of the most significant figures in twentieth-century Latin American literature. Born in the Andean city of Santiago de Chuco, he moved to Lima as a young university student, producing there his first collection of poems, Los heraldos negros (1919). Seeking wider cultural and intellectual opportunities, Vallejo left Peru for Europe in 1923, spending most of his remaining fifteen years in self-imposed, impoverished exile in France, with periods in Spain and two trips to Russia. He died in Paris in 1938 at the age of 46. 

Vallejo’s poetry has no precedent in the history of modern poetry. Written during a period that witnessed the crude consequences of war, imprisonment, and displacement (1919–1922), his avant-garde masterwork, Trilce (1922), challenges the reader with compelling paradoxes, abrupt syntactical turns, irregular spellings, rarefied lexicon, and verses arranged in unfamiliar visual displays.

However, this experimental register goes beyond the drive toward the new that was characteristic of the avant-garde movements. Vallejo’s poetic language is also a consequence of his search for the stark concrete expression of human affect. This is why in Trilce abstract notions of time, space, and being are conflated with raw emotions. No other poet has given shape to the silence that sustains the remembrance of things past with such precision:

Aguedita, Nativa, Miguel,
cuidado con ir por ahí, por donde
acaban de pasar
gangueando sus memorias
dobladoras penas,
hacia el silencioso corral, y por donde
las gallinas que se están acostando todavía,
se han espantado tanto.
Mejor estemos aquí no más.
Madre dijo que no demoraría.

“Poema III,” Trilce, 1922

[Find English translations of the poems cited here at https://www.ucpress.edu/book/9780520261730/the-complete-poetry]

On the other hand, Vallejo’s poems embody the collective rather than the egotistical self. Familiar references are always a window into the vulnerability of human nature and the resilience of collective struggle, both in his homeland of Peru and in the entire world. A poem on the death of a soldier in the Spanish Civil War reads:

Pedro también solía comer
entre las criaturas de su carne, asear, pintar
la mesa y vivir dulcemente
en representación de todo el mundo.
Y esta cuchara anduvo en su chaqueta,
despierto o bien cuando dormía, siempre,
cuchara muerta viva, ella y sus símbolos.
¡Abisa a todos compañeros pronto!
¡Viban los compañeros al pie de esta cuchara para siempre!

“Solía escribir con su dedo grande en el aire,” España, aparta de mí este cáliz,1939

Vallejo’s oeuvre is thus an affective journey through the troublesome history of the twentieth century. Evidence of this is his posthumous poetry, which pertains to his last years in Europe: Poemas humanos (Human Poems), grouped under this title by his widow Georgette María Philippart Travers in 1937; and España, aparta de mí este cáliz (Spain, Take This Cup from Me,1939), his testament of the Spanish Civil War. Both collections are a centerpiece of the Benson’s recent acquisition.

Beyond the recurring debate as to whether Human Poems is an appropriate title for this posthumous corpus, it is certain that these poems are an honest and critical reflection on the role of the lettered poet in a world charged with misery and human suffering:

Un albañil cae de un techo, muere y ya no almuerza
¿Innovar, luego, el tropo, la metáfora?

“Un hombre pasa con un pan al hombro,” Poemas humanos, 1937

Vallejo’s poems will always be contemporary, as they shed light on the devastating consequences of societal fragmentation, displacement, and exile. At the same time, his poems remind us of the need to keep longing for human empathy and love, even in times of war. We celebrate the arrival of Vallejo’s papers.

Al fin de la batalla,
y muerto el combatiente, vino hacia él un hombre
y le dijo: “No mueras, te amo tanto!”
Pero el cadáver ¡ay! siguió muriendo.

Se le acercaron dos y repitiéronle:
“No nos dejes! ¡Valor! ¡Vuelve a la vida!”
Pero el cadáver ¡ay! siguió muriendo.

Acudieron a él veinte, cien, mil, quinientos mil,
clamando: “Tanto amor, y no poder nada contra la muerte!”
Pero el cadáver ¡ay! siguió muriendo.

Le rodearon millones de individuos,
con un ruego común: “¡Quédate, hermano!”
Pero el cadáver ¡ay! siguió muriendo.

Entonces, todos los hombres de
la tierra le rodearon; les vio el cadáver triste, emocionado;
incorporóse lentamente,
abrazó al primer hombre; echóse a andar . . .

“Masa,” Poemas humanos, 1939

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The César Vallejo Papers consist of materials dated from 1918 to 1992, and include manuscripts, drafts, correspondence, newspaper clippings, photographs, and some published copies of his written work.

This acquisition was funded in part by the Janet and Jack Roberts Peruvian Endowment.

Adela Pineda Franco is Lozano Long Endowed Professor in Latin American Literary and Cultural Studies, and director of the Teresa Lozano Long Institute of Latin American Studies (LLILAS) at The University of Texas at Austin. Biographical research on César Vallejo was contributed by Benson Exhibitions Curator Veronica Valarino.