César Vallejo

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César Abraham Vallejo Mendoza (born March 16, 1892 in Santiago de Chuco , Peru , † April 15, 1938 in Paris , France ) was a Peruvian poet, writer and journalist and an important representative of the Spanish - speaking avant-garde .

Life

César Vallejo in Paris

César Vallejo was born as the youngest of eleven siblings in a mestizo family in Santiago de Chuco, a village in the Peruvian Andes . He began to write his first poems at the age of 13, then studied literature at the Universidad de la Libertad in Trujillo and earned his living as a tutor and cashier on a sugar farm. Here he got to know the exploitation of the farm workers, which would have a strong influence on his later literary and political work. In 1915 he obtained a licentiate degree in Spanish literature with a thesis on Spanish Romanticism.

After graduation, Vallejo lived in Lima , where he met important representatives of the intellectual left. He gave tutoring and eventually got a job as a teacher. He lost that job after refusing to marry his pregnant mistress; she died after an abortion initiated by him. During this time, around 1918, he wrote his first work, the volume Los heraldos negros containing 72 poems . In 1921, while visiting his hometown, he got caught in an armed uprising, was wrongly mistaken for one of the perpetrators, and spent four months in prison. He also processed this prison stay in his stories Escalas Melografiadas from 1923.

Universidad César Vallejo in Lima (Peru)

After Trilce was published in 1922, César Vallejo lost another teaching position and emigrated to Europe in the summer of 1923. Here he settled in Paris. The case against him was by no means dropped in Peru, which prevented him from returning home for years. He earned his living as a journalist. He wrote a total of just over 300 articles for the Peruvian newspapers El Norte , Mundial , Variedades and El Comercio . He often had to struggle a long time to get the outstanding payment for his work. From 1925 to 1927 he received a modest scholarship from the Spanish Republic to study law, which he began in Peru, but which he never finished. Translations, for example by Henri Barbusse and Marcel Aymé , formed another part of the job .

In the following years communist influences increased on his work. In the autumn of 1928 and in the autumn of 1929, and again in October 1931, he also traveled to the Soviet Union to get to know socialism in that country. Because he was then expelled from France, he went to Spain. In 1931 he became a member of the Congress of Antifascist Authors and in 1937, together with Pablo Neruda , founded the Latin America Committee in Paris to support the Spanish Republic . After his death in 1938 he was buried in the Montparnasse Cemetery in Paris.

A private university in Lima today bears his name.

Work

Poems

Although only three of his books were published during his lifetime, César Vallejo is still considered one of the great poetic innovators of the Spanish language of the 20th century. Always one step ahead of the literary trends of the time, each of his books was stylistically different from the other and revolutionary in its own right.

  • Los heraldos negros (1919), “The black messengers”; German by Curt Meyer-Clason , Aachen, 2000. ISBN 3-89086-794-4
  • Trilce (1922); German by Curt Meyer-Clason, Aachen, 1998. ISBN 3-89086-865-7
  • España, aparta de mí este cáliz (1937), “Spain, take this cup from me”; German by Curt Meyer-Clason, Aachen, 1998. ISBN 3-89086-863-0
  • Poemas humanos (1939), “Human Poems”; German by Curt Meyer-Clason, Aachen, 1998. ISBN 3-89086-864-9
  • Complete Poetry: A Bilingual Edition , University of California Press (Paperback), 2009, ISBN 0-520-26173-9

Plays

Vallejo wrote five plays, none of which were performed or published during his lifetime.

  • Mampar (manuscript probably destroyed by the author)
  • Lock-Out (1930), in French
  • Entre las dos orillas corre el río (1930s)
  • Colacho hermanos o Presidentes de América (1934), satire
  • La piedra cansada (1937)

Edition: Teatro completo , Lima, Fondo Editorial Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú, 1979

novel

  • El Tungsteno (1931)

prose

  • Novelas y cuentos completos . Lima, Francisco Moncloa Editores, 1967

Essays and reports

  • Rusia en 1931 (Russia 1931), Madrid 1931.
  • A utopsy on surrealism , Willimantic, CT: Curbstone Press, 1982
  • Ensayos y reportajes completos , Lima: Pontificia Univ. Católica del Perú: 2002: CIX, 638 p.: Ill.

Web links

Commons : César Vallejo  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

supporting documents

  1. ↑ Americo Ferrari: About the Author, Book, and Translators; in César Vallejo, Clayton Eshleman, Julio Ortega: Trilce, Wesleyan University Press, 1992, p. VII
  2. ↑ Peter Kultzen (Ed.): César Vallejo - Let's talk Spanish, you listen to us; Reports from Europe 1923–1930 . Berenberg Verlag, Berlin 2018, ISBN 978-3-946334-43-9 , pp. 7-10 .
personal data
SURNAME Vallejo, César
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Vallejo Mendoza, César Abraham (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Peruvian poet and writer
DATE OF BIRTH March 16, 1892
PLACE OF BIRTH Santiago de Chuco , Peru
DATE OF DEATH April 15, 1938
Place of death Paris , France