|
Erica Gregg
November 22, 1999
ENG 598
Neruda & Vallejo Selected Poems
edited by Robert Bly
Pablo Neruda
Neruda was born on the twelfth of July in 1904 in Parral, Chile. His real name was Neftalí Ricardo Reyes Basoalto. From age six to sixteen, he studied at the Liceo de Hombres de Temuco. He completed his study in Humanities in 1920. His first publication was in the Temuco daily newspaper, La Mañana, in 1917. The article was titled "Enthusiasm and Perseverance." The article was signed Neftalí Reyes. His earliest published poems appeared in the Corre-Vuela de Santiago and in student literary magazines in Temuco in 1918. These poems were signed Neftalí Reyes, as well.
The pseudonym, Pablo Neruda, was first signed to poems published in Corre-Vuela in 1919. In 1920, Neruda writes a poem entitled "Hombre." Thereafter, Pablo Neruda not only became his permanent pseudonym, it became his name. On November 28th, 1920 he won his first award with the poem, "La Canción de la Fiesta" at the Fiesta de la Primevera de Temuco, the Spring Festival of Temuco. Neruda's first book was Crepusculario. It was published in 1923. Neruda went on to publish fifty books in fifty years.
Neruda dedicated the majority of his life to the left's struggle to challenge right-wing control in Chile. In 1948 he was persecuted for his membership in the Communist Party. Neruda fled to France in 1949, and after extensive travel, returned to Chile in 1954. The 1971 Nobel Prize for Literature poet died two years after receiving the award, during Pinochet's takeover of the Chilean government.
César Vallejo
César Vallejo was born in Santiago de Chuco, Perú in 1892. Vallejo was the youngest of eleven siblings. His family were devoted Catholics of indigenous descent. His father's wish was that he would become a priest as his two grandfathers had been. However, Vallejo had no interest in becoming a priest. At eighteen, he enrolled at the University of Trujillo. He graduated at age twenty-three. His first book, Los Heraldos Negros was published in Lima in 1919. He returned to Trujillo in 1920. He was imprisoned for three months for his involvement in a provincial political feud. During his imprisonment he wrote some of the poems for Trilce, his second book of poems.
In 1922, after losing his teaching job in Lima, Vallejo went to Paris. Poor throughout his life, Vallejo spent as much time considering the concerns of the poor as the concerns of writing. For instance, he had developed intricate methods for preventing the wear on his trousers when crossing his legs. He was a dedicated Marxist, and visited Russia in 1928. Vallejo was deported from France in 1930. He went to Spain, and returned to Paris in 1932. During the last year of his life, Vallejo began to prepare the collection of poems that would become, Poemas Humanos. It is unknown exactly when the poems were written.
From 1937-1938, Vallejo worked extensively for the welfare of refugees, on his writing, and the left's struggle in the Spanish Civil War. Finally, after much exhaustion, he fell ill with fever. The doctors were unable to diagnose the cause of his fever. César Vallejo died April 15th, 1938 during a rainstorm. Many believe he predicted his own death in his writing. The first and last stanzas of the poem "Down to the Dregs" in Los Heraldos Negros reads:
This afternoon it rains, rains endlessly. And I
don't feel like staying alive, heart!
And, more strikingly, the first line of the poem "Black Stone Lying on a White Stone" of Poemas Humanos proclaims:
I will die in Paris, on a rainy day,
on some day I can already remember.
Alternative Translations
The following are alternative translations written by Erica Maria Gregg
"La Cólera Que Quiebra Al Hombre en Niños" by César Vallejo
Translation:
"The Cholera That Breaks the Man into Boys"
The cholera that breaks the man into boys,
that breaks the boy into equal birds,
and after, the bird into little eggs;
the cholera of the poor
has an oil versus two vinegars.
The cholera that breaks the tree into leaves,
the leaves into rugged buttons
and the button into telescopic grooves;
the cholera of the poor
has a certain steel against two daggers.
The cholera that breaks the soul into bodies,
the body into dissimilar organs
and the organ, into eighths of thought;
the cholera of the poor
has a center fire opposite two craters.
"Alturas de Macchu Picchu, III" by Pablo Neruda
Translation:
"The Heights of Macchu Picchu, III"
Being, like maíz, is shelled in an infinite
granary of misplaced efforts, of miserable
happenings, the one out of seven, out of eight,
and not one dead, but many deaths approaching each one:
each day a small death, dust, maggot, lamp
shut off in the sludge of the outskirts of town, a small death
of rough wings
was thrust into every man like a short lance
and the man was inundated with bread or with knife,
the cattleman: the son of ports, or the dark captain
of the plough,
or the rat of the reflective roads:
They weakened waiting for death,
the short daily death:
and the fateful deterioration of each day was
like a black cup from they drank, trembling.
Neruda: The Expression of Water in Earth
In "Nothing but Death" in Residencia de la Tierra I and II, death is alive and active, as it was in Pedro Páramo by Juan Rulfo. Death is barking, it's embarking, and sailing. Finally, it arrives. It's arrival is marked by a shocking knock "like a shoe with no foot in it, like a suit with no man in it . . . a ring with no stone in it , with no finger in it . . ." It arrives with shouts "with no tongue, with no throat." Death sings the color of violets. It's face is green. Death is dressed as a broom. It's lapping the floor.
Neruda offers an earth full of water, full of light. He writes life into everything, even death, and underground. Neruda has a portal for viewing the hidden essence, the transcendence in pain. He has a piercing sight that not only sees a kind of glory within the objects and states of life, but also the surprising correlation between them--the "quartz in slugs," as in "Melancholy Inside Families."
Vallejo: Adding Air to Fire
Vallejo's writing in this selection seems to blow oxygen into flame, add burning to suffering. He sees the suffering in everything. There is little transcendence, actually none without the entire communal effort, as in "Masses" of España, Aparte de Mí Cáiz. Life can not be revived into living with every one's participation; remove one being from the effort, and the effort is wasted. In the last stanza, it is not until "all the men on th earth stood around him" that the corpse could be moved enough to revive.
Vallejo's work in Los Heraldos Negros is spattered with guilt and regret for life. In "Agape," the last line of the second to the last stanza reads: "my soul takes something that belongs to another." In "Eternal Dice," the speaker cries out in the first two lines of the poem, "God of mine, I am weeping for the life that I live; I am sorry to have stolen your bread . . ." Similiarly, in "Our Daily Bread," in the last stanza the speaker considers:
Every bone in me belongs to others;
and maybe I robbed them.
I came to take something for myself that maybe
was meant for some other man;
and I start thinking that, if I had not been born,
another poor man could have drunk this coffee.
I feel like a dirty thief . . . Where will I end?
Note: Vallejo's work was not magical realism, or related to a "marvelous" perspective of reality. His work seemed to be very rooted in "real" real, rather than the "marvelous" real. His poems were largely, if not completely, a reaction to the very heavy reality of the times and places he experienced. Neruda's writing was, of course, a reaction as well. The difference is that Neruda's poems allowed for transcendence, not of the experience, but of the perspective.
Works Cited
Bly, Robert. Neruda & Vallejo Selected Poems. Boston: Beacon Press, 1993.
Schade, George. Pablo Neruda: Fifty Odes. Austin: Host Publications, Inc., 1996.
Belitt, Ben. Five Decades: Poems 1925-1970 Pablo Neruda. New York: Grove Press,
1974.
|
|
