Selected Writings of César Vallejo. César Vallejo

romanticism exercises on all European literatures, one can say that José Zorrilla was a genius whose works are the exclusive fruit of his own artistic organization and philosophical temperament. This is confirmed by the fact that no poet of his rank has become the representative voice of his race and epoch to the point of reaching his level or rising above him, which is clearly manifest not only in the content but also in the formal technique of his works, and this has incited Alberto Lista—a classicist through and through—to read the grandiose creations of this author and then exclaim in a scathing critique of the liberty of Zorrilla’s executive manner,

      [W]hen on the wings of the idea our fantasy wants to fly to the empire, an incorrect expression, an improper word, an impossible Gallicism or neologism warns us that we are stuck in the mud of the earth … We cannot attribute this defect to the school of contemporary romanticism, first because its leaders in France have never managed to remove the yolk of their grammar, which is one thousand times more burdensome in French than in Spanish, and second because there are many poets among us who belong to the same school and who despite the liberty that they take during their raptures of imagination, still do not dare trespass the limits that preformulated poetic language has imposed on the license of genius.¹⁰

      As for his technique, there is no doubt that Zorrilla left many of his contemporaries in the dust, with his autonomous exaltation and profound knowledge of the science of the belles lettres, which is why to the chagrin of the Aristarchuses of the world¹¹ and the rulings of prescribed science, rather than being transgressions, as the professor of the University of Madrid suggests, those breaks with the academic rules of language have become the greatest merits of his work. With regard to morphology, the true legislator and motor for the transformation or disappearance of words is not the fanciful will of writers but of society, which thus fulfills one of the various projections of the evolution of the human spirit. That is why, when Zorrilla had penetrated this truth, placing in his poetry all the feeling, desire, and action of his people, he knew better than anyone where it was going, following the impulses of his own original artistic orientation. Today in his diction society sees words and phrases heard every day in different situations of life among the Spanish people. For this reason, one author says,

      [I]n Zorrilla one does not find reminiscences of Homer’s grandiosity or Virgil’s delicate tenderness or Horace’s cultured philosophical expression: in his poetry one does not sense the exotic yet enjoyable flavor that reading the works of foreign writers transmits, but of him one can say what Michelet said of Alexander Dumas: he was a force of Nature.¹²

      [JM]

FROM The Black Heralds

THE BLACK HERALDS

      There are blows in life, so powerful … I don’t know!

      Blows as from the hatred of God; as if, facing them,

      the undertow of everything suffered

      welled up in the soul … I don’t know!

      They are few; but they are … They open dark trenches

      in the fiercest face and in the strongest back.

      Perhaps they are the colts of barbaric Attilas;

      or the black heralds sent to us by Death.

      They are the deep falls of the Christs of the soul,

      of some adored faith blasphemed by Destiny.

      Those bloodstained blows are the crackling of

      bread burning us at the oven door.

      And man … Poor … poor! He turns his eyes, as

      when a slap on the shoulder summons us;

      turns his crazed eyes, and everything lived

      wells up, like a pool of guilt, in his look.

      There are blows in life, so powerful … I don’t know!

      [CE]

      ________________

THE SPIDER

      It is an enormous spider that now cannot move;

      a colorless spider, whose body,

      a head and an abdomen, bleeds.

      Today I watched it up close. With what effort

      toward every side

      it extended its innumerable legs.

      And I have thought about its invisible eyes,

      the spider’s fatal pilots.

      It is a spider that tremored caught

      on the edge of a rock;

      abdomen on one side,

      head on the other.

      With so many legs the poor thing, and still unable

      to free itself. And, on seeing it

      confounded by its fix

      today, I have felt such sorrow for that traveler.

      It is an enormous spider, impeded by

      its abdomen from following its head.

      And I have thought about its eyes

      and about its numerous legs …

      And I have felt such sorrow for that traveler!

      [CE]

      ________________

THE POET TO HIS LOVER

      My love, on this night you have been crucified on

      the two curved beams of my kiss;

      your torment has told me that Jesus wept,

      that there is a goodfriday sweeter than that kiss.

      On this strange night when you looked at me so,

      Death was happy and sang in his bone.

      On this September night my second fall

      and the most human kiss have been presided over.

      My love, we two will die together, close together;

      our sublime bitterness will slowly dry up;

      and our defunct lips will have touched in shadow.

      There will be no more reproach in your holy eyes;

      nor will I offend you ever again. In one grave

      we two will sleep, as two siblings.

      [CE]

      ________________

DREGS

      This afternoon it is raining, as never before; and I

      have no desire to live, my heart.

      This afternoon is sweet. Why should it not be?

      Dressed in grace and pain; dressed like a woman.

      This afternoon in Lima it is raining. And I recall

      the cruel caverns of my ingratitude;

      my block of ice over her poppy,

      stronger than her “Don’t be this way!”

      My violent black flowers; and the barbaric

      and terrible stoning; and the glacial distance.

      And the silence of her dignity

      with burning holy oils will put an end to it.

      So this afternoon, as never before, I am

      with this owl, with this heart.

      Other women go by; and seeing me so sad,

      they take on a bit of you

      in the abrupt wrinkle of my deep remorse.

      This