This section contains 10,100 words (approx. 34 pages at 300 words per page) |
SOURCE: "César Vallejo (Peru, 1892-1938)," in Modern Latin American Literature, Oxford University Press, London, 1973, pp. 11-38.
In the essay below, Gallagher provides an overview of Vallejo's career.
Vallejo's first book of poems, Los heraldos negros (1918), is at first sight a derivative work, and one or two poems in it could easily have been written by Ruben Dario, others by Herrera y Reissig or Lugones. Take the opening stanza of 'Nochebuena' ('Christmas Eve'):
Al callar la orquesta, pasean veladas
sombras femeninas bajo los ramajes,
por cuya hojarasca se filtran heladas
quimeras de luna, pálidos celajes
['When the orchestra falls silent, veiled / female shadows stride beneath the branches / through whose foliage are filtered / frozen whims of moon, pallid skyscapes.']
—a purely decorative description that parades all the portentous hush, the hectically contrived mystery of fleeting feminine presences, the subtly filtered light effects, the delicate pallors of modernista...
This section contains 10,100 words (approx. 34 pages at 300 words per page) |