SOURCE: "César Vallejo's Personal Earthquake," in Romance Notes, Vol. XXV, No. 2, Winter, 1984, pp. 127-31.

In the essay below, Hart discusses historical and religious references in the poem "Terremoto. 'I

César Vallejo's poem "Terremoto" has received little critical attention in the past. [In the 1976 César Vallejo: The Dialectics of Poetry and Silence] Jean Franco discusses how the poem 'destroys any sense of presence in order to replace this by relativity and function', but she does not bring out the relevance of the historical figures to the imagery used. Americo Ferrari gives a longer critical discussion of "Terremoto" [in the 1972 El universo poetico de César Vallejo], showing how it is characterized by opposites of various kinds, but confessing ignorance at the meaning of certain phrases such as 'horizonte de entrada' and the relevance of certain names such as Atanacio and Isabel. Clayton Eshleman goes one step...