Los heraldos negros De zwarte herauten
	Tiempo Tiempo.

Tiempo Tiempo.

Mediodía estancado entre relentes.
Bomba aburrida del cuartel achica
tiempo tiempo tiempo tiempo.

Era Era.

Gallos cancionan escarbando en vano.
Boca del claro día que conjuga
era era era era.

Mañana Mañana.

El reposo caliente aun de ser.
Piensa el presente guárdame para
mañana mañana mañana mañana.

Nombre Nombre.

¿Qué se llama cuanto heriza nos?
Se llama Lomismo que padece
nombre nombre nombre nombre.

César Abraham Vallejo was born on March 16, 1892, in Santiago de Chuco, an isolated town in north central Perú. Vallejo's grandmothers were Chimu Indians and both of his grandfathers, by a strange coincidence, were Spanish Catholic priests. He was the youngest of eleven children and grew up in a home saturated with religious devotion. Vallejo entered the School of Philosophy and Letters at Trujillo University in 1910, but had to drop out for lack of money. Between 1908 and 1913, he started and stopped his college education several times, working in the meantime as a tutor and in the accounts department on a large sugar estate. At the sugar estate, Vallejo saw thousands of workers arrive in the courtyard at dawn to work in the fields until nightfall for a few cents a day and a fistful of rice. Seeing this devastated Vallejo and later inspired both his poetry and his politics.

In 1913 Vallejo enrolled again at Trujillo University and studied literature and law, and read voraciously about determinism, mythology, and evolution. After receiving a Master's Degree in Spanish literature in 1915, Vallejo continued to study law until 1917. However, his life in Trujillo had become complicated by a tortured love affair and he moved to Lima. Vallejo found work as the principal of a prestigious school. At night he visited opium dens in Chinatown and hung out in the Bohemian cafés, where he met the important literary figures of the time, including Manual Gonzalez Prada, one of Peru's leading leftists. When Vallejo's Los heraldos negros was published, in 1919, it was received enthusiastically. Vallejo then began to push his talent in a new direction.

Vallejo lost his teaching post for refusing to marry a woman with whom he was having an affair. In 1920, after his mother's death and the loss of a second teaching job, Vallejo visited his home. During a feud that broke out before his arrival in Santiago de Chuco, an aide to the subprefect was shot and the general store burned to the ground. Vallejo, who was actually writing up the legal information about the shooting for the subprefect, was blamed as an "intellectual instigator." In spite of protest telegrams from intellectuals and newspaper editors, he was imprisoned for 105 days. When released on parole, he left for Lima, embittered by the affair.

In 1922, Vallejo published Trilce, a book written while in hiding before his arrest. Trilce, which placed Latin American poetry in the center of Western cultural tradition, appeared to come out of nowhere. Vallejo continued to teach while in Lima, but in the spring of 1923 his position was eliminated. Fearing that he could still be forced to go back to jail, he accepted the invitation of his friend Julio Gálvez to go to Paris. Vallejo left Peru for good in June 1923.

Vallejo and Gálvez nearly starved in Paris. It wasn't until 1925 that Vallejo found his first stable job in a newly opened press agency and began to receive a monthly grant from the Spanish government to continue his law studies at the University of Madrid. Since he was not required to stay on campus Vallejo remained in Paris, where he continued to receive the money for two years. The grant, plus the income from articles, enabled Vallejo to move into the Hotel Richelieu in 1926 and frequent exhibitions, concerts, and cafés. He met Antonin Artaud, Pablo Picasso, and Jean Cocteau. The somber, straightforward works he wrote during this period form a bridge between Trilce and the densely compassionate and bitter poetry he would write in the thirties.

In 1927, he received news from home that the tribunal in charge of his old case had given orders to arrest him, which confirmed his intuition to leave Peru. He left his post at the press agency and refused further grant payments. His economic situation worsened. By 1928, he had begun to read Marxist literature and appeared to be an actively committed Communist. In September of 1928 Vallejo made the first of three trips to Russia; he returned to form the Peruvian Socialist party with other expatriates.

In January 1929, Vallejo and Georgette Philipart, whom he met soon after his arrival in Paris, moved in together. Vallejo's Marxist studies continued, and he decided no longer to publish poetry, devoting himself instead to writing a book of Marxist theory. In 1930, Vallejo wrote his first drama. He continued to write scripts in the years to come, leaving nearly 600 pages of unpublished material at his death. Vallejo was arrested by the police in a Paris railroad station in December and ordered to leave France within three days. He returned to Madrid where, in 1931, he wrote his only novel, El tungsteno. When the Monarchy fell and the Republic was proclaimed, Vallejo officially joined the Spanish Communist party and, once Rusia en 1931 was published, was even temporarily famous. Despite his success, however, he could not find a publisher for his new material.

In January 1932, Georgette Philipart returned to Paris to find their apartment sacked by the police. Meanwhile, Vallejo was desperately trying to establish publishing connections in Madrid. Finally obtaining a resident permit in February 1933, Vallejo left for Paris with nothing but the clothes on his back. The conditions of the permit forbade him to engage in any political activity whatsoever; the years between 1933 and 1936 were the least documented in Vallejo's adult life and may well have been his darkest.

Vallejo and Philipart married in 1934, and their financial situation took a turn for the worse. Finally, in 1936, Vallejo found a teaching position, and the Fascist uprising in Spain in July of that year inspired him to a spectacular display of sustained creativity. Absorbed by the Loyalist anti-Fascist cause, Vallejo began to build a "popular poetry," incorporating war reportage, while at the same time becoming more hermetic than ever before. In July 1927 he left again for Spain, which was deep in civil war, and took part in the Second International Congress of Writers for the Defense of Culture. Among the 200 writers attending, Vallejo was elected the Peruvian representative. While in Spain, Vallejo visited the front briefly and saw the horror with his own eyes. Back in Paris he wrote a fifteen-scene tragedy, La piedra cansada, and then in one sustained push, from early September to early December, fifty-two of the fifty-four poems that make up Sermón de la barbarie, along with the fifteen poems of España, aparte de mí este cálize.

In early March 1938, the years of strain and deprivation, compounded by heartbreak over Spain, as well as exhaustion from the pace of the previous year, finally took their toll. Vallejo contracted a lingering fever, and by late March he could not get out of bed. Despite medical attention, his condition worsened. No one knew how to heal him; at one point, his wife even enlisted the help of astrologers and wizards. On the morning of April 15, the Fascists finally reached the Mediterranean, cutting the Loyalist territory in two. At more or less the same moment, Vallejo cried out in delirium, "I am going to Spain! I want to go to Spain!" and he died. It was Good Friday. The clinic records state that he died of an "acute intestinal infection." His body was buried at Montrouge, the "Communist" cemetery in southern Paris. In the 1960s, Georgette, who was living in Lima, had his remains moved to Montparnasse, where they now reside.

A Selected Bibliography

Poetry

    Los heraldos negros (The Black Heralds) (1918)
    Trilce (1922)
    Nómina de huesos (Payroll of Bones) (1936)
    Sermón de la barbarie (Sermon on Barbarism) (1939)
    España, aparte de mí este cálize (Spain, Take This Cup from Me) (1939)
    Poemas humanos (Human Poems) (1939)
    Antologia de Cesar Vallejo (1942) Compiled by Xavier Abril.
    Antologia (1948) Compiled by Edmundo Cornejo U.
    Poesias completas (1918-1938) (1949) Compiled by Cesar Miro.
    Los mejores versos de Cesar Vallejo (1956)
    La vida, y quince poemas: antologia poetica (1958) Compiled by Jose Escobar and Eugenio Martinez Pastor.
    Poemas (1958) Compiled with notes by Ramiro de Casabellas.
    Poemas escogidos (1958) Compiled with prologue by Gustavo Valcarcel.
    Poemas humanos (1923-1938) [and] Espana, aparta de mi este caliz (1937-1938) (1961)
    Poesias completas (1961) Volume 1: Los heraldos negros, Volume 2: Trilce, Volume 3: Espana, aparta de mi este caliz, Volume 4: Poemas humanos.
    Cesar Vallejo: Sus mejores obras (1962) Includes Los heraldos negros, Trilce, and Rusia en 1931: Reflexiones al pie del Kremlin.
    Twenty Poems (1962) Bilingual edition. Selected and translated by Robert Bly, James Wright, and John Knoepfle, with essay by Wright.
    Antologia poetica (1962) Introduction by Valcarcel.
    Los heraldos negros y Trilce (1962)
    Poesias completas (1965) With prologue by Roberto Fernandez Retaman, Casa de las Americas.
    Antologia (1966) Edited with notes by Julio Ortega.
    Cesar Vallejo (1967) Edited by Georgette de Vallejo, P. Seghers.
    Seven Poems (1967) Translated by Clayton Eshleman, R. Morris.
    Obra poetica completa (1968) With manuscript facsimiles. Edited by Georgette de Vallejo and F. Moncloa.
    Cesar Vallejo: An Anthology of His Poetry (1970) Edited by James Higgins.
    Un hombre pasa (1970) Translated by Michael Smith.
    Ten Versions from Trilce (1970) Translated by Charles Tomlinson and Henry Gifford. Translated by Charles Tomlinson and Henry Gifford.
    Poesias completas de Cesar Vallejo, J. Pablos (1971)
    Trilce (1973) Translated by David Smith.
    Obras completas (1974) Volume 1:Contra el secreto profesional: A proposito de Pablo Abril de Vivero, Volume 2: El arte y la revolucion, Volume 3: Obra poetica completa.
    Selected Poems (1976) Edited by Gordon Brotherston and Ed Dorn.
    Cesar Vallejo: The Complete Posthumous Poetry (1978) Translated by Eshleman and Barcia.
    Perfil de Cesar Vallejo: Vida y obra antologia poetica (1978) Edited by Juan Larrea and others.
    Works also collected in Poesia completa (1978) Edited by Juan Larrea.
    Poesia completa (1981)
    Canciones de hogar: Songs of Home (1981) Translated by Richard Schaaf and Kathleen Ross.
     Selected Poems of Cesar Vallejo Selected Poems of Cesar Vallejo (1981) Translated by. H. R. Hays.
    Obra poetica completa: Cesar Vallejo (1982) Introduction by Americo Ferrari. V
    Palms and Guitar (1982) Translation by J. C. R. Green.
    Asi es la vida, tal como es la vida (1982) Edited by Juan Antonio Massone.
    Poemas humanos; Espana, aparta de mi este caliz (1985)
    Selected Poetry (1987) Edited by Higgins, F. Cairns.
    Poemas en prosa; Poemas humanos, Espana, aparta de mi este caliz (1988)
    Poesia completa (1988) Ediciones Consejo de Integracion Culturam Latinoamericana.
    Cesar Vallejo, a Selection of His Poetry (1988) Translated by James Higgins, F. Cairns.
    Trilce (1992) Translated by Clayton Eshleman.
    Trilce (1992) Translated by Rebecca Seiferle.
    Neruda and Vallejo: Selected Poems (1993) Translated by Bly, Wright, and Knoepfle. Edited with new preface by Robert Bly.

Prose

    Rusia en 1931 (1932)
    El romanticismo en la poesia castellana (1954) Juan Mejia Baca & P. L. Villanueva.
    Rusia en 1931: Reflexiones al pie del Kremlin (1959) Published in two volumes.
    Articulos olvidados (1960) Compiled with prologue by Luis Alberto Sanchez.
    Rusia ante el segundo plan quinquenal (1965)
    Literatura y arte (1966)
    Cartas a Pablo Abril (1971) Rodolfo Alonso.
    Battles in Spain (1978) Translated by Eshleman and Barcia.
    Paco Yunque (1981) First Honduran edition, 1969, illustrated by Pablo Picasso.
    Epistolario general (1982) Letters.
    Autopsy on Surrealism (1982) Translated by Schaaf, edited by James Scully.
    The Mayakovsky Case (1982) "El caso Maiakovski," a critical essay; Translated by Schaaf; edited by Scully.
    Cronicas (1984) Prose works, in several volumes; volume 1.
    La cultura Peruana: Cronicas (1987) Collected essays by Aguirre.
    Desde Europa (1987) Edited by Jorge Puccinelli.

Letters

    Escalas melografiadas, Talleres Tipografia de la Penitenciaria (1923) Short stories.
    Fabla salvaje (1923) Novella.
    El tungsteno (1931)
    Novelas: Tungsteno, Fabla salvaje, Escalas melografiadas, Hora del Hombre (1948)
    Tungsteno y Paco Yunque (1957) J. Mejia Baca & P. L. Villanueva.
    Tungsteno (1958) First Peruvian edition.
    Novelas y cuentos completos (1970) F. Moncloa, Moncloa-Campodonico.
    Tungsten: A Novel (1988) Translated by Robert Mezey with preface by Kevin O'Connor.

Drama

    La piedra cansada (1927)
    Teatro completo (1979) Two volumes.

César Vallejo exhibits elsewhere on the web:

	César Vallejo (1892-1938) A bio and three poems, from the Poetry archives.
	Review by Don Share of Trilce, translated by Clayton Eshleman From the Boston Review, summer 1993.
	El Proceso de la Literatura XIV: César Vallejo (Spanish) A critical essay by José Carlos Mariátegui and six poems, posted by Héctor Velarde.
	El Autor de la Semana: CésarVallejo (Spanish) Bio and thirteen poems, prepared by Prof. Oscar E. Aguilera F. of the University of Chile.
	Las Españas . . . de Vallejo y Neruda (Spanish) An essay by Stalin Alvear.
	Vallejo en Neruda: twee grote communistische dichters (Dutch!) An article by Henriette Courtens