César Vallejo: A Poet of the Event 3031335139, 9783031335136

Citation preview

STUDIES IN REVOLUTION AND LITERATURE

César Vallejo A Poet of the Event

Víctor Vich

Studies in Revolution and Literature Series Editors

Bruno Bosteels Department of Latin American & Iberian Culture Columbia University New York, NY, USA Joshua Clover English & Comparative Literature University of California, Davis Davis, CA, USA

This global-focused series seeks to present a set of timely interventions at the crossover between radical politics—insurrectionary, anarchist, communist, Marxist—and the writing of literature: poetry, theater, or the novel, but also blogs, pamphlets, manifestos, and other texts. Starting from the idea that literature is one area among others in which people become conscious of and explore surrounding antagonisms, the editors invite contributions (full-length books, edited collections, and the shorter form, Pivot) that will address specific structures for understanding, intensifying, and prolonging revolutionary engagement.

Víctor Vich

César Vallejo A Poet of the Event

Víctor Vich Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú Lima, Perú

Studies in Revolution and Literature ISBN 978-3-031-33512-9    ISBN 978-3-031-33513-6 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-33513-6 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2024 Translation from the Spanish language edition: “César Vallejo: Un poeta del acontecimiento” by Victor Vich, © 2021. Published by Horizonte and Prometeo. All Rights Reserved. This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors, and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. Cover illustration: Cesar Vallejo. Probably in Berlin, 1928. Detail. This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG. The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland Paper in this product is recyclable.

They’ve mistaken me for my cry. César Vallejo

Your name will be immortal. —Abraham Valderomar The fact that we understand and value Vallejo is not a product of chance. Nor is it a consequence of his genius alone. It is rather a proof that, along these cosmopolitan and ecumenical paths, which we are so much criticized for, we are getting closer and closer to ourselves. —José Carlos Mariátegui Vallejo was the beginning and the end. —José María Arguedas

Acknowledgements

This book is the product of many years of reading César Vallejo’s poetry, but its structure was forged thanks to the doctoral seminar I gave at the University of California, Berkeley, between August and December 2014. It was an intense semester that I always remember. I would like to thank all the students who attended my seminar, Estelle Tarica and Ivonne del Valle for the generous welcome they gave me (and the regular conversations we had), and Giancarlo Cornejo and Gustavo Campos for their sincere friendship during those months. In Lima, Nae Hanashiro’s help was indispensable. There were many mornings when we met to discuss poems and try to analyze them in detail. I also learned a lot from Marcos Mondoñedo and Martín Vargas Canchaya in a seminar on Badiou that they organized at San Marcos University during the summer of 2017. Juan Carlos Ubilluz generously read the manuscript and made some sharp observations, both on the theoretical discussions and on the poems themselves. Thanks to an invitation from Gladys Flores Heredia, I was able to participate in an important congress on Vallejo in Salamanca where I met outstanding Vallejistas from whom I learned a great deal. I would especially like to thank the “translation team” without whom this book would never have been available in English: Martin Scurrah, Cecilia Scurrah, Daniela Wurst and, above all, Virginia Zavala. William Rowe was a friend and constant interlocutor throughout this work. Also, I would like to thank Valentino Gianuzzi for his permanent answers to my questions and his generous help. His editor, Tony Frazer, allowed me to use the translations of Vallejo that Valentino made together ix

x 

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

with Michael Smith. I am also very grateful to Bruno Bosteels for his intellectual work, his friendship and his interest in publishing this book in English. As José María Arguedas said, we write to try to get out of the scepticism to which the present world always leads us. There are many, many more people with whom I have been able to share my passion for Vallejo. To all of them, to my family, to my friends, to my todavías, my sincere gratitude.

Praise for César Vallejo “This book reveals that the political reading of Vallejo’s poetry demands that we radically rethink politics itself. The singular ethical force of this poetry resides there. We have to think reality from the excess, that is, from what does not fit in ideological schematisms, nor in the concepts themselves. With a great pedagogical spirit, through lucid theoretical expositions and precise commentaries on the texts, this book shows us that Vallejo wrote a poetry that is absolutely alive for our times: a poetry that demands that we live in a different way.” —William Rowe, Birkbeck College, University of London “From this careful study, César Vallejo emerges as a poet-witness of the event, ready to assume the constitutive flaw of the human being but capable of affirming the radical possibility of a communist politics of equality. By following the philosophy of Alain Badiou, as well as the clues of other thinkers (from Marx to Mariátegui, from Butler to Žižek), Víctor Vich has succeeded in producing an original, new, and other Vallejo.” —Bruno Bosteels, Columbia University

Contents

1 Introduction  1 2 A Poet of the Ethics of the Real  7 3 A Poet of the Language Crisis 37 4 A Poet of the “Part With No Part” 59 5 A Poet Who Announces the Event 83 6 A Poet of the Communist Event105 7 A Poet of Lost Causes145 8 Vallejo and Political Art Beyond Death (Conclusions)173 List of Analyzed Poems Per Chapter181 Spanish Versions of the Analyzed Poems183

xiii

xiv 

Contents

Bibliography223 Index of Authors225 Index of Categories227

CHAPTER 1

Introduction

Art is not a means of political propaganda, but the supreme spring of political creation. César Vallejo.

The image of Vallejo as a poet of pain and loss is insufficient and incomplete. Vallejo has long been regarded as a poet who writes about pain and loss, but this picture is incomplete. Vallejo is also a poet who celebrates his encounter with universal truths, who comes into contact with something eternal, and who seeks to transform the world. While his poetry expresses an inherently subjective pain and shows flaws in how the world is constituted, his verses also bring with them a set of images from which new possibilities for life could emerge. Vallejo is an author impacted by the force of the need for justice and human solidarity. These images are his greatest legacy. This book analyzes César Vallejo’s poetry and comments on it from a political perspective. The political here is understood, not as day-to-day governance, but as a question for the future of the community and, in that sense, as an interruption, as a disagreement, as a mechanism of subjectivation, as the attempt to restore the category of “truth” from the revelation of an “event.” Alan Badiou has sustained the following: “I call the consequence of an event truth” (2018, 18), emphasizing in addition that “the statements that carry truth arise in the lack of any social order” (2009c, 80). An event is the moment of rupture of a given state of reality, as a fact © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2024 V. Vich, César Vallejo, Studies in Revolution and Literature, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-33513-6_1

1

2 

V. VICH

that alters the logic of an existing situation because it brings with it a truth that emerges from the “holes” left by the exercise of power. In this book, I argue that Vallejo discovers that poetry is a decisive place to name the event and that his function as a poet (and as a human being) is to summon it, to speak from this place. Vallejo’s poetry always confronts us with human pain (generally understood as helplessness, orphanhood, alienation, injustice, or evil) but, at the same time, many of his poems seek to channel that negativity into more fertile ground. This is a poet who always fights with himself, fights with the world and, above all, fights with language (he works within and outside of language), but this action of “fighting” is nothing other than the incessant search for some kind of truth. In fact, the Christian message of universal solidarity, Marx’s works, the workers’ revolution in Russia at the beginning of the twentieth century, Mariátegui’s works in Perú, and the militant fidelity unleashed throughout Europe by the Spanish Civil War were all understood by Vallejo as a scenario of political truths that emerged from a concrete situation and that, nevertheless, went universally beyond this purely historical juncture. Thus, I maintain that Vallejo’s is a poetry of the event, a poetry that emerges from a deep political conviction and which recognizes that, in human history, a set of facts that are “true” occur because they bring with them universal and eternal ideas of justice and equality. That is why Vallejo produced a “militant art” that is not the same as an art of ideology. I am referring, with Badiou (undated), to an art where ideology does not manifest itself as something constituted but, rather, as a force that is seeking to be constituted. This is, undoubtedly, an innovative form of poetry, and one that is never glorified because it is always recognized as imperfect. Vallejo forces the unnamable and points to the intrinsically hollow nature of language (Montalbetti 2019, 124). It is not a question, either, of a poetry created in a space of power, but of poetry that is always marginal and produced from a place of defeat. “Art discovers paths, never goals,” he wrote in 1924 (Vallejo 2002a, b, c, 45). Vallejo was very critical of certain aspects of western modernity and he was also critical of certain avant-garde positions that reduced art to simple technical experiments or to a pure manual formalism. “Image makers, give back the word to men” he stated, emphatically, in one of his many journalistic chronicles (Vallejo 2002a, b, c, 346). His artistic (and political) was always a poetry that revealed the precariousness of the symbolic (of language, of the subject, of culture, of society), but also (and above all) revealed a set of latent political possibilities.

1 INTRODUCTION 

3

Vallejo does not propose an art of “representation,” but of “presentation.” He proposes an art of “becoming,” but a type of becoming of which “we already know something” (not of something that is “about to come”) because, in some way, that something “already is,” “has already happened” in the world. It is something that can be found both in history and in the present and that can be radicalized into a set of political decisions. Vallejo was an observer of not yet realized possibilities in history, and his verses were an attempt to recall them. His poetry, therefore, is one that emerges from an intense conviction, from a deep reflection on the limits of literary expression and from a particular historical situation read always from a universal point of view. This book started when I began to wonder about the representations of “excess” in Vallejo’s poetry. I realized that many of his poems faced this problem and that they were more than just a literary motif. Vallejo observed that, in human beings, there is an inclination towards excess that has been historically censured by ethical traditions or by official ideologies. However, he also realized that excess defines something central to human subjectivity and, for this reason, he not only tried to give it dignity but, above all, to make it a political factor. For Vallejo, the subject is an excess, language is an excess, love is an excess, and revolution itself is also an excess, an excess of lack. This is what would seem to be the most human of humanity. The “ethics of the real” (Lacan 2005; Badiou 2004; Zupancic 2010) is one that recognizes that the subject is inhabited by an inherent negativity and is, therefore, divided. From there, it forces us to think that subjectivity is due as much to its own faults as to an inclination to the excess that still does not have a name. What is the unnamable? In this poetry, the unnamable is that emptiness or excess that reveals the inconsistency of the symbolic order, that is, the crisis of a given state of social reality. Vallejo, therefore, discovers the need to recognize that flaw and to notice that language cannot say everything either about oneself or about reality. For this reason, many of his images aim to name that which overflows reality and that which has been abandoned and left without a place. In this book, I will argue that Vallejo’s poetic project consisted, above all, in resubjectivizing the space of artistic expression (and of political options) with an ethic that affirms the importance of the excessively human (to transcend certain limits), from an awareness of the unmentionable (“lack” or “excess”), understood as a place of a possible encounter with the event.

4 

V. VICH

From there, Vallejo began to politicize pain and to question its causes and conditions. In fact, the event emerges from an outside which one must recognize and be faithful to. In Vallejo’s poetry there is, on the one hand, a movement that goes from desire to drive, from control to uncontrol, but there also emerges a political option for its reverse, that is, an effort to get out of the drive to return to desire and, from there, to be able to elaborate new political meanings (Zupancic 2010). Vallejo, in fact, was a communist writer who understood communism as an indestructible truth that runs through human history because it has emerged from an event that gives direction to political struggles (Badiou 2004). In Vallejo, communism is the bearer of old demands of justice and equality; it is the “archaic name for something that is entirely to come” (Jean-Luc Nancy 2014). The intensity of the event derives from Vallejo’s observation that a new actor has appeared on the scene and his understanding that the world could begin to reconfigure itself from that place. In fact, many of his poems (from the first book) center on those who have been “left out” of the system, because they reveal the structural flaws of the larger society. The utopian vision emerges, therefore, from a critique that has identified an impasse, but also from an encounter that confirms a new possibility. This is, in effect, a poetry that recognizes the emergence of a political event while it investigates who we are (identity and social bonds) as well as the tensions and antagonisms of what we are not yet, but that we could become (Bosteels 2016, 132). Vallejo, in short, is not a neutral author: he takes a position and is proud of it. Although it is always marked by pain and loss, his poetry finally constructs a new political subjectivity or, better said, a new “subject of the will” (Hallward 2001). Although his verses never had any qualms in recognizing how we human beings cower before the event (where we are from so much being there /cómo quedamos de tan quedarnos, says a remarkable line of Trilce XIX), his work also verifies that the subjects are capable of making decisions and can be faithful to a truth even when everything has become adverse. For this reason, Vallejo did not hesitate to celebrate a group of persons who defended the “communist idea” to the end, because they embodied the kind of subjectivity that the new world required. “Man is identified by his affirmative thought, by the singular truths of which he is capable, by the immortality that makes him the most resistant and the most paradoxical of animals” (Badiou 2004, 42).

1 INTRODUCTION 

5

In sum, Vallejo’s poetry shows how a voice, a subject, is being plotted by a truth that, in this case, is a political truth that anxiously seeks and fights for human emancipation. Vallejo was a writer who felt challenged by “the communist idea” and tried to be faithful to it in his own writing. From there, his poetry proposes that a subject only becomes a subject (a human being, in his words) when he or she becomes faithful to a universal truth and when he proposes to defend it in spite of defeat, errors or “lost causes” (Žižek 2011). Badiou (2009b: 129) has sustained that “Every poem is an interruption of language about itself and about the world in a given state of reality”. In that sense, Vallejo’s poems attempted to be acts. In many cases, the poems try to mobilize different resources to transform a vision of things. His poems forcefully extract elements from language; they try to name something unnamable, and they do it in a new way. Vallejo is a dialectical writer, an author whose verses contemplate human reality from a syntax full of twists, gaps, juxtapositions, contradictions, emptiness, and internal ruptures. If Vallejo is a decisive force in contemporary poetry, it is because his work allows us to question the traditional ways of representing reality in order to see another way of relating to language and to the world represented by language. If today Vallejo is a literary classic, it is because his work brings a truth that pierces the sense of what is given, a truth that can no longer be doubted because it restores something that is universal: human justice. It is often said that political poetry is short lived and that, when contexts change, political poems lose their force (De Costa 1993, 84). None of this happens with Vallejo’s poems which, despite the passage of time, still maintain surprising poetic force. This is because his poems always discuss “the becoming of truths and the subjects that escort that becoming” (Badiou 2010, 106). In a world like the present, where the human being “has stopped being a ‘subject of truth’ to become a sophisticated animal only with particular interests” (Groys 2016, 192), Vallejo’s poetry is different because he never abdicated his critical function and affirmative will. He differentiated himself from a world (like then, like now) that continues to be fundamentally hostile to the conditions of truth (Badiou 1999, 12).

6 

V. VICH

Bibliography References Badiou, Alain. 1999. San pablo o la fundación del universalismo. Barcelona: Anthropos. ———. 2004. La ética: ensayo sobre la conciencia del mal. Barcelona: Herder. ———. 2009a. Teoría del sujeto. Buenos Aires: Prometeo. ———. 2009b. Pequeño manual de inestética. Buenos Aires: Prometeo. ———. 2009c. Compendio de metapolítica. Buenos Aires: Prometeo. ———. 2010. Segundo manifiesto por la filosofía. Buenos Aires: Manantial. ———. 2018. El balcón del presente. Conferencias y entrevistas. México DF: Siglo XXI. Bosteels, Bruno. 2016. Marx y Freud en América Latina. Política, psicoanálisis y religión en tiempos de terror. Madrid: Akal. De costa, René. 1993. La poesía de Pablo Neruda. Santiago de Chile: Andrés Bello. Groys, Boris. 2016. Arte en flujo. Ensayos sobre la evanescencia del presente. Buenos Aires: Caja negra. Hallward, Peter. 2001. Traslation introduction. In Ethics: An essay on the understanding of Evil, ed. Alain Badiou. London: Verso. Lacan, Jacques. 2005. Seminario 7. La ética del psicoanálisis [1959–1960]. Buenos Aires: Paidós. Montalbetti, Mario. 2019. El pensamiento del poema. Santiago: Marginalia editores. Nancy, Jean-Luc, and Jean Christophe Bailly. 2014. La comparecencia. Madrid: Avarigani. Vallejo, César. 2002a. Artículos y Crónicas completas. Tomos I y II. Recopilación, prólogo, notas y documentación por Jorge Puccinelli. Lima: Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú. ———. 2002b. Correspondencia completa. Edición, estudio preliminar y notas de Jesús Cabel. Lima: Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú. ———. 2002c. Ensayos y reportajes completos. Edición, estudio preliminar y notas de Manuel Miguel de Priego. Lima: Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú. Žižek, Slavoj. 2011. En defensa de las causas perdidas. Madrid: Akal. Zupancic, Alenka. 2010. Ética de lo real: Kant, Lacan. Buenos Aires: Prometeo.

CHAPTER 2

A Poet of the Ethics of the Real

César Vallejo is a poet of pain but not one of depression and defeat. He is a poet who recognizes the incomplete and fragile condition of human beings, but this does not lead him to the impossibility of affirming an idea. Despite noting the structural malaise of the human condition, in spite of attempting to name its limits and failures, his poetry proposes something different and commits itself to a cause. Although pain can be defined as a force that limits the construction of meaning, and although his themes expose the absurd dimension of existence, his verses ultimately choose to defend a truth, a transcendental meaning, something worth living for. Little by little, Vallejo takes that pain, that inherent source of subjectivity, and forges something out of it. What is the meaning of pain in his poetry? Is it something related to loss, to the passage of time, to some kind of discomfort and dissatisfaction? Is it a sign of something that is beyond human control and that is never completely traceable? In this poetry, in fact, pain refers to something very intense that language can never fully define because it seems to be located elsewhere. Some of the pain has to do with excess. William Rowe has described it this way: Pain cannot be interpreted, not ethically, not politically, not metaphysically, not even aesthetically. And although pain is associated with a condition of sacrifice, it lacks an idea, a sacrificial ideology, that gives it meaning. (2006, 19) © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2024 V. Vich, César Vallejo, Studies in Revolution and Literature, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-33513-6_2

7

8 

V. VICH

Vallejo is a poet of the “ethics of the Real.” What does this mean? The Real is not reality. Reality is always a law. Reality is a discourse articulated through existing power structures. The Real, on the contrary, is an excess, something that has surpassed that framework, that never fits in and that opens a crack in reality. The Real—Lacanians maintain—is the sign of the crisis of the symbolic, is the gauntlet laid down to culture demanding that it function as an organic whole (Žižek 2011a, 328). Jacques Allan Miller (2006) has maintained that, unlike traditional ethics, the ethics of psychoanalysis is one that arises from a type of “malaise” (in the culture, in the subject) and that, for the same reason, works by assuming the flaws of the symbolic and of subjectivity in general. In fact, Freud (2001) had already noticed that culture’s hidden assumption is that excess needs to be subsumed or sacrificed for social order and that, in that sense, it chooses to oppose something fundamentally human. Culture needs to repress excesses, or extirpate them, to guarantee order, control, and law. Vallejo is a poet of the “ethics of the Real” because he recognizes that this inclination to excess expresses something fundamental to the human condition. Moreover, in expressing this excess he attempts to capture a hidden pleasure, resulting in a unique form of verse and also a unique stance visàvis society. The “ethics of the Real” is one that aims to question the way in which social habits are established and prevent us from defining ourselves fully. It is an ethic that, in recognizing that it is not so easy to get rid of the inclination to excess, makes it necessary to start maneuvering it in a different way. “The ethics of psychoanalysis—says Lacan—is one that accepts the tragic dimension of life” (2005b, 372). It is about an ethics that has chosen to think about subjectivity by internalizing its flaws rather than denying them. Let us temporarily suspend any theoretical explanation and use a concrete example instead: Trilce XIII (Vallejo 2022, b, c, d, 29). I think of your sex. Simple-hearted, I think of your sex as I confront day’s ripe burgeoning. I feel the bud of bliss, now in season. And an ancient sense dies devolved into mind. I think of your sex, a furrow more abounding and melodious than the Shadow’s womb,

2  A POET OF THE ETHICS OF THE REAL 

9

although Death conceives and bears from God himself. Oh Conscience, yes, I think of the free beast that delights where it will, where it can. Oh, honied riot of dusks. Oh muffled crash. Hsarcdelffum!

I think of your sex (Pienso en tu sexo) must have been a very transgressive and destabilizing modernist statement, given the prevailing morality and cultural rules of that time. In fact, it is not a verse constructed from great literary figures. It does not place the reader in front of a metaphorical image. It is, to the contrary, a statement that directly names something and shows, without shame, a type of thought that seems to be more than a simple thought. When the verse states categorically I think of your sex (Pienso en tu sexo), we can say that it is pointing to the Real. What is Vallejo trying to show with this image? What is he trying to legitimate? The answer is that there is something about sex that is situated far beyond the discourse of love. Vallejo does not say that he is in love and has sublime feelings. He simply says that he is thinking about sex, that he is obsessed with it and repeats the phrase at least twice. In other words, the poetic voice affirms that there is something in the human condition that cannot be completely controlled but that, nevertheless, must be faced and expressed symbolically with courage. As opposed to a discourse that disciplines eroticism and forces the hiding of desires, this verse makes public what is usually repressed. With this verse, Vallejo begins to escape from the discourse of guilt. And an ancient sense dies (Y muere un sentimiento antiguo), he says, and from there he shows that the body must recover its dignity by stepping away from a social mandate that has placed duty above desire. There is an image that equates the sexual act with a fall (Death conceives and bears/ from God himself/ la Muerte concibe y pare/ de Dios mismo), but the whole poem is presented as a recovery of the physicality of the body and of desire (sex, mind/ sexo, seso) beyond all moral discipline and archaic religious norms. In fact, there is something here that emerges from the depths (something that reason has denied) and that the poem has decided

10 

V. VICH

to put in the foreground: the free beast/ that delights where it will, where it can/ el bruto libre/ que goza donde quiere, donde puede. This something is jouissance: a force that has no word, that has no form and that moves us to desire. Jouissance, however, is something that the subject does not know well about himself, and that reason does not explain clearly. It is something within me, but which I do not know about myself. Vallejo, therefore, has proposed naming jouissance as that internal force that is not elaborated by the social and thus escapes all cultural parameters. The poem places us before a subjectivity that recognizes that it has been taken by something that is one’s own, but that one does not recognize or know (Braunstein 2006). The peak moment of sexual intercourse unleashes a jouissance. How does Vallejo describe the orgasm? The poem presents a sequence comprising three attempts to define it: first he names it with a classic figure: (honied riot of dusks/ escándalo de miel de los crepúsculos), but that image does not seem to him exact nor sufficient. In his opinion, it is an image that still sounds very traditional (it is a classic modernist image) and that does not manage to capture the intensity of the instant. So he resorts to a more complex image, an oxymoron, because he intuits that with it he can describe an extreme tension that points to something that is not rational and that in the poem emerges as a linguistic absurdity: the orgasm is a silent roar (muffled crash/ estruendo mudo), that is, a loud but silent noise; a noise without noise that is, however, so intense that it disrupts everything. For the poem, this second representation is an improvement (with respect to the need to name the unnamable), although the poetic voice knows well that it too does not completely capture what has been experienced. Hence, Vallejo tries to symbolize it for the third time and writes: Hsarcdelffum!

If this word reverses the order of writing, it does so as a form of protest against a symbolic instrument—language—that cannot account for the totality of the experience of jouissance. All this effort has thus arrived at a final strategy, one in which writing backwards reveals the precarious and limited character of human language. In fact, this gesture (writing backwards) opens a crack in symbolic language to try to reach the unsymbolized, that is, the “other side” of life. Alongside Eagleton, we could say that

2  A POET OF THE ETHICS OF THE REAL 

11

in this poem Vallejo “recovers the libidinal practice of the body and with it explodes the univocal languages of reason” (2011a, b, 416). This transgression of the rules of language shows that the Real must be understood as a true crack within the very framework of the symbolic. Indeed, in this poem we note that the symbolic breaks in its own function or, better said, that jouissance is the sign through which the Real breaks the symbolic because it always returns (Žižek 2008, 328). As we will see later, the “ethics of the Real” and a large proportion of César Vallejo’s poetry works towards this goal. Ethics has been defined as a disciplinary discourse that tries to control something overflowing or overflowing in subjectivity. In fact, ethics has always aimed at building a set of rules or principles to control certain desires, often excessive ones. Traditional ethics maintains that excess is something that must be expelled, and, for that reason, Aristotle defined ethics as a practice that should activate a balance between an excess and a lack thereof. In the second book of the “Ethics to Nicomacheus,” Aristotle states the following: “Thus virtue is in relation to the passions and actions, in which the excess and the defect are a mistake, while the middle ground is a success and causes praise” (2010, 56). From this point of view, the ethical objective should be to produce a counterbalance and a balance. The search for that harmony is what will shape virtue. In contrast, the “ethics of the Real” does not try to eliminate that excessive and uncontrolled dimension of the human condition. Its objective is not to “purify” the subject or to invent a false harmony. It is, to the contrary, the attempt to find another way for both the excess and the lack to subjectively affirm a truth that lies far beyond the established rules. The “ethics of the Real” is one that retakes a kind of impossibility (something of the absent, of the traumatic, of the excessive, of the not symbolized) to, from there, promote a new act (Zupancic 2010, 19). It is about an ethics that affirms something irrational or traumatic to try to transcend it. A new poem, Trilce LXXIII, explores this problem further (Vallejo 2022, b, c, d, 165): Another alas has triumphed. There lies the truth. And whoever acts so, won’t he really know how to train excellent digitigrades for the mouse Yes . . . No . . .? Another alas has triumphed and against no one. Oh exosmosis of chemically pure water.

12 

V. VICH

Ah southwinds of mine. Oh our divines.          I have the right then to be green and content and dangerous, and to be the chisel, the fear of the crude coarse block; to put my foot in it, and to laughter.   Absurd, only you are pure. Absurd, only before you does this excess sweat with golden pleasure.

This poem places negativity at the center of human subjectivity. Pain— that ay (alas)—would seem to be the subject’s truth. The verses present the human being as burdened with excessive forces over which he or she has no complete control. Pain, in fact, appears without any cause and thus accounts for a flaw that is central to identity. The poem, however, has chosen to acknowledge it and therefore has no qualms about presenting a sentence: there lies the truth (la verdad está ahí), it says, trying to find some meaning in this negativity. By means of a strange poetic construction, and whoever acts so (y quien tal actúa), the text asks itself if the subject could control his or her drives, if the subject could learn to maneuver that inherent negativity or that constitutive excess. Can the subject control his or her impulses? Can the uncontrollable be controlled? Can that elusive thing that is the Real be known? The poem does not provide any answer and only insists on reaffirming a question: Yes…No…? (Sí…No…?). The mention of animals seems to be a way to name that desire that seems uncontrollable. That is why the poem insists on stating emphatically once again: Another alas has triumphed and against no one (ha triunfado otro ay y contra nadie). Its intention is to emphasize that this pain, this failure, has no clear cause or origin. In fact, the particle ay (alas) does not name something specific but refers instead to the difficulty of expressing a dimension that can never be forged into its symbolic form. In other words, the poem emphasizes, once again, the triumph of the unnamable over pain, which can only be alluded to through an interjection. In any case, that against no one (contra nadie) is a paradoxical figure since, in general, the preposition against (contra) should allude to a confrontation with someone or something, but there no longer seems to be anyone to confront. This is a poem that concentrates only on the need to name an absurdity, that is, on the lack of a cause for pain, on its ever inexplicable character.

2  A POET OF THE ETHICS OF THE REAL 

13

Note that negativity, or pain, is found both “outside” and “inside” the subject, and emerges by surprise. Sweat is here a symbol of something beyond human control because one cannot decide when or how much to sweat. The word exosmosis (exósmosis) names that sweat, but it renders the situation much more complex by referring not only to a liquid that emerges from the inside out, but also from the outside in. Therefore, the poem discovers that pain comes from all sides and acknowledges the need to recognize its presence, its effects, and its inherent contradictions. Badiou (2002, 197) maintains that a truth is always “outside” of language and established knowledge. Therefore, in this poem, neither earth nor heaven can explain pain, since the true thing is always indecipherable, indiscernible, generic, and unnamable. Pain, then, seems to be at once earthly and cosmic, something that always exceeds explanation. Southwinds of mine (míos australes) and our divines (nuestros divinos) are insufficient to explain the nature of what is happening. Poetic discourse then emerges as the place that points to the unnamable and to excess. This is a poem that has chosen to be reconciled with contradiction and with the overflow of human impulses. The poetic voice reaffirms its right to excess, for it has found there something it can no longer doubt. I have the right to laughter (Tengo derecho a la risa), says the verse; to put my foot in it (a meter la pata). In other words, this is a voice that acknowledges it needs to recover something from its wild side, from its faults, and from its less “mature” state (I have the right to be green/ tengo derecho a estar verde, it says), because only from this recognition can it begin to free itself from this illusion of coherence that traditional ethics demands. From there, the poet chooses to represent himself as a sculptor (the synecdoche being chisel, cincel) and, therefore, as someone who, now fearless, can create something new (Hibbett 2004). To do so, he must face something crude (basto), yet always coarse (vasto). In sum, the poem accepts everything that is usually associated with negativity, because it has begun to recognize it not only as legitimate but also as the carrier of a truth fundamental to the human condition. There is, however, no value judgment that mediates this observation. Rather, the poem accepts the absence of explanation and attempts to reconcile itself with its own pain no matter the cost. The poem states that there is no solution to pain and the word absurd (absurdo) is synonymous with contradiction, that is, the inevitable character of nonmeaning. Pain is always

14 

V. VICH

there and pain always is. The poem recognizes it, objectifies it, and assumes it as a truth. With courage, the poetic voice makes pain its own (makes the symptom its own) and begins, without fear, to identify with it. “I am going to speak of hope” (“Voy a hablar de la Esperanza”) is another poem that asks, radically, about human suffering. Vallejo represents suffering as something that can never be completely calmed and as a kind of inherent malaise. The poem locates a “cursed part” in subjectivity that is not a pathology, but a precondition of being alive in this world (Vallejo 2012, b, 335). I do not suffer this pain as César Vallejo. I do not hurt now as an artist, as a man or even as a mere living being. I do not suffer this pain as a Catholic, as a Muslim, nor as an atheist. Today I simply suffer. Were my name not César Vallejo, I would suffer this same pain. Were I not an artist I would still suffer it. Were I not a man or even a living being, I would still suffer it. Were I not Catholic, atheist, Muslim, I would still suffer it. Today I suffer from deep down. Today I simply suffer. I hurt today inexplicably. My pain is so deep it had no cause nor does it lack a cause. What would its cause be? Where is that thing so important that it would cease to be its cause? Nothing caused it; nothing has stopped being its cause. Why has this pain been born, all by its own? My pain comes from the north wind and from the south wind, as those neutral eggs that some strange birds hatch from the wind. Had my girlfriend died, my pain would be the same. Had they cut my head clean off my neck, my pain would be the same. Were life, in short, some other way, my pain would be the same. Today I suffer from higher up. Today I simply suffer. I see the starving man’s pain and see his hunger move so distant from my own suffering, that if I fasted to death, at least a blade of grass would sprout from my tomb. The same for the man in love. How begotten his blood compared to mine, without source or consumption! Until now I believed everything in this universe was inevitably a father or a son. But the fact is that today my pain is neither a father nor a son. It does not have enough back to night-fall, as it has more than enough chest to dawn. Placed in a dark room it would shed no light, and placed in a bright one, it would cast no shadow. Today I suffer come what may. Today I simply suffer.

What does Vallejo mean by the word suffering (sufrimiento)? The pain of a punch? A situation of extreme sadness? A generalized depression? No. Suffering is the word Vallejo has chosen to name a kind of structural failure that defines a human being. The poem tries to demonstrate that this failure can never be completely resolved. In the first sentence Vallejo

2  A POET OF THE ETHICS OF THE REAL 

15

depersonalizes his pain. He claims that the suffering he feels is not something that refers to a clinical diagnosis because it has nothing to do with his personal history. “I’m not going to recount my life,” he seems to say, “I’m not going to explain the reasons for my suffering.” Vallejo, then, does not suffer here as Vallejo, but as any human being. Or, perhaps, his proposal is even more radical: he affirms that he does not suffer as a human being because the verses refer to a core that cannot be encapsulated. In this sense, the poem affirms that it is the whole universe, the absolute self, that suffers because it seems to have an original flaw. Vallejo maintains that suffering transcends, that one suffers from deep down (desde más abajo). For this poem, pain, in fact, is something that emerges independently of personal history and comes with life itself. In the second stanza, Vallejo asks himself: What would its cause be? Where is that thing so important that it would cease to be its cause? (¿Qué sería su causa? ¿Dónde está aquello tan importante, que dejase de ser su causa?). And, at once, he answers: Nothing caused it; nothing has stopped being its cause (Nada es su causa; nada ha podido dejar de ser su causa). The poem does reach a conclusion: that it does have a finding, that it does reach a kind of truth. The conclusion is that this discomfort, this structural failure, comes with human existence itself and that human pain does not have a traceable cause, that there is something about it that exceeds explanation. The poem is then a testimony to the acceptance of that failure, to face that discomfort and to begin to position oneself before it in another way. Today I suffer come what may. Today I simply suffer (Hoy sufro suceda lo que suceda. Hoy sufro solamente), the poem concludes, avoiding any kind of compassionate sentimentality. It is essential to note that Vallejo does not victimize himself. The poetic voice is not asking for help. It is not building an image of itself with some personal interest in mind. Its objective is only to give testimony and to theorize on the human condition. For Vallejo, there is something about suffering that is inexplicable because it does not depend on personal or political history. The poem insists on this repeatedly and therefore confronts us with a pain that is neither “father” nor “son.” It is a pain that neither reason nor symbolic order can fully explain because it has to do with the friction in the face of a world that does not seem to have been completely made for the subject. In this poem, the subject also suffers from higher up (desde más arriba). However, this is not a disconcerted subjectivity. The poem does not place us before a disoriented subjectivity, but rather one that wants to

16 

V. VICH

speak of hope, but does so by transgressing the senses commonly associated with it. Why this title? Why is the poem entitled “I am going to speak of hope?” if it could be argued that there is no hope here and that suffering is fundamentally conceptualized as something irremediable? The poem does not end with a subject looking into the past and searching for the source of his or her pain. What the poem stresses is, on the contrary, that hope must be based on the very division of the subject. In other words, the poem discovers that what provides hope is neither something that is “good” nor a “cure.” It is, on the contrary, something that must emerge from one’s own suffering and not from a place outside it. For this to happen, the subject must fully identify with his or her pain and be aware of his or her constitutive split. This is not a poem that looks at the past and gets stuck in it. It is a poem that recognizes the rawness of the present in order to begin to live better. The idea is that the subject comes to understand himself or herself with that pain that emerges or that harasses as a form of jouissance and as a symptom. Again, this seems to be a text that does not deny excess and that, rather, has chosen to accept it with dignity because it understands that it is, inevitably, a driving force of human existence: Pain is that part of the body that provokes movement and this is what makes it the first testimony of the remains of the spirit. Pain is the corporal proof that there are remains of the spirit, while it incites the shadows to movement. (Badiou, 2009b, 169)

In conclusion, the poem observes how the subject is always tied to pain, without meaning that it controls him or her completely. Vallejo recognizes that pain is found within life and never outside it, but his verses try to overcome his denial to open a field of greater visibility. Let us now look at the poem entitled “Payroll of bones” (“Nómina de huesos”) (Vallejo 2012, b, 327): It was demanded loudly: “Let him show both hands at once.” And this was not possible. “Let them, as he cries, take the measure of his steps.” And this was not possible. “Let him think an identical thought, while a zero remains useless.” And this was not possible. “Let him do something mad.”

2  A POET OF THE ETHICS OF THE REAL 

17

And this was not possible. “Let a crowd of men like him stand between him and a man just like him.” And this was not possible. “Let them compare him to himself.” And this was not possible. “Let them, lastly, call him by his name.”      And this was not possible.

This poem is a new attempt to define the human being, to try to answer the question of what human subjectivity is and how it works. Vallejo tries to give an account of its structure but once again fails to find a definitive answer. The title alludes to this need to name, to classify this supposed “organic whole” from its parts. “Payroll of bones” is a way of asking what the human being is. It is understood, in principle, that by describing his parts, that is, by listing each of them, a human being can be described with transparency and clarity. The rhetoric here is skillful and novel: a somewhat impersonal voice is describing a set of mandates for verifying the qualities of the human condition. The human being is asked, or required, to perform a set of tasks that he or she can never do, perhaps because they refuse to comply with them or because they simply cannot or do not know how to do them. These tasks are presented as authoritarian imperatives, as disciplinary discourses, as forms of social control. In this sense, the poem gives an account of the moment of ideological interpellation that is of the emergence of subjectivity because of cultural mandates. It is always culture, the symbolic order, which constitutes the subjects when they are asked to perform or do something (Althusser 1977). These mandates nonetheless all have one thing in common, which is their demand for “unity,” that is, they demand that the subject be a “unified” and “coherent” whole. For example, the subject is asked to be able to show both hands as a sign of coordination and control over himself. He is also asked to be able to think in a uniform way and to think like others do without becoming distracted. However, the response to all these commands is always the same: none of this is possible. The subject resists obeying the command because he/she does not have the interest, or the capacity, to be able to do so. For example, showing both hands at the same time implies producing a “complete” image of subjectivity and that is precisely what the poem wants to question.

18 

V. VICH

This poem is an example of how ideological questioning works or fails. On the one hand, the subject is the response to a “call” or “mandate” that tries to objectify it in order to impose on it a specific identity but, on the other hand, subjectivity also emerges from the failure of these mandates. The response, therefore, can never be the expected one since the subject would seem to exist, precisely, as a reaction to that type of violence. Judith Butler has explained it in this way: “If the human is anything, it would seem to be a double movement in which we affirm moral norms while questioning their authority by virtue of which we make that affirmation” (2009, 142–43). In this sense, for this poem, the subject is always out of control, off-­ center and cannot possibly coincide with him or herself. He or she cannot, therefore, be defined as a self-determined entity. In this way, the verses note that the subject always carries with it an excess, a remainder, something that the official question fails to master or define. All these commands fail because the subject is more than all of them and because he or she can never be completely “subjected.” In this poem, the subject never coincides with him or herself, because they are always the bearer of “something else,” that is, because they bring something that can take them and transcend them. This poem then shows how subjectivity is constituted as an excess in the face of the symbolic order, understood as a set of social mandates. The poem maintains that the subject is never completely capable of satisfying the demand of the other, since there is always a level of failure, something that does not fulfill itself, something that prevents the social mandate from being carried out faithfully. If subjectivity is constituted from a set of demands that want to build identity, the poem astutely underlines that every subject is much more than a simple passive object before those demands and pressures to which he or she is intensely subjected. For this poem, the subject must always be understood as an agency, as an open entity, as resisting. At its end, the last mandate is for a “name,” but this is not possible either, because there is an inherent opacity in the subject that can never be solved. In fact, having a name implies being inscribed in a particular identity and, above all, having to satisfy the demand for transparency and social control. This is a poem that realizes that this is not possible, because human beings are never like that. Rather, it shows that subjectivity always emerges as something contradictory and unexpected; as something that cannot be tied to a single signifier. The word bones (huesos) deconstructs the word payroll (nómina), since it alludes to fragments

2  A POET OF THE ETHICS OF THE REAL 

19

that are not necessarily subject to a coherent unit. Vallejo can never give a name because he has discovered that there is something in subjectivity that does not have a name, that has to do with the Real and his proposal is then that something of the ethical must stem from that verification. After verifying that the subject has a structural flaw (that it is fragmented), Vallejo’s poetry is ready to make a kind of “summary judgment” of the person, that is, a complete evaluation. A new poem represents that process of trying to describe how human beings are and how they behave. “Considering coldly, impartially…” (“Considerando en frío, imparcialmente…”) is one of the most important poems in all of Vallejo’s poetic work and worth analyzing in detail (Vallejo 2012, b, 381–383): Considering coldly, impartially that man is sad, coughs, and nevertheless is pleased in his red chest; that the only thing he does is to be made of days; that he is a lugubrious mammal and combs his hair . . . Considering that man derives softly from work, echoes as boss and sounds as subordinate; that the diagram of time is a constant diorama on his medals, that his half-open eyes have studied, since distant times, his starving formula of mass . . . Understanding effortlessly that man stays at times to wonder, as if wanting to cry, and given to lying out as an object becomes a good carpenter, sweats, kills, and then sings, has lunch, buttons up . . . Considering as well that man is really an animal and despite this, when turning he hits my head with his sadness . . . Examining, in short, his matched pieces, his toilet, his despair at the end of an atrocious day, erasing him . . .

20 

V. VICH

Comprehending that he knows I love him, hate him with affection, and am, in short, indifferent to him . . . Considering his general documents and looking through glasses at his certificate which proves he was born really tiny . . . I gesture toward him, he approaches and I embrace him, moved So what! Moved . . . Moved . . .

Many critics have noted that this poem attempts to reproduce a legal discourse through a language that tries to argue and prove something (Ferrari 1974; Escobar 1973; Hart 1987; Higgins 1989; González Vigil 1991). The poem is presented as a kind of evaluation of the human being. In each stanza, the poetic voice describes certain habits or actions to then produce a sentence or an opinion. At first, and in the manner of a judge, the poem tries to be as objective as possible but, little by little, the voice loses control over itself and becomes attached to the human condition. Note the list of gerunds with which each stanza begins: considering, considering, understanding, considering, examining, comprehending, considering (considerando, considerando, comprendiendo, considerando, examinando, comprendiendo, considerando). González Vigil (1991) has interpreted them as a sequence of approximations and distances that represent an attempt at impartiality but that, finally, proves to be impossible. In fact, after a long evaluation that has attempted to be impartial, the voice ends up “becoming attached,” accepting the inherently contradictory character of the subject and of itself. The first stanza is fundamentally averse to the human being. The poem begins by stating a person is a fundamentally sad being and, with this, the verses do not refer to a simple emotion, but—as we have already seen—to the fact that subjectivity is structured by a fault that is impossible to resolve. The verse says that the human being is a fragile entity and that is why he coughs (tose). However, despite this, he does everything possible to hide this failed condition and, therefore is pleased in his red chest (se complace en su pecho colorado). In fact, this judge notes that, instead of being humble and accepting his contradictions, the man combs his hair (se peina) and covers

2  A POET OF THE ETHICS OF THE REAL 

21

himself up. In other words, the verses detect that the subject brings with him a certain hypocrisy visàvis himself and others. The representation that the poem proposes is that of someone who is alienated, and, above all, who lives under a routine: to be made of days (componerse de días). We could then say that a person seems incapable of getting involved with an “event,” as an appearance of the new-that transforms him or her and makes them something else. The discourse of the second stanza insists on a cold and analytical evaluation. If the first stanza focused on observing conditions inherent in subjectivity, that is, on deepening the subject’s relationship with him or herself, now it introduces a much more political reflection. What has made a person behave in this way? The poem opts for historicizing the subject, which necessitates some Marxist references. The verses affirm that it is work that “produces” humanity. The person does not “live” in the world, but “survives” in society for the purposes of his/her work. The person has had to postpone some of his or her freedom, because he or she finds him or herself inscribed in the very badly organized “realm of necessity.” At the end of this stanza, the “impartial” evaluation is a little more complicated, since the poem recognizes that the social organization of work is unjust and that the history of humanity has been, to a large degree, a history of oppression and social inequality. With a forceful verse, Vallejo maintains that the human being echoes as boss and sounds as subordinate (repercute jefe, suena subordinado). In their eagerness to survive, human beings have not been able to build a true community of equals but rather have exploited each other, violated each other, and killed each other mercilessly. Indeed, the poem knows that human history has been one of masters and slaves, of unjust bosses and subordinate employees. Against a linear and progressive vision, the verses argue that the intense changes experienced in the diagram of time (el diagrama del tiempo) are not medals (medallas), but only simple dioramas (dioramas), misleading images or artificial models (Higgins 1989, 129). The point, however, is to highlight that, under such determinants, people have always asked themselves questions about their identity and their social status. The verses maintain that since distant times (desde lejanos tiempos), people’s eyes (ojos) have wondered, questioning his starving formula of mass (su fórmula famélica de masa). Thus, in this poem, a person is someone who has also wanted to be conscious even though he or she

22 

V. VICH

has ultimately been a victim of him or herself and of others. For this reason, the next stanza becomes more condescending and no longer begins with that icy gerund repeated twice of considering (considerando) but shifts to a somewhat more sympathetic position: Understanding effortlessly (Comprendiendo sin esfuerzo), says the verse, because now he is interested in marking a transformation in the mood of the poem, that is, a change of attitude before that subjectivity the poetic voice has been judging. Little by little, this judge is feeling more and more affected by the complexity of the human being. This change, however, this feeling of compassion, will not last long. Although human beings have tried to be conscious subjects, sometimes attempting to become subjects critical of themselves, the truth is that they have not been able to create change, to rebel radically and, therefore, given to lying out as an object (sujeto a tenderse como objeto), have always ended up passively inscribed in an alienating condition. Again, some of Marx’s ideas are present. Due to diverse forms of social domination, people have lost their creative capacity, their agency and their rebelliousness. It is probably the sale of the labor force and the very routine of work that alienated them mercilessly in the end. However, with the force of colloquial language, the verses also say that people button themselves up to reemphasize that cowardice inherent in the human condition, that permanent option to hide, that inability to take on board what has now been understood. The following verses will be a more radical representation of these ideas but also a questioning about whether to censure the human condition. On the one hand, the poetic voice recognizes that people find themselves subject to unjust social conditions that they have not chosen and that alienate them but, on the other hand, this is a voice that remains annoyed with people’s passivity, with their hypocrisy and with their inability to transform themselves and their reality. For this reason, the fourth stanza maintains once again that people are truly animals, but then the voice becomes destabilized, because it feels simultaneously challenged by the sadness inherent in the human condition. The fifth stanza, therefore, tries to judge human beings with a new word, examining (examinando), but it also fails to provide objectivity and distance. Here, the verses again emphasize that human beings are an agonizing tension of forces, that they are an inevitable contradiction and are always ready to erase everything, to fade away like water going down the toilet (retrete). The verses note that a self-destructive drive also dwells in

2  A POET OF THE ETHICS OF THE REAL 

23

subjectivity. Again, they note that human beings always culminate as victims of themselves. Although in this verse the poetic voice—the voice of the judge—had begun its discourse with a more neutral voice (examining/ examinando) at the end it produces a slightly more positive evaluation of the human condition. The representation of the supposed judgment of the human condition continues to become more complex. Now human beings appear as desperate subjects who are always in search of someone else to accompany them in their sadness. For this reason, we are shown a judge who is not made of stone and who feels such compassion that he can now affirm that he knows I love him (que el sabe que le quiero). However, the judge recognizes at once that he needs to neutralize such a slip of compassion (in contrast to his supposed desire for objectivity) and he quickly constructs a tense image (that I hate him with affection, and am, in short, indifferent to him / que le odio con afecto y me es en suma indiferente) in order to justify himself or to account for the confusion that all this evaluation produces in him. In short, here is a very tense image that suggests a different way of apprehending reality. For Vallejo, Thinking in a dialectical way means neither more nor less than writing dialectical phrases... because insofar as dialectical thought is thought about thought, thought squared, concrete thought about an object, which at the same time continues to be aware of its own intellectual operations in the very act of thinking, this self-consciousness must be inscribed in the phrase itself. And to the extent to which the dialectical thought characteristically implies a conjunction of opposite phenomena, or at least conceptually disparate, it can be said of the dialectical phrase that, certainly, its force increases proportionally when the related realities remain distant and different from each other. (Jameson 2016, 47–8)

The poem thus concludes by recognizing that the human being was born really tiny (nació muy pequeñito) and that, for the same reason, is not exactly guilty of the society it has inherited and all the identities that are in play. The verses affirm with greater clarity that many of people’s problems must be understood in the context of the social relations in which they have been inscribed. Therefore, despite human beings being burdened with a fundamentally alienated and hypocritical condition, despite having accumulated “evidence and arguments to demonstrate that he is a subject unworthy of consideration and deserves to be ostracized” (Higgins 1989,

24 

V. VICH

131), the poetic voice does not censure them and, rather, ends up being moved: it calls them, tells them, to come closer and, finally, gives them a doubly emotional hug (and I embrace him, moved So what! Moved. .. Moved. .. / y le doy un abrazo, emocionado/ ¡Qué más da! Emocionado.... Emocionado…). So what! (¡Qué más da!) says the verse and this expression seems to be key. It is again about that excessive and uncontrolled condition that will unveil the dignity of humankind. To give human beings an emotional embrace after having recognized all their faults and miseries implies assuming the excess to redeem them, that is, to propose, concretely, that it is a matter of identifying with the other from the place of their failing, with the failing and within the failing. With the expression So what! (¡Qué más da!) the poem ends by placing that excess center-stage, which is equivalent to an ethical and political gesture (Ortega 2014, 76). If we must act ethically, we must admit that the error is constitutive of what we are. This does not mean that we are only error or that everything we say is misguided or wrong, but it does imply that our acting is conditioned by a constitutive limit of which we cannot give full account, and that condition is, paradoxically, the basis of our responsibility. (Butler 2009, 152)

What, then, is the final sentence of this judge after all? What is the final decision? The poem maintains that the “ethics of the Real” must also be, above all, an ethics of grace or an ethics of forgiveness. What does that mean? It is a matter of accepting that human beings are internally divided, that they are contradictory subjects, even though they are never exempt from responsibility. In fact, resistance to forgiveness implies, but does not sustain, the fantasy that the other is not a divided subject. For this poem, however, not to forgive would place the enunciation in the place of resentment or within the pure past. And it must be said that for Vallejo forgiveness is a theme of the present and the future: it is something as impossible as it is necessary, as bitter as it is utopian. In fact, an “ethic of the Real” must go beyond the mandate that obliges subjects to be completely coherent and transparent to themselves. Rather, it is a discourse that wants to assume the excess, the contradiction, and the opacity of the human condition. It is about a perspective that tries to observe “the intrusion of the social world in us, in a way that, invariably, makes us ignorant of ourselves” (Butler 2009, 145). We are here before an ethics that observes that life is always precarious because it involves dependence on others.

2  A POET OF THE ETHICS OF THE REAL 

25

From this point of view, Vallejo warned that the ethical could only be constituted from a radical apprehension of human limits. Human beings must always be questioned, but they must also be understood. This understanding is, for Vallejo, an indispensable gift for building community and, therefore, in this poem, there is something that emerges freely. This question of grace and common responsibility has always been central to his poetry, for example, in the poem entitled “Stumble between two stars” (“Traspié entre dos estrellas”) (Vallejo 2012, b, 469–471): There are people so miserable, they do not even have a body; quantitative the hair, low, in inches, the genial displeasure; mood, high; do not look for me, the tooth of oblivion, they seem to come out of air, to add sighs mentally, to hear clear whippings on their palates! They leave their skin, scratching the sarcophagus wherein they are born and they ascend to their death hour after hour and fall, all along their gelid alphabet, to the ground. Alas, so much! Alas, so little! Alas them! Alas in my room, hearing them through glasses! Alas my thorax, when they are buying vests! Alas my white dirt, in their associated excrement! Beloved the ears sanchez, beloved the people who sit down beloved the unknown man and his wife, the neighbour with sleeves, collar, eyes! Beloved him, who has bedbugs, who wears a broken shoe under the rain, who wakes the corpse of a piece of bread with two matches, who gets his finger caught on the door, who has no birthday, who lost his shadow in a fire, who is an animal, looks like a parrot who looks like a man, the poor rich man, the sheer miserable, the poor poor man!

26 

V. VICH

Beloved he who is hungry or thirsty, but lacks a hunger with which to quench his thirst, a thirst with which to assuage all of his hungers! Beloved he who works for a day, a month, an hour, who sweats out of sadness, out of shame, who goes, following the order of his hands, to the cinema, who pays with what he owes, who sleeps on his back, who does not recall his childhood; beloved the hatless bald, the thornless just, the roseless thief, the one who carries a watch and has seen God, who carries an honour and does not die! Beloved the child, who falls and still cries, and the man who has fallen and cries no more! Alas, so much! Alas, so little! Alas them!

The verses begin with a representation of inequality and social injustice. This is a materialistic piece that represents those who have been consigned to be the remnants of the social system. Without fear, the images show all the abuse and exclusion to which they are exposed. In the poem, these characters are even stripped of their own sense of self. The degree of deterioration is such that many of them seem to come out of air (parecen salir del aire) and are said to no longer have the strength even to expel their own sighs. The verses state that misery has dehumanized them, almost animalizing them. Somehow, they are no longer themselves. In pain and feeling deeply challenged, we can hear clear whippings on their palates (to hear clear whippings on their palates/ oír claros azotes en sus paladares) and feel all the violence of history weighing on them. With vehemence, the verses try to communicate that the inequality is so extreme that many seem dead from birth, since society has no place reserved for them. For this reason, the poem emphasizes that life originates in a sarcophagus and that living amounts to not much more than heading towards death. For many people, life is, then, a constant

2  A POET OF THE ETHICS OF THE REAL 

27

martyrdom. Harrowingly, the poem positions us before characters whose lives have lost all capacity for language, not only because their demands are systematically silenced, but because the subaltern never has a language completely of their own to express themselves (Spivak 1996). These characters—we are told—fall, all along their gelid alphabet, to the ground (caen, a lo largo de su alfabeto gélido, hasta el suelo) because their language, in fact, also seems to have been taken by the powerful. In fact, the poetic voice notes the difficulty of social change and regrets it. The very title of the poem “Stumble Between Two Stars” (“Traspié entre dos estrellas”) names a cosmic imbalance that affects the same poetic voice. The poetic voice has seen the inequality in the street, but then feels it in the solitude of the bedroom (Alas in my room, hearing them through glasses! / ¡Ay en mi cuarto, oyéndolas con lentes!). In fact, it has been said that the first ethical gesture must start by abandoning the liberal idea that subtracts the subject from the community and by recognizing the fact of being permanently determined (and overwhelmed) by the other (Žižek 2010, 186). Alas in my room, hearing them through glasses! the verse says to show how this is a voice that begins to feel responsible for an unjust society that may allow some subjects to reach such a condition. Vallejo, in fact, realizes that his dirt is white (Ay de mi mugre blanca) compared to the deterioration in which others live and that his pain is much less than that of the characters on the street. We find ourselves then before a deeply felt compassion for others’ pain and, above all, before the need to communicate “in a physical and solid way, the emotional impact that the misfortune of the neighbor produces in him” (Paoli 1981, 71). Vallejo understands that poetry is a genre that must tell the truth as an attempt to generate a new present. If the first two stanzas gave an account of human injustice and if the second one wanted to bear witness to the profound interpellation that all this generates in the poetic voice, then the poem demands an urgent response from the reader. First, it is a presentation of social inequality. Then, it marks the effect that this produces on the one who enunciates and, finally, it feels the need to make a political proposal that implies both the recognition of the anonymous and the invocation of a new community of deep human solidarity. The rhetorical strategy thus becomes more classic and therefore anaphoric: the verses will list different identities that are marked by the same social fatality: that of defeat, exclusion, bad luck, extreme pain, social injustice, or simple absurdity. Beyond the potent visual imagery, it is

28 

V. VICH

important to note that the poem does not establish any hierarchy among all that it describes and that its exhaustive desire to enumerate responds only to the desire to recognize them all. “The neighbor must be loved simply because he is the neighbor” has emphasized Paoli (1981, 72) and therefore we can say that this list works, above all, as a first political act: it is a matter of not excluding anyone, of forming a community of anonymous people, of recognizing that all, despite our diverse fatalities, are equal. A new ethical discourse emerges here, but one deeply rooted in everyday life. Vallejo understands that injustice and pain are not exceptional events, but ordinary preconditions of human existence and, for this reason, the reader is invited to understand that the ethical act must be a daily habit. In this poem, Vallejo appropriates a famous biblical discourse (the famous “Sermon on the Mount”) to emphasize the urgency of building a new social practice. Here, the words of Christ are rewritten under a profoundly materialistic aesthetic that has chosen to single out the anonymous and to point to the ordinary. This is a poem written from a materialistic and secular perspective, but one that does not renounce to the absolute (or sacred) character of the truth it seeks to convey. Salvation, far from the sublime and close to the almost trivial, has very little to do with worship, law and ritual.... It consists rather in feeding the hungry, welcoming the immigrants, visiting the sick, protecting the poor, orphans or widows. Incredible as it may seem, what saves us is not a special machine we call religion, but the quality of our daily relations with other people. It was Christianity -and not the French intelligentsia- that invented the concept of “daily life.” (Eagleton 2012, 38)

Vallejo places in the foreground the poorest and most degraded of all (the one who has bedbugs/ aquel que tiene chinches), the one who has run out of resources (the one who wears a broken shoe under the rain/ el que lleva zapato roto bajo la lluvia), the one who no longer has anything to eat (the one who wakes the corpse of a piece of bread with two matches/ el que vela un cadáver de pan con dos cerillas), the one who is the victim of an ordinary fatality (the one who gets his finger caught on the door/ el que se coge el dedo en una puerta), the one who is not recognized (the one who has no birthday/ el que no tiene cumpleaños), the one who has been left homeless (the one who lost his shadow in a fire/ el que perdió su sombra en un incendio), the animal, the one who does not have a stable job (the one who works for a day, a month, an hour/ el que trabaja al día, al mes, al año), the

2  A POET OF THE ETHICS OF THE REAL 

29

one who has a feeling of inferiority (because he sweats out of sadness, out of shame/ pues suda de pena o de vergüenza), the one who has no possessions (because he pays with what he owes/ paga con lo que le falta), the one who lacks what he really needs (the hatless bald/ es un calvo sin sombrero), the one who has become a prisoner of time (because he carries a watch and has seen God/ pues lleva reloj y ha visto a Dios) and the one who reaffirms his loyalty beyond death (because he carries an honor and does not die/ pues tiene un honor y no fallece). All the images start from the particular but point to the universal. The strictly political in this poem is that it is as much a matter of “universalizing the particular” as of the desire to emphasize the indestructible link between poetics and justice. The verses start from the ears sanchez (de las orejas sánchez) to build, from there, a new human community. Without fear, Vallejo tries to restore an old myth: he makes the ancient words of Christ vibrate and rewrites them from an intensely political perspective. This is a poetry that succeeds in making a set of ancient words resonate with the aim of activating new desires for social transformation. Let us review one last poem (Vallejo 2012, b, 509–511): Some days I get a fruitful, political desire of loving, of kissing love on both its faces, and from a distance there comes to me a demonstrative desire, a new desire for loving, by will or force, the one who hates me, the one that tears his paper, the little boy, the girl who cries for one who cried, the king of wine, the slave of water, the one who is hiding in his anger, the one who sweats, who passes, who shakes his being on my soul. And thus, I want to set straight the braid of the one who speaks to me, the soldier’s hair; the great man’s light, the small man’s greatness. I want to iron a handkerchief directly for one who cannot cry, and when I am sad or my happiness hurts, to fix up the children and the geniuses. I want to assist the good be a little evil and I am urged to be seated on the right of the left-handed man, and to answer the mute, trying to help him

30 

V. VICH

with what I can, and I also want so much to wash the lame man’s foot, and help the nearby one-eyed man to sleep. Oh, this, this desire, of mine, so worldly, interhuman and parochial, mature! It comes to me timely, from the base, from the public groin, and, coming from a distance, one has the desire to kiss the singer’s scarf, and to kiss on his frying pan him who suffers, and to kiss the deaf man on his calm, cranial murmur; and to kiss the one who gives what I had forgotten in my breast, on his Dante, on his Chaplin, on his shoulders. And I want, finally, when I’m at the renowned edge of violence or with my heart full of chest, I would like to help bring laughter to him who smiles, to place a bird on the shoulders of the evil man, to take care of the sick by making them angry, to buy from the salesman, to help the killer kill—a terrible thing— and I would like to be good to myself in everything.

What to do with the excess? Where to put it? In this poem, subjectivity is assailed by a feeling that imposes its presence and begins to unfold little by little. It is an attempt at reconciliation with life, but also a wager that reaffirms its choice to become active and responsible in the presence of the other. The poem positions us before an abundant and fertile emotion, before a feeling that, ultimately, is not individual but political, that is, before an action that is directly related to the sense of community and, for that very reason, to the will to transform existing social relations. What does the poetic voice want to do in this poem? Paoli (1981) has analyzed many of the images by breaking down their rhetorical figures and their dialogue with Christian discourse. These are corporeal actions inserted into everyday life. In them, we can observe true acts of solidarity, humility, and universalism. The poem is addressed to all the people of the world, from the strongest to the weakest, from the great to the small, from

2  A POET OF THE ETHICS OF THE REAL 

31

the “bad” to the “good.” It is not, however, purely doctrinaire (although it is also charged with biblical resonances) as it does not quite know where its impulse originates (from a distance there comes to me / me viene de lejos, he says). Nevertheless, the poetic voice has decided to face this with dignity. In this poem we again observe a subject who feels the need to go beyond him or herself. Here, the verses build images that open up to the world in order to construct an ethic that does something with that inclination towards the excessive and that defines and constitutes the human condition. Eagleton (2010a) has called for an “ethics of the Real” that transcends the fantasy and that points to the day to day “banality of goodness.” In his opinion, the ethical cannot be a metaphysical ideal, but a constant practice anchored in the everyday. What we are calling here an “ethics of the Real” is that which chooses whatever has no place in the system. In fact, in this poem, social change is not conceived as the irruption of something extraordinary but, rather, as something that must occur in everyday life. It is a question, then, of washing the lame man’s foot (lavarle al cojo el pie), helping the nearby one-eyed man to sleep (ayudarle a dormir al tuerto). The poetic voice recognizes these subjects, that is, the faults that constitute them, and the action of the poetic voice is placed on the side of that fault and those failings. The poem is political because it arises from a profound interpellation, that is, from a radical questioning. Vallejo feels impacted by the one who shakes his being on my soul (sacude su persona en mi alma) because a sense of human responsibility arises from his presence. Vallejo then wants to perform an act that restores something of the marginalized identity (stop his crying, neutralize his anger, comb his hair, clean him, talk to him, etc.) because he considers that, with these acts, minimal as they might be, he contributes to transforming the world. This is a voice that does not prioritize any particular dimension of life because it intervenes from both the sacred and the profane, from Dante and Chaplin. However, the poem is about something even more radical. It is also about assisting the good be a little evil, taking care of the sick by making them angry and—a terrible thing, helping the killer kill (ayudarle al bueno a ser un poquito malo, cuidar a los enfermos enfadándolos y—cosa terrible, ayudar a matar al matador). What are these images alluding to? Again, the poem insists on the choice not to repress the excess, but to recognize it, make it visible and try to do something with it. In all his images, Vallejo locates something repressed and encourages it to express itself beyond

32 

V. VICH

prevailing morality. It is not, therefore, a passive discourse in the face of a superior mandate. To the contrary, it is about the choice to act in the face of jouissance and to confront it (or channel it) beyond all censorship or moral discredit. For this poem, the true act can only be sustained once it leaves behind that discourse that fantasizes about harmonic balance and that, rather, has chosen to be carried away by that overwhelming and exuberant Real. However, nothing in this poem has to do with charity or philanthropy. Somehow, Vallejo knows that the other is also a subject loaded with faults and carries disturbing excess. The poem begins by pointing out the importance of loving the one who hates me (al que me odia), and thus does not avoid facing that traumatic disturbance that the presence of the other always implies. This is an ethics that takes human antagonisms as its starting point; an ethics that knows that one’s neighbor, like oneself, is made up of subjects who are often hostile and that this perfect love (obsolete, decrepit) is not a desire that is assumed to be perfect, but rather one that arises from or is part of the recognition of one’s own faults. In this poem, the lyrical speaker and the other reflect each other in their shared failings, and this seems to be the requirement for a new ethic and a new social bond, that is, for the construction of a true human solidarity. Does a narcissistic resolution emerge in the final verse? What is certain is that it could also be read as a manifestation of pure “grace,” that is to say, as the act in which a subject, without expecting anything, chooses to give, and in doing so is created. In other words, the redemption of the world also passes through the redemption of oneself. From there, the verses conclude with a subjectivity that needs something to sustain it: a subjectivity that is not complete either. In short, the poem proposes a representation (and revaluation) of excess that in the ethical tradition has often been understood as an impasse but is now understood as a political possibility. Excess is here the sign of an event that becomes present as the mark of a truth that reveals the deep uneasiness of the symbolic: Oh, this, this desire, of mine, so worldly, interhuman and parochial, mature! (¡Ah querer, éste, el mío, éste, el mundial, interhumano y parroquial, provecto!) In their eagerness to describe an abundant and disproportionate feeling, the verses affirm something that comes from afar, but that authentically imposes its presence as it begins to show its innumerable political possibilities. * * *

2  A POET OF THE ETHICS OF THE REAL 

33

Butler asks herself: “What could it mean to shape an ethic out of the ‘unwanted’?” (2009, 138). Some of the poems analyzed here encourage us to build paths towards an answer. The “ethics of the Real” is an ethics that does not ask the subject not to be a split subject. It is, on the contrary, one that arises from the very decentering of subjectivity and that is why, in these verses, we always observe a subject that is divided between what it is and what it wants to be, between the forms in which it has been formed by culture and what it aspires to be that lies far beyond it. This is not an ethic of the victim. Although Vallejo accepts that the subject is always determined by multiple conditioners, he also affirms that he or she can always do something against him or herself. The subject is inherently flawed, it is true, but at the same time, the decentering of the subject (their criticism of the rational and self-conscious model of idealism) can lead to another type of liberation. It is only a matter of assuming the incompleteness and maneuvering with that inclination towards excess in another way. In this way, the failure, the emptiness, and the excess are central categories to understand an “ethics of the Real” that, finally, is one that cannot be disengaged from something disproportionate that is central to us. Žižek has summed it up this way: The subject is neither human nor simply inhuman, but is marked by a terrifying excess which, while denying what we understand as humanity, is at the same time inherent to the human condition... but as Kant and German idealism have pointed out, excess is absolutely immanent, it is the very core of subjectivity. (2010, 214)

We must conclude, therefore, with the statement that this excess may be capable of activating a set of unexpected political possibilities. In fact, Vallejo’s poems always go to the encounter of what has not been sufficiently symbolized because the official discourses know full well that facing it could disrupt everything that exists. It is not, however, an attempt to “dominate” the Real, but only a will to face it in another way. Beyond his permanent confrontation with pain and death, Vallejo’s poetry recognizes that this inclination to excess can bring new human possibilities. In fact, for Vallejo, social revolution is also an excess. The “ethics of the Real” is one that is not reduced to the individual and that ultimately poses a political problem. The neighbor, especially the one who has been excluded from the system, is someone who makes a powerful ethical demand. This is a poetry that is not afraid of this challenge and

34 

V. VICH

takes it up with great intensity. An “ethics of the Real” is always an ethics that wants to “move into action” and therefore cannot be reduced or limited to an intimate problem between the subject and the moral code, but is always in search of bigger projects because, in a tireless way, it can never stop wondering about the political organization of the world (Butler 2009, 179).

Bibliography The Translations into English from Vallejo’s Original Poems Are Taken from the Following Books Vallejo, César. 2012. The Complete Poems. Edited and translated by Michael Smith and Valentino Gianuzzi. Bristo: Shearsman Books. ———. 2022. Trilce. Edited and translated by Michael Smith and Valentino Gianuzzi. Swindon: Shearsman Books.

Other English Translations Are as Follow Vallejo, César. 2022b. Trilce. Translation and glosses by William Rowe and Helene Dimos. London: Crater Press and Veer Books. ———. 2022c. Trilce. Centenary Bilingual edition. Barry Garside Fogden.

References Althusser, Louis. 1977. Ideología y aparatos ideológicos del Estado. In Posiciones. Barcelona: Anagrama. Badiou, Alain. 2002. Condiciones. México DF: Siglo XXI. ———. 2009a. Teoría del sujeto. Buenos Aires: Prometeo. ———. 2009b. Pequeño manual de inestética. Buenos Aires: Prometeo. ———. 2009c. Compendio de metapolítica. Buenos Aires: Prometeo. Braunstein. 2006. El goce: un concepto lacaniano. Buenos Aires: Siglo XXI. Butler, Judith. 2009. Dar cuenta de sí mismo. Violencia ética y responsabilidad. Buenos Aires: Amorrortu. Eagleton, Terry. 2010a. Los extranjeros. Por una ética de la solidaridad. Madrid: Paidós. ———. 2010b. Sobre el mal. Barcelona: Península. ———. 2010c. Cómo leer un poema. Madrid: Akal. ———. 2011a. Por qué Marx tenía razón. Barcelona: Península. ———. 2011b. La estética como ideología. Madrid: Trotta. ———. 2012. Razón, fe y revolución. Barcelona: Paidós.

2  A POET OF THE ETHICS OF THE REAL 

35

Escobar, Alberto. 1973. Cómo leer a Vallejo. Lima: PLV editor. Ferrari, Américo. 1974. El universo poético de César Vallejo. Caracas: Monte Avila editores. Freud, Sigmund. 2001. El malestar en la cultura. In Obras completas. Tomo XXI. Buenos Aire: Amorrortu. González Vigil, Ricardo., ed. 1991. César Vallejo. Obras completas. Biblioteca Clásicos del Perú. Lima: Banco de Crédito del Perú. Hart, Stephen. 1987. Religión, política y ciencia en la obra de Vallejo. London: Támesis books limited. Hibbett, Alexandra. 2004. “¡Ay, los golpes!: una comparación de Trilce LXXIII y el poema “Los heraldos negros” (manuscrito). Higgins, James. 1989. César Vallejo en su poesía. Lima: Seglusa editores. Jameson, Fredric. 2016. Marxismo y forma. Madrid: Akal. Lacan, Jacques. 2005b. Seminario 7. La ética del psicoanálisis [1959–1960]. Buenos Aires: Paidós. Miller, Jacques-Alain. 2006. La ética del psicoanálisis. In Introducción a la clínica lacaniana, 147–172. Barcelona: RBA libros. Ortega, Julio. 2014. César Vallejo, una escritura de devenir. Taurus: Lima. Paoli, Roberto. 1981. Mapas anatómicos de César Vallejo. Messina: Casa editrice Danna. Rowe, William. 2006. Ensayos vallejianos. Berkeley-Lima: Latinoamericana editores. Spivak, Gaytri. 1996. Subaltern talk. In The Spivak reader, ed. Donna Landry and Gerald Maclean. New York: Routledge. Vallejo, César. 2012b. The Complete Poems, edited and translated by Michael Smith and Valentino Gianuzzi. Bristol: Shearsman Books. ———. 2022d. Trilce, edited and translated by Michael Smith and Valentino Gianuzzi. Swindon: Shearsman Books. Žižek, Slavoj. 2010. Prójimos y otros monstruos: un alegato a favor de la violencia ética. In El prójimo. Tres indagaciones en teología política, ed. Slavoj Žižek, Eric L. Santner, and Kenneth Reinhard. Buenos Aires: Amorrortu. Zupancic, Alenka. 2010. Ética de lo real: Kant, Lacan. Buenos Aires: Prometeo.

CHAPTER 3

A Poet of the Language Crisis

Contemporary poetry was founded on self-criticism. It is a type of textuality that observes its tradition but is not afraid to make itself an object of doubt and questioning. Can poetic language represent the complexity of human experience? Can it account for simultaneity and contradiction? Is beauty synonymous with “goodness” and “happiness”? Is aesthetic experience the only purpose of art? Could poetry also convey ideas? Vallejo establishes a very tense relationship with language and with literature in general. When, in his first book, he exclaims There are blows in life so strong...I don’t know! (Hay golpes en la vida tan fuertes… ¡Yo no sé!), he recognizes a limit that escapes any possible representation. The verse (with its suspension points) brings us face to face with a voice that does not understand why these blows occur, where they come from and why. Moreover, the poet recognizes that he does not have the words to name everything he would like to and that, for this reason, language is an insufficient instrument to describe both the characteristics of these blows and their impact on subjectivity. This is, in the first place, a poetry that expresses anguish in the presence of something that exceeds all meaning. The expression I don’t know! refers to two or three types of problems: “I cannot know,” “I do not know how to say,” and even a “I do not know what to do” (González Vigil 2014; López Soria and Ignacio 1971). Subjectivity is divided in the face of a serious epistemological problem and produces a discursive impasse. For this verse, the world has become dark and unpredictable and the language insufficient. Julio Ortega has © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2024 V. Vich, César Vallejo, Studies in Revolution and Literature, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-33513-6_3

37

38 

V. VICH

summarized it as follows: “The poem works from not knowing, from not being able to say, reconstructing the knowledge of a lack that explores the helplessness of the human being in the language” (2014, 24). In fact, this is a poem that states that there is something in human experience that cannot be known or said completely: A very important aspect for the 20th century artist is that one of the symptoms of the decomposition of the world is the ruin of language itself. The naming ability of words is affected, and the relationship between it and things has relaxed. The thesis of the conjunction between the murder and the collapse of the language is very strong. In any case, it is a spectacular emblem of the dying century. (Badiou 2005a, b, 67–68)

As opposed to a previous tradition in which poets represented themselves as those who could say everything, that is, as those who knew and mastered language perfectly and who were able to represent reality with a certain accuracy, Vallejo’s poetry shows, from the start, another type of poet: one who is not afraid to show the very limits which constrain him; one who shows the very crisis of language (its edge, its limit). Vallejo, then, recognizes that “the essence of saying is to say badly. To say badly is not a failure of saying; it is exactly the opposite; all saying is, in its very existence, a saying badly” (Badiou 2009b, 151). Vallejo notes with pain and anxiety that there is something that is unrepresentable. He has discovered that there is an antagonism that prevents the exact knowledge of reality and its transparent literary expression. If we could say, in a Lacanian sense, that the presence of the Real is what produces an insufficiency in saying, then the Real is what triggers the need for representation, that is to say, the urgency to maneuver around what cannot be said (Recalcati 2006). Vallejo has realized that there is something in the experience that obscures its meaning, rendering the verse incomplete. For this reason, he believes that the literary act is always flawed. However, acknowledging this problem did not paralyze his poetic creativity. Many of his images show both deep aesthetic changes and a voice that reveals a very different positioning on the possibilities and limits of poetic expression. To comment on Trilce’s famous poem LV (Vallejo 2022, b, c, d, 125): Samain would say the air is calm and of a constrained sadness. Vallejo says today Death is welding each limit to each strand of lost hair, from the small barrel of a forehead, where there are algae, balms that sing divine mastics on guard, and ownerless antiseptic verses.

3  A POET OF THE LANGUAGE CRISIS 

39

Wednesday, with dethroned fingernails opens its own fingernails of camphor, and infuses through dusty sieves, echoes, turned pages, sediments,                      buzzing of flies when there’s a corpse, and clear porous pain and a little hope. A sick man reads The Press, as on a lectern. Another is stretched out throbbing, long-faced, almost buried. And I notice a shoulder is still in its place and is almost ready after this one, the other side. Already the afternoon passes sixteen times by the patrolled subsoil, and is almost absent in the yellow timber number of the bed long unoccupied          there . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .                      up ahead.

The poem does not identify with traditional representations of poetic speech and confronts them with vehemence. In these verses, Vallejo distances himself from an aesthetic that he considers not only insufficient, but also misguided. Nevertheless, beyond a noticeably different artistic option, what is clear is an insufficiency in the forms of poetic expression. The poem seeks to represent that limit, that edge, that deep crisis that, in the verses, is figuratively represented as death. Samain’s universe is a strongly stylized one. The world described in the poem is as the poet perceives it and reflects his aesthetic vision. Although Samain recognizes that the world contains antagonisms, he limits himself to observing it from a purely aesthetic perspective. Samain knows he is doing “literature” and seems to be content with that. In contrast, Vallejo’s verses opt for another path in which the antagonisms of the world intrude to destabilize his own gaze by imposing their presence with an even greater force. The representation is destabilized by the presence of what is hidden, which always wants to become manifest and which returns after being repressed. The poem notes that, while death is welding each limit (soldando en cada lindero), for now it is the poet who

40 

V. VICH

feels it as inscribed within himself. In this poem, Vallejo understands that pain is not a deviation from the subject or the world, but the deep and structural condition of life itself. That is why death is depicted here as something inherent, as a traumatic excess located at the very core of human existence. Let us dwell on the words used by both poets. The differences between Samain and Vallejo can be located between the verbal form “is” and the form “to be.” Samain’s verse is fundamentally categorical in its definition of reality. There is no awareness of the linguistic mediation that his point of view implies. For him, reality is always quiet and its sadness is contained. Vallejo’s verses are also categorical, but there is a slight difference. For Vallejo, the world is not a fixed entity, but rather a reality with a constant potential to transform itself, allowing the poetic voice to position itself with greater agency against it. If the world is not a fixed entity, then it had a different form in the past and could have a different form in the future. Therein lies its potential. In other words, while the selection of words in Samain’s verses corresponds to established frameworks of classical poetics, that is, the words conform to romantic forms of poetizing, Vallejo breaks radically with this aesthetic to not only render structural antagonisms more visible, but to also include new words not used in the traditional discursive regime: barrel (cubeta), balms (toronjiles) and antiseptic (antisépticos) reflect the option of inscribing all his poetics in an “aesthetics of the ordinary,” that is, of pure existential everyday life. From there, the poem strives to emphasize that it is not constructing a purely literary image, but that its purpose consists, above all, of the desire to transmit a very concrete experience. The poem, in fact, is written in an intensely testimonial voice that recognizes the limits and the possibilities of the literary artifact. Vallejo knows well that he is writing literature, but this causes in him a certain anguish because his life project (ethical, let’s say) involves pointing to something that is beyond the strictly aesthetic. What the verse proposes is neither fiction nor poetry. The verses do not represent an external reality, but a radically situated experience. Here, the poetic voice is inscribed in death but, above all, challenged by it. The aim is therefore to highlight the limits of language and the human condition. In fact, all the representation that the poem proposes is in a hospital, where death is revealed as a truth within life. But, what is a truth?

3  A POET OF THE LANGUAGE CRISIS 

41

Of what then is a truth true? It cannot be more truthful than the situation itself on which it insists since it is not giving us anything of transcendent of the situation whose dominion would assure a truth... Since a truth proceeds in situation, that of which it gives testimony does not exceed in anything to the situation itself. (Badiou 2002, 190)

Vallejo is indeed a poet who is deeply anchored in the concrete realities of daily life and the demands that arise from them. For this reason, his purpose is not to make death itself poetic; it does not aspire to construct general statements about it, but rather to confirm its presence in a particular situation. That is why the mention of Wednesday (miércoles) is so important, because it is a matter of marking the irruption of death or pain on a specific day. The poem emphasizes that there is a force that wins and imposes itself on life. In this sense, external forces always refer to internal conditions. The sieves (harneros) cannot stop death. If the word camphor (alcanfor) refers to an antibacterial substance, it fails, since the poem states that sick nails contaminate healthy nails. In this poem, the medicine seems to be insufficient because flies are present everywhere, showing how, little by little, death takes everything. The poem culminates with two characters who, in different ways, symbolize the presence of death. They are two sick people: one is reading the news (probably bad news) while the other, with a long face (longirrostro), suffers from palpitations and is extremely frightened by death’s imminent approach. In this poem, however, death ends up being the image of an empty bed, of an absent presence. Note that the last two words (there/ up head; allá/enfrente) could be read as a paradox, but also as a new debate with Samain’s symbolist aesthetics. While the adverb there (allá) accounts for something that is spatially or temporally distant, that condition is quickly neutralized by another adverb that insists on marking the near presence of death. Opposite is the chosen word. In a remarkable way, Vallejo radicalizes the use of the suspension points to inscribe, right there, a specific lack, death itself in the materiality and emptiness of the signifiers. Death, then, would never be there (allá) (always stylized), but always here, like a void in front of oneself. Another poem, Trilce XLIV, is also a reflection on artistic creation. It is a text that poses questions about the identity of an object, and about its operation or way of operating in the world. In it we find something that does not have a definite answer and that seems to exceed all possible representation (Vallejo 2022, b, c, d, 99).

42 

V. VICH

This piano travels inward, it travels in joyous leaps. Then ponders in iron-clad repose, nailed with ten horizons. It advances. It crawls under tunnels, further on, under tunnels of grief, under vertebrae that naturally flee. Other times their horns lead, slow yellow desires of living, they go in eclipse, and insect nightmares are deloused, already dead to thunder, herald of geneses. Dark piano, on whom do you spy with your deafness that hears me, with your muteness that deafens me? Oh mysterious beat.

What does the piano represent here? What does it allude to? The imagery fails to define it because the poem only describes its trajectory, its actions, and its consequences for subjectivity. That is why, through a tone that is sometimes confident and sometimes distant, the poetic voice personifies the piano, addresses itself to it, and poses it a final question. For Badiou, the emergence of truth has to do with both the internal and external dynamics belonging to a given moment (2002, 60). Every truth emerges from a concrete situation, but also exceeds it. Insofar as it “exceeds” it, one can say that it belongs elsewhere. In other words, truth is immanent to a situation, but its designation is impossible within the margins of meaning established by that same situation. For this reason, it transcends it and relates a different story about its own parts. The piano music travels inwards. In fact, the instrument is played from its edges, but the sound is produced inside the instrument, then emerges towards the outside to finally arrive at the interior of subjectivity. Music is a different kind of language from vocal language because it has no reference, is not conceptual and produces an experience that is beyond the symbolic. Music, in fact, expresses something that has no words: it is the art of the unmentionable, and the unmentionable is something that exists, but is removed from language. I am not referring to the formality

3  A POET OF THE LANGUAGE CRISIS 

43

of the composition (harmony, melody) but to the timbre, that strange pulse of the musical and, in this case, of the piano. Music locks and stops meaning and is thus an art that points more directly to the Real. In this poem, the poetic voice wonders about the effects that music has on the constitution of its subjectivity. The enunciation notes how this movement acquires a link with the outside world because it identifies something central to subjectivity that is simultaneously “inside” and “outside” language: “outside” because it cannot be symbolized and “inside” because it appears as a fracture within the symbolic. Music is featured here as an art constructed in the spaces between the symbolic and the Real. The Real emerges from the impasses of formalization: the Real is not an external hard core that resists symbolization but the producer of a dead end in the process of symbolization. (Žižek 2013, 181–82)

The Real, in short, can only be defined as the break that originates in the symbolic in its incapacity to name the world. Here, the piano cannot hear, but it also deafens (asorda). It hears yet is also silent. When the voice asks itself on whom do you spy with your deafness that hears me? (a quién atisbas con tu sordera que me oye?), it reveals that the music captures something unnamable that is nevertheless transcendental. This music must be mute because what is spoken is always in the realm of the symbolic. This muteness does not refer to silence, but to the tragic impossibility of speaking. For the poem, the Real must then be understood as something that is never presented in terms that are completely identifiable. Although the Real brings with it a profound truth, the subject is always overwhelmed by its incapacity to speak it: it is not a question of maintaining that, through the piano or music, art produces an exorcism of the dark side of the human condition, but rather that art is a discourse that aims to confront that unknown, but always active, dimension that is the Real. In this poem, the poetic voice borders on the Real, recognizes it, and wants to face it. Neale-Silva described this poem as follows: Trilce XLIV is a visionary ensemble with an inquiring intention. What is expressed in it is a plurality of failed interrogations because the mystery is always transformed into something blurred and hallucinating. The enigmatic piano is barely glimpsed through spectral visions -unusual scales, fugitive vertebrations, invisible keyboard, silent trumpets, etc., all these are

44 

V. VICH

elements of a dream. Trilce XLIV is a magnificent example of the Vallejian interest in entering the zone of the deep self, a desire that would become the dominant concern among the Surrealists. (1975, 134–144)

The poem discovers that art is a type of discourse that positions itself far beyond the existing rules, that is, outside the logic of non-contradiction. In fact, it is a discourse that disregards the logic of cause and effect. The poem portrays art as a place where everything is reversed, where everything becomes simultaneous, and where a greater density of life can be captured. Why is the piano described as “dark” and “mysterious”? What happens with it is beyond the symbolic, that is, beyond the disciplinary parameters on which social reality is built. In fact, music always transports the listener to another place and opens him or her up to a dimension that had hitherto been unknown. This is a poem that portrays the movement of the Real. Its verses show various dynamics: displacements that scatter, universes that disconcert because of the insect nightmares (pesadillas insectiles) they bring with them, and vanishing points that awaken unrestrained. Understanding this poem is very difficult. When reading it we encounter a set of images whose reference we cannot name. This happens because the poem points to something that cannot be translated. It is a dynamic that undermines meaning, that questions language itself, and that destabilizes the representations proposed by reason. Badiou (2009b, 62) has maintained that “Mimesis is not the bottom of the problem.” The piano is an instrument that activates a set of resonances that disturb the defenses of subjectivity and its limits. This problem is also represented in the famous poem entitled “Intensity and Height” (“Intensidad y Altura”) (Vallejo 2012, b, 485): I want to write, but forth comes froth I want to say so much but I get stuck; there’s no spoken cipher that’s not a sum there’s no written pyramid without a core. I want to write—but I feel like a puma, I want to be laurel- but am onion-wreathed. There’s no spoken cough that’s not just fog, no god or son of god bereft of growth.

3  A POET OF THE LANGUAGE CRISIS 

45

Let’s go, therefore, to eat grass, meat of laments, fruit of moaning, our melancholy soul in a tin can. Let’s go, let’s go! I’m wounded; let’s go drink what’s just been drunk, let’s go, crow, and fecundate your crow-hen.

From the first verse, Vallejo displays a good part of the sense (or nonsense) of this poem. His aim is both to show the impossibility of saying it and to reveal the stubborn need to try to say it. The poetic voice stalls but insists; it recognizes its core (cogollo), but never falters. In this poem, Vallejo recognizes that the subject is fundamentally a materiality but one from which “significant projects can be organized” (Eagleton 1997, 113). The subject is a body, yes, an animal, but it is also a “speaker-being” in Lacan’s words (1975, 64), a being always trapped in its need to speak. In these verses, writing has ceased to be an external instrument to become expressed in the body as a pain or a wound that can no longer be avoided. Therefore, the verses represent the poet both as a product of culture and as a simple animal. From his first identity, he positions himself as a subject capable of writing a sonnet. Vallejo chooses the most difficult rhetorical path, submitting to an established format and respecting its rules. The poem faces such difficulty and does so within a consecrated form of literary history. This is a great sonnet in its form and rhetoric. It is true that language is not enough to say everything that is meant, that it is insufficient, but it is also true that something can be done with it to force it elsewhere. The verses affirm that there is no perfect poem, no written pyramid (pirámide escrita), but only fragmented attempts at poetic expression. Despite the difficulty in expressing himself, the subject writes and claims that he cannot stop doing so. From this second identity, the poetic voice discovers that there is a type of friction with the world, a material relationship which is what reveals the limitations of language. The images of the animal that constitutes the human being are very clear (I feel like a puma; let’s go, therefore, to eat grass; let’s go, crow, and fecundate your crow-hen/ Me siento puma, Vámonos, pues, por eso, a comer hierba; Vámonos, cuervo, a fecundar tu cuerva), but they are, at the same time, certainly suggestive as he tries to reconcile himself with that excess that transcends culture.

46 

V. VICH

In this way, Vallejo explores the inadequacies of language, notes its ambiguities, and dares to show his own failure. This is a poem that, once again, points to what fractures, what exceeds, what has no definite signifier and which is impossible to symbolize. Its aim is to recover the purely instinctive side of the human condition to show the limitations of culture or, rather, the violent mediation that language imposes on reality. For Ferrari, for example, this poem marks “the hiatus between the unlimited universe of possible expression and the limited world of written expression” (1974, 198); and for Ortega, it is about producing a communication so agonizing that it is equivalent to the act of eating and drinking, in the need for survival (1986, 47). In this poem, Vallejo seems to recognize, wildly, that the subject is “an animal continually at risk” because he cannot stop being “a creature condemned to meaning” (Eagleton 1997, 115). From there, the poetic voice knows well that it has no alternative but to drink what’s just been drunk (beber lo que ya ha bebido), that is, to accept the literary tradition, since it is only possible to create within it. This reflection, however, never removes the political responsibility of the writer. I’m wounded (Estoy herido), says the verse, because the poetic voice recognizes that antagonisms are also present and affect the poetic voice deeply. Vallejo always assumed that his responsibility as a writer was to reveal the structural flaw in life and that is why he proposed to build new representations that would find a way out of this dilemma. Let us comment, in this respect, the following poem (Vallejo 2012, b, 505): A man passes with a loaf of bread on his shoulder. Shall I, afterwards, write about my double? Another sits, scratches himself, picks a louse from his armpit and kills it. What’s the use of talking about psychoanalysis? Another has entered my chest with a stick in his hand. Shall I afterward talk to the doctor about Socrates? A cripple goes by giving his arm to a boy. Shall I later on read André Breton? Another shivers with cold, coughs, spits up blood. How can I allude to the I of depth-psychology?

3  A POET OF THE LANGUAGE CRISIS 

47

Another rakes in the mud for bones and husks. Can I, later on, write about infinity? A mason falls from a roof, dies before lunch. How can I renew, after that, the trope, the metaphor? A shopkeeper cheats a customer out of a gram. How then can I write about the fourth dimension? A banker forges his balance. Have I the nerve to weep at the theatre? An outcast sleeps with his foot behind his back. Can I later speak to anyone about Picasso? Someone attends a funeral in floods of tears. How can I then accept membership of the Academy? Someone cleans a rifle in his kitchen. What’s the point of talking about the afterlife? Someone goes by counting on his fingers. How can I speak of the not-I and not scream?

Vallejo asks about the connection (or disconnection) between art and life, between poetry and the world. The poem presents a series of contrasts, each beginning with an image always followed by a question. All the images reveal the flawed nature of reality, and the questions are concerned with the affairs surrounding art and thought. In the first place, this poem confirms the existence of a set of antagonisms that constitute reality; it is a text that names social inequality and injustice as a serious political debt. As a writer, Vallejo feels deeply challenged by this context. In other words, his is a voice that recognizes that what happens in reality affects him much more than what is happening in art and thought. In fact, Vallejo always questioned all those artistic currents that tried to substitute the world of life with the world of art. Without mercy, he denounced all those artists who understood artistic creation as an end in itself. “Makers of images, give back the word to man,” he said at

48 

V. VICH

one point (Vallejo 2002a, b, c, 346). Years before Huidobro (1925), Vallejo had affirmed that “the truth of art begins where the truth of life ends,” yet he opted for a radically different position because he persevered to the end with the question of how to radically introduce art into the antagonisms of human reality. Is it possible for the poetic discourse to name social desperation? Is it possible for it to describe the logic of power to which we never have complete access? Is it possible to understand the causes of evil and pain? The poem asks these questions but also an even more radical question: Is it possible for poetry to do anything? The poem does not deny, but only states. The poetic voice does not claim that art, philosophy, and psychoanalysis are not important practices, but rather proposes to describe a type of antagonism that perforates something of the realm of knowledge. We could say that Vallejo points again to what has remained outside representation, to that “rest” of the social that has not been described anywhere. The poem names the difficulty that art has in intervening in life and thus bears witness to an impenetrable core of social marginality. However, it is not so much about the incapacity to speak, but about denouncing an art that does not see, in the social, something decisive that exists in human life. In this sense, the verses question both the hegemonic discourse on “progress” and the artistic avant-garde because neither is capable of committing itself to the urgent demands of reality: hunger, illness, poverty, and the desperation of the marginalized who here challenge the poetic voice and who provoke a desire to intervene or to shout. Here, in fact, Vallejo “is the speaker of modern deficiency and what we see is a definition of modernity as a failure to comply with itself” (Ortega 2014, 66–67). Ultimately, it is a self-critical poem, a text where the discourse of art deeply doubts its own condition. What is the point of renewing the trope, the metaphor (innovar en el tropo, en la metáfora) if that does not serve to change life? In fact, this poem takes up a very old question (the relationship between art and life), but politicizes it beyond all academic discourse. Vallejo is perfectly aware of the danger that purely intellectual work brings with it but, far from denouncing this, he concentrates on generating a set of questions that courageously present the disconnection in search of a new type of connection. Vallejo’s art always stems from material, and not symbolic, reality. For him, as Marx maintained in the Grundrisse, to understand always implies “elevating” the abstract towards the concrete and material (Marx 1971, 23).

3  A POET OF THE LANGUAGE CRISIS 

49

Again, Vallejo recognizes the limits of language; he knows perfectly well that language is not enough, but he still tries to do something more with it. He insists on asking if the poems could be inserted into the world in another way. Vallejo cannot accept that art is something independent of life and cannot believe that words are an end in themselves. The presence of a cry in the poem (How can I speak of the not-I and not scream?/¿Cómo hablar del no-yo sin dar un grito?)—not only demonstrates that reality can never be completely represented, but that this cry emerges as a doubt about the possibility that art can change life. Let’s take a look at a new poem that illustrates this (Vallejo 2012, b, 399): And if after all these words, the word does not survive! If after the wings of the birds the erect bird does not survive! It would be better, really if they ate everything up and were done with it! To have been born just to live off our death! To rise from the sky towards the earth by its own disasters and to spy when turning off the darkness with its own shadow! Frankly, it would be better if they ate everything up and what of it! . . . And if after so much history we succumb not out of eternity, but out of simple things, like staying at home or starting to wonder! And then, what if we find all of a sudden, that we live, judging by the height of the stars, by the comb and the handkerchief’s stains! Truly, it would be better if they ate everything up, surely! And one could say we have in one of our eyes, much sadness and in the other one, as well, much sadness and in both, as they look, much sadness . . . And then . . . Sure! . . . Then . . . not a word!

50 

V. VICH

Written with anguish and anxiety, this poem (which again asks about the role of art in history) insists on posing new questions that convey fundamental political concerns: What if, after so many words, the words themselves do not recover their power to interpellate? What if, after so much philosophy, so much history, so many verses, we realize that knowledge and words are useless? Once again, Vallejo asks himself if there is meaning beyond language. With much disquiet, but also with some irony, Vallejo insists again and again: What if, in truth, there is no truth that can resist deterioration and oppose the permanent emptiness of existence? Throughout the poem, Vallejo stresses that life has become alienated, that it has lost its meaning and that we don’t know how to find it again. To have been born just to live off our death (Haber nacido para vivir de nuestra muerte), says a verse to mark the fact that being born no longer implies to live fully, but rather to fail at every step. What if, after so much freedom, we don’t know what to do with it? What if, after the wings of the birds (alas de los pájaros), we are not capable of observing ourselves anchored to the earth? Always tempted by disappointment, the poem alludes with skepticism to a possible reality to come. All its stanzas conclude in the same way: if there is no meaning, then everything should end now. If the event and the truth are not possible in the world, then they ate everything up (que se lo coman todo), and that’s that. Without a doubt, there is a sense of defeat in this poem that leans towards the absurd. The words tend to move through the ideal and not through the flesh, not through the here and now of life. Nevertheless, Vallejo is prepared to argue with all those who avoid facing the set of antagonisms that characterize the human condition. Higgins, for example, has interpreted the poem in the following way: after having offered a desolate panorama in which the search for a new reality does not seem possible, a contrary voice arises, one that maintains that it is self-destructive to propose such a pessimistic position. Thus, Vallejo chooses not to argue anymore, and the poem ends by parodying the superficial optimism associated with this type of argument (1989, 101). There is an idea that runs through all this poetry: how to decompose everyday language—to subtract something from it—to capture something that is outside of it? How to use words so that they go beyond themselves? How to build an ethic (and a poetics) of the Real? The following poem rehearses an important proposal. By way of a surprisingly chaotic

3  A POET OF THE LANGUAGE CRISIS 

51

enumeration, it draws attention to itself as it challenges traditional ways of writing (Vallejo 2012, b, 451). The peace, the wasp, the heel, the flowing, the dead, the decilitres, the owl, the places, the want, the sarcophagi, the vessel, the brunettes, the ignorance, the pots, the acolyte, the drops, oblivion, the potentate, the cousins, the archangels, the needle, the parsons, the ebony, the disdain, the part, the type, the stupor, the soul . . . Ductile, saffroned, external, clear, mobile, old, thirteen, bloodied, photographed, ready, numb, linked, long, ribboned, perfidious . . . Burning, comparing, living, being angry, beating, analysing, hearing, trembling, dying, holding on, taking place, crying . . . Afterwards, those, here, afterwards, above, perhaps, meanwhile, behind, so much, so never, below, maybe, far, always, that, tomorrow, how much, how much! . . . The horrendous, the sumptuary, the slowest, the august, the unfruitful, the fateful, the contracting, the drenched, the fatal, the everything, the purest, the lugubrious, the harsh, the satanic, the tactile, the deep . . .

Vallejo knows that language is never enough to sum up the human experience. Indeed, there is something excessive and amorphous in subjectivity that language fails to narrate fully. Language establishes an order, but, in constructing a form, it hides the simultaneity of experience. However, this poem is a new attempt to border on all that is unrepresentable and to resist symbolization.

52 

V. VICH

The poem tries to state that the simultaneous and the paradoxical are beyond the linear rationality of the functioning of language. Vallejo excludes the syntax of the poem and limits himself to presenting a rhythmic succession of words, an apparently chaotic enumeration, where each group, and each strophe is different in form and function. Some critics have described the structure of this poem in this way: the first group is composed of nouns, the second of adjectives, the third of gerunds, the fourth of adverbs of place, and the last of noun adjectival forms (González Vigil 1991, Montabeltti 2019). Why does he choose this strategy? To affirm that all these words “try to return to language the obstructed symbolic riches, they try to rescue it from its fall, from its cognitive impoverishment, so that the word can dance again” (Eagleton 2011a, b, 414). Indeed, each word here acquires a very strong evocative power and is charged with a symbolic density capable of radiating to many places. For this reason, its rhetorical strength lies as much in a certain confidence in the hidden powers of the words as in the reader’s abilities. For Vallejo, both have a difficult task to accomplish. On the one hand, words have to recover their multiple meanings, that is, their capacity to capture what is simultaneous and excessive in reality and, on the other hand, readers must recognize that each word is only one signifier that leads to other signifiers and then to others, and so on. In this poem, each word is then capable of activating a multiplicity of experiences. McDuffie has described it in this way: We have reached the limits of poetic expression, and we are threatened by the danger that the poem will unravel for lack of inner connections that communicate the poet's emotion to us. Vallejo wanted to give us a vision of life so complete that it runs the risk of falling into mere babble. In the course of this process, he wanted to show that words have life of their own, if they are informed by poetic sensibility. (1971, 62–63)

In fact, here words combine diverse semantic fields that point to the objective and the subjective, to the moral and the physical. Above all, however, they show the transcendent and the everyday as simultaneous realities. The cousins and the archangels (Los primos y los arcángeles) or the pot and the ignorance (la olla y el desconocimiento) are pairs that confuse because they belong to different registers. On the one hand, we can read words like burning or crying (ardiendo o llorando). On the other, the poem makes us face the heel and the drops (el taco y las gotas). We are placed

3  A POET OF THE LANGUAGE CRISIS 

53

before such transcendental questions as the fatal and the deep (lo fatal y lo profundo) before we are placed before the drenched and the tactile (lo mojado y lo táctil). Why does this happen? Culture forces us to associate a meaning with a signifier and has accustomed us to group signifiers according to shared traits. In other words, culture establishes a boundary between transcendent things (those it groups on the one hand) and common and ordinary things (those it groups as the other). This, however, does not occur in this poem, which has decided to transgress this custom. His aim is to underscore the importance of each of these elements without subjecting them to a hierarchical process. In other words, if in life the transcendent and the everyday have been culturally opposed, the poem brings them back together in the same space to make explicit the arbitrariness with which they have been dissociated and, above all, to underline their simultaneity, the singular importance of each of them. For this reason, González Vigil (1991) has described this poem as a verbal experiment of a cubist nature. Indeed, here the poetic voice tries to describe life from multiple angles beyond any center. The poem brings words together without grouping them or ranking them according to established cultural patterns. From there, it transgresses the idea that the meaning of words responds only to the context in which they are inscribed. The poem, on the contrary, frees them from any context to exploit the possibility of their multiple meanings. If language is a pragmatic phenomenon that tends to refer to a specific situation, in this case, the fragmentary nature of everything leads to the possibility of meanings becoming infinite. This is a poem that attempts to expand the boundaries of language and, from there, to question the official meaning that is usually assigned to each word. The second stanza is organized as two differentiated diptychs (the masculine singular and the feminine plural) that attempt to name certain conditions of the subject. If the former refer to internal characteristics, the latter point to something that is external to subjectivity. The images are, however, always in tension, as in the third stanza (composed of gerunds), to account for the permanent instability of the subject. For this poem, in fact, the subject and the experience must always be understood as something mobile, contradictory and changing. All these gerunds allude to the untiring mechanisms of construction and reconstruction of social and collective identity.

54 

V. VICH

The fourth stanza presents a set of adverbs belonging to various categories: adverbs of time, of place, demonstrative, etc. All of them aim to point out both a multiplicity of spatial positions and to question a notion of time that breaks with the linear paradigm. In fact, this is a poem that destabilizes a classic way of relating to both time and space because it knows that, in life, everything is in disorder (one is above and below at the same time) and that we are permanently confronted with irruptions from the past into the present. For this poem (and others), every advance can also be a setback. For this very reason, the words maybe (acaso) and perhaps (quizá) are open to contingency and preclude any categorical statement. With them, the poem strives to represent that place of permanent existential indetermination: “could be” as “might not be.” Both words announce a doubt, an uncertainty, but also a desire. In this strophe, the adverb how much (cuánto) is twice repeated and thus stands out with force. With it, Vallejo demonstrates that language is incapable of demonstrating simultaneity. Why does this happen? Let us paraphrase the verses: “How much contradiction, how much exists that cannot be easily grasped. Everything is altogether, it is complex, and it is over determined.” The last stanza lists several adjectival phrases. The phrase the everything (lo todo) is not placed at the end of the poem, because if it appeared there, it would close the totality. However, the totality must remain open in this poem because the whole is in permanent movement and has no final destination. Although the poem attempts to totalize something central to the human experience, the suspension points signal that it remains impossible to name everything. The fact that each stanza ends with these points suggests that the enumeration continues infinitely, and that language is not only a structure but above all an incomplete inventory. It is impossible to represent the totatility, but the poem is rightly interested in showing that impossibility which is the need to place the words on a level playing field and articulate them in a different way. Montalbetti says: What is radically lacking in the poem is syntax. And yet, syntax is expressed in the poem. Not only as an evident void, this is what is important, not only as an absence (or as a lack) that the hyphal movement of his words reveals, but as a constitutive part of the poem itself. Or more precisely, Vallejo does not make a syntax of emptiness that would tip him face first in the direction of mysticism, nor does he exhibit the syntactic structure that gives contour to the background emptiness. He does something else: he puts syntax in the void and reveals the unnamable void of syntax. (2019, 109)

3  A POET OF THE LANGUAGE CRISIS 

55

How does the poem end? What is its last image? That which is deep (lo profundo) is the chosen phrase. With it, Vallejo points to what is misaligned, to that which has succeeded in recovering its true humanity that lies beyond social power. He points to that which emerges within images of fatal concepts and of regrettable facts of human experience. Its appearance is important because it propels the subject into an active role; that same role which is now expected from the reader. The deep emerges here as an open form of the whole, as a truth that has been found in the very process of finitude and subtraction. In this poem the deep (lo profundo) is a metaphor of an infinite emptiness that questions; it is the sign of something eternal that is beyond what exists, but that emerges from what exists: the truth, in short. * * * Throughout his work, Vallejo asked himself what it meant for subjectivity to have assumed a place in the symbolic and, for this reason, his poems confirmed in dramatic fashion the impasse that hinders all representation. His is a poetry astonished to see that words, often emptied of meaning, are not enough to name the totality of human experience. “It will not be that the words that should serve me to express myself in this case, were dispersed in all the languages of the earth and not only in one of them” (Vallejo 2002c, 505). His poems bear witness to that limit and try to find it or, rather, to encircle it in some way. The important thing, in any case, is that Vallejo never tried to cover up or cancel out that void. Rather, he opted for exhibiting it without reservations. Unlike an art that is anxious to represent that which exists, Vallejo proposed a type of aesthetic that can never stop showing the flaw that all representation brings with it.1 Moreover, Vallejo realized that this flaw is the very foundation not only of language but also of human existence. Far from avoiding it or fleeing from it, his poems chose to hold on to the unspeakable. In fact, that confrontation with what “does not cease not to be written” (Lacan 2006, 114), that is to say, what has no name and cannot be named (because it refers to both excess and lack, both the bond and its fracture) is what impresses these verses with a remarkable poetic force. “A truth -Badiou sustains- is based on inconsistency because truth 1  “Now I already know what I am without being able to express it, however” is a line that Antenor Orrego quotes from a Vallejo letter lost to this day (Orrego: 2018, 129).

56 

V. VICH

is always something to be produced” (2009b, 81). In this sense, “what does not cease to be written is not simply what cannot be named; it is, above all, what demands to be written but fails even though it always insists. This stubborn act, however, somehow emancipates humankind from that what “does not cease to be unwritten.”2 It was the romantic poets (whom Vallejo knew very well) who maintained that artistic work was the result of danger, of having reached the end of an experience. For them, art was a heroic practice that involved sacrifice and tragedy (Agamben 2005, 17). In Vallejo’s poetry, the heroic is related to that willingness to transgress the known (Trilce is the clearest example of this), and the tragic refers to that stubborn opting for the impossible, for what is not representable, for what words can never capture. In fact, romantic poetry can be understood as that which persists in wanting to rise and transcend. Vallejo is, then, both a tragic and a heroic poet because his discourse points to the missing signifier and because his writing tries to trace something that has been left empty. His poetry recognizes the difficulty of being able to tell the truth about oneself and recognizes that the Real does not pass for a meaning constructed from power relations and social discipline. His poetry, in contrast, is one that has located something beyond all signification because it has discovered—in Yurkievich’s words—“the arbitrariness of human existence, the arbitrariness of the world and therefore the abruptness of the linguistic sign” (1978, 11). In his struggle against language, in his way of approaching the edge, of bordering on language with non-language, of renaming names, of carrying out an operation within language Vallejo gives, in effect, a masterful demonstration of the potentiality-of-the­no as a constructive form of power, pure and simple. His power to write is inseparably linked to his power not to write. And his power of not doing is manifestly expressed in the absence of syntax, in throwing the syntax into the inner emptiness of the poem. What is missing is not a fault but an absence: something that could have been there but is not. Or something that was there and is no longer there. (Montalbetti 2019, 113)

However, despite the limits of language Vallejo writes a work that does not surrender and, motivated by an “imperative to say,” wants to become, 2

 Juan Carlos Ubilluz: personal conversation.

3  A POET OF THE LANGUAGE CRISIS 

57

finally, a political act (Badiou 2009a, b, c, 141). Vallejo splices all this theoretical problematic with a critique of modernity and that is why he never tires of saying that the foundation of art has to be “outside” art itself. In an even more radical sense, Vallejo believed that life and art were alienated because capitalism was contributing to the perversion of social reality. Vallejo believed that poetry could (or should) recover its old pedagogical function and contribute towards producing a more humane person. Sustained by its own fracture, by its own lack, Vallejo’s poetry is one that battles for art to rediscover its capacity for social intervention. His verses always doubt, but they also take a stand. Vallejo knows well that there is something of the Real that deconstructs the order of meaning but, at the same time, does not hesitate to arrange all his images such that they prevent poetry from annihilating itself (Agamben 2005, 87).

Bibliography The Translations into English from Vallejo’s Original Poems Are Taken from the Following Books Vallejo, César. 2012. The Complete Poems. Edited and translated by Michael Smith and Valentino Gianuzzi. Bristo: Shearsman Books. ———. 2022. Trilce. Edited and translated by Michael Smith and Valentino Gianuzzi. Swindon: Shearsman Books.

Other English Translations Are as Follow Vallejo, César. 2022b. Trilce. Translation and glosses by William Rowe and Helene Dimos. London: Crater Press and Veer Books. ———. 2022c. Trilce. Centenary Bilingual edition. Barry Garside Fogden.

References Agamben, Giorgio. 2005. El hombre sin contenido. Barcelona: Altera. Badiou, Alain. 2002. Condiciones. México DF: Siglo XXI. ———. 2005a. El siglo. Buenos Aires: Manantial. ———. 2005b. Filosofía del presente. Libros del Zorzal: Buenos Aires. ———. 2009a. Teoría del sujeto. Buenos Aires: Prometeo. ———. 2009b. Pequeño manual de inestética. Buenos Aires: Prometeo. ———. 2009c. Compendio de metapolítica. Buenos Aires: Prometeo. Eagleton, Terry. 1997. Las ilusiones del posmodernismo. Barcelona: Paidós. ———. 2011a. Por qué Marx tenía razón. Barcelona: Península.

58 

V. VICH

———. 2011b. La estética como ideología. Madrid: Trotta. González Vigil, Ricardo., ed. 1991. César Vallejo. Obras completas. Biblioteca Clásicos del Perú. Lima: Banco de Crédito del Perú. ———. 2014. Las tres dimensiones del “yo no sé” de César Vallejo. In Vallejo 2014. Actas del congreso internacional Vallejo siempre, vol. Tomo 1, 125–150. Lima: editorial Cátedra Vallejo. Lacan, Jacques. 2006. El seminario 20. Aun [1972–1973]. Buenos Aires: Paidós. Marx, Karl. 1971. Elementos fundamentales para la crítica de la economía política (borrador) 1857–1858. Buenos Aires: Siglo XXI. Montalbetti, Mario. 2019. El pensamiento del poema. Santiago: Marginalia editores. Orrego, Antenor. 2018. El sentido americano y universal de la poesía de César Vallejo. Lima: Alastor editores - Cátedra Vallejo. Ortega, Julio. 1986. La teoría poética de César Vallejo. Providence: ediciones del Sol. ———. 2014. César Vallejo, una escritura de devenir. Taurus: Lima. Recalcati, Massimo. 2006. Las tres estéticas de Lacan. In Las tres estéticas de Lacan: arte y psicoanálisis, 9–32. Buenos Aires: Del Cifrado. Soria, López, and José Ignacio. 1971. El no saber. In Aproximaciones a César Vallejo, ed. Angel Flores. New York: Las Américas. Vallejo, César. 2002a. Artículos y Crónicas completas. Tomos I y II. Recopilación, prólogo, notas y documentación por Jorge Puccinelli. Lima: Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú. ———. 2002b. Correspondencia completa. Edición, estudio preliminar y notas de Jesús Cabel. Lima: Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú. ———. 2002c. Ensayos y reportajes completos. Edición, estudio preliminar y notas de Manuel Miguel de Priego. Lima: Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú. ———. 2012b. The Complete Poems, edited and translated by Michael Smith and Valentino Gianuzzi. Bristol: Shearsman Books. ———. 2022d. Trilce, edited and translated by Michael Smith and Valentino Gianuzzi. Swindon: Shearsman Books. Yurkievich, Saúl. 1978. Fundadores de la nueva poesía hispanoamericana. Vallejo, Huidobro, Borges, Girondo, Neruda, Paz. Barcelona: Barral editores. Žižek, Slavoj. 2013. El resto indivisible. Buenos Aires: Ediciones Godot.

CHAPTER 4

A Poet of the “Part With No Part”

Vallejo’s poetry was always committed to politicizing human pain, that is, naming its causes and representing the effects that pain (suffering, exploitation, evil) causes in the remnants of the social system. This is a poetics in which the representation of marginality became increasingly prominent. Because of his religious formation and his Marxist readings, Vallejo began to think (and feel) that the world could be reconstituted from the place of the excluded. How to represent the marginal and anonymous? How to name it in political terms and how to figure it symbolically? How, from the representation of the marginal, could poetry portray the social totality and, more specifically, its structural flaws? I would like to argue that, in this poetry, the representation of marginality aspires to produce an estrangement from the practices and representations that structure and sustain the social order, i.e., the so-called “distribution of the sensible.” For Rancière, this category functions as an organizer that establishes common life by assigning identities, producing social relations, and activating regimes of visibility and invisibility (2009, 9). Art, however, functions as an interruption to the “distribution of the sensible” and as a “disagreement” over the existing regime of visibility. Its representations fracture established representations and contribute to the construction of new maps (of the visible and the speakable) within a given state of reality. Indeed, artistic practices aim to destabilize what has been imposed as unique and naturalized as “true.” In other words, if every © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2024 V. Vich, César Vallejo, Studies in Revolution and Literature, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-33513-6_4

59

60 

V. VICH

community establishes a way of understanding the world (a way of seeing, doing, saying, etc.), the aim of art is to question these established forms (of distribution and representation) because they contribute to sustaining social practices. However, in Vallejo’s poetry, art not only questions but also affirms something: it names the excluded rest in order to try to produce a social change in another direction. Indeed, Vallejo always understood his poetry as a different way of communicating a truth, as a device that could transform existing common senses. From there, the representation of the marginal became more prominent because he realized that its incorporation into his poetry generated the possibility of observing the community crisis as it was configured. This decision was made very early and throughout his work. If his poems chose to represent excluded identities, they did so with the aim of promoting different estrangements from the existing social order and activating new political subjectivations. Let us comment on the poem entitled “The starving man’s wheel” (“La rueda del hambriento”) (Vallejo 2012, 393): From in between my own teeth I come out smoking, calling out, pushing, dropping my trousers … My stomach empties, my jejunum empties, poverty pulls me out from in between my own teeth, caught with a stick from the cuff of my shirt. Won’t there be a stone for me to sit on? Even the stone that trips the woman who gave birth, the mother of all things, the cause, the root, won’t there even be that for me? At least that other one, that has passed crouching along my soul! At least the bad, calcareous one (humble ocean) or the one not even good to be thrown against a man, —give me that one now for me! At least the one found crosswise and lonely in an insult, give that one now for me! At least the one twisted and crowned, over which

4  A POET OF THE “PART WITH NO PART” 

61

just once echo the steps of straight consciences, or just the one that, thrown in worthy curve, drops by itself in profession of real gut, —give me that one now for me! Won’t there even be a piece of bread now, for me? Never again shall I be what I will be always, but just give me a stone on which to sit, please give me a piece of bread on which to sit, give me, in Spanish something, in short, to drink, to eat, to live, to lie on, and then I’ll leave … I find a strange shape, my shirt’s in flitters and filthy and I have nothing. This is dreadful.

Vallejo considered that poetry could be a space to represent what had not yet been represented, that is, to show, in their dejected condition, subjects who were victims of social injustice. This poem is therefore intended to politically challenge his readers by showing the desperate situation of a particular character. Here, for example, Vallejo does not run away from didactic poetry and fearlessly confronts us with a harsh reality. The poem is constructed from the monologue of an increasingly desperate character whose need to tell what is happening to him is becoming more and more explicit. The poem represents him as someone who has been completely “left out” of the system, as someone who is on the last rung of the social ladder. In symbolic terms, he is a subject who has been so reduced that poverty pulls me out from in between my own teeth (la miseria me saca por entre mis propios dientes). It is a subject in a condition of extreme poverty and weakness. In the poem, we see him groaning, portraying a dramatic and unpleasant condition. His stomach is empty as is his whole being. Formally, there is a verbal construction that is very striking: the well-­ known verses that say: My stomach empties, my jejunum empties (Váca mi estómago, váca mi yeyuno). For Higgins this empties (váca) is an extremely polyvalent word, which comes from the verb “vacar,” but which also evokes the idea of “emptiness” because there is nothing in the stomach

62 

V. VICH

anymore and because there is no “vacant” work either (1989, 123–24). In fact, the unprecedented use of this word surprises and configures the empty, emptied, and vacant condition of the character in question. We see him pushing, not to expel anything, but only to reveal his always empty and abject condition. This is a character who is so skinny that almost nothing can hold him and who, for the same reason, seems to be caught with a stick from the cuff of my shirt (cogido por un palito por el puño de la camisa). His begging is so abject that he does not even have a stone to sit on. This is someone who possesses nothing because he has been stripped of everything. The poem delves into this condition under a symbolic and certainly political strategy. Its aim is to challenge readers by confronting them with the harshness of social inequality. Here, the images are always extreme. The weakness of the poetic subject is such that it urgently needs to find a resting place. Its strength is exhausted and it is very hungry. In fact, it is about to die. It has lost all hope, though continuing to beg for something: a stone, a loaf of bread, something to ease its death. If this character appears as a “remnant” of the system, at the same time, it finds itself asking for a “remnant” of the social as the ultimate guarantee of its existence. It is not asking for just any stone: it is asking for the one that nobody wants, the one that is useless, the one that is cursed. It asks for those that are not even good to be thrown against a man (que ya no sirve ni para ser tirada contra el hombre). These images are shocking, and the rhetoric of hyperbole fulfils a dramatic function. By asking, won’t there even be a piece of bread now, for me? (un pedazo de pan, ¿tampoco habrá ahora para mí?), the reader can sense that, today, there is nothing for this character, not only because everything has already been privatized but also because no one is willing to give anything anymore. Of all the phenomena that are ultimately unrepresentable – work, fatigue, the complete absorption of human time, my perpetual exclusion from a space that is never mine (which is literally alienated) – none is as unrepresentable as hunger, stripped of all its cultural forms and reduced to starvation and a weakness that has no name. (Jameson 2013a, 155)

The poem strives to represent a subject that always insists and does not keep quiet: it insists on asking for a piece of bread, and this demand accelerates its poetic intensity and its existential condition. Although the subject appears to be marginalized within the social system, the truth is that it

4  A POET OF THE “PART WITH NO PART” 

63

has been “produced” by the system itself. It is not a subject that has “fallen from the sky,” but one that is a product of inequality and social exclusion. This is a subject produced by the irrationality of capitalism. It is not the classic subject of poetry either. Its figure goes beyond the literary scene to destabilize the traditional frameworks of the strictly lyrical. In reality, this subject has been left alone, completely alone. What it is ultimately asking for is a social bond to prove that the other exists, that society exists and that it has not gone mad. This character has nothing, but still speaks and in the act of speaking begins to shape its entire political agency. In the final verses, the need to employ a particular language – Spanish–is the last attempt to produce a point of union with society. This language, then, appears as the last link that unites it with others. The poem is asking if there is anyone to listen and if society still exists: I find a strange shape, my shirt’s in flitters and filthy and I have nothing. This is dreadful (2012, 393)

What is so dreadful (horrendo) about it? What is the point of closing the poem with that word? The horrific refers not only to the situation in which the character finds itself, to its extreme social exclusion and marginality, but also-and above all-to the character of a society that allows this to happen, to a social organization that can generate such extreme inequalities. To say this is horrendous is certainly a cry of impotence, but it is also a judgment and a condemnation. It is also a sentence that has chosen to free itself from any kind of literary artifice in order to affirm something very clearly. It is a verse that gives a testimony and takes a particular position. “Whatever comes, it will have no part in happiness or misfortune” is a phrase from Julian Hunter that Marx quotes in “Capital,” amazed at the conditions in which the English workers lived (1988, 848). The poem alludes, then, to the verification—horror—of social injustice, understood not only in purely economic terms but as the loss of a sense of community. This character states that it is not going to receive anything, because in reality there is no longer anyone willing to give. It is not only the lack of stone and bread that the character ratifies, but the absence of people with whom to build some kind of social relationship. In fact, the subject is not only looking for something material, but also for recognition, something that must come from the other. That is why it can ask

64 

V. VICH

even for that stone destined to attack man, because, paradoxically, that act of aggression would imply, at least, a minimum social bond. In short, this is a subject who despairs because it realizes that, in addition to having nothing, it is invisible. However, to the extent that it has become aware of its invisibility, it utters a complicated prayer so that others will know what is happening: Never again shall I be what I will be always (Ya no más he de ser lo que siempre he de ser). Let us note the verbal game: the poetic voice does not point out “I will no longer be what I have always been” because what the verse is interested in is in marking a difference between I have to be (He de ser) with being (ser). While the second case alludes to an individual’s certain static condition, the first refers, rather, to a duty or mandate of fixation. I must be (He de ser) implies something that is imposed by someone. The poem concludes by arguing that marginality is produced politically and a role that some must play in the logic of social organization. In that verse, there is a confirmation that one is marginal because “one has to be,” because capitalism, to constitute, always needs an “industrial reserve army” or a “constitutive exterior” (Marx 1988, 782; Mouffe 1999). Nevertheless, in this poem the subject questions that role and affirms its decision to stop performing it. Note the verbal subtlety: I no longer have to be. This is a character that cannot produce a sentence of the type “I will no longer be” because, to the degree that capitalism has run wild internally and externally, that is, it has become a wheel difficult to stop, passivity has been imposed. Under these conditions, there would seem to be no change possible. The very title of the poem– “The starving man’s wheel” (“La rueda del hambriento”)–has been explained as follows: It suggests that the unemployed are rolling around in the world, living adrift, with no place in the society that has rejected them. Then, the poem suggests that the beggar goes around, captive of a vicious circle with no way out. Finally, it evokes the image of the wheel of fortune and, by extension, the swings of the capitalist economy, implying that the hungry is the innocent victim of impersonal and inhuman forces. (Higgins 1989, 123)

Note the poem’s synectic strategy: society is in the part and that part expresses precisely the crisis of the social totality. We know that politics consists in reconfiguring the existing identifications from the crisis of one of its parts. From which part could the whole be reconfigured? The answer

4  A POET OF THE “PART WITH NO PART” 

65

is very clear: from the excluded part. Both Christianity and Marxism had affirmed something similar: the new world must emerge from a place located outside of power. Marx had emphasized that the proletariat was a universal class because, having nothing, it had no particular interest to defend. If the formation of a community always involves the formation of a “constituent exterior,” that exterior had to generate the possibility of its change and transformation. This is the idea that appears again and again in Vallejo’s writings. Let us now comment on another poem: Standing on a stone, unemployed, loathsome, dreadful, on the margins of the Seine, coming and going. Then from the river sprouts consciousness, with a leafstalk and sketches of an eager tree: made from embraced wolves, the city goes up and down the river. The standing man sees it come and go; monumental, he bears his fasting on his concave head, and on his chest his purest lice and down there the low noise of his pelvis silent between two big decisions, and down there even lower, a scrap of paper, a nail, a match … This is the one, workers, who in labour sweated inside-out, but who now sweats outside-in his secretion of rejected blood! Smelter of cannon who knows how many anchors make steel, weaver who knows his veins’ positive threads, mason of pyramids, builder of descents down serene columns, down triumphal failures, an unemployed individual among thirty million unemployed, wanderer among multitudes, —such a jump portrayed in his heel and such a smoke out of his fasting mouth, and how

66 

V. VICH

his waist makes an incision, edge to edge, into his standing and atrocious tool, and such a painful valve’s idea on his cheekbone! Also standing, the iron before the oven, standing the seeds with their meek synthesis in the air, standing the linked oils, the light standing on its true apostrophes, the laurels halted from growing, the moving waters standing on one foot and earth itself stopping out of amazement before all this standing; such a jump depicted on his tendons! such a transmission started by his hundred steps! how the engine squeals on his ankle! how the clock growls, pacing impatiently behind his back! how he hears the bosses swallow the drink he lacks, comrades, and the bread that meets the wrong saliva; and—hearing it, feeling it humanly in the plural— how the thunder breaks its headless force over his head! and, what down there —alas!— lower, comrades, are doing the scrap of paper, the nail, the match, the low noise, the father louse! (Vallejo 2012, 419–421)

In this poem, the unemployed are also placed in an extremely hostile context but which they are not afraid to confront. The poetic voice describes a scenario in which the city is portrayed as a river that rises and falls, and in which the wolves have stopped fighting. It is not exactly a question of this character facing up to the social world, but rather that its mere presence distorts reality and challenges it politically. This is a voice that has felt challenged and that claims to have discovered an unquestionable truth. For this reason, the poem is written as a kind of “ode,” like a song dedicated to celebrating, not the miserable condition of the unemployed, but the seed of something new that this character could bring. Again, the description of its social condition is very crude. It has not eaten, it hardly speaks, it is very dirty and has lice. It is then presented as a starry and scary character who cannot develop its human potentialities because it has no job. However, in spite of having lost its place in society,

4  A POET OF THE “PART WITH NO PART” 

67

it seems to be the bearer of something new. What is represented here is the formation of a new “class consciousness” that is growing throughout the city. In effect, the character observes how this is taking shape (then from the river sprouts consciousness/del río brota entonces la conciencia) and, little by little, summons the others: The standing man sees it come and go; monumental, he bears his fasting on his concave head, and on his chest his purest lice and down there the low noise of his pelvis silent between two big decisions, and down there even lower, a scrap of paper, a nail, a match … (2012, 419)

Having “class consciousness” means knowing what place you occupy in the production process and being able to explain why this place is unfair and involves antagonisms. It also means proposing a new political project. In this sense, while this subject is a victim of the system, it is, at the same time, someone who brings the seed of something new. In fact, the poem portrays the character as the representative of all the workers of the world: the bricklayer, the steel worker, and the weaver and all those who, in their trades, embody both interdependence and social inequality. The verses, however, have a positive impact on each of these identities as they aim to show their creative practice: the number of paws (número de zarpas) and steel (acero), the positive threads (hilos positivos) and the construction of pyramids (pirámides). Although the character is described as a wretch, it is standing up and this standing up is, for Jean Franco, a sign of proletarian consciousness (1984, 155). The poem presents a counterpoint between the miserable situation of the unemployed and the promise of a new world. An unemployed individual among thirty million unemployed/wanderer among multitudes (Parado individual entre treinta millones de parados/andante en multitud), the verses speak with great solemnity, thus marking a tension between immobility and mobility. On the one hand, as an unemployed person, it is an immobile subject but, on the other, the verses portray it as the representative of those who could transform history. The poem strives to represent the two dimensions at the same time and to show this tension or this

68 

V. VICH

dialectic and antagonistic balance. Both characterizations produce the image of someone who represents both the end of one system and the possible beginning of another. Little by little, the poem acquires a celebratory rhythm. In the last strophe, a set of natural products appear, those that humans transform through their work, but all of them also appear “standing” perhaps as a sign of protest or strike. The iron (hierro), the seeds (semillas), the oils (petróleos), the light (la luz), everything stops in expectation of that new thing to come that the character seems to summon up. What happens? Why does this happen? This is a poem that tries to show how humans could retake “control” over social production. If capitalism is experienced as a runaway system where humans have become simple “objects” within a mad, impersonal machine, the impersonality of the system is neutralized and, suddenly, thanks to class consciousness, this person, this proletarian, who is the representative of all people in the world, is able to regain control over reality. That is why, with astonishment, all the objects in the world stop before a new context that has begun to show the victory of labor over “capital.” This is perhaps the image of the general strike or of an epistemological strike where workers stop to contemplate their work and to reappropriate their own work: Also standing, the iron before the oven, standing the seeds with their meek synthesis in the air, standing the linked oils, the light standing on its true apostrophes, the laurels halted from growing, the moving waters standing on one foot and earth itself stopping out of amazement before all this standing; such a jump depicted on his tendons! such a transmission started by his hundred steps! (2012, 420)

Inscribed, however, in a Bolshevik productivist aesthetic, the poem ends up producing an identification between the character and the machine, underlining with emotion the qualities that both share: such a transmission started by his hundred steps!/how the engine squeals on his ankle!/how the clock growls, pacing impatiently behind his back! (¡qué transmisión entablan sus cien pasos!/¡cómo chilla el motor en su tobillo!/¡cómo gruñe el reloj, paseándose impaciente a sus espaldas!). At this point, the aim is to show another productive time, a non-capitalist time of work and social

4  A POET OF THE “PART WITH NO PART” 

69

relationship. This is a poem about “class consciousness,” symbolized by the appearance of surplus value as the central device of capitalist accumulation. The poem cannot stop representing capitalism as a system built on the appropriation of the work of others and says so: how he hears the bosses swallow the drink he lacks, comrades, and the bread that meets the wrong saliva; (2012, (421))

This character is one who has become aware that there is something that belongs to it, but that capitalism has taken away. Indeed, some people’s bread ends up in the mouth of others, and some people’s thirst cannot be quenched because others have taken it all. For Vallejo, in modern society, there are very few who eat without anguish and many whose drink (trago) has been expropriated and must be recovered. I would like to argue that Vallejo is representing the need to reconstruct the world from the “labor force” and no longer from the logic of capital. This subject emerges as a singular representative of the world proletariat and the new multitude walking towards the communist revolution. Through the collection of a set of words previously disseminated in the poem, retaking a set of elements that appeared in its own rhetorical development (paper, nail, match, louse/papelito, clavo, cerilla, piojo), the poem affirms the need to overcome social fragmentation, to re-integrate the whole and to build a “class-for-itself” (“clase-para-sí”) that is capable of remaking history. What is the subject of the revolution? From where could society be reconstructed? The answer that Marxism offered was very clear. From a marginal place, from the social base of production, from below, from what is excluded by ideology or hegemonic power. Another poem stands out because of the need for an allegorical reading: There is a man mutilated, not from combat but from an embrace, not from war but from peace. He lost his face in love and not in hate. He lost it in the normal course of life, not in an accident. He lost it in nature’s order, not in man’s disorder. Colonel Picot, President of ‘Les Gueules Cassées’, has his mouth devoured by the gunpowder of 1914. This mutilated man I know has his face devoured by immortal and immemorial air. A dead face on his living trunk. A rigid face nailed to his living head. This face is the back of the skull, the skull’s skull. I once saw a tree turn its back on me and I also saw a road turn its back on me. A tree that turns its back

70 

V. VICH

grows only in a place where nobody was ever born or died. A road that turns its back unfolds only through places where all deaths have happened, and no birth. The man mutilated by peace and by love, by embraces and order and who carries a dead face on a living trunk, was born under the shade of a turned tree and his existence unfolds through a turned road. Since the face is rigid and deceased, all this man’s psychic life, all his animal expression takes cover within, to be shown externally in the hairy skull, the thorax and the limbs. When going out, the drives of his deep being recede from his face; and his breath, his smell, his sight, his hearing, his word, and the human gleam of his being function and are expressed through the chest, through the shoulders, the hair, the ribs, the arms, the legs and feet. Mutilated on his face, covering his face, closing his face, this man is nonetheless complete and lacks nothing. He has no eyes, but he can see and cry. He has no nose but he can smell and breathe. Has no ears and he can hear. Has no mouth and he speaks, smiles. Has no forehead yet he thinks, is absorbed in thought. He has no chin, but he desires and endures. Jesus knew the man of mutilated functions, who had eyes and did not see, had ears and could not hear. I know the man of mutilated organs, who can see without eyes, hear without ears. (Vallejo 2012, 343)

The figure of the mutilated serves for the poem to characterize a subjectivity different from all those that are valued in the social order. The lack— that lack of face—imprints, nevertheless, another type of quality on it. This is a character that carries a different message and articulates an alternative practice. The character is completely alienated from the existing social order. In the poem, however, no one seems to have any concrete responsibility for the mutilation and it is presented as a sign of difference, as something out of this world. The poem states, for example, that the mutilated person was devoured by immortal and immemorial air (comido por el aire inmortal e inmemorial), that they lost their face in nature’s order, not in man’s disorder (en el orden de la naturaleza y no en el desorden de los hombres). In any case, as they have no face, they can acquire all the faces of the world; as they have no face, they can identify themselves with all the faces; as they have no specific identity, they can incarnate whatever is necessary. From there, this option to identify with the mutilated occurs because the character is understood as the bearer of a new universality.

4  A POET OF THE “PART WITH NO PART” 

71

Vallejo is convinced that poetry and art must be linked to a “process of truth” and that this truth must be socially situated. That place, however, is a non-place. The poem informs little about the history of the identity of the mutilated, but it appears as the place from which something new could emerge. Vallejo is a political poet, and so the poem strives to assert that the notion of truth can only be constructed from an excluded position. Why? Because only from there can social organization be questioned as the only possibility of truth. If, with Lacan and Badiou, we know that truth does not exactly belong to the order of “knowing,” if it has been insisted that truth must come from somewhere else (from an unknown internal place or an external event), in this poem truth seems to be embodied in the mutilation itself. This subject brings a message that is not of hatred or war, nor of law or sin. On the contrary, it brings an affirmative message and displays great authority. It is a message that engages the whole being and all the organs. Although it is mutilated, its figure seems to be the bearer of a vigorous totality. Let us comment on the following verse: a road that turns its back unfolds only through places where all deaths have happened, and no birth (un camino de espaldas sólo avanza por los lugares donde ha habido todas las muertes y ningún nacimiento). Are we before a representation of the history of humanity? We are and the verse confronts us with the representation of an erratic historical development, a lack of direction in the long road of humanity. In “Misery of philosophy,” Marx had pointed out that history advances “by the bad side” (2015, 78), by the side that does not make justice progress. It is not about the representation of a full and gratifying human history, but of a great story whose continuity is pain and not happiness. A turned road (un camino de espaldas) could be read as a sentence that reveals a history loaded with injustice and suffering. Moreover, the symbolism of the mutilated serves to represent the always tense character of the relationship with others. It is not–never–a harmonious or easy relationship. Rather, the poem shows that it is a relationship that is full of demands and frictions. There is something that always perturbs and disturbs in one’s social interaction. There is something present in the other that deforms and mutilates. The poem would seem to point to something located far beyond a particular face. In fact, this subject does not need a face to see, nor an ear to function in the world. It is someone who, despite having lost their face, is complete and lacks nothing (está entero y nada le hace falta).

72 

V. VICH

In a debate with Levinás, Žižek (2010) argues that the only way to reach the encounter with the other is through the deformation of the face, since it is a matter of leaving an image of kindness and compassion to assume the other as someone associated with contradictions and antagonisms. The poem attempts to confront its readers with an “ethics without a face,” an ethics inscribed in a backward path; an ethics that confronts the Real of the encounter with the other, with its inevitable antagonisms and with that impenetrable presence that always disturbs (Žižek 2010, 189). However, neither the loss of face (rostro) nor the turned road (camino de espaldas) are here something negative, but rather a condition that must be accepted as a political possibility. Although the character presents a set of images of lack and mutilation, these are not understood as deficiencies or antagonisms, but as conditions that open up different political possibilities. This mutilated person does not appear as a victim but as a subject who brings with them a very important task: to represent themselves as the bearers of a project that arises from the affirmation of good and not of evil. The proposal is not of this world, but it is “made” for this world. Although they have no eyes, they see differently. Although they have no mouth, they speak differently and smile differently. Although they have no nose, they smell and breathe differently. Although they have no ears, they are able to hear other things. From there, the poem proposes that the ears and eyes that the old world has produced are no longer necessary to rebuild it. On the contrary, it is a matter of learning to listen in another way, to look from another place and to leave the old face. This could be his final message. Another poem on this subject presents an image that reveals the crisis of the present while, at the same time, announces the arrival of a new and egalitarian world. The density of its images—its striking symbolism— deserves a careful comment (Vallejo 2012, 521): He has just passed, the one who will come exiled, to sit on my triple growth; he has just passed like a criminal. He has just sat nearer, just a body away from my soul, the one who came on a donkey to make me thin; he just sat standing, livid.

4  A POET OF THE “PART WITH NO PART” 

73

He has just given me what is finished, the fire’s heat and the immense pronoun the animal sheltered under his tail. He has just told me his doubts about distant hypotheses, that he distances, further, with his glance. He has just honoured goodness accordingly by virtue of the notorious pachyderm, for what in me was dreamt and killed in him. He has just placed (there is no first) his second afflixion on my loins and his third sweat right on my tear. He has just passed, without having come.

In the first place, the poem is based on the perspective which, at that time, held that the social revolution was an inevitable process that would be commanded by the workers. He has just passed, the one who will come (Acaba de pasar el que vendrá), says the verse, and, with it, the attempt is made to underline (and promote) the arrival of a subject capable of changing the world. With unwavering faith, the poetic voice maintains that the future does have hope because in the Europe that Vallejo had to live in, the revolution seemed to be “just around the corner.” The disasters of the First World War, the example of the Russian revolution, the crisis of capitalism, the rise of fascism, and the great workers’ organizations articulated throughout the continent made the communist project not only feasible but almost imminent. The subject of the revolution had to be a proletarian, a subject within the system but excluded from all its benefits. The “Communist Manifesto” had emphasized this very strongly. In fact, in this poem, the character is not represented as a victim but as someone charged with a future potentiality; someone whose task is to restore solidarity within a society that has lost it completely; someone who recovers deep love and who is no longer alienated because they have been freed from any particular interest. In the poem, the fire’s heat (el calor del fuego) and the immense pronoun (pronombre inmenso) are updated again by this character who, we are told, has come to change the world.

74 

V. VICH

The poem also concentrates on representing the effects that this subject has on the poetic voice. It is a presence that deeply challenges him, that disturbs him and that questions his identity and his ideas: He has just sat nearer (Acaba de sentarse más acá), points out emphatically how proximity to this character can provoke questions in the poetic voice. In many ways, this subject reveals to him his comfort or, rather, his triple growth (triple desarrollo). It is said that the character has just passed like a criminal (acaba de pasar criminalmente) because its mere presence questions and destabilizes the place where the voice is located. In this way, its affliction and its sweat ensure that the poetic voice can only feel privileged. The verses conclude with an apparently strange image: he has just passed, without having come (Acaba de pasar sin haber venido). The whole poem is constructed using the representation of a kind of “Messiah” who should come to redeem the world. However, what is important is that this arrival is not understood as something consummated but, dialectically, as a task to be carried out, as a debt before history. In other words, the presence of this character is of vital importance because if, on the one hand, it oversees the announcement of something new, on the other hand, it reveals the way forward. Certainly, the character “has passed,” but the revolution is still a debt to be collected, something to be built collectively. There is another poem where social change has already begun to take place. It is a poem that narrates the emergence not of a single character but of a new group, a social class that has a specific place in production. This is another text whose aesthetic comes from the Soviet realism of the time: The miners came out of the mine soaring over their future ruins, swaddling their health with gun reports and, elaborating their mental function, closed with their voices the adit in the shape of a deep symptom. It was worth seeing their corrosive dusts! Worth hearing their rusts of height! Wedges of mouth, anvils of mouth, apparatuses of mouth (It’s formidable!)

4  A POET OF THE “PART WITH NO PART” 

75

The order of their graves, their plastic induction, their coral answers, crowded at the feet of igneous misfortunes and an airy yellowness the sad and saddest knew, imbued with exhausted metal, with the small and pallid metalloid. Skulled with labour, shoed with viscacha’s leather shoed with unending paths and the eyes of physical weeping, creators of depth, with the ladder’s intermittent sky, they know how to climb down while looking up, how to climb up while looking down. Praise for their nature’s ancient game, their sleepless organs, their rustic saliva! Temper, edge and tip, for their eyelashes! May the grass, the lichen and the frog grow on their adverbs! Iron plush for their nuptial bedclothes! Their women, women all the way down! Much happiness to their kin! A portentous thing, the miners: soaring over their future ruins, elaborating their mental function and with their voices opening the adit, in the shape of a deep symptom! Praise for their yellowish nature, their magic lantern, their cubes and rhombi, their plastic misfortunes, and their big eyes with six optic nerves and their children playing in the church and their tacit, infant parents! Cheers, oh creators of depth! … (It’s formidable.) (Vallejo 2012, 403–405)

If, in a previous poem, we asked ourselves what was dreadful (horrendo), we must now ask ourselves what is formidable (formidable), that is, what the poetic voice enthusiastically celebrates. Why is there the elegiac tone of praise? Why is there so much emotion in describing these characters? What is celebrated in this poem? The mining identity? The proletarian identity?

76 

V. VICH

The accent is not so much on the identity itself as on the action of the miners. What is praised here is the actions that these characters perform. The miners came out of the mine (Los mineros salieron de la mina), says the verse, because the objective here is to emphasize a job done, an action accomplished and a social victory. If the poetic voice can praise them in this way, it is because they have all managed to overcome adversities. These miners are a metaphor for “work” as an activity that shows the productive possibilities of life. In fact, what is celebrated here is “human work” in its role as an agent of wealth production. For Marxism, humans become “human” thanks to work, because it is work that separates them from the “kingdom of need” (Marx 2004; Engels 1979a). Work is the producer of social life itself, but the problem is that throughout history work has not dignified people nor has allowed them to develop their multiple potentialities because it has always been associated with power relations: it has been alienating. In this poem, however, these characters face work with great dignity and strength and that is why their action is called a deep symptom (síntoma profundo), that is, a truth capable of ameliorating and resolving the conflict between people. Jean Franco has understood them in this way: The miners emerge from the mines as constructors of the new order, but also as producers of the new thought, a dialectic reason elaborated not only in their work but also through their collective action (their choral responses)…; they are the ones who close the gap between thought and action, between the subjective and the objective, between the past and the future, since their future emerges on the ruins of the past after creating depth, that is, the mine of the new philosophy. (Franco: 251–254)

The poetic voice has witnessed the work of these characters and, therefore, is represented almost as a report. This is a voice that needs to show what has impacted it deeply and this seems to be the sign of an event’s truth. It is, almost, a movement that goes from contingency to necessity and, above all, from mishaps to the creation of depth. The miners represent the emergence of a new practice, a new work, and a new knowledge emanating from those same conditions. It was worth seeing (era de ver), he says, worth hearing (era de oír), the poem emphasizes. It is, then, a voice that strives to name what it has seen and to share that truth to which it wants to be faithful.

4  A POET OF THE “PART WITH NO PART” 

77

In this poem, the miners have no name because they act as a group, because they are the symbol of collective work, because they all realize that by working collectively society can overcome the reign of scarcity. Vallejo has constructed a representation with grandiose images, with a solid language, at times rude, but profoundly emotional. For the poetic voice, these characters embody something authentic because they are the evidence of a new society. They are called Creators of depth (Creadores de profundidad) in an extremely solemn way. Unlike ordinary people, these miners are no longer alienated because they know how to climb down while looking up (saben bajar mirando para arriba) and because they know how to climb up while looking down (saben subir mirando para abajo). In other words, they have stopped living one-­ dimensionally. German idealism opposed “work” to “art,” because it considered that the former was subject to the meeting of immediate needs and the latter was related to the expansion of free and creative forces (Cross: 199). In this poem, however, this is not the case. Vallejo observes that the work that the miners do is deeply creative and generates freedom. In fact, here work is not represented as something “external” to the worker, but as an internal force. These miners transform nature for the benefit of all and thus are the sign of a life that asserts itself in its own action: a life that is the symbol of human emancipation, a life “that generates more life” (Marx 2004, 112). These miners have regained their “generic life” (because they have “class consciousness”) and seem to want to project it onto humanity as a whole. In their own action, they announce the political potential that proletarians have if they form a party, an organization, a greater political unity. The poem, in fact, sees in them the possibility of building a new history that could be created, not from capitalist alienation, but from elsewhere. The work they do does not seem to be organized in hierarchies or oriented towards individual accumulation. If we know that capitalism is a system that does not reward the worker, if we know that the separation between “capital” and “labor” promotes a type of contradiction that alienates human beings, in this poem the verses strive to highlight how, in that monumental departure from the mine, a different articulation arises between the productive system and workers in general. This is, in short, a poem that ecstatically exposes the presence of a political truth. What is it? That of a type of work—a new society—that could become the sign of a greater freedom. Marx had described it as “an association of free men who work with collective means of production and

78 

V. VICH

employ, consciously, their many individual work forces as a social work force” (1988, 96). From there, Vallejo is a writer who realizes that the so-­ called “freedom,” more than a simple “value,” is, above all, a social achievement built on the basis of justice (Berman 2002, 33). These miners, in effect, are free because they affirm themselves in work, and this work, in turn, affirms another type of society. Faced with a social system that only values “objects” and “money,” in this poem “work” and “human being” are valued. Grow (crezcan), it says, because that is the seed for building true human freedom. This next poem belongs to “Spain take this cup away from me” and was written when defeat became visible and many of the Republican cities had begun to fall. Vallejo observed that those who defended the cause of Spain were, above all, the poor, the marginalized, the organized. The beggars fight for Spain, begging in Paris, in Rome, in Prague thus legitimising, with gothic, praying hand the Apostles’ feet, in London, in New York, in Mexico. The mendicants fight, hellishly imploring God for Santander, a fight in which no one is defeated anymore. To ancient suffering they give themselves, cry cruelly social lead at the foot of the individual, attacking with moaning, these beggars, killing by just being beggars. Prayers of infantry, in which the weapon prays from the metal up above, and wrath prays, nearer than wrathful gunpowder. Tacit squadrons who discharge, with mortal cadence, their tameness from a threshold, from themselves, alas!, from themselves. Potential warriors without stockings when shoeing thunder, satanic, numeric, dragging their titles of force, crumbs at the belt, double-calibre rifle: blood and blood. The poet salutes the armed suffering! (Vallejo 2012, 565–567)

4  A POET OF THE “PART WITH NO PART” 

79

There are at least two elements that should be highlighted here: the universalism present in the defense of the Spanish Republic and the fact that those who are defending it are, above all, the poor of the world, those excluded from the system. In this poem, in fact, it is the beggars who have come from all over to fight for Spain. It is they who are calling on other people to defend a project that is far beyond any one nation; it is they who are announcing—to the whole world—the truth of the communist project that Spain embodies at that time. The poem is written with an agonizing passion, with extreme suffering and from a biblical framework that, as its title announces, is the central engine of this entire collection of poems. The religious vocabulary (the Apostles/Apóstoles, the suffering/sufrimiento, the prayers (ruegos), the presence of God/Dios) runs through the verses and passionately charges all its images. The poem is almost a prayer, but a secular prayer, an act by which one recognizes the irruption of some truth that must be communicated. Although he is in agony, the poet insists on praying solemnly for it. The poem is very skillful in converting religious symbols to the side of war. Prayers and supplications are how beggars defend the Republic. Such pleas are in fact equivalent to gunshots, and supplications can be read as forms of confrontation. A remarkable verse emphatically says that these beggars attack with moaning (atacan con gemidos). In this poem, the most marginal of the marginalized is present as someone who has begun to participate directly in history. The poetic voice recognizes that fascism is advancing and that the war is intensifying the suffering but, nevertheless, in their very poor condition, with only their will, with their agonizing and passionate dedication, the beggars insist on defending the radical truth of the communist event. Their very presence is already a sign of a strong resistance to power. The fact that they are only beggars serves to undermine their enemies. The poem highlights the social condition of these characters and never turns them into anything else. Beggars killing by just being beggars (Los mendigos matando solo con tan solo ser medigos), the verse points out and says that they are warriors without stockings (guerreros sin calcetines). It is not, therefore, a professional army. Nor are they soldiers “prepared” for war. On the contrary, they are subjects charged with passion, a group which has decided to defend an event, because the Republic symbolizes the beginning of a much greater conquest. The images describe them as unspoken squads that shoot because they have always been invisible,

80 

V. VICH

because they have never really counted, but also because, although they are not, they are, and are acting firmly; they are defending the truth. Why is there so much emotion in the final words? What is it that the poetic voice calls out with the greatest trepidation? The argument is the same: what the poet is proclaiming in this poem is that the marginalized have become actors in history. The poet celebrates a social group that has taken control of its own direction (as the embodiment of a new universality) and is no longer represented by others. In fact, the poem has tried to represent the miserable identity of these characters but, above all, their decision, their absolute courage to face a dramatic situation. Blood and blood (Sangre y sangre), say the verses, crumbs at the belt (migaja al cinto), it says again. Beggars are celebrated by their actions and not by their words. The new subjectivity must be, above all, a practice that transforms the world. In these beggars, Vallejo celebrates an action that seemed to want to relaunch politics. The poet salutes the armed suffering (El poeta saluda al sufrimiento armado), says the verse. “Suffering” can be read here as a synonym for “nothing” as opposed to the word “armed”, which means “everything,” not as an apology for destructive violence, but as a dialectical verse that points to defensive violence. Here death is represented as an act of humility. These beggars are dying for a cause, but that death is almost biblical. If beggars fall into death, they do so as a generous surrender to the new possibilities of life. * * * Vallejo’s decision to represent marginalized characters declares a boundary in human history. For these poems, society can only be reconfigured from what has been left out of place and which, however, could begin to play a more determining role. In that sense, all these poems underline that the event can only emerge from something that has no name or place because it does not belong in the official narrative or because it is too abject for it. We can conclude that this is a poetry that proposes a new configuration of the sensitive. Thanks to Marxism, Vallejo intuited, politically and aesthetically, that what was excluded, what was anonymous, was not a simple “failure” of the system but rather its “moment of truth,” that antagonism that makes it possible to understand the functioning of the whole and reveal its internal contradiction. Vallejo considered that his poetry should get its hands dirty to narrate the structural contradictions of modernity

4  A POET OF THE “PART WITH NO PART” 

81

and show its absurdity. In this sense, the subject that emerges in this poetry is, in effect, “the speaker of modern lack: the disenfranchised of the promises of the discourse of modernity. What we see is a definition of modernity as incomplete of itself” (Ortega 2014, 67). In these poems, the proletarian, the marginal or the anonymous is a social condition, but it is also an emergent political subjectivation. The becoming of the anonymous is that place that challenges the community and the aesthetic regime of art itself (Rancière 2005, 84). In many poems, the images resound with emotion, but Vallejo knows well that this emotion “is not exactly of the order of the self, but of the event, that is, it obeys an external truth, very concrete, but transcendent at the same time” (Didi-Huberman 2016, 36). Situated in a very specific historical juncture, Vallejo chose to represent the marginal subjectivities that emerged from within the dominant system to express its crisis and mark its limits. Vallejo knew well that the act of naming someone could be a decisive contribution to the revolution. It was about writing history from another place and from a new actor. In this poetry, these characters are not represented as irrational or depoliticized subjects, but rather appear charged with a political force that is always resistant to the dominant order. Vallejo’s incessant option to capture something of the excluded only made sense if it could reconfigure the “symbolic order,” the language itself, the “distribution of the sensible,” the crude system of social oppression.

Bibliography The Translations into English from Vallejo’s Original Poems Are Taken from the Following Books Vallejo, César. 2012. The Complete Poems. Edited and translated by Michael Smith and Valentino Gianuzzi. Bristo: Shearsman Books.

References Berman, Marshall. 2002. Aventuras Marxistas. Madrid: Siglo XXI. Didi-Huberman, George. 2016. ¡Qué emoción! ¿Qué emoción? Buenos Aires: Capital intelectual. Engels, Federico. 1979a [1876]. El papel del trabajo en la transformación del mono al hombre. Moscú: editorial Progreso.

82 

V. VICH

———. 1979b. Ludwig Feuerbach y el fin de la filosofía clásica alemana. Bogotá: Linotipo. Franco, Jean. 1984. César Vallejo. La dialéctica de la poesía y el silencio. Translated by Luis Justo. Buenos Aires: Editorial Sudamericana. Higgins, James. 1989. César Vallejo en su poesía. Lima: Seglusa editores. Jameson, Fredric. 2013a. Representar el capital. Una lectura del tomo I. Buenos Aires: FCE. Marx, Karl. 1988 [1876]. El capital. Crítica de la economía política. Tomo I/vol 3. Libro primero. El proceso de producción de capital. Edición a cargo de Pedro Scaron. México DF: Siglo XXI. ———. 2004. Manuscritos económicos-filosóficos de 1844. Traducción y notas de Fernanda Aren, Silvia Rotemberg y Miguel Vedda. Buenos Aires: Colihue. ———. 2015 [1847]. Miseria de la filosofía. Respuesta a filosofía de la miseria de P.-J. Proudhon, Edición a cargo de Martí Soler. México D.F: Siglo XXI. Mouffe, Chantal. 1999. El retorno de lo político. Comunidad, ciudadanía, pluralismo y democracia radical. Barcelona: Paidos. Ortega, Julio. 2014. César Vallejo, una escritura de devenir. Taurus: Lima. Rancière, Jacques. 2005. Sobre políticas estéticas. Manuel Arranz, traductor. Barcelona: Museu d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona. ———. 2009. El reparto de lo sensible. Estética y política. Santiago de Chile: Lom. Vallejo, César. 2012. The Complete Poems, edited and translated by Michael Smith and Valentino Gianuzzi. Bristol: Shearsman Books. Žižek, Slavoj. 2010. Prójimos y otros monstruos: un alegato a favor de la violencia ética. In El prójimo. Tres indagaciones en teología política, ed. Slavoj Žižek, Eric L. Santner, and Kenneth Reinhard. Buenos Aires: Amorrortu.

CHAPTER 5

A Poet Who Announces the Event

Vallejo is a poet of the “event,” that is, a poet who strives to portray an experience of truth that has interrupted the world and can begin to transform it. For Badiou (2013, 9), an event is something fundamentally new that emerges from what was not included in established frameworks; something that emerges from a social void to break the inertia of daily life. He was not afraid to communicate this in order to incite an urgent transformation of people’s world experience. Vallejo was impacted by the Russian revolution, by the Spanish civil war, by the workers’ organization in Europe and by the rise of the Socialist Party in Perú. In fact, his later poetry promoted, in militant fashion, an unquestionable truth: the “idea of communism.” Badiou (2007a, 15) maintains that events—the irruption of truth processes—happen within four spaces: science, love, art, and politics. In each of them, events can trigger changes in ways of perceiving and interacting with the world. Events have several characteristics: they are unexpected, they transform our understanding, they offer no guarantees, and, above all, they produce a faithful subject. This last characteristic is perhaps the most important and merits further consideration. The event cannot exist without the subject. There is no subject without an event, and events only exist because there are subjects who commit themselves to the truths they engender. Before being a subject, humans are simple “human animals” anchored in the everyday. Individuals exist, however, to become subjects, they must have discovered a truth and © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2024 V. Vich, César Vallejo, Studies in Revolution and Literature, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-33513-6_5

83

84 

V. VICH

decided to be part of the process that it activates. Badiou (2016, 15, 56) maintains that “the subject is the moment in which the individual commits himself in a possibility that goes beyond his particularity and that constructs something whose reality can be infinite.” From there, every individual must try to become a “subject of the event.” Žižek has explained this process as follows: A subject does not precede choice; choice precedes the subject. A subject arises after the choice of fidelity to an event as an agent who commits himself to the task of reinforcing the consequences of that event. (2016, 368)

What is central is the moment of decision, when an individual decides to become the subject of the event so that, from there, they can begin to communicate a new universal truth. What does it mean to come into contact with a truth? For Badiou (2016), it is about being part of something that runs through human history, that transcends a specific context (although it arises from it) and that goes beyond personal interest. In the “idea of communism” Vallejo found a universal project, a new truth to be communicated. That said, the communist idea did not emerge as a “pure idea” but as the confirmation of a long history of social struggle. In other words, it emerged as an inheritance, or a debt to the past, and also as something of the present, that is, as an “eternal form of rebel subjectivity” (Bosteels 2007, 177). Therefore, it was about the possibility of building a radically different social order and using solidarity to criticize capitalist alienation. There is a set of Vallejo’s poems that invite us to participate in a moment of transformation or personal resubjectivation. They encourage us to make the choice to reorganize our life around the truth of an event. LXXV, a poem in Trilce, allows us to explore resubjectivation through its portrayal of a subject that has become petrified in its own inertia. The bewildered poetic voice witnesses the crisis of a given state of reality. This poem highlights how continuing with life as it is now has reached an untenable state, urging us to involve ourselves with an event through a radical choice. In fact, Badiou (2009b, 103) has explained that an event “reveals the emptiness of the situation because it shows that what is there was without truth. It is then from that emptiness that the poetic subject is built as the fragment of a process of truth (Vallejo 2012, 169).”

5  A POET WHO ANNOUNCES THE EVENT 

85

You are dead. What a strange way to be dead. Anyone would say you are not. But, in fact, you are dead. You float nothingly behind that membrane which, pendulous from zenith to nadir, comes and goes from twilight to twilight, throbbing before the sonorous box of a wound that does not pain you. I tell you, then, that life is in the mirror, and that you are the original, death. While the wave goes, while the wave comes, with what impunity is one dead. Only when the waters crash on the opposing borders and they fold and refold themselves, then you are transformed and, thinking you are dead, perceive the sixth string no longer yours. You are dead, not ever having lived before. Anyone would say that not being now, in another time you were. But, in fact, you are the corpses of a life that never was. A sad fate. Not having been but dead always. Being a dry leaf without ever having been green. Orphanhood of orphanhoods. And yet, the dead are not, cannot be corpses of a life they still have not lived. They always died from life. You are dead.

Reaching far beyond the anecdote that inspired it (Espejo’s (1989, 107), this text is densely symbolic and carries multiple meanings. The poem begins as a description of the present that can be read both as a criticism of a subjectivity anchored in everyday inertia and as a criticism of a society that can no longer offer anything new. You are dead (Estáis muertos), the verse says, and in saying this it begins to reveal a message that will unfold in subsequent verses. The poem begins by suggesting that reality is never what it seems to be. The subjects pretend to have control over their world, but this is not the case. The expression what a strange… (qué extraña…) marks how subjects think they are active but are actually paralyzed. The poetic voice does not hesitate to communicate something that contradicts what is considered to be true. According to Escobar (1973, 177), in this poem “it becomes clear that the poetic voice is dissociated from the group to which it is addressed and on which it gives its opinion” and, therefore, is able to assert without hesitation, that everyone thinks they are alive, but in reality they are dead. Appearances are, thus, inauthentic. The poem questions common sense and builds a new space in which social reality can be interpreted. The verses argue that they have discovered nothing more than a certain passivity in people, a constant and repeated inertia resulting in a life in which

86 

V. VICH

there is nothing new to offer. The images then describe how nature and the cosmos do not stop moving (from zenith to nadir, from twilight to twilight/del zenit al nadir, de tarde en tarde), but they observe, above all, how people themselves are fundamentally static. The verses thus confirm without mercy that the subject is a bad copy of life: life has ceased to be life (it has passed into the mirror), and humankind seems to have become death itself. Moreover: humans are not only dead but dead with impunity (impunemente). This adverb shows the urgent need to judge all of humanity, to censure it and to question the comfortable position in which it finds itself. From there, the poetic voice cannot but express its own bewilderment in the face of an absurdity that must be censored. What does this criticism comprise? What does the poet refer to? He is showing humankind’s fundamental incapacity to be self-critical. These are verses that condemn an alienated state that does not allow one to understand the situation in which one has been inscribed: Only when the waters crash on the opposing borders and they fold and refold themselves, then you are transformed and, thinking you are dead, perceive the sixth string no longer yours.

Humans only think they are going to die once things are out of order, once the water breaks. The problem is that they have not realized that they have been dead all the while. Humans do not react, or if they do, they do so very late and only occasionally. That is why the poem is written in a sanctioning tone and can state: a sad fate. Not having been but dead always. Being a dry leaf without ever having been green (triste destino. El no haber sido sino muertos siempre. El ser hoja seca sin haber sido verde jamás). The poetic voice concludes that life has not been lived or that life’s possibilities have not been taken advantage of and that, in reality, they remain intact because they have not been allowed to develop. One verse is key in this respect: but, in fact, you are the corpses of a life that never was (pero, en verdad, vosotros sois los cadáveres de una vida que nunca fue). We clearly find ourselves before a poem firmly maintaining that life can always be otherwise, that life could be different if humans decide to leave the state of alienation in which they find themselves. The poem declares with conviction that humans are “dead” with respect to a truth of which they are not yet a part. What is the decision to be made? The answer cannot be other than to be part of an event.

5  A POET WHO ANNOUNCES THE EVENT 

87

The poem shows the lack of courage to leave a repetitive and monotonous condition. The decision to do this also marks the origin of an event. It marks the possibility that the individual interiorizes the truth and begins a process of personal resubjectivation. The poem is written from a voice that has already made the decision and, for that very reason, the poet feels committed to encouraging others to make it as well. It is the existence of the event that has allowed the poetic voice to declare that everyone is dead. The poem interpellates the subject, reveals their alienated present and forces them out of it. Julio Ortega (1993, 350) has stated that, in this poem, life would only have meaning if humans decided to get involved in it by taking a radical and political risk. If the poem is hard and cruel, if the vision of humanity is fundamentally negative, it is so because the poet has a hidden political intent. Indeed, the repetition of the same sentence at the beginning and end of the poem and use of a somber tone, are intended to catapult the present sharply into view. The poetic voice is convinced that the present can always be altered if it is faced with a new intent. What follows is a poem that almost describes the exact opposite. Faced with this “finding of death” (as González Vigil has called it), the poem “The discovery of life” (“Hallazgo de la vida”) proposes the inverse. It bears witness to an existential shift. Whereas subjectivity is described as being in a state of death in the previous poem, revealing an impasse and a condition to be transformed, in this poem, in contrast, subjectivity is understood as a moving testimony to the irruption of a new truth that is the truth of the event. It is a text in which Vallejo describes the intense transformation he has begun to experience in life. With an exalted tone and a direct but always argumentative voice, Vallejo enthusiastically describes what has just happened to him: Gentlemen! Today is the first time that I am aware of the presence of life. Gentlemen! I ask you to give me leave for a moment to savour this immense, recent and spontaneous excitement for life that, for the first time, enraptures me today and renders me joyous to the point of tears. My joy comes from the newness of my excitement. My exultation is such because I had not felt the presence of life before. I have never felt it. Whoever says I have felt it, lies. He lies, and his lie hurts me so deep, it would make me wretched. My joy comes from my faith in this personal discovery of life, and no one can contradict this faith. If someone did, his tongue would fall out, his bones would fall off and he would be in danger of picking up others, not his, just to be able to stay standing before my eyes.

88 

V. VICH

Never until now has there been life. Never until now have people passed by. Never until now have there been houses and streets, air and horizon. Were my friend Peyriet to come right now, I would tell him that I never met him, that we must start all over again. In fact, when have I met my friend Peyriet? Today would be the first time we met. I would tell him to leave and come back, and to come in to see me, as if he had never met me, that is, for the first time. Right now I don’t know anyone nor anything. I find myself in a strange country, in which everything acquires an emphasis of birth, a light of everlasting epiphany. No sir, do not speak to that gentleman. You have never met him and he would be surprised by such unexpected chat. Do not set foot on that little stone: who knows, it might not be a stone and you might fall into the void. Be cautious, for we are in a completely unknown world. Such a short time I have lived! My birth is so recent there are no units of measurement to count my age. I have just been born! I haven’t started to live yet! Gentlemen, I am so small the day barely fits inside me. Never until now did I hear the din of wagons being loaded up with stones for a great construction in Haussmann Boulevard. Never until now did I approach spring on parallel, saying: ‘If death had been another …’ Never until now did I see the golden sunlight over the domes of Sacré-­ Cœur. Never until now did a boy approach me and stare at me profoundly with his mouth. Never until now did I know there was a door, and another door, and the cordial edge of distances. Let me be! Life has struck me now in all my death. (Vallejo 2012, 339)

What is that formidable and spontaneous excitement (emoción formidable y espontánea) that the poem strives to represent in all its verses? The answer is a deep personal transformation. In fact, it is not difficult to observe how subjectivity has just experienced a radical impact, a rupture that has managed to open it up to new possibilities. That blow, that impact, is the event, an interruption that disorganizes what has been given and that can establish something new. The poetic voice strives to name what has happened to it because it knows full well that the event needs to be named in order to be constituted as such. “Anxiety—Bosteels maintains—is that form of interruption that, through the invasion of the real as excess, leaves the existing order as a dead order” (2007, 100). However, the allusion to the new order can only be made through metaphors because the poetic voice has also discovered that in the event there is something that resists words and is unnamable. The poet persists in trying to name the unnamable because he

5  A POET WHO ANNOUNCES THE EVENT 

89

recognizes the importance of bearing witness to what has happened. Badiou has explained it this way: The only way to fix an event is by giving it a name, by inscribing it as a supernumerary name. The event establishes a singular time from its nominal fixation. (2009a, b, c, 110)

What does Vallejo mean by the word life? What is its poetic meaning? He is referring to the word “change,” that is, to the possibility of a true personal transformation. The event is a moment that invites the subject to become another. If Vallejo says that he is happy to the point of tears, he is happy for at least two reasons: because he has decided to begin to transform himself and because, from this new condition, reality has begun to present itself to him as something completely unprecedented. The event refers not only to a change in the existing rules, but also to the emergence of new rules that transform the official parameters of interpretation of reality (Žižek 2014, 23–24). Observe the profound radicality of the event: Were my friend Peyriet to come right now, I would tell him that I never met him, that we must start all over again. In fact, when have I met my friend Peyriet? Today would be the first time we met. I would tell him to leave and come back, and to come in to see me, as if he had never met me, that is, for the first time.

The images are clear: it is about the representation of a new beginning, the irruption of something that can change the ultimate frame that produces reality. Is the event something that changes reality or something that changes the framework of perception that we have of reality? What the poem shows is a change in the structure of meanings, a reconfiguration of the frameworks from which we understand and act. That is why, from there, everything starts to be understood as new: Never until now has there been life. Never until now have people passed by. Never until now have there been houses and streets, air and horizon (Nunca, sino ahora, ha habido vida. Nunca, sino ahora, han pasado gentes. Nunca, sino ahora, ha habido casas y avenidas, aire y horizonte). Vallejo emphasizes with great emotion: Right now I don’t know anyone nor anything. I find myself in a strange country, in which everything acquires an emphasis of birth, a light of everlasting epiphany (Ahora yo no conozco a nadie ni nada. Me advierto en un país extraño, en el que todo cobra relieve de nacimiento, luz de epifanía inmarcesible).

90 

V. VICH

The event is something that provides visibility over what was previously invisible and inexplicable. It is not the creation of a reality, it is the creation of a possibility, it is what opens up possibilities. It indicates that in spite of being ignored, the possibility always exists. It is, to some extent, a proposition, it is something that proposes something to us. The event creates the possibility, but then there has to be effort, commitment to inscribe that truth in the world. (Badiou 2013, 9–10)

This “Life Finding” refers, on the one hand, to the emergence of a new subject to whom a new way of perceiving reality has been opened and, on the other hand, to an attempt to reconcile with the overwhelming side of life. This is also a poem that has begun to reconcile itself with the excess, which it understands as a reality that can revert to a fertile condition. Hence, the emotion that emerges and the poetic voice’s new commitment. For this poem, the event is, above all, an overflowing energy that could reconfigure the world. This is why the state of confusion is intense and the personal decision becomes firm. When the verses exclaim Let me be! Life has struck me now in all my death (¡Dejadme! La vida me ha dado ahora en toda mi muerte), it means that the event is so radical that it can recover “the entirety of the life not lived” in order to resignify it and open it up to the unthinkable (Butler 2001, 41). In other words: if death means the “life not lived,” then the poem has tried to represent a kind of reconfiguration of the past and the present. That is why the poetic voice emphasizes the resurgence of personal choice. My joy comes from my faith in this personal discovery of life, and no one can contradict this faith (Mi gozo viene de mi fe en este hallazgo personal de la vida, y nadie puede ir contra esa fe), the verses say. So, it is not just a matter of naming the event, but of raising the importance of the decision (or personal choice) regarding that finding. From now on, the option is to remain faithful to that discovered truth. In fact, it is the act of naming (and the faith derived from it) that reinforces the very process of this new personal subjectivation. Both are, then, agents that help to promote personal and political change. However, Vallejo’s poems always go further: once the transformation has taken place, that is, once subjectivity has been resubjectivized by the truth of the event (by the process of truth that it has brought with it), the subject will gradually become a “militant subject” faithful to the event

5  A POET WHO ANNOUNCES THE EVENT 

91

whose task will then be to motivate others to be part of it too. Let us read another poem (Vallejo 2012, 489): Hear your mass, your comet, listen to them; don’t moan by heart, gravest cetacean; hear the robe in which you are sleeping, hear your nakedness—mistress of dream. Narrate yourself while hanging from the tail of fire and from the horns in which the mane’s atrocious course ends; smash yourself, but in circles; form yourself, but in crooked columns; describe yourself as atmospheric, a being of smoke, to the quick step of a skeleton. Death? Oppose all of your clothes to it! Life? Oppose part of your death to it! Joyous beast, think; miserable god, take off your forehead. And then we’ll talk.

This poem, loaded with anxiety, is presented as a radical invitation for humans to emerge from the alienation in which they find themselves. It invokes the human being to decide to become part of the new and to participate in the event as a radical transformation of the world. The verses are invocative and utilize the imperative to direct themselves to the very core of subjectivity. If, at first, Vallejo names the human being as gravest cetacean (gravísimo cetáceo), he does so because he knows that subjects, before the event, are simple “human animals,” because they do not realize that they are trapped in a system that oppresses them and in a routine that dehumanizes them. That is why the verbs in this poem have become very emphatic: hear your nakedness (oye a tu desnudez), the verse says, because it asks the subject to take off the mask that prevents them from seeing the reality of the world. “Listen to that truth that dwells in you: recover your body, your freedom, your own desire; don’t be afraid to reconstruct yourself based on new parameters” is a way of paraphrasing these images. The second stanza begins with another bold image. Vallejo insists that humans must remove an evil from themselves, a devil that has settled there. Tail of fire (cola del fuego), horns (cuernos) and mane (crin) appear

92 

V. VICH

as elements that embody that “cursed part” that inhabits the subjectivity. As a result, three verbs appear that acquire a lot of poetic force: smash yourself (rómpete), form yourself (fórmate), describe yourself (descríbete), encouraging the subject to deconstruct themselves and to try to create and narrate themselves in another way. Describe yourself as atmospheric, a being of smoke (Descríbete atmosférico, ser de humo), says a verse to promote the construction of a dynamic subjectivity that is never one-­ dimensional, and which must interrupt the inertia to produce new meanings in the framework of a new truth. However, all this must be done quickly, to the quick step of a skeleton (a paso redoblado de esqueleto), because “the time of fidelity to the event is the previous future: by anticipating the future, we act in the present as if the future we want to propitiate were already here” (Žižek 2001, 473). The end emphasizes once again the need to produce a radical change in subjectivity. Vallejo opposes death with all personal force and throws into life all available courage. If the event is based on a decision, all the images in this poem invite us to make that decision. If the first strophe called humankind gravest cetacean (gravísimo cetáceo), now it calls us joyous beast (bestia dichosa) and miserable god (dios desgraciado) because the dialetics of bestiality and deity open up new political possibilities. The purpose has become very emphatic: people must take off their forehead (quítate la frente) in order to neutralize their own defenses. With true political passion and emphasizing his adherence to the socialist revolution understood as an event, Vallejo wrote the following poem entitled “The wretched” (“Los desgraciados”) (Vallejo 2012, 423–425): The day’s about to come; bind up your arm, look for yourself under your mattress, stand once again on your head, so you can walk straight. The day’s about to come, put on your coat. The day’s about to come; hold your big intestine firm within your hand, ponder before you meditate, for it is awful when misery falls over one and when one’s tooth falls all the way down. You need to eat but, I tell myself, don’t be sad, for sadness

5  A POET WHO ANNOUNCES THE EVENT 

does not become the poor, nor sobbing by the grave; mend yourself, remember, trust your white thread, smoke, roll-call on your chain and keep it behind your portrait. The day’s about to come, put on your soul. The day’s about to come; they walk by, have opened up an eye in the hotel, whipping it, hitting it with a mirror of yours … Are you trembling? It’s the remote state of the forehead and the recent nation of the stomach. They’re still snoring … What a universe this snoring takes away! How your pores remain, judging it! With so many twos, alas, you’re so alone! The day’s about to come, put on your dream. The day’s about to come, I repeat from the oral organ of your silence and it’s urgent to take the left with hunger and to take the right with thirst; despite all, refrain from being poor with the rich, stir your coldness, because in it my warmth is integrated, beloved victim. The day’s about to come, put on your body. The day’s about to come; the morning, the sea, the meteor, walk toward your tiredness, with flags, and by your classic pride, hyenas count their steps to the beat of the donkey, the baker-woman thinks about you, the butcher thinks about you, touching the axe wherein the steel, the iron and the metal are imprisoned; never forget that during Mass there are no friends. The day’s about to come, put on the sun. The day is coming, double your breath, triple your rancorous goodness and elbow fear, link and emphasis, for you, as you can see in your crotch and being,

93

94 

V. VICH

oh, the bad immortal, have dreamt tonight that you were living on nothing and dying of everything …

Again, this is a poem written with expectation, with desire, and with a tireless will to politically challenge its readers. Vallejo is confident that social change is possible, and these verses promise to bring meaning and a new orientation. Here, the word “day” seems to be a synonym for event. The poem alludes to the revolution without naming it: it only summons it and places it between the verses. He proposes it from the void of language because he trusts in a new and unnamable power. The day’s about to come (Ya va a venir el día), he says, and it is necessary to have initiated a process of personal transformation, of political conversion, of fruitful commitment. The revolution is an event that demands courage and requires subjectivities that are willing to do anything, subjects that are faithful to the cause. The poem begins with a powerful visual image. To be part of the event, to be part of the truth, to walk straight (andar derecho), one must look for yourself under your mattress (buscarse debajo del colchón), bind up your arm (doblar el brazo) and stand once again on your head (pararse de cabeza). In other words, it is indispensable to be willing to bring out one’s hidden side, not to be afraid to turn oneself around, to change one’s daily habits and to begin to be someone else. The poem argues that it is urgent to confront emptiness and one’s own uniqueness. The poetic voice is vehement and insists on what it believes: we must be ready, it is urgent to transform ourselves now. The verses represent the revolution as something very serious and therefore encourage us to dress elegantly. It is the advent of a very solemn truth: put on your coat (ponte el saco). Vallejo invites us to opt for the new principles that are becoming apparent. The poetic voice is vehement because it knows that “anxiety can be a guide for the advent of a new truth” (Bosteels 2007, 100). In fact, the whole poem can be read as a “training” for the arrival of the event or the revolution. The verses encourage the reader not to be afraid of the new and to decide to take risks: roll-call on your chain and keep it behind your portrait (pasa lista a tu cadena y guárdala detrás de tu retrato), says one verse because one knows well that people tend to cower and that their condition is always to be in chains. Since Vallejo is a poet who recognizes that people can always give in, the poem motivates them not to cower and to free themselves from their own chains.

5  A POET WHO ANNOUNCES THE EVENT 

95

The poem calls on humans to leave their sorrow behind and to be filled with enthusiasm. Vallejo maintains that sadness constitutes subjectivity, but he recognizes, at the same time, that a true event is emerging and that it is urgent to take a chance. That event functions as the North Star for the construction of a just and egalitarian society; it is the guide to a revolution based on the “communist idea” (Badiou 2010b). That is why the verses contrast lyrical meditation with political reflection. The first is figuratively something sad, but the second (understood as “class consciousness”) can indicate a much clearer path: trust your white thread, smoke, roll call/hold your big intestine firm within your hand (confía en tu hilo blanco, fuma, pasa lista,/ten fuerte la mano en tu intestino grande), it also says. The poem calls for a departure from the established order and, therefore, a new ethic. One verse is decisive in this respect: refrain from being poor with the rich (abstente de ser pobre con los ricos). With it, the poetic voice urges the reader to drop that victimizing and fundamentally passive discourse. If capitalism is described as an economic organization where hyenas (hienas) are always in search of their prey, then the poem states that during Mass there are no friends (durante la misa no hay amigos). This is a voice that knows well that society is divided into classes: on the one hand rich people who want to be “compassionate” to the poor, and on the other poor people who can easily be oppressed. This is why it is important not to allow ourselves to be blackmailed and to regain the ability to protest and fight. Vallejo is a poet who never stops promoting human solidarity: triple your rancorous goodness (triplica tu bondad reconrosa), he emphatically maintains, because we already know that an “ethics of the Real” implies reconciling oneself with the excess inherent in subjectivity. The event is something that exceeds what has been given and, therefore, despite all the accumulated rancor, despite the marginalization suffered, the poem builds a powerful image of forgiveness that invites us to focus on justice and not on hate. Vallejo is a poet who encourages involvement in a dynamic of good and not in evil. In this sense, the revolution is figurative, bearing a cosmic nature: the day’s about to come; the morning, the sea, the meteor (Ya va a venir el día; la mañana, el mar, el meteoro), he says, because the event can only be understood as the irruption of something unexpected that intends to transform everything. From a profoundly materialistic point of view, the poem alludes to the world’s poor who represent universality because of their marginal position in society: You need to eat but, I tell myself (Necesitas comer pero me digo).

96 

V. VICH

The poetic voice knows well that the event can only arise from the margins and, therefore, its images originate from exclusion to distort what exists and propose something else. Without hesitation, the poem announces that something is happening and encourages readers not to be afraid to embrace it with commitment. The poem is stubborn, very emphatic and enthusiastic about today’s tomorrow: The day’s about to come, put on your dream. The day’s about to come, put on your soul. The day’s about to come, put on the sun (Ya va a venir el día, ponte el sueño. Ya va a venir el día, ponte el alma. Ya va a venir el día ponte el sol), are some of the most beautiful verses Vallejo wrote in Europe. Let us consider another poem: Trust the eyeglass, not the eye; trust the stairs, never the step; trust the wing and not the bird, and just yourself, and just yourself, and just yourself. Trust evil ways, not evil men; trust the glass but not the wine; trust the corpse and not the man, and just yourself, and just yourself, and just yourself. Trust many but not one; trust the riverbed, never the flow; trust the trousers, not the legs, and just yourself, and just yourself, and just yourself. Trust the window, not the door; trust a mother, not nine months; trust destiny, not golden dice, and just yourself, and just yourself, and just yourself.

This poem shows that Vallejo’s verses always have the capacity to evoke a deep resonance beyond any logical explanation. It is, however, a text that forces the reader to have conviction, to develop greater self-confidence and to convince him or herself of the possibilities that are inscribed in human history. What is it that, despite the difficulty of the task, represents a radical conviction? González Vigil (1991, 618) has listed it as follows. It is about having confidence in human elaboration and not in animal reality; in the whole and not its parts; in the quality, but not in the one who holds it. The

5  A POET WHO ANNOUNCES THE EVENT 

97

poem urges us to trust in the receptacle, in human work, in the totality, in the universal community. The whole poem is a call to have faith in something that has already happened or should happen. For example, beyond the complications that may exist throughout pregnancy, one must always trust a mother, not nine months (en la madre, mas no en los nueve meses). Problems may arise during that time, but the mother is always a guarantor. Similarly, the current may be slow or agitated, the water may be clean or dirty, but you must always trust the channels. Moreover, the verses say, one must trust the wing and not the bird (en el ala, no en el ave), evil ways, not evil men (en la maldad, no en el malvado). It is necessary to trust the stairs (en la escalera), in that totality capable of generating something beyond its parts. We must also trust in the human capacity to build tools, to develop productive forces, to carry out science, and to dominate nature. We must trust in accumulated experience and the united collective: Trust the eyeglasses, not the eye; the trousers, not the legs (Confianza en el anteojo, no en el ojo; en los calzones, no en las piernas). In other words, trust in work and not in nature itself. On the other hand, this is a poem that strives to deconstruct the tension between the individual and society. Even though the chorus of each strophe underlines the need to have confidence in oneself and each part of the poem concludes in the subject’s need to become a “subject of will,” this should not be interpreted from a liberal perspective that removes the subject from their social determinations and, even less, from the collectivity of which they are a part. In this sense, it is not a matter of individualistic voluntarism or narcissistic reclusion. Vallejo is a writer who states that if, on the one hand, it is necessary to trust oneself (and just yourself, and just yourself/en ti sólo, en ti solo), on the other hand, the decision to build a really new society must transcend everyone’s individuality: trust many but not one (confianza en mucho, pero ya no en uno), he clearly states. In other words, any proposal that privileges only one part is wrong. That is why Vallejo makes his own the phrase that says that “man can only individualize himself in society” (Marx 1971, 4) and, therefore, that it is a theoretical (and political) mistake to understand society as an entity built in opposition to the individual. With great poetic intuition, but also with Marx under his arm, Vallejo points to the dialectic between the two. The subject must make the decision to be part of an event because it is a truth, because it transcends it collectively. Recall the famous verses of another poem: Thus, I address all collective individualities, as well as all individual

98 

V. VICH

collectivities and those who, between one and the other, march to the sound of frontiers, or simply mark the unmoveable step at the edge of the world (Me dirijo, en esta forma, a las individualidades colectivas, tanto como a las colectividades individuales y a los que, entre unas y otras, yacen marchando al son de las fronteras o, simplemente, marcan el paso inmóvil en el borde del mundo, Vallejo 1988, 341). Ultimately, the poem proposes a commitment, not to what “is given,” but to the set of possibilities that can burst forth and transform the existing order. These verses do not address a person as a pure individual subject of the present, but instead name an enormous force that could emerge under a new collective will. Vallejo knows that the subject is, fundamentally, a collective reality. It is therefore a poem that calls for confidence, not in what exists, but in what could exist and, therefore, to use the powerful words of Matthew’s gospel (19,30), invites us to be willing to leave everything. Let us look at one last poem entitled “Paris, October 1936” (“París, Octubre 1936”): From all of this I’m the only one who leaves. I leave from this bench, and from my breeches from my actions and my great circumstance, from my number cleft in equal parts, from all of this I’m the only one who leaves. From the Champs Elysées or going round the corner of the strange alley of the Moon, my cradle leaves, my death’s gone off; and surrounded by men, alone, unbound, my human likeness turns around and delivers its shadows one by one. And I withdraw from everything, for everything remains to give me my alibi: my shoe, its eyelet and its dirt and even the elbow’s bending on my own buttoned-up shirt.

What happens in this poem? Are we faced with a representation in which the subject is losing something or is it, rather, an image that is choosing to build a new identity of itself? Is this a subject forced to leave due to an ideological disappointment or is it a phrase that names the

5  A POET WHO ANNOUNCES THE EVENT 

99

emergence of some kind of commitment? What does this radical departure refer to? Why does it have to leave? Where is this subject going? In principle, the subject “leaves” because they are alienated from reality and from themselves. This is a subjectivity that has decided to exile itself from its own actions and from all those signs that represent it. The poem emphasizes the need to produce a real distancing from the present and from the place one inhabits. Once again, we are faced with a subject that no longer coincides with itself and that finds itself split between its simple daily action (its repetitive “habitus”) and the performance of a real act. For Guillermo Sucre (1985, 130), however, “this is a man who is preparing to live a definitive historical experience: the advent of another being and another world, the realization of a utopia.” It is a question of differentiating the “act” from simple “action.” Action has to do with repetition, with what we do every day. In contrast, the act has to do with breaking the pre-written, and putting an end to repetition. A real act has no guarantees. A true act is part of an event, and we know that the event refers to “a process of truth that interrupts the repetition” (Badiou 1999, 11). The poetic voice has chosen to distance itself from its own present and, therefore, it leaves from this bench (de este banco) and from my breeches (de mis calzones). The subject moves away from everything, but does so pointing out the danger that what is left could somehow return. The subject leaves, but something stays behind, and this could start to take the place of the subject. Those things that remain could begin to blackmail subjectivity and end up becoming a ruse that forces it to have to return. That is why the poetic voice is represented as an exception, as someone who has had the courage to assume a new identity. Badiou (2009a, b, c, 15) has sustained that “All resistance is a break with what is. And every break, for those who commit themselves to it, begins with a break with themselves.” Although the poem does not show what decision has been taken (what it is and what it corresponds to), its images allow us to observe the firmness with which the poetic voice assumes it. I’m the only one who leaves (yo soy el único que parte) and does so by stating that this is someone who can leave behind their pain (its shadows/sus sombras), their grave (my death/mi defunción) and even their origin (my cradle/mi cuna). If the poem is a representation of death (as has often been interpreted), then that materiality will be the alibi upon which others will dump their memories. However, as a representation of a new life, and as a political poem, its objective is to show that a doubt may arise to incite the subject

100 

V. VICH

to betray his or her decision. The ambiguity of the poem lies in the fact that we do not know whether the subject has suffered a loss (and, therefore, must leave resignedly) or whether this act of leaving refers, to the contrary, to a new faith, to a militancy, and to a commitment to something new. The symbolic force of the text seems to point to both elements at the same time, to a subjectivity that is recognized as radically split between these two movements. This tension is typical of the dialectic thought and poetic images that Vallejo provokes in his poetry. The event is something that ultimately has no guarantees. The truth that makes itself present cannot be guaranteed. The event is authorized by itself, and one only has to decide to get involved. The poem was written a few months before the start of the Spanish civil war, a period in which Vallejo returned to intense political militancy (Pachas 2018). In those years, Vallejo bet on remaining faithful to the “communist idea”, which he understood as an event that should resignify human history. * * * Badiou (2005b, 17) has again recalled that philosophy emerged as an “awakening” to the world and to the idea. This awakening must be understood as the action of affirming oneself in something new. We can sustain, then, that many of these poems represent the need for “awakening” in the political sense of the term. All give testimony to having discovered a truth that could be the transforming agent of the subject and the world. Beyond the flaws that define human subjectivity (pain, desire, drive) and beyond social injustice (of a poorly organized world), these poems show that the subject could indeed construct a new identity and become involved with something greater than his or her own interests. If we think about the first three decades of the twentieth century, we can say that history confronted Vallejo with a set of facts that motivated him to opt for the “communist idea,” which he understood as a truth that always had to be defended and announced. These poems challenge human beings as subjects who can recognize the signs of the event. “There are truths, because there are subjects for those truths,” Badiou has sustained (2004, 93). At this point, a theoretical question arises: can the event be announced? Did we not say that the truth of the event came from elsewhere? These poems combine the figure of the “prophet” with that of the “apostle” since, on the one hand, there is something messianic in them that

5  A POET WHO ANNOUNCES THE EVENT 

101

announces the arrival of something new but, on the other hand, they are also a militant, apostolic testimony that affirms with vehemence what has already happened. There is no “Idea of the Idea,” since ideas are created with the particular materials that exist in the world and thus appear before the subject (Badiou 2010a, 115). For me, truth is a project, a promise. The possibilities opened up by the event are always present… To be prepared for the event means then to be subjectively ready to recognize new possibilities. (Badiou 2013, 12)

Vallejo always knew that the human being is a finite being (because of death, because of bodily limitations, because of the problem of desire), but he also realized that human beings had the capacity to come into contact with the infinite and universal. If politics is an orienting action, this poetry aims to motivate the subject to construct a new world. All these poems affirm the construction of a new political subject and maintain, indeed, that the subject cannot be imagined without two more concepts: those of “event” and of “truth” (Badiou 2016, 14). These poems encourage people to prepare themselves for the arrival of the revolution, and this implies questioning the established order and affirming that truth which cannot be doubted. They are poems for “getting down to business”; an act that, like a radical transgression, emerges from the present situation. Everyone claims that transformation is possible because ideas are possible. What is an idea? “The idea is the name of the possibility in which you act, it is the conviction of a possibility” (Badiou 2013, 14). Vallejo’s poetry had no qualms about becoming deeply political because he has discovered that in history there was an old practice and an idea that was always new: the “communist idea.”

Bibliography The Translations into English from Vallejo’s Original Poems Are Taken from the Following Books Vallejo, César. 2012. The Complete Poems. Edited and translated by Michael Smith and Valentino Gianuzzi. Bristo: Shearsman Books. ———. 2022. Trilce. Edited and translated by Michael Smith and Valentino Gianuzzi. Swindon: Shearsman Books.

102 

V. VICH

Other English Translations Are as Follow Vallejo, César. 2022b. Trilce. Translation and glosses by William Rowe and Helene Dimos. London: Crater Press and Veer Books. ———. 2022c. Trilce. Centenary Bilingual edition. Barry Garside Fogden.

References Badiou, Alain. 1999. San pablo o la fundación del universalismo. Barcelona: Anthropos. ———. 2004. La ética: ensayo sobre la conciencia del mal. Barcelona: Herder. ———. 2005a. El siglo. Buenos Aires: Manantial. ———. 2005b. Filosofía del presente. Libros del Zorzal: Buenos Aires. ———. 2007a. Manifiesto por la filosofía. Buenos Aires: Nueva visión. ———. 2009a. Teoría del sujeto. Buenos Aires: Prometeo. ———. 2009b. Pequeño manual de inestética. Buenos Aires: Prometeo. ———. 2009c. Compendio de metapolítica. Buenos Aires: Prometeo. ———. 2010a. Segundo manifiesto por la filosofía. Buenos Aires: Manantial. ———. 2010b. La idea del comunismo. In Sobre la idea del comunismo. Analía Hounie (comp.). Buenos Aires: Paidós. ———. 2013. Philosphy and the event. Alain Badiou with Fabien Tarby. Cambridge: Polity press. ———. 2016. La filosofía ante el comunismo. Buenos Aires: Siglo XXI. Bosteels, Bruno. 2007. Badiou o el recomienzo del materialismo dialéctico. Santiago de Chile: Palinodia. Butler, Judith. 2001. El grito de Antígona. Barcelona: el Roure. Escobar, Alberto. 1973. Cómo leer a Vallejo. Lima: PLV editor. Espejo Asturrizaga, Juan. 1989. César Vallejo. Itinerario del hombre. 1892–1923. Lima: Seglusa editores. González Vigil, Ricardo., ed. 1991. César Vallejo. Obras completas. Biblioteca Clásicos del Perú. Lima: Banco de Crédito del Perú. Marx, Karl. 1971. Elementos fundamentales para la crítica de la economía política (borrador) 1857–1858. Buenos Aires: Siglo XXI. Ortega, Julio. (edit). 1993. César Vallejo, Trilce. Madrid: Cátedra. Pachas Almeyda, Miguel. 2018. ¡Yo que tan solo he nacido! (Una biografía de César Vallejo). Lima: Juan Gutemberg. Sucre, Guillermo. 1985. Vallejo: inocencia y utopía. In La máscara, la transparencia. Ensayos sobre poesía hispanoamericana. México: Fondo de Cultura Económica.

5  A POET WHO ANNOUNCES THE EVENT 

103

Vallejo, César. 1988. Poesía completa. Edición crítica y estudio introductorio de Raúl Hernández Novás. La Habana: Editorial arte y literatura/Casa de las Américas. ———. 2012. The Complete Poems, edited and translated by Michael Smith and Valentino Gianuzzi. Bristol: Shearsman Books. ———. 2022d. Trilce, edited and translated by Michael Smith and Valentino Gianuzzi. Swindon: Shearsman Books. Žižek, Slavoj. 2001. El sujeto espinoso. El centro ausente de la ontología política. Buenos Aires: Paidós. ———. 2014. Acontecimiento. Madrid: sexto piso. ———. 2016. Contragolpe absoluto. Para una refundación del materialismo histórico. Madrid: Akal.

CHAPTER 6

A Poet of the Communist Event

In Vallejo’s view, communism made it possible for human beings to reconcile with history, with nature, and with themselves. Communism promised to turn the tale of human scarcity and social exploitation into one of productive, just, and egalitarian action. Vallejo celebrated modern advances, but questioned capital accumulation, the new culture of consumption, and the dominant interests of the centers of power. From Lima, but above all in Europe, Vallejo began to feel part of those demands for systemic social change. Little by little, he came to perceive communism as something that named a truth that traversed human history, a radical emancipatory project that would eliminate historical alienation (Lambie 1993). It is proven that progress has served, at least until now, money and not to the wretched […] Human comfort and well-being do not depend so much on industrial and scientific progress, but on social justice. If the fair distribution of the construction company’s profits between employers and workers is sacrificed to car shows, it will be of no use for man to go to the moon or eat fried stars or listen to seraphic music on a wireless. While some lovers will continue kissing and lolling among the cushions of a large Renault, others will commit suicide from hunger, throwing themselves precisely under the wheels of perfect and brilliant cars. (Vallejo 2002a, 353 [1926])

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2024 V. Vich, César Vallejo, Studies in Revolution and Literature, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-33513-6_6

105

106 

V. VICH

A keen observer of the social relations that capitalism was generating, Vallejo realized that modernity was betraying itself and experiencing a major crisis. Vallejo had arrived in Europe after World War I, seen the advent of the Russian Revolution, suffered the economic crisis of 1929, observed workers’ struggles across the continent, and observed the rise of fascism with horror. He experienced poverty in the flesh, since he had no stable job: his journalistic chronicles were always poorly paid, belatedly paid, and in several cases not paid at all. This fragment of a letter addressed to Pablo Abril de Vivero and written on December 27, 1928, is well known: I am ready to work as hard as I can in the service of economic justice, whose current errors we suffer: you, and I and most men, for the benefit of a few thieves and scoundrels. All of us who suffer from the present capitalist swindle must unite to bring down this state of affairs. I am feeling revolutionary from lived experience more than learned ideas. (Vallejo 2002b, 316)

While in exile (in Paris and Madrid), Vallejo suffered economic deprivation and this allowed him to observe reality from a marginal position. At the same time, as highlighted by Antonio Cornejo Polar (1989), Vallejo focused not on the supposed “artistic center” of the world but, rather, on the political extremes of Europe: first in Russia and later in Spain. Vallejo was not interested in the artistic avant-garde, which he saw as disconnected from social processes, but rather observed that true radical experimentation was to be found in the political avant-garde. He maintained that the truly avant-garde was no longer to be found in art, but amongst those involved with the radical attempt to organize life in a different way. Vallejo understood communism to be a universal project that offered the possibility of bringing justice to the entire world. Vallejo was Catholic and, from its beginnings, Catholicism had also been conceived as a universal project. Jesus was a Jew, but the religion he founded was not limited to that particular ethnic group. Instead, it preached a message of justice and solidarity for all men and women. Many centuries later, Marx and Engels stressed something similar: the struggle for social change had to be universal, because the history of humanity was already one and because the movement of capital demanded it. What is César Vallejo’s communist ethic? Some images can be found in his first poems, which—in many cases—represent the implementation of something like the Christian message. The subject does not exist as an autonomous and self-sufficient entity. Vallejo discovered early on that

6  A POET OF THE COMMUNIST EVENT 

107

subjectivity is always part of something greater and that it is inscribed in forms of mutual dependence. Life, in his poems, is always social in nature and must involve responsibility and a commitment to others. An example is the famous poem “Agape” (“Agape”) that appeared in “The Black Heralds” (“Los Heraldos Negros”) in 1919 (Vallejo 2012, 93). Today no one has come to inquire; nor have they asked anything of me this evening. I have not seen a single graveyard flower in such a happy procession of lights. Forgive me, Lord: how little I have died! On this evening, everyone, everyone passes without inquiring for me or asking anything of me. And I don’t know what’s forgotten and remains wrongly in my hands, as something not mine. I have gone to the doorway, and I want to shout at everyone: If you miss something, it will stay here! Because on every evening of this life, I don’t know what doors slam on a face, and something strange possesses this soul of mine. Today no one has come; and today how little I have died on this evening!

Why does this voice seek to be demanded? Why does the poem present us with a subjectivity that, far from feeling restricted by others, anxiously seeks to constitute itself on the basis of the demand and its requests? What lies behind this imperious need to give something to the other? Why does the lack of satisfaction of this desire submerge him or her in sadness and even guilt? Espósito (2007) has explained that community cannot be defined by shared elements but, rather, by a responsibility vis-à-vis the social collective. Every community, he says, always supposes a “debt” and does not emerge as something that is “possessed” but as an inclination to give or as some kind of “duty”:

108 

V. VICH

The community is the set of people it unites, not a property, but precisely a duty or a debt. Group of persons united not by a plus, but by a minus, a fault, a limit that is configured as a lien or even a modality of charity, for whom is affected, unlike the one who is exempt or exonerated. (2007, 29–30)

The poem “Agape” affirms that we only become subjects if we belong to a community and that we can only recognize ourselves as members when we are truly needed, that is, when we are asked to do something for the community after a failing is identified. Indeed, the images in the poem never tire of underlining the dependence on and need for the other. It is the demand of the other that allows the “I” to recognize itself as a useful and responsible subject. Vallejo describes a community that stops being a community. The verses present us with a group of individuals who no longer need each other and who have begun to live on the margins of their interdependencies. No one questions or asks for anything. If the poetic voice despairs, it is because it needs to verify that a relationship still exists between it and others, because it understands that this relationship is the guarantee of its own existence. From there, the subject demands a social bond to be certified as a way of certifying him or herself. It is not exactly the act of “giving” that generates the feeling of belonging to the community. The identification with it arises from what is demanded from each of its members. If the community does not ask anything of me, that means that I am not recognized as a member and that my identity, my whole being, is radically questioned. This poem shows how the need to give comes after the request for assistance, which aims to make subjects feel they are full members of the community. There is a contrast between the title and the images of the poem. While the first refers to fraternal love (symbolized by a dinner), its images show a society that is becoming increasingly impersonal and indifferent (Higgins 1989, 10). Similarly, the title represents love as an act of giving, whilst in contrast the poem shows the crisis of this paradigm in what has become an individualistic society. In his own rhetoric, to repeat several times how little I have died (qué poco he muerto) is equivalent to saying “how little I have lived” because it is referring to someone who understands that living cannot be understood as anything other than the act of responding to what is demanded of one, and of sharing what one can. The expression how little I have died means “how disintegrated I am” or, better still, “what a

6  A POET OF THE COMMUNIST EVENT 

109

disintegrated position I have been inscribed into.” In the verses there is a feeling of guilt, but this seems to function best as a social criticism rather than a simple moral dilemma. This is a poem that represents a subjectivity that needs to give instead of receive and that, for that very reason, is already far removed from the cultural habits of modernity. There is a contrast between the activity of others and the marginal, but always expectant, position of the poetic voice. It is said that everyone passes in such a happy procession (en tan alegre procesión), but the problem is that they do so without asking for anything. In this way, the poem depicts a subject whose supposed “passivity” is his real “activity.” This waiting is profoundly “active” because it refers, not to an imposed demand, but to a responsibility that wants to expand towards others. In other words, it is a voice that, in its isolation and intense frustration, is demanding to be demanded and, in doing so, questions the false actions of others. And I don’t know what’s forgotten and remains wrongly in my hands, as something not mine. I have gone to the doorway, and I want to shout at everyone: If you miss something, it will stay here!

The verb “to forget” takes on a leading role in naming the way in which the social bond is now being practiced. What do the subjects forget? What does the poetic voice fail to symbolize correctly? The images in the poem offer an answer: what they forget is precisely that debt. The poetic voice is highlighting the fact that this new society (the modern world) is reluctant to take responsibility for this failing. In a commentary on Lévinas’ work, the philosopher Byung-Chul Han argues that one’s responsibility to others characterize one as an individual. “To be me,” he says, “means to be responsible. Consequently, identity has an ethical origin” (2018, 179). For Vallejo, then, subjectivity is not self-generated. Vallejo is not a liberal writer. The community is decisive not only because it is the agent that has constituted subjectivity, but because the subject has a responsibility to it and a project to fulfill. The community figures as a “gift” and a “duty.” The verses affirm that only the responsibility vis-a-vis this bond can uncover the meaning of life. There is guilt and anguish in this poem because, on the one hand, it states that the community has dissolved and,

110 

V. VICH

on the other, that feeling part of it must always imply “a gift that cannot not be given” (Espósito 2007, 28). Let us consider another poem: Trilce XIV (Vallejo 2022, 30): Like my explanation. This tears at me with earlyness. That whole walking on trapezes. Those fearsome brutes like phonies. That glue that bonds the mercury inside. Those buttocks sitting upwards. That which could not be, become. Absurd. Insanity. But I left Trujillo for Lima. But I earn a wage of five soles.

This poem describes a complicated personal situation. The poetic voice shows that reality is violent, is limited by social conditioning, and that it has been inscribed in a scenario that is both unjust and absurd. For Escobar (1973, 136), it is about a reality that permanently “hurts the I-narrative” and that is contrary to all human development. The first verse appears to have an ellipsis. It is declamatory and has been paraphrased by different critics in different ways: “What is my explanation,” “I will say this by way of explanation,” “How do I explain all this,” “There goes my explanation” (Escobar 1973; Neale Silva 1975; Higgins 1989). This poetic voice feels the urge to understand the situation in which it has been inscribed and, therefore, the need to symbolize it and understand its living conditions. Because the poem is based on life in Lima, the representation of modernity is deeply critical and appears to be profoundly artificial, and unable to solve the problems or to accompany the subject. Many of their achievements are perceived as adulterated or falsified, as is the case with sexual experience itself: a new object (that glue that bonds the mercury inside/esa goma que pega el azogue al adentro) prevents contact between the bodies, rendering everything artificial. The poem asserts that, under this reign of modernity, the world has been turned upside down.

6  A POET OF THE COMMUNIST EVENT 

111

This is not, however, a purely sociological reflection. The poetic voice experiences uneasiness from the very beginning (with earlyness/desde tempranía), that is, from the very beginnings of its life. We have already referred in a previous chapter to a painful origin identified as that structural flaw. If, at the beginning of the poem, the subject doubts how to understand themself, by the end of the poem they confront a political statement. The use of adversative conjunctions politicizes all that is described, adding new elements to a world that has been consistently described as poorly organized. Vallejo concludes by representing modernity as being a disappointment and in a state of crisis. Here the world has begun to lose all sense of logic and that is why the language also destructures itself in the act of transforming an infinitive into a participle, and the whole phrase into a substantive expression (Higgins 1989, 35). For this poem, absurdity exists and, in fact, has always existed: That which could not be, become (Eso no puede ser, sido). As if this were not enough, the poem represents a society based on social exploitation and a migrant subject. It presents the image of survival, but no longer as a symbolic figure flying on the trapeze, but as a political critique. There is an uneasiness from the beginning (with earlyness) and a vision of a very badly constructed society, which we can observe through a very concrete item: the salary of five soles. If the poem begins with abstract metaphorical digressions, it ends with a raw, direct, and material image. The repetition of the disjunction in the last two verses (but/pero) reveals an impasse and a profound social criticism. The verse that says But I left Trujillo for Lima (Pero he venido de Trujillo a Lima) emphasizes a decision, but the second “but” questions this assumption. By concluding with the statement But I earn a wage of five soles (Pero gano un sueldo de cinco soles), the poem deconstructs the idealized narrative of the modern world by showing all the precariousness that it produces. For Foffani (2018, 31), the money that the poetic voice does not possess destabilizes the verse in order to construct another way of standing existentially before the world. The loss of social ties, the extreme difficulty in building community and the perceived inscription into an unjust society are themes that will gradually unfold. A new poem can take us deeper into these problems: Something identifies you with the one going away from you, and it is the common capacity of returning: hence your greatest burden.

112 

V. VICH

Something separates you from the one who stays with you, and it is the common slavery of parting: hence your smallest joys. Thus, I address all collective individualities, as well as all individual collectivities and those who, between one and the other, march to the sound of frontiers, or simply mark the unmoveable step at the edge of the world. Something characteristically neutral, of an inexorable neutrality, interposes itself between the thief and his victim. This as well, can be observed as regards the surgeon and his patient. Horrendous half-moon, solar and convex, shelters both. Because the object stolen has also its indifferent weight, and the operated-on organ, its sad fat as well. What on earth is more despairing than the incapacity of the happy man to be miserable, and of the good man to be evil? To move away! To stay! To return! To part! The whole social mechanics is encompassed in these words. (Vallejo 2012, 537)

The poem begins with a deconstructive will, as it tries to neutralize all opposition between opposites: he who moves away is like you; he who stays is different. The first two stanzas point out that there is something shared in common with the one who has chosen to leave, but there is also something that bothers the one who stays. That is, the one who leaves is missed, but the one who stays is disturbed. Therefore, forming a community is an extremely complicated task: we always have something in common with the other, but what we have in common is also problematic. In other words, the poem states that our neighbors are as necessary as they are a bother, that there are as many needs as there are obstacles among human beings. Subjectivity is represented as a place of tension and opacity. The poem is attempting to name something unrepresentable, something unnamable and nonetheless capable of uniting all people despite the existence of social antagonisms. While it is true that human relationships always bring tension, at the same time, the subject always needs to feel recognized within a community. From this point of view, this is a poem built on the urgent need to reconstruct a bond that can articulate beyond all differences. It is a voice that believes in the possibility that everything can be different. That is why it is enthusiastic about those who march to the sound of frontiers (marchando al son de las fronteras) and, at the same time, the unmoveable step at the edge of the world (el paso inmóvil en el borde del mundo). Despite the tension within his own images, this is an affirmative and programmatic poem: a voice that pleads not to give up, to seek that which is

6  A POET OF THE COMMUNIST EVENT 

113

held in common and to follow the example of those who have already taken the first step. The poem states that the individual cannot be named by removing him or her from the community. At the same time, it stresses that the community cannot be named either without noting how it is embodied in concrete individuals. The famous verse that says I address all collective individualities, as well as all individual collectivities (me dirijo a las individualidades colectivas, tanto como a las colectividades individuales) is remarkable for its dialectical structure and because it engages with those who attempt to solve the opposition between the individual and society in a very simple way. Here subjects never have an existence “prior” to the social. These verses do not remove the subject from the group to which he or she belongs, but neither do they build the community as a force that obscures and represses individual uniqueness. The subject is the social bond itself. In his theses on Feuerbach, Marx had already noted: “The human essence is not something abstract inherent to each individual. It is, in its reality, the set of social relations” (Engels 1979b, 56). With remarkable poetic intuition, the verse captures how “the individual is absolutely social, and society is absolutely individual.” That is, how social facts always have an individual texture and how every individual bears an inherent sociality (Rochabrun 1993, 151). The poem compares the thief with the doctor and the stolen object with the organ that has been intervened with. Both are different—one cures, the other damages—but both fashion their identity on an object of desire that they aspire to extract. What, then, is that “neutral” that can intervene between them and can somehow unify and shelter them? The logic of the poem is to affirm that neither is entirely a “thief” or a “victim,” that neither can identify completely with the role they play in society, since no one carries within themself a unique and permanent identity. Noting that social roles are constructed, the poem points out that they can always be deconstructed and that all identities can radically change. Vallejo rejects all moral discourse that tries to categorically fix an identity. There is no model of normality in this poem. If at some point, the verse could refer to characteristically neutral (típicamente neutro), it only does so to distance itself from any classical discourse and to emphasize its indifferent weight (peso indiferente), its nonvalue or, rather, its value never anchored in anything specific. The poem affirms that it is only from this standpoint, far from all kinds of particularisms, that a universal discourse can be constructed.

114 

V. VICH

From there, the “desperate” thing would be that men mistake their roles for their identities and that they stop recognizing the void and their constitutive antagonisms. What unifies all persons in the poem is precisely the possibility of always changing. Although social power is a force that attempts to fix identities so that a “good” person cannot be evil and a “happy” person is always far from misfortune, the whole social mechanics (toda la mecánica social) alluded to in the poem urge us to understand that there is a foundational loss in everyone which is integral to the human condition, and that positions are circumstantial and antagonisms are inherent. At the end of the poem, the verbs refer to changes that described the responses provoked by the antagonism between their singular individuality and their need for the other. The verses affirm that everything is in motion and, therefore, everything is transient. Vallejo expresses findings and doubts, but also a faith in an identity that is not based on anything specific but in social roles to be developed. The existence of an inherent antagonism, which seems irreconcilable, but which always enters dialectics, is what seems to explain what he calls social mechanics. The problem is that society does not allow subjects to individualize themselves with dignity because they are inscribed in power relations that result in some having a good time whilst others a very bad one. Once again, the verses evince a strong sense of responsibility towards the community, a gesture that we can notice in his first poems, such as “The wretched supper” (“La cena miserable”), whose first version dates to 1917. It is a text that was written at least twelve or thirteen years before, Vallejo adopted a Marxist vision of history (Vallejo 2012, 113). How long shall we be waiting for what is not due to us … And on what corner shall we extend our poor knee forever! How long will the cross that cheers us on not halt its oaring. How long will Doubt offer us blazons for having suffered …            We have been sitting enough time at this table, with the bitterness of a child who at midnight, cries with hunger, awake …

6  A POET OF THE COMMUNIST EVENT 

115

And when shall we see ourselves with the rest, at the edge of an eternal morning, all of us breakfasted. How long in this vale of tears, to which I never asked to be brought.              On my elbows all bathed in weeping, I repeat head-bowed, vanquished: How long will the supper last. There is someone who has overdrunk, and mocks us, drawing close and far from us, like a black spoonful of bitter human essence, the grave …                  And that dark one hardly knows how long the supper will last!

González Vigil (1988, 193–193) has tracked all references in this poem (biblical allusions, an intertext with “Les Misérables” by Víctor Hugo, a Ciceronian resonance from the “Catilinarias”) and has noted how this affects the solidity of its structure and the strength of its political message: How long will we wait in an absurd way for dinner to stop being miserable. Until when will death delay its arrival to end the heaviness of life. Until when doubt (which comes to function as a root of the blasphemous irony of the poem) will offer us a shield of arms to protect our helplessness, as we no longer trust in God (nor in the philosophy of Plato and Aristotle). (1988, 194)

In this poem, Vallejo speculates about the causes of social injustice and attempts to politicize that suffering which, in other poems, had appeared as purely intimate or metaphysical. In contrast, here he proposes that human pain enables us to rethink society historically and to observe its structural failure. The verses are very clear on this point: if there is pain, it is because someone has caused it; if some have nothing, it is because others have appropriated everything. Unlike “Agape,” where the debt was a gratuitous act, here suffering is a form of social criticism. Whereas in “Agape” he references the dinner of the first Christians, here he names social inequality as a dispossession: a dinner in which there is nothing left to eat because others have eaten it all. The poem notes an absurdity, but it is a political absurdity, an unjust situation that has very concrete causes. For this reason, the most important representation concentrates on those who do not cease to row and on

116 

V. VICH

those children who are accumulating a grudge because of their hunger. This is a poem that carries a lot of anger, which seems to be as much an agent of justice as of Christian love. In this poem, love consists of identifying with that group that has rage and is seeking justice. Note the radical nature of the following verse: waiting for what is not due to us (esperando lo que no se nos debe). The presence of the negative is substantial because it is not a matter of expecting “what is right” but of expecting something more, something greater, an excess beyond ordinary laws, something capable of founding a new order. By emphasizing what is not due to us, Vallejo is pointing to the “event” as a place where all the rules of the symbolic are exceeded, as an act that transforms the framework from which the social is defined, which overflows into what is established and which transcends the existing social order. The “event” must be understood as the emergence of something that produces a radical rupture and that is why, for this poem, true justice has to be a new type of justice as yet unknown, which lies outside the paradigms of what the word justice even means. With courage, the poem points toward something greater: And when shall we see ourselves with the rest, at the edge of an eternal morning, all of us breakfasted (Y cuándo nos veremos con los demás, al borde de una mañana eterna, desayunados todos). Because Vallejo observes that society is profoundly unjust, his verses center around those who have lost their place in the system. The image names an urgent task. This is a utopian image, but one which is not pronounced from a perspective of power, but from the perspective of those who have been deprived of their supper, those who suffer, day by day, the consequences of social domination. It is, then, a position that understands politics as the task of the present for the future. That is why the poem concludes: There is someone who has overdrunk, and mocks us, drawing close and far from us, like a black spoonful of bitter human essence, the grave …                 And that dark one hardly knows how long the supper will last!

The presence of death is noted in a particular way. It is not exactly a question of drunkenness and excess. The image makes us confront a dispossession and the private appropriation of what is collective. The poem underlines this dispossession as causing an evil. The character’s movement

6  A POET OF THE COMMUNIST EVENT 

117

is similar to the movement of the spoon in the act of eating, which here acquires malignant and even truculent connotations. However, the verses do not fail to highlight that, despite its power, this character does not have complete control over life: and that dark one hardly knows how long the supper will last (y menos sabe ese oscuro hasta cuándo la cena durará). This sense of having lost control over the world, and over oneself, can also be found in “The Nine Monsters” (“Los nueve monstruos”) (Vallejo 2012, 501–503). So, unfortunately pain grows in the world at all times, it grows at thirty minutes per second, step by step, and the nature of pain is twice the pain, and the condition of martyrdom, carnivorous, ravenous, is twice the pain and the task of the purest herb, twice the pain and the goodness of being, our double pain. Never, human men, was there so much pain in the heart, in the lapel, in the wallet, in the glass, in the butchery, in the arithmetic! Never so much painful affection, never did distance attack so close, never did the fire play better its role of dead coldness! Never, sir minister of health, was health so fatal, nor the headache extract so much forehead from the forehead! And the furniture had in its drawer, pain, and the heart, in its drawer, pain, and the lizard, in its drawer, pain. Misfortune grows, brother men, faster than machines, at the rate of ten machines; it grows with Rousseau’s cattle, with our beards; evil flourishes for inexplicable reasons and is a flood with liquids of its own, with clay of its own, with a solid cloud of its own! Suffering inverts positions, gives a function in which the aqueous humour is vertical

118 

V. VICH

to the pavement, the eye is seen, and this ear heard, and this ear tolls nine bells at the hour of lightning, and nine guffaws at the hour of wheat, and nine female sounds at the hour of crying, and nine chants at the hour of hunger and nine thunders and nine lashes, less a scream. Pain snatches us, brother men, from behind, in profile, drives us mad in the cinemas, nails us to the gramophones and unnails us on our beds, falls perpendicularly on our tickets, on our letters; and it’s very severe to suffer, one can pray … And because of pain, some are born, others grow, others die, and others are born but don’t die, others without having been born, die, and others are neither born nor die (these are the majority). And also because of suffering, I am sad to my head, and sadder still to my ankle, seeing the bread crucified, the turnip bloodied, crying, the onion, the cereal, generally just flour, the salt turned to dust, the water fleeing, the wine an ecce-homo, the snow so pale, the sun so ardent! Human brothers, how can I not tell you that I cannot bear, cannot bear do with so much drawer, so much minute, so much lizard and so much inversion, so much distance and so much thirst for thirst! Sir minister of health, what’s to be done? Oh, unfortunately, human men, there is much, brothers, so much to be done!

6  A POET OF THE COMMUNIST EVENT 

119

The main issue is the reproduction of pain in society and the urgent need to neutralize it. Pain emerges as a traverse force that can take over reality and pervert it to absurdity. It is not, however, an individual pain, but a force, or a blow, that defines the subjects and the movement of society at a particular moment in history. Here the word “pain” (dolor) alludes as much to an inherent malaise in the structure of subjectivity as to social inequality, injustice and political evil. In this poem the political meaning of the word “pain” is imposed. In fact, for Higgins (1989, 116), the title of the poem (“The Nine Monsters”) equates the Great Depression of 1929 with the biblical plagues and “evokes the helplessness and disorientation of men in the face of a catastrophe beyond their control and understanding.” The poem begins in an untimely fashion, almost “in media res,” pointing out the speed with which pain is reproduced in the world and, above all, underlining the inability of culture to control it. These images show that humans have lost control over the reproduction of an evil that is thirty times faster than time. Just as the speed of light is faster than the speed of sound, here, with a magnificent verse, pain grows in the world at thirty minutes per second (el dolor crece en el mundo a treinta minutos por Segundo), Vallejo maintains that the speed at which pain (of injustice, of social inequality) emerges is faster than the passage of time itself. By arguing that the nature of pain is twice the pain (la naturaleza del dolor es el dolor dos veces) and that the goodness of being, our double pain (el bien del ser dolernos doblemente), the poem insists that human culture has lost control over itself and the world. For Marx humankind has fallen “under the domination of his own product—the capital—and is subordinated to it” (1988, 771). However, the poem emphasizes the difficulty of finding the exact cause of evil. On a first level, it states that the cause of evil is evil itself. Evil seems to be something unintelligible and “the less sense the evil has, the more evil it is” (Eagleton 2010b, 11). The poem represents how pain is appropriating everything and is entering unsuspected places, as in those depersonalized numbers that the economy produces to replace the concrete experience of people and pervert everything that exists. We are told that pain has extinguished even the fire that is a symbol of solidarity and goodness. At first, the poem maintains that we do not know the causes of evil, since it is presented as something inherent to humanity itself. Although this is a political poem, that is, a poem that demands responsibility and

120 

V. VICH

that seeks to generate action, it is also a text that contemplates, with desperation, a reality that can never be completely known. Evil flourishes for inexplicable reasons (Crece el mal por razones que ignoramos), says a verse to emphasize that dark zone of reality that neither philosophy nor the social sciences can completely explain. This is why the poem depicts pain as acquiring a cosmic status and locates it at the center of life’s dynamics. Vallejo was a thinker who, in one of his chronicles, had already asked himself the following question. Does Marxism solve the multiple problems of the spirit? Will all the moments and possibilities of historical becoming have their solution in Marxism? Has Marxism approached the whole human essence of life? Does the scientific aspect – which is its creative essence – of this doctrine supply and satisfy the extra-scientific and yet always human and, more importantly, natural needs of our conscience? Here lies the genesis of contemporary restlessness. (Vallejo 2002a, b, c, 750)

Vallejo is a militant Marxist convinced of the economic causes of evil, but with this verse he makes it very clear that his vision is much more complex than simple economic reasoning. Vallejo is always a writer committed to the “concerns” and “political nebulae” of human nature (Vallejo 2002a, b, c, 519). However, the appearance of the Minister of Health serves once again to anchor the problem of evil in a very concrete reality in order to underline political responsibilities. If health has become mortal it is because, under capitalism, human life is no longer healthy but sick for the benefit of business, surplus value and individualism. The verses render the State and the market responsible for the existing crisis, but they also point to people themselves. For Vallejo, the human being always has a task to perform: to become a “human man,” a subject of the event, a misaligned person capable of recognizing that justice is beyond calculation and private interest. Jean Jacques Rousseau, in many of his essays, tried to think about the ways in which society repressed the possibilities of human development and freedom. For this reason, the poet’s allusion in the poem is fundamental for understanding how pain disrupts all existence and hinders free life. Evil acts as an external force that attacks everywhere reproducing itself incessantly, eventually producing subjectivities that are impotent before it. Let us look at these verses:

6  A POET OF THE COMMUNIST EVENT 

121

And because of pain, some are born, others grow, others die, and others are born but don’t die, others without having been born, die, and others are neither born nor die (these are the majority).

The poem confronts us with a description of the kind of subjectivities that emerge in the modern world, which has become a world of injustice and pain. The first characters described are those who do not realize anything and are alienated, since their life consists of a simple passing through without an awareness of reality. The second are those for whom poverty becomes a suffering that has no end. The third are those who have never had a moment’s pleasure because they are victims of injustice from birth. Finally, there are those who cannot enjoy either their own life or the possibility of death understood as a liberation from their hardships: they are the absolute slaves and, the verse notes, tragically, these are the majority (son los más). This verse is not simply exaggerated nor is it purely literary. Vallejo shows how, under capitalism, the human is always produced in a differentiated way while disinterest in social inequality seems to be the norm. All the images show that pain, evil, and injustice produce reality as we live it, and they also show that society has become a machine that produces subjects without any agency with which to transform the world. Vallejo maintains that the history of humanity has been fundamentally a story of social exploitation, or, better said “an incessant history of work and oppression, of suffering and social degradation” (Eagleton 1997, 88). Vallejo never excuses himself and so ends the poem by anchoring the problem itself. The poetic voice cannot stop feeling part of reality and, thus, chooses to give testimony. “I suffer too, I am also a victim of this system, I am also having a very bad time,” he proclaims at the end of the poem. He then brings everything together in a “collective dissemination” with the aim of making the whole description flow into the present (Ferrari 1974, 311). Human brothers, how can I not tell you that I cannot bear, cannot bear do with so much drawer, so much minute, so much

122 

V. VICH

lizard and so much inversion, so much distance and so much thirst for thirst! Sir minister of health, what’s to be done? Oh, unfortunately, human men, there is much, brothers, so much to be done!

Whilst Vallejo observes with horror the catastrophe of human history and that history has only been a story of injustices for the greatest number of people who have inhabited the earth, he does so not only to lament but to stimulate the construction of a new actor in history and to promote the emergence of human men (hombres humanos) who transcend narrow interests, and who are capable of affirming the urgency of transforming the world. What does pain represent in this poem? Rowe has suggested that here pain is what suspends the narrative of progress and that it is a symptom that “jumps” from the past to destabilize the present and seek a new redemption.1 Indeed, as a mark of injustice and social inequality, pain is what questions the world of the given and what demands political change. But if pain is the agent that has constituted mankind, it is also what could unite them within a new community, which is now a community of pain. Insofar as they are unified by it, people could set themselves up as agents of historical change. This poem is thus an invitation to recover human agency beyond the insularity of existing power. This is a poem that vehemently advocates the construction of a new person, a “human man,” a subject of the event outside the capitalist model: the subject of the revolution. * * * Badiou (2010b) has explained that communism is an idea that originates from struggles that, throughout human history, have sought social equality within the framework of justice. The “communist idea” represents an experience that “has already happened” and invites the subjects to be part of that long struggle for emancipation. Hence, Vallejo realized that life only had meaning if the subject was able to inscribe him or herself in universal and eternal acts: “universal” because they should involve all the people and “eternal” because the communist idea encompasses all human 1

 Personal communication.

6  A POET OF THE COMMUNIST EVENT 

123

history. Little by little, Vallejo discovered that communism was an updated version of a liberation project and that it could summon all the people of the world. The “communist idea” was presented to him as an event that had a heroic component because it invited him to read history in a different way, interpreting the present and transforming himself. For Vallejo, communism became a willful act that affirmed the possibility of transcending one’s own personal inertia. It was a practice that brought with it a truth that challenged official knowledge and that could neutralize the power that stops something truly new from emerging. Communism, for Vallejo, emerged not only as the result of an economic critique, but as a fact—an ethic if you will—that penetrated history through its stubborn insistence on one truth: the truth of social justice. In Vallejo’s verses, communism refers to an excess that overflows in the face of the normal state of reality. All truth has an excessive component because it is something that “goes out of control,” that wants to reinvent everything, and because it announces the emergence of something new. What does it consist of? Communism offered a “society of associated producers” where the surplus would not be privatized, where the relations between capital and labor could always be reinvented, and where the common good would be the general framework for personal fulfillment. Communism was understood by Vallejo as “an association of free men who work with the means of collective production and use, consciously, their many individual work forces as a social work force” (Marx 1988, 96). In sum, in this poetry communism was a philosophical idea, a historical truth, a political program and an excess of will. The “communist idea” invited the old historical demands and the hard struggles of the present to be articulated and an urgently needed historical change to occur (Bosteels 2014, 29). Vallejo saw in communism the possibility of overcoming a victimized and self-fearing subjectivity. He understood it as the radically universal and militant need to build new possibilities for life. * * * In the last decade of his life, Vallejo discovered that the subject had to become a “subject of the idea,” a subject beyond him or herself. Only in this way could he or she overcome part of their constitutive fragility and begin to change human history. Vallejo discovered that the “idea” is an organizing field of subjectivity based on a truth and that this truth had its

124 

V. VICH

origin in an event and that it was the duty of poetry to summon it intensely (Badiou 2010a, 113). Vallejo’s poetics is ultimately an ethic, an ethic that arises from the “idea of communism”, which has observed the historical excess of social oppression and has chosen to rechannel this excess through human emancipation. It is about an ethics that, in spite of the errors or defeats, always returns and insists on affirming a truth (Žižek 2008). Vallejo saw the Russian revolution as the irruption of a true event in human history. For the first time, the poor were victorious and took power. For the first time, an unprecedented experiment began to take place on earth: building a just and egalitarian society. For this reason, Vallejo went to Russia on three occasions to observe what was happening there and even wrote two books, one of which (“Russia 1931: Reflections at the Foot of the Kremlin”) was famous in Spain. Like Mariátegui, Vallejo began to think that something central to human history, something transcendent, was occurring. What is an event? What is its importance? An event is a place of truth. Events reveal that truths do exist and that we can have contact with them. The truth, however, is never a comfortable instance as it presents itself in order to transform a given state of reality. An event is an interruption that transforms the paradigm from which reality is constructed. “An event— Badiou sustains (2010a, 99)—is the disturbance of the order of the world, something that locally alters the logical organization testified by relaying the nonexistent”. What, however, does an event produce? What it produces is, above all, a subject. The subject does not exist prior to the truth. Badiou (2003, 430) has stated “I call subject to every local configuration of a generic procedure that sustains a truth” to emphasize that the first thing that the event does is to produce a subject that begins to reorganize all their life according to the truth they have discovered. The subject then emerges as an effect of the impact with an event and as permanently faithful to it. This allows us to interpret the last decade of Vallejo’s life and appreciate the power of his final poetry. Impacted by the crisis of European modernity, by the conditions of his own existence (his unemployment and poverty), by the international workers’ movement, by the work of Mariátegui in Perú and, finally, by the Spanish civil war, Vallejo realized that a decision had to be made (that he had to become a “militant”) to defend, at any cost, the “idea of communism.” Therefore, his poetry did not cease to

6  A POET OF THE COMMUNIST EVENT 

125

bear witness to this fact and to accompany the transformation of people and society.2 “Spain take this cup away from me” (“España aparta de mí este cáliz”) is a poem that understands politics as the emergence of an event that disrupts all the rules of the possible. For Vallejo, something real was happening in Spain that needed to be defended. For this reason, he concentrated a good part of his poems on celebrating the sacrifice and loyalty of the militant Republicans. Vallejo chose to represent those who had been resubjectivized by this fact, and who were passionate about proclaiming that a new world was possible. What did Vallejo see in the civil war? What surprises him and impacts him is the irruption of a new type of revolution, the unprecedented character of a new social energy that had begun to break free. Beyond his disagreements about party centralization and his criticism of “textbook Marxists,” Vallejo observed: For the first time, the reason for a war ceases to be an action from the State, to become instead the direct and immediate expression of the interest of the people and their historical instinct, manifested in the open air and as if from the mouth of a jug. For the first time, a war is waged by the spontaneous will of the people, and for the first time, in short, it is the people themselves, it is the passers-by and no longer the soldiers, who without coercion by the State, without captains, without a military spirit or organization, without weapons or kepis, run to encounter with the enemy and die for a clear, definite cause, stripped of more or less unremarkable official fog. Since the people are thus in charge of their own struggle, it is understandable that they feel in that struggle the human heart beats of a popular authenticity which possesses an extraordinary germinal scope, without precedent. (Vallejo 2002a, 960)

We could say, theoretically, that Vallejo understands that the Spanish Republic is capable of “redeeming” the Russian revolution, as well as, in a 2  The mutual admiration between Mariátegui and Vallejo can be seen in the letters they exchanged. In Mariátegui’s epistolary there is a letter from Armanda Bazán in which he alludes to Vallejo’s desire to return to Peru. At that time, Mariátegui (one year after her death) had just suffered a second house arrest and the confiscation of many of her letters and papers. In the face of the hostile and censorial environment, Mariátegui began to seriously organize her trip to Buenos Aires. Bazán says the following: “If Vallejo goes to Lima I will order many things for you. He will be of enormous relief. He is one of the strongest and noblest; one of those who with greater love have bent down and recognized the value of the new work in America” (Mariátegui 1984, 693).

126 

V. VICH

first moment, this one redeemed the French revolution. Let us explain this idea further: The French revolution proclaimed the equality of all humans, but it quickly became a “bourgeois revolution” that could not change the “mode of production” and build a true social equality. For its part, the Russian revolution tried to reorganize the economic rules, but it became a bureaucracy (authoritarian and criminal) often disconnected from civil society. Always remaining close to Trotskyism, Vallejo observed then that the Spanish Republic was making a new attempt to incorporate truth into history and understood it as a new universal event. “The Spanish Republic cause has amazed the whole world,” he once said (2002a, 967). And continued: From this point of view, the epic of the Spanish Republic is unique in history. It reveals how much a people is capable of, launched by the exclusive propulsion of its own means and civic inspirations, the defense of its rights: in the space of a few months, it debunks a vast military insurrection, stops two powerful coalesced foreign invasions, creates a severe revolutionary public order, restructures its economy on new foundations, establishes a popular army from top to bottom and, in short, places itself at the vanguard of civilization, defending, with blood never equaled in purity and generous ardor, universal democracy in danger. And this entire miracle -it is necessary to insist- consumes it by his own work of sovereign mass, which is enough to itself and its incontrastable becoming. (Vallejo 2002a, 964)

Let us say along with Žižek (2008, 146) that “repetition is not only one of the modalities of appearance of the new, but the new can only appear in history through some kind of repetition.” The “Ode to the Volunteers of the Republic” (“Himno a los voluntarios de la República”) is a good example of this. It is a poem that celebrates the decision by some to give their lives for the Republic. This is Vallejo’s longest ever poem and in it we find images that synthesizes both his thinking about, and interpretation of, the role of art and literature. Since several studies about it already exist (especially, Lambie 1993; Meo Zilio 1996), I will only discuss its three main images, poetically displayed in these verses: the representation of the voluntary soldier, the way in which the poetic voice appears and the representations of a utopian character. Vallejo celebrates the volunteers because he sees that they have made a decision (of trustable bones/tienen los huesos fidedignos) and are willing to risk their life because of a truth that they will defend unquestionably (when your heart marches on to die/marchan con el corazón a morir). The

6  A POET OF THE COMMUNIST EVENT 

127

poetic voice sees in these characters the “passage to the act”: the moment when an event begins to materialize into concrete actions. They have not been forced, nor do their actions result from an imposition. The volunteer is always a “volunteer,” someone who is acting freely. Therefore, Vallejo celebrates them intensely because he sees in them a humanized subject, a human being, a true agent of historic change. The poem places politics at the foreground. Vallejo thought that the contradictions of capital were insurmountable, but this never led him towards static thinking. Rather, he held that the subject had a mission to fulfill beyond any social determination. Although Vallejo always refers to workers and peasants as the motors of social change, throughout the poem, there is no subjection to the category of “class” as an economic orthodoxy. In the poem, Vallejo celebrates all who have chosen to defend the Republic, and his verses honor that choice. In his chronicles and in the ups and downs of his own political militancy (which Lambie 1993; Hart 1987, 2014; Pachas 2018 have analyzed very well) Vallejo had already observed that the link between the common folk and the leftist parties had been lost. For this reason, this poem celebrates the emergence of that popular spontaneity which he understands as an unprecedented revolution, as a new mobilization in defense of an old truth. In this poem, the volunteer is a subject who says “yes” to becoming. The truth lies in a decision that transforms him or her completely and that must become an example for the world. Vallejo observes how the struggle towards definitive liberation is expressed through the volunteers’ actions and presents them as subjects who reveal an unsuspected force for the first time in our history. The people are closing their birthplace with elective hands (cerrando su natalicio con manos electivas), says the verse. The revolution must defend itself. The poem is political because it invokes all people to assume that kind of militant subjectivity. Battles? No! passions (¿Batallas? ¡No! Pasiones), it strives to emphasize (Vallejo 2012, 549). So in your breath the winds change their atmospheric needles and the graves in your chest change their keys, your frontal raised to the first power of martyrdom.

What this poem allows us to observe is the constitution of the political as a decision. Note the immense character of the figure. The volunteer’s decision is so transcendent that their actions cannot only transform society, but also modify the very logic of the cosmos and the very course of the

128 

V. VICH

wind. The breath of the militia, his or her commitment, is so strong, so determined, that it can change the course of history (winds change their atmospheric needles/agujas atmosféricas los vientos) and, with them, the sense of death itself. In these verses, the volunteer becomes a Christological figure, but never a victim. It is someone who sacrifices him or herself for a truth because they know that it is redemptive. Vallejo is very impressed by that frontal (frontal) that rises universally above everything and despite everything. This is a poem that celebrates, with emotion, the militancy of these militia. This praise, however, is interrupted by a counterpoint generated between the image of the volunteer and a voice that has begun to question itself in the volunteer’s presence. While in “The Black Heralds” the negativity was what could not be named (There are blows in life, so harsh, I don’ know!/Hay golpes en la vida tan fuertes, ¡Yo no sé!) here the same thing happens, but this time with a positive feeling also equally enormous and unnamable. The poetic voice recognizes once again that language is insufficient to describe, not for the mystery and materiality of the pain, but the immense (and political) greatness of these characters. Many testimonies recount the surprising nature of the Spanish popular mobilization in defense of the Republic and Vallejo’s participation in it in the streets of Madrid and Barcelona. Many of those who visited Spain in the early years of the war believed they were witnessing the most profound revolution in history. Even Englishmen like George Orwell and Steven Sender were impressed by what was happening. In “Homage to Catalonia,” for example, Orwell argues: “I had come to Spain with the vague intention of writing newspaper articles, yet I had to join the military almost immediately because at that time, and in that environment, it seemed the only thing to do” (Lambie 1993, 168). The event emerges from its particular situation to modify it radically. The poetic voice finds itself positioned before an event (the construction of socialism in Spain and the decision of the volunteers to defend it) that overflows language, all its formal resources and, even more so, everything the poet knows. For the same reason, this voice has to recognize that it does not have the tools to represent it because it no longer knows what to do or what to say, or how to say it correctly (Vallejo 2012, 547): I don’t know really what to do, where to place myself; I run, write, clap my hands,

6  A POET OF THE COMMUNIST EVENT 

129

I cry, watch, destroy, they extinguish, I tell my chest to stop, tell goodness to come, and then want to disgrace myself; I uncover my impersonal forehead until I touch the glass of blood, I halt, those famous architect falls restrain my size with which is honoured the animal who honours me; my instincts ebb back toward their ropes, and joy sheds smoke before my grave and, once again, not knowing what to do, destitute, let me be, from my blank stone, let me be, alone, four-handed, much closer, still farther away, since your lengthy ecstatic while doesn’t fit in my hands, I swerve against your double-edged speed my smallness dressed-up in greatness!

The event is an excess that overflows both in the social order and in the language institutionalized by culture. It exceeds the given, because it is sustained by other paradigms. While it brings with it something of the Real, its objective is to reveal the limits of the very constitution of reality. Here, the poet does not know either, but he does not give up and is always looking for a new way to represent it. If “the event puts language in a deadlock” (Badiou 1999, 50), in these verses we can observe the stark attempt to skirt around the Real of the truth that has happened (Recalcati 2006). From his first book, Vallejo knew well that the Real is not “represented” but “presented” (Badiou 2005a, 140) and, therefore, the first stanza of the poem places us before the classic dichotomy between “act” and “representation.” The problem is that while the volunteer appears represented as the “act,” the poetic voice still feels immersed in the world of “representation” and discourse. How, then, does Vallejo solve that old question of how to articulate between political action and artistic work? Could thought and action somehow converge? The poem gives an answer by questioning the action of writing as if it were an autonomous practice, that is, as if it emerged only from the author himself and not from the culture in which he is inscribed (Vallejo 2012, 549). (Every genial voice or act comes from the people and goes to them, directly or transmitted

130 

V. VICH

by incessant strings, through the pink smoke of bitter unsuccessful passwords.) Thus your creature, militiaman, thus your anaemic creature, stirred by an unmoving stone, sacrifices itself, estranges itself, falls upward and through its inflammable flame ascends, rises up to the weak, scattering spains to the bulls, bulls to the doves …

The poet is no longer the “seer” of the people nor their “guide”. In this poem, Vallejo has extracted the artist as “genius” mediator of the absolute. Rather, the verses emphasize that other actors have appeared on the scene and that art must be articulated horizontally through them. With the verse that says Every genial voice or act comes from the people and goes to them (Todo acto o voz genial viene del pueblo y va hacia él), Vallejo is arguing theoretically and politically that it is history that speaks through artists and that their creation returns to the people no matter what choice they might want to make about it. From the romantic aesthetic Vallejo inherits the importance of popular tradition as a historical substratum and as a cultural authority. At the same time, he distances himself from a representation of the artist as the “genius” of the people. As happened with Marx when he arrived in Paris in 1843, Vallejo realized that other social actors had entered the course of history. Thus, the verses remain firm in proposing the representation of the artist as opting to articulate politically with these social actors, and thus becoming part of the movement towards a definitive revolution. The poem pays homage to the canonical Spanish authors, but does so by placing them on the same level as popular heroes. This poem underlines the key role of “the popular” in the constitution of Spanish history and goes on to generate a new cultural formulation understood as a horizontal field capable of producing diverse exchanges and no longer one that engenders boundaries and hierarchies. Vallejo greatly admires Quevedo and Santa Teresa de Avila, but feels the same way about an anarchist leader (like Antonio Coll) and a common woman (like Lina Odena) who decided to give her life in defense of the Republic. When in a verse he argues for the illiterate I write to (Por el analfabeto a quien escribo), the image is not the result of a formal taste for oxymorons, but instead springs from a reformulation of the romantic conception of the artist, and points

6  A POET OF THE COMMUNIST EVENT 

131

to the discovery that what is truly radical in art consists in underlining, dialectically, the conviction that his work as an artist can reach everyone equally. It has been said that the twentieth century was a vitalist century that gave itself an enormous set of tasks, which ended up exploding in its face. “The nineteenth century announced, dreamed, promised; the twentieth century declared that it did, here and now … What is the twentieth century? asks the century and the century itself answers: ‘It is the final struggle,’” Badiou has maintained (2005a, 52–58). Thus, utopian images are central to this poem because of the radically redemptive character with which the Spanish civil war is assumed as the step towards a new reality. They reference the prophet Isaiah (33, 5–6) and aim to name a true project of social emancipation. Unlike the poem “The Nine Monsters” (which we analyzed in the previous chapter) here we imagine a world that is no longer guided by that “blind power” of the movement of capital, but one where the human being can control the mode of production that gives movement and structure to society. Vallejo thought and felt that the volunteers were fighting for this, and his verses try to depict the reality that is to come (Vallejo 2012, 551–553): All men will love each other and they will eat holding the tips of your doleful handkerchiefs and they will drink, toasting your accursed throats! They will rest walking at the foot of this racing, they will sob thinking of your orbits, they will be lucky and to the sound of your atrocious return, blossomed, innate, will modify tomorrow their tasks, their dreamed and sung figures! The selfsame shoes will fit the one who rises pathless toward his body and the one who descends to the shape of his soul! Mingling, the mute will speak, the paralytic will walk! On coming back, the blind will see and throbbing the deaf will hear! The ignorant will know, the wise will not! The kisses will be given that you could not give! Only death will die! The ant will bring breadcrumbs to the elephant chained

132 

V. VICH

to his brutal refinement; aborted children will be born again in perfection, spatial, and all men will work all men will engender, all men will understand!

Norman Cohn (1997) has proposed that Marx is the last prophet of the Western tradition. He explains, however, that Marx is a secular prophet who turns the myth of the universal paradise (of salvation) into the earthly struggle for a communist society. In these verses, we find a salvific discourse of human restoration, but its motivation lies, above all, in the political importance of naming the event. The revolution is not only an act that breaks up a past that would seem to last forever, but also a discursive act of social redemption. Vallejo knows that the event needs to be named to establish both a critique of the present and a greater political interpellation. “The enormous amount of money that it costs to be poor,” he wrote, in a dialectic way, in another important poem (Vallejo 1988, 247). By naming the event, these verses also summon many others to join the cause. For Groys (2015, 9), “the communist revolution is the transfer of society from the medium of money to the medium of language.” The argument being that numbers govern the economy, while words govern politics. Groys states that money is mute, but the word is dialectic. From there, the utopic can recover language to free it from capitalist alienation and to situate it beyond particular interests. If Vallejo insists that, for the first time, all men will understand! (comprenderán todos los hombres!) he does so because he knows well that, under capitalism, ideology prevents the observation of reality and thus manipulates the construction of a general and collective interest. For these verses, understand is a decisive verb because it implies a collective liberation from capitalist alienation. In this poem, war ceases to be a circumstantial episode and carries with it a truth that brings with it the “idea of communism”, which is the bearer of those unrealized historical possibilities. Indeed, for Vallejo: the past contains hidden unrealized possibilities, and the true future is the repetition/recovery of this past, not of the past as it was, but of those elements of the past that the past itself, in its reality betrayed, suffocated, failed to realize. (Žižek 2008, 148)

6  A POET OF THE COMMUNIST EVENT 

133

Thus, these verses represent the Spanish Republic as the force that creates the need to build a completely new world where those who have been marginalized will never be marginalized again. That is why the kisses will be given that you could not give! (serán dados los besos que no pudiste dar!) and also why aborted children will be born again in perfection (volverán los niños abortados a nacer perfectos). In sum, it is about neutralizing the reification of all that capital produces and recovering human energy as an end in itself (Marx 1981, 1044). For that reason, one of the most important images of the poem affirms with extreme messianic force: Only death will die! (¡Sólo la muerte morirá!). The need for justice is the backdrop of the entire book. For Vallejo, this has to do both with naming the exploitation of one human being by another, and with the ever present possibility of changing history. Justice is a historic debt but it is also a mandate that comes from elsewhere (Vallejo 2012, 555).   Volunteers, for life, for the good men, kill death, kill the evil! Do it for the liberty of all, of the exploited and the exploiter, for painless peace—I surmise it when I sleep at the foot of my forehead and even more when I circulate shouting— and do it, I am saying, for the illiterate I write to, for the barefooted genius and his lamb, for the fallen comrades, their ashes embracing a roadside corpse!

Can you humanize the enemy? The verses make present a dramatic but certainly liberating violence. The images are clear about this. The enemy is included among those who will be saved because their social condition can only be understood from their own historicity. For Marx, the capitalist is much more a function of the system than a character with innate characteristics. In the prologue to the first edition of “Capital,” Marx emphasized that he is going to discuss economic categories and not specific

134 

V. VICH

characters. That is why the poem suggests that, as circumstances change, the capitalist will also change.3 As with Walter Benjamin’s (1991) essay on violence, the poem represents a “divine violence” that does not arise to preserve a “given state” of reality, but to transform reality because of the need for justice. In this poem, the divine has to do with the just, and the just has to come from elsewhere because, in this world, that which is just is not in the law. If the militia must act in defense of the Republic, they do so with a violence that is not a manifestation of power, but an expression of justice, as an intent to redeem innumerable historic debts. Now that the history of an “evil” has been located, the use of religious discourse emerges, offering itself as means to redeem the world. Although other verses maintain that the world is Spanish to death (el mundo está español hasta la muerte), in this case, Vallejo understands death as including the possibility of resistance and resurrection. This poem produces an ethic that suspends all nationalistic particularisms in search of a new universal community. Vallejo paid tribute to the international brigades of volunteers: with its world agony (agonía mundial), they arrived in Spain because the event could only be true if it bore a universal idea and if it could therefore involve all of humankind. For Vallejo (and for the volunteers) the Spanish Republic was “true” because of the universalist discourse that supported it and the “communist idea” that it brought with it. * * * The messianic plea of the “Hymn to the Volunteers of the Republic” is opposed by the apocalyptic speech “Battles,” which represents the second part. In this poem, the poetic voice has begun to feel challenged by defeat and now contemplates, with horror, Spain’s collapse and the fall of the communist project. The fall of Malaga, for example, is interpreted as announcing an approaching greater tragedy. This poem confronts defeat and the crisis of the utopian project for war and evil. 3  Marx’s quote is: “I do not paint the figures of the capitalist and the landowner pink, by the way. But here we are dealing with people only insofar as they are the embodiment of economic categories carrying certain class interests. My point of view, according to which I conceive the development of social economic formation as a process of natural history, less than any other could hold the individual responsible for relations for which he remains socially a creature even though he may rise above them” (Marx 2011, 8 [1867]).

6  A POET OF THE COMMUNIST EVENT 

135

Unlike the previous poem, now, the poetic voice captures something of what is happening with more confidence. It is a voice that continues to be challenged both by the truth of the event and by visions of what lies ahead. Beyond that, the poet needs to show his horror because he sees how an event, a truth, is being betrayed (Vallejo 2012, 555). Man of Estremadura I can hear under your foot the smoke of the wolf, the smoke of the species, the smoke of the child, the solitary smoke of two wheats, the smoke of Geneva, the smoke of Rome, the smoke of Berlin, and the one of Paris, and the smoke of your saddened appendix, and the smoke that, finally, emerges from the future. Oh life! Oh earth! Oh Spain! Ounces of blood, metres of blood, liquids of blood, blood on horse, on foot, mural, without diameter, blood four by four, blood of water, and dead blood of the living blood!

Tearfully, the poem shows the remnants of an atrocious scene of violence. Therefore, the poetic voice accompanies the combatant in his or her pain to honor their sacrifice. He knows well that this man from Extremadura represents the world and that the fall of Malaga brings with it the destiny of all humanity. It is the smoke of the species (humo de la especie), but also the smoke of the future. Smoke is here the remnant of a fire but, at the same time, the sign that announces the emergence of something new. Again, the poem honors the sacrifice of the combatants because it understands it as redemption. This war is not simply a conflict within Spain, but a defense against an evil that threatens to worsen the disastrous condition in which humanity finds itself. From there, the defense of the Republic is understood as a “just war,” as a fight against evil. For this poem, mankind has become (and is not) the wolf of humankind (Vallejo 2012, 557): Estremaduran, and there being no land to bear the weight of your plough, no world other than the colour of your yoke between two eras; no order of your posthumous cattle!

136 

V. VICH

Estremaduran, you let me see you from this wolf, suffering, fighting for everyone and fighting for the individual to be a man, for gentlemen to be men, for the whole world to be a man, and even for animals to be men, the horse, a man, the lizard, a man, the vulture, an honest man, the fly, a man, and the olive tree, a man and even the mound, a man and the sky itself, a whole young man!

While in “The Nine Monsters” humans had lost control over the world, and all human existence had been taken over by evil (or by the absurd logic of the movement of capital), in these verses we observe the opposite: the need to give control back to humanity in order to restore freedom and creativity. Here, the militia are understood as heroes because of their stubborn fidelity to the event, because of the correspondence between what they think and what they do and, above all, because “they bring a new way of meaning the human.”4 These verses, then, imagine a social change that begins with the subject and continues with society, animals, things, and the whole universe. However, this humanization is not anthropocentric. It is in no way a question of placing humans back at the center of the world, nor is it a question of restoring them to a condition of dominance so that they can exercise new power from there. To the contrary, the verses suggest that if everything is humanized, everything will be decentralized, and then everything will cease to be hierarchical: animals, things, and the universe itself will take their rightful place, and thus mankind will be fully integrated with its surroundings. For these verses, overcoming social alienation implies restoring a horizontal communication with everything that exists.

4  Julio Ortega, personal communication. We can add that, in the first of his chronicles on Russia, Vallejo wrote: “… when society ceases to be a pack of gross individualisms, a magnifying glass of bestial instincts -and less than bestial, vicious- to begin to be a political and economic structure essentially human, that is to say, just and free and of a freedom and a dialectic justice, each time wider and perfect” (Vallejo 2002a, b, c, 14).

6  A POET OF THE COMMUNIST EVENT 

137

However, Vallejo wrote this poem (and this whole book) when he realized that the war would be lost, because he wanted to record the experience of the defeated. What does this mean? On the one hand, it was about showing how injustice was reinstating itself in the world and, on the other hand, about the importance of having the courage to fight in adverse conditions, to defend the “lost causes” and openly reveal the “bad side” of history. Let us now comment, in more detail, the following verses (Vallejo 2012, 559): But from this place, later, from this land’s point of view, from the grief to where satanic goodness flows, one can see the great battle of Guernica. A priori battle, out of count, peaceful battle, battle of weak souls against weak bodies, battle wherein the child strikes, without anyone telling him to strike, beneath his atrocious diphthong, beneath his handy diaper, and wherein the mother strikes with her scream, with a tear’s back wherein the sick one strikes with his sickness, his pill and his son, wherein the old one strikes with his grey hair, his centuries and his canes, and wherein the priest strikes with god! Tacit defenders of Guernica! Oh, weak ones! oh, offended gentle ones, rising, growing, filling the world with powerful weak men!

Popular agency springs from the volunteers’ very weakness, from a passion that builds its weapons from the scarce resources it has available. Vallejo says that, although they are all armed with hearts up to the forehead (armados del pecho hasta la frente), these volunteers are only armed with hunger (armados de hambre) and walk around without planes (sin aviones) and with almost nothing. In fact, they can only defend themselves with their own precarious resources. The child defends itself with his diaper (pañal), the mother attacks with her scream (gritos), the sick man resists with his pill (pastilla), and the old man does so with his grey hair (canas). That is to say, the poetic voice does not try to transform the “strong” into the “weak” but, echoing the final words of the Communist Manifesto—“the proletarians

138 

V. VICH

have nothing to lose but their chains; they have on the contrary, the whole world to gain” (Marx 1983, 61)—, it opts for a form of representation where weakness becomes the sign of strength and revolutionary conviction. If these images become apocalyptic, it is not only due to the magnitude of the facts, but because they all arise from verifying, painfully, how nonsense takes over human history again (Vallejo 2012, 561): Malaga, fatherless and motherless, without pebble, oven, or white dog! Defenceless Malaga, wherein my death was born walking, and my birth died of passion! Malaga walking behind your feet, in exodus, below evil, below cowardice, below concave history, unutterable, with the yolk in hand: organic earth! and the white at the tip of your hair: all the chaos!

In this passage, the verses contemplate how the truth of the event is being lost. The forces of evil impose themselves on Malaga to destroy all sense and all faith. Whilst in many of the “Human Poems” (“Poemas Humanos”) the subject wanted to reconstitute him or herself for the purposes of their truth, and the subject had attempted to transform him or herself in order to change the world, in contrast, these verses are truly dramatic because they note that there is something radically impeding this situated far beyond one’s own ability to choose. Malaga was a Republican city that had a great workers’ movement. Due to its strategic nature (as a port and supply point), in January 1937 it was bombed by land, sea and air, resulting in an apocalyptic scenario. When, after resisting for several days, the Republicans realized that all was lost, they ordered the evacuation of the city, at which point thousands of people chose to flee to the city of Almeria by road. However, the majority of those Republicans that were located along the seashore were killed that day, and it is estimated that about 5000 people lost their lives. It is known as one of the biggest massacres of the civil war. The poem recreates this historic event with great intensity (Vallejo 2012, 561): Malaga fleeing from father to father, familiar, from your son to your son, along the sea that flees from the sea, through the metal that flees from the lead, at the ground-level that flees from the earth, and at the orders, alas,

6  A POET OF THE COMMUNIST EVENT 

139

of the depth that loved you! Malaga by beatings, by fatal clot, by bandits, by hell-strikes, by heaven-strikes, treading on hard wine, in multitudes, on lilac foam, one by one, on a static and more lilac tornado, and to the tune of the four loving orbits, and of both ribs that kill each other!

Most of the poems in this book can be read as journalistic chronicles describing what happened during the war. They are texts that emerge as brief poetic chronicles.5 Other poems narrate the fall of Badajoz, the bombing of Guernica, the taking of Bilbao and the defeats of Gijón, Teruel, and Durango. In these verses, Vallejo writes a strongly historicist poetry without literary complexity, a poetry that wants to reveal what is happening in that particular moment. Vallejo made several aesthetic choices as he attempted to represent the fall of Málaga. The facts—the flight to Almeria and the seaside massacre— are represented by images pointing to different planes, but that never fail to portray the feeling of poetic enunciation of its agonic and sad lament. The flight of families, the bullets, the anguish and, above all, the bombing by sea and air, all the horror of the attack, appear arranged in a cubist way and as an epic montage. One verse has omitted the verb “is” (Málaga fleeing/Málaga huyendo) because everything has already been broken and because everything has begun to lose place and direction. Malaga is not fleeing from one place to another, but, more accurately, the families fled from one death to another; they fled without being able to flee because they were still killed along the sea (a lo largo del mar) and at the ground-­ level (al ras del suelo). Malaga had no way out and only fled from father to father (de padre a padre) and from your son to your son (de tu hijo a tu hijo). In their attempt to represent the unrepresentable—the horror of war— the images become brutally unhinged. War is unrepresentable because its action fractures all existing languages and all forms of expression. Can metal escape from lead? Can soil escape from the earth? Can the sea escape from the sea? Vallejo reconstructs the bombardment (by hell-strikes/a infiernazos), he says, by heaven-strikes (a cielazos), he underlines because he has realized that in that moment the panic must have been of such magnitude that everything wanted to flee, even from itself, in the attempt to avoid its fatal end as a fatal clot (fatídico coágulo). 5

 Julio Ortega, personal communication.

140 

V. VICH

Overcome by these circumstances, desperate because of what was happening, Vallejo decided to construct a language that would show the triumph of evil. Here are two ribs that, instead of loving each other, have chosen to hurt each other. Here, we are told of a group of people who have been forced to enter another orbit, only to meet again with the wine colored blood and a lilac-colored passion that is the color of penance. The poem ends as follows (Vallejo 2012, 561–563): Malaga of my small blood and my great colouring at a great distance, life follows with a drum your sorrel honours, with rockets, your eternal children, and with silence, your final drum, with nothing, your soul, and with even more nothing, your genial breastbone! Malaga, don’t perish with your name! For if you go you go wholly, toward yourself, infinitely whole in total guise, concordant with your fixed size wherein I turn crazy, with your fruitful shoe-sole and its hole, and your old razor tied to your ill sickle, and your rod attached to a hammer! Literal, ill-omened Malaga, fleeing toward Egypt, because you’re nailed, prolonging your dance in an identical suffering, resolving within you the volume of the sphere, losing your wine jug, your canticles, fleeing with your external Spain and your innate world! Malaga on your own right and in the biological garden, still more Malaga! Malaga by virtue of the road, attentive to the wolf that pursues you, and by reason of the cub that awaits you! Malaga, how I’m crying! Malaga, I cry and cry!

The poet identifies himself again with Malaga: finally, it has taken over his whole body, it has taken over all his feelings and his most intimate coloring. The poem culminates by personalizing everything, showing how the fall of that city obliges him to revert to a voice that will no longer be able

6  A POET OF THE COMMUNIST EVENT 

141

to prevent defeat. At this point, the biblical associations re-emerge: the flight from Egypt, the passion, the crucifixion itself. The fall of Malaga is portrayed as being as unjust as the death of Christ. It is a defeat that will truncate the truth of the event, a truth betrayed by people themselves. With the fall of Malaga, the poet will once again be inscribed in that original orphanhood, in that fragile condition that tempted him to present human existence as an absurdity. The name of the city is repeated many times as if something very important were at stake. Malaga, don’t perish with your name! (Málaga, no te vayas con tu nombre!), says the verse, and it says so because Vallejo has discovered that naming the event is fundamental to its constitution, because he knows that the name incorporates something of the truth, and because this action could be a new form of political interpellation. If Malaga falls, that name, which this poetry has sought to codify in liberating terms, will also fall. Malaga is a proper name but, in the poem, it assumes other morphological functions. More Malaga! (más Málaga!), these verses ask, since this city is the symbol of an event that must be replicated all over the world. The poem makes Malaga a place that exceeds itself, making it the torn symbol of communist universalism. Malaga, however, will continue to face two dangers: one that exists now and one that will become a future threat. The wolf and the wolf cub. The image is hopeless because the future appears as inevitably tragic. However, although he is suffering, although he is dying, the poet continues to invoke it in all its truth: Malaga is fleeing with your external Spain and your innate world! (huyendo con tu España exterior y tu orbe innato!). The tragedy of the war in Spain runs parallel to the break-up of poetic language. In this poem, everything falls: Malaga falls, Spain falls and, with them, the poetic discourse itself. It ceases to be words and becomes mere tears: Malaga, how I’m crying! Malaga, I cry and cry! (¡Málaga que estoy llorando! ¡Málaga que lloro y lloro!), says the verse emphatically. All language (the “literary” and the “non-literary”) falls with the poet, not only because the pain is unrepresentable, but because the truth could not be named exactly or because this defeat is really terrible and Vallejo knows, in a panic, that words cannot prevent it either. * * *

142 

V. VICH

Badiou has observed that many of the most important poets of the twentieth century were communists, and that they were so not only because of an ideological commitment, but because “poetry” and “communism” are two attempts to confront a truth. In his view, the avant-garde movements and political revolutions testify to having found a new idea and, above all, that “passion for the Real” that has been the cornerstone of art and politics throughout the twentieth century. Vallejo attempted to recover an ancient literary genre that sets out to narrate an effort to change the world and to imbue collective life with new meaning: the epic. A few years earlier, Mariátegui (1985, 161) had promoted its revival. The epic does not usually tell stories of disoriented individuals within a world that is revealed to them as strange, but rather represents immense collective projects aimed at neutralizing the threat of an even darker world. The epic is a discourse that allows us to celebrate the courage of a group of characters who will become heroes thanks to their dedication and sacrifice. In the poems of “Spain take this cup away from me” (“España aparta de mí este cáliz”), a religious discourse gives support to this newly recovered epic. Both the utopian and apocalyptic language arise from biblical sources, a reference that Vallejo never ceased to absorb with intensity. Like Mariátegui and Walter Benjamín, Vallejo thought that religion laid out some fundamental questions about the possibilities of life on earth, not only in the heights of heaven. Like the Amauta, religion was understood as a mobilizing myth. For that reason, “the use of language with religious expressions never comes to weaken its communist vision, but rather gives it a messianic impulse that increases its creed” (Lambie 1993, 233). Vallejo, in short, is a poet who testifies that something important has occurred in the world. His last book sought to show the political possibilities wanting to incorporate a truth in history as well as the horror unleashed by reactive forces that inhabit the world. Badiou (2002, 72) has argued that “the truth is not, it comes” and wanted to be present in the Spanish Republic. Vallejo’s poetry shows the communist attempt to change the world, but also represents a painful reproduction of a set of dark forces that systematically prevented it from changing.

6  A POET OF THE COMMUNIST EVENT 

143

Bibliography The Translations into English from Vallejo’s Original Poems Are Taken from the Following Books Vallejo, César. 2012. The Complete Poems. Edited and translated by Michael Smith and Valentino Gianuzzi. Bristo: Shearsman Books. ———. 2022. Trilce. Edited and translated by Michael Smith and Valentino Gianuzzi. Swindon: Shearsman Books.

Other English Translations Are as Follow Vallejo, César. 2022b. Trilce. Translation and glosses by William Rowe and Helene Dimos. London: Crater Press and Veer Books. ———. 2022c. Trilce. Centenary Bilingual edition. Barry Garside Fogden.

References Badiou, Alain. 1999. San pablo o la fundación del universalismo. Barcelona: Anthropos. ———. 2002. Condiciones. México DF: Siglo XXI. ———. 2003. El ser y el acontecimiento. Buenos Aires: Manantial. ———. 2005a. El siglo. Buenos Aires: Manantial. ———. 2010a. Segundo manifiesto por la filosofía. Buenos Aires: Manantial. ———. 2010b. La idea del comunismo. In Sobre la idea del comunismo. Analía Hounie (comp.). Buenos Aires: Paidós. Benjamin, Walter. 1991. Para una crítica de la violencia. In Para una crítica de la violencia y otros ensayos. Introducción y selección de Eduardo Subirats. Madrid: Taurus. Bosteels, Bruno. 2014. The Actuality of Communism. London: Verso. Byung-Chul, Han. 2018. Muerte y alteridad. Barcelona: Herder. Cohn, Norman. 1997. En pos del milenio. Revolucionarios, milenaristas y anarquistas místicos de la edad media. Madrid: Alianza editorial. Cornejo Polar, Antonio. 1989. César Vallejo: la universalización de una experiencia nacional. La Torre II (12): 673–684. Eagleton, Terry. 1997. Las ilusiones del posmodernismo. Barcelona: Paidós. ———. 2010b. Sobre el mal. Barcelona: Península. Engels, Federico. 1979a [1876]. El papel del trabajo en la transformación del mono al hombre. Moscú: editorial Progreso. ———. 1979b. Ludwig Feuerbach y el fin de la filosofía clásica alemana. Bogotá: Linotipo. Escobar, Alberto. 1973. Cómo leer a Vallejo. Lima: PLV editor. Espósito, Roberto. 2007. Comunitas. Origen y destino de la comunidad. Buenos Aires: Amorrortu.

144 

V. VICH

Ferrari, Américo. 1974. El universo poético de César Vallejo. Caracas: Monte Avila editores. Foffani, Enrique. 2018. Vallejo y el dinero. Formas de la subjetividad en la poesía. Lima: Cátedra Vallejo. González Vigil, Ricardo. 1988. Los heraldos negros y otros poemas juveniles. Lima: Banco Central del Reserva. Groys, Boris. 2015. La posdata comunista. Buenos Aires: Cruce. Hart, Stephen. 1987. Religión, política y ciencia en la obra de Vallejo. London: Támesis books limited. ———. 2014. César Vallejo. Una biografía literaria. Lima: Cátedra Vallejo. Higgins, James. 1989. César Vallejo en su poesía. Lima: Seglusa editores. Lambie, George. 1993. El pensamiento político de César Vallejo y la guerra civil española. Milla Bartres: Lima. Mariátegui, José Carlos. 1984. Correspondencia. Lima: Biblioteca Amauta. ———. 1985 [1925]. La escena contemporánea. Lima: Amauta. Marx, Karl. 1981. El capital. Crítica de la economía política. Tomo III/vol 8. Libro tercero. El proceso global de la producción capitalista. Edición a cargo de Pedro Scaron. México DF: Siglo XXI. ———. 1983 [1848]. El manifiesto comunista. Madrid: Sarpe. ———. 1988 [1876]. El capital. Crítica de la economía política. Tomo I/vol 3. Libro primero. El proceso de producción de capital. Edición a cargo de Pedro Scaron. México DF: Siglo XXI. Meo Zilio, Giovanni. 1996. Estilo y poesía en César Vallejo. Roma: Bulzoni editores. Neale Silva, Eduardo. 1975. César Vallejo en su fase trílcica. Madison: The University of Wisconsin Press. Pachas Almeyda, Miguel. 2018. ¡Yo que tan solo he nacido! (Una biografía de César Vallejo). Lima: Juan Gutemberg. Recalcati, Massimo. 2006. Las tres estéticas de Lacan. In Las tres estéticas de Lacan: arte y psicoanálisis, 9–32. Buenos Aires: Del Cifrado. Rochabrun, Guillermo. 1993. Socialidad e individualidad. Materiales para una sociología. Lima: Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú. Vallejo, César. 1988. Poesía completa. Edición crítica y estudio introductorio de Raúl Hernández Novás. La Habana: Editorial arte y literatura/Casa de las Américas. ———. 2002a. Artículos y Crónicas completas. Tomos I y II. Recopilación, prólogo, notas y documentación por Jorge Puccinelli. Lima: Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú. ———. 2002b. Correspondencia completa. Edición, estudio preliminar y notas de Jesús Cabel. Lima: Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú. ———. 2002c. Ensayos y reportajes completos. Edición, estudio preliminar y notas de Manuel Miguel de Priego. Lima: Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú. ———. 2012. The Complete Poems, edited and translated by Michael Smith and Valentino Gianuzzi. Bristol: Shearsman Books. ———. 2022. Trilce, edited and translated by Michael Smith and Valentino Gianuzzi. Swindon: Shearsman Books.

CHAPTER 7

A Poet of Lost Causes

The subject of Vallejo’s poetry is also a subject of free will. Although his work portrays the fundamentally fragile nature of the human condition and has no qualms about displaying subjectivity’s reluctance to make momentous decisions (where we are from so much being there/cómo quedamos de tan quedarnos says a famous verse), his poetry also shows that human beings can become part of a universal truth and affirm it with commitment. Vallejo invested in this with passion and understood that truth could articulate with a great number of political possibilities. Vallejo’s work shows a commitment to understand things in a situated way. Hence, he walked the streets of Paris to capture reality as a reporter or a chronicler would. That is why he travelled to Russia on three occasions to observe first-hand what was happening there and he supported the defense of the Spanish Republic with conviction. His work was always part journalistic chronicle, part theoretical reflection and part literary intuition, oscillating between the description of reality and its interpretation (lyrical or theoretical). Furthermore: Vallejo became a militant communist, who, impacted by a truth, decided to commit himself to that universal cause. Unlike what occurs in other similar cases, Vallejo’s political ideas enrich his artistic practice and add an astonishing and extremely radical intensity to it. If Vallejo’s poetry is seen as having an ethical component, it is because he is trying to reconstruct the category of the subject. The idea is this: a subject only becomes a subject (a human man, in his words) when they © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2024 V. Vich, César Vallejo, Studies in Revolution and Literature, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-33513-6_7

145

146 

V. VICH

choose to be faithful to a truth, when they get involved with the event, when they make a decision that transforms them completely. Vallejo observes that human life is fundamentally a form of inertia (that man … is to be made of days) and that only the acceptance of the event can force it out of its circular entrapment. Badiou (2009a, 165) argues that “every subject is at the crossroads of a repetition, of an interruption, of an emplacement and of an excess” in his need to argue how “a human animal” only becomes a subject when it is willing to resubjectivize itself, to transform itself because it has come into contact with that truth procedure that the event brings with it. “Spain take this cup away from me” (“España aparta de mí este cáliz”) is a collection of poems in which Vallejo proposed to celebrate that group of characters who defended the “communist idea” whatever the consequences. They are subjects who could make a decision, who did not give up in the face of difficulty, and who did not hesitate to heroically sacrifice their lives. Vallejo’s intention in writing about them was to generate a contrast and neutralize the reactive character before the truth of the event. Vallejo’s poetry observes how the processes of personal subjectivation are intimately related to fidelity or infidelity before a decision that is difficult to make. Let us comment on two poems that speak of the lack of courage to make a decision (Vallejo 2012, b, 441). He goes running, walking, fleeing from his feet … He goes with two clouds on his cloud, sitting apocryphal, in his hand inserted lie his sad so-thats, his funereal therefores. He runs from everything, walking among colourless protests; he flees ascending, flees descending, flees with a cassock step, he flees raising evil on his arms, flees straightaway to cry alone. Wherever he goes, far from his craggy, caustic heels,

7  A POET OF LOST CAUSES 

147

far from the air, far from his voyage, just to flee, to flee and flee and flee from his feet—a man on two feet, standing from all the fleeing—there he’ll have a thirst for running. And not even the tree, if it endorses gold in iron! And not even the iron, if it covers the dead leaves! Nothing but his feet, nothing but his brief chill, his living so-thats, his living therefores . . .

The poem affirms that the subject can represent an escape from him or herself or an evasive move caught in a treadmill. Nothing, not the tree nor the iron, can stop his feet from running away. This flight is reprehensible, but the poetic voice tries to understand it and therefore it features as a drama variously described. This is an agonizing poem because it observes a tense situation, an entrapment, the impossibility of escaping from a vicious circle. The failure to make a decision is put to the fore. Thus, the subject is presented as a liar always trying to justify him or herself. The poetic voice maintains that people carry in their own hands his sad so-thats, his funereal therefores (sus tristes paras, sus entonces fúnebres), because he has realized the always strategic way in which the subject has to argue “coherently” about their own escape. Those so-thats (paras) (preposition that indicates “finality”) are sad (tristes) because in the end all justifications seem apocryphal. Those therefores (entonces) (adverb that marks an episode or indicates a succession) are funereal (fúnebres) because they kill the subject not allowing him or her to live a life articulated to the truth of the event. The poetic voice, then, judges a good part of the human being’s action (what has happened or what is to come) because it knows that its fundamental attitude is the relentless flight from itself. This is how González Vigil has described this poem: The central theme of the poem is flight seen as escape. It is not about the defenseless humanity, prey to the vicious circle of suffering; but about the tendency (quite generalized, but not extensive to all men, at least not to the revolutionaries who have not broken with the new man) to escape from the hard reality, to only emit “colorless protests” (weak and ineffective) and “sobbing alone” (without the values of revolutionary solidarity). Vallejo is

148 

V. VICH

portraying the man alienated from his own feet when these should serve to settle firmly on the ground and walk the path to full human fulfillment. (1991: 594)

Why does the subject run away? Why does it run away from everything? A first answer would affirm that they do it to avoid confronting themselves and to evade responsibility. Every event requires a personal renunciation and a decision to reorganize life around the truth procedure that it activates. Getting involved implies leaving the place where one is. If all what the subject does is run away (ascending, flees; descending, flees/ subiendo, huye; bajando, huye), it is clear that their usual condition is always static. However, the poem states that, at some point, the subject will have a thirst for running (sed de correr), that is, will want to change position and start doing something truly new. It is a subject that is conscious of the situation in which it has been placed, but does not have the courage to make the decision to leave. Its flight is its final condition. That is why the verses note that he flees straightaway to cry alone (huye directamente a sollozar a solas), and that is why the poetic voice also feels some compassion and agony for what is happening. This is a subject who must become discouraged, but he does not know how. Let’s look at a more powerful poem (Vallejo 2012, b, 453). Famished, solomonic, decent, he screeched; composed, captious, cadaverous, forsworn, he was going, turning back, answering; he dared, fatal, scarlet, irresistible. In society, in glass, in dust, in coal, he set off; he hesitated, speaking in gold; he gleamed, turned, in acceptance; in velvet, in tears, he receded. Remembering? Insisting? Going? Forgiving? Frowning, he would end up lying, rough, numb, mural; he considered stamping, getting confused, dying. Without harm, with impunity, blackly, he will peep out, comprehend; he will dress orally; will go hesitantly, will be frightened, will forget.

7  A POET OF LOST CAUSES 

149

As several critics (Escobar 1973; Franco 1984; among others) have explained, this poem stands out for its great sense of rhythm, for the selection of words and for its aesthetic effect combined to build a poem without relational elements. Once again, the subtraction of syntax acts as a decisive mechanism in the construction of the poem. This, however, does not prevent it from successfully telling a story and presenting a set of activities that elucidate a large part of the human experience. The whole poem reveals the subject’s inherent contradictions, its state of permanent indecision and its existential anguish (González Vigil 2009, 232–236). Let us observe two large sections in the structure of the poem: the first two stanzas refer to the past, while the last two project the future. In the middle, using verbs in the infinitive, the poetic voice poses questions that re-orient the poem and take on the point of view of the subject described. This, however, is short-lived, because the poem returns to the initial voice and concludes by showing what it believes will happen or what usually happens in response to the subject’s decisions. The poem begins by conveying the rational side of the human condition but, immediately thereafter, situations or moods begin to appear that erode the appearance of control that the subject has over itself and the world. The first stanza says that the subject has accumulated a lot of experience (famished/ transido), that it can observe things with equanimity and decency (salomonic and decent/ salomónico y decente) and that, therefore, it seems to be a mature person, someone capable of taking on life with caution and discretion. The problem is that the verses know that humans are more than that: the poetic voice knows that the subject is also someone who doubts, who carries an excess, and who is never completely sure of the path it has chosen. For this reason, words begin to emerge that destabilize all previous representation and begin to change it: screeched, cadaverous, forsworn (ululaba, cadavérico, perjuro) are opaque words referring to a negativity that also defines the human condition and that will become ever more present in subsequent verses. At the end of this verse, the subject is presented as one who has no self-control and whose life escapes from its own hands. From this point of view, the subject is fatal, scarlet, and irresistible (fatídico, escarlata, and irresistible). Little by little, the poem becomes more and more emphatic: in different situations and at different times (in society, in glass, in dust, in coal/ en sociedad, en vidrio, en polvo, en hulla), humans act in a similar way: they want to commit themselves, but they always come to evade what they have

150 

V. VICH

discovered. They try to dominate things, but only fill themselves with words and culminate with retreat. For this stanza, humankind is a subject who knows that they must transform themselves (and, in the process, try to transform the world), but they do not have the courage to do so because they are overcome by fear. At this point, the poem has already destabilized any rationalist notion that explains human subjectivity. Its images are distant from any theory that defines humankind as rational and transparent. To the contrary, the representation insists that it is someone full of doubts, who is opaque and coward. Thus, the poem has no qualms about cruelly judging human beings. The poem also poses questions that demonstrate the subject’s tireless search for answers that neutralize this existential disorientation. At this point, the subject is depicted as someone who is restless and in permanent search of itself and of the meaning of life. What should I do? How should I face life? Remembering? Insisting? Going? and Forgiving? (¿recordar? ¿insistir? ¿ir? and ¿perdonar?). The poem argues that in life there is no pre-­ established script, that human beings do not have a clear and rational to follow. For this poem, this confusion, this lack of guarantees gives rise to this dramatic condition of subjectivity and brings with it a burden of negativity from which it is very difficult to free oneself. The poem’s closure is striking: all the images lead to and culminate in two words whose extreme tension serves to demonstrate two movements in subjectivity. These are comprehend and forget (comprenderá and olvidará). In other words, the verses conclude by stating that the true drama of the human condition lies in the something that has been discovered as true but cannot be acknowledged due to a lack of courage. For this reason, the poem emphasizes that after having been confronted with the truth of the event, a person becomes intimidated, dresses orally (vestiráse oralmente), turns back and leaves alone and with their sadness under their arm. However, it would be a mistake to see this as a skeptical poem. The verses clearly affirm that the subject is capable of finding or producing a truth. The poem stresses emphatically that humans do come to “understand” and, therefore, that there is indeed something that can give meaning to life (which is precisely the act of perforating the official meaning). The problem is that too often the truth does not last due to the inability to sustain it, no matter the cost. Note the two opposing moments in the poem: the confirmation that subjectivity can indeed be the bearer of a

7  A POET OF LOST CAUSES 

151

truth (it is said, finally, that subjectivity will understand) and, at the same time, the presence of a structural cowardice that always ruins everything. * * * Despite all this, Vallejo realized that the event could produce a subject willing to defend the truth. However, he also knew that truth is always in the process of being constructed (without guarantees) and that the new subject would have to abandon all fundamentalist dogmatism. Although Vallejo was a converted militant, he was always open to criticism and to self-criticism. Many of his essays and journalistic chronicles are examples of this. Although the subject of an event may be constituted by a truth, this is no guarantee that things will be done right. Standing against deterministic thought, Vallejo wanted to warn of the ideological dangers inherent in the process of political struggle. Let us now comment on the poem entitled “Farewell recalling a goodbye” (“Despedida recordando un adiós”) (Vallejo 2012, b, 473): In the end, at last, finally I turn, I came back and wither, and I moan to you, giving you the key, my hat, this letter for everyone. At the end of the key lies the metal in which we learned to ungild gold, and at the end of my hat lies this poor badly combed brain, and, a last glass of smoke, in its dramatic role, lies this practical dream of the soul. Goodbye, brother saint peters, heraclituses, erasmuses, spinozas! Goodbye, sad bolshevik priests! Goodbye, rulers in disorder! Goodbye, wine in water like wine! Goodbye, alcohol in rain! And goodbye also, I tell myself, goodbye, formal flight of milligrams! Goodbye as well, in the same way, cold of cold and cold of warmth! In the end, at last, finally, the logic, the frontiers of the fire, the farewell recalling that goodbye.

152 

V. VICH

What does the word goodbye (adiós) mean in this poem? What is this poetic voice saying goodbye to? It is clear that it is saying goodbye to ideological dogmatism, to all those ideas that, in the midst of political struggle, can turn rigid and schematic. Here, the word goodbye must be understood as a kind of self-critical discourse. Every goodbye implies a distancing and an end. When the verse says Goodbye, wine in water like wine! (¡Adiós, vino que está en el agua como vino!), it is a criticism of militant dogmas: a farewell to miracles, a reflection on that inertia that leads us to rigidify our ideas. In this poem, the poetic voice shows its displeasure with a thought that has fossilized over time and therefore prevents the new from becoming. What is interesting, however, is that while at first this goodbye is directed towards a supposedly “external” reality, towards something which has begun to disillusion the poetic voice, it then reverts and is directed towards its own enunciation. This happens because the poet knows well that it can no longer understand the “outside” and the “inside” as dichotomous thought. In other words, the poetic voice knows that the “outside” is comprised from the same credence as the inside. Saint Peter, Heraclitus, Erasmus, Spinoza, and the Bolsheviks themselves are constitutive agents of their own identity, but they must also be critically considered. This is a voice that has begun to distance itself from a central part of itself and, for that very reason, does not hesitate to be self-critical. The poem proposes, in a radical way, that everything must disidentify with itself (Hart 1987, 58) and, with a remarkable verse, it therefore asks the reader to ungild gold (desdorar el oro), to observe the problematic side of their belief and the radically skeptical side of their own faith. In Agamben’s (2011, 22) words, Vallejo is an artist who does not allow himself to be blinded by the lights of the century and can distinguish in them “the part of the shadow, its intimate darkness.” This is a subject that has begun to question its beliefs but, at the same time, can never stop believing. It could be argued that the poem brings out a “skeptical faith” or, perhaps, the beginning of a “skepticism within faith.” In that sense, revolution is named this practical dream of the soul (sueño práctico del alma), referring to at least three characteristics: revolution is an ideal (sueño) that must be achieved urgently (práctica) and, above all, it is something that implies passion and fidelity (alma). However, this dream acquires a dramatic tone as the poem reveals the tension between faith and doubt, and between a passion for the truth and the tendency to self-criticize in the present.

7  A POET OF LOST CAUSES 

153

The poem concludes with the need to give. There is something that cannot be explained and that the poet resolves with the metaphors of the key, the hat, and that letter addressed to humanity. For Hart (1987, 57), that letter is the poem itself since what one tries to give (with that letter, with that poem) is the capacity to fearlessly face the dark side of one’s faith. This is a poem that from the outset is critical of the category of identity because Vallejo realized that identity is inherently in danger of stagnation. If this poem questions that tendency it is because it knows that the rigidity that goes hand in hand with identity can ultimately betray revolutionary practice. Let us examine a new poem about this (Vallejo 2012, b, 583–585): Beware, Spain, of your own Spain! Beware the sickle without the hammer, beware the hammer without the sickle! Beware the victim in spite of himself, the executioner in spite of himself and the indifferent one in spite of himself! Beware him, who, before the cock crows, would thrice deny you, and him who afterwards denied you thrice! Beware the skulls without the crossbones, and the crossbones without the skulls! Beware the newly empowered! Beware the one who feeds on your corpses, who devours your dead living! Beware the loyal a hundred percent! Beware the sky closer to the air and beware the air beyond the sky! Beware the ones who love you! Beware your heroes! Beware your dead! Beware the Republic! Beware the future! . . .

Let us say along with Eagleton (1998, 267) that Vallejo realized that “revolutionary time was not identical to itself either.” Here the word beware (cuídate) acquires a special political force. With it, the poem highlights an internal threat to the present conjuncture. In the verses beware means

154 

V. VICH

“Take care of yourself and don’t be self-indulgent” and acts as a mandate to remain on alert, to know how to take distance and to attempt to surpass one’s own personal limits. No one doubts that Vallejo was a committed militant who stood passionately for the communist cause, but this does not mean that he could not distance himself from his own inertias. The verses state that the Republic must take care of itself because the Republic must never relinquish its own permanent internal revolution. Why does the poem insist that some characters must be taken care of themselves in spite of himself (a pesar suyo)? This image is important and we can phrase it as follows: “Beware of the victim, even if he or she is really a victim,” beware of the victim generating a discourse of false “goodness,” a discourse of “compassion” and not of social justice. Beware—moreover—of the executioner who executes without being able to intervene in the order he or she has received. And finally: beware of the indifferent one because he or she is opposed to action. This poem states that one must beware of all of these characters because they can all radicalize the evil they practice. The temporal play of some verses refers to both the present and the future. When the poem says beware your heroes!/ beware your dead! (cuídate de tus héroes!/ cuídate de tus muertos!), it is avoiding the temptation to build an idealized vision of the past as a false heroic story that ignores the continual display of social domination. When he says beware the one who feeds on your corpses/ who devours your dead living! (cuídate del que come tus cadáveres/ del que devora muertos a tus vivos!), he is criticizing those who do not understand that the past is a debt to be redeemed and, therefore, are unable to recognize it as the building block for the present. When it says beware the loyal a hundred percent!/ beware the ones who love you! (cuídate del leal ciento por ciento!/ cuídate de los que te aman!), it is not a cynical claim but rather an affirmation stemming from a deep sense of loyalty. It is about engaging one’s faith in a continuous process of questioning-itself and thus does not disengage from the event itself. It is a type of questioning that requires greater commitment and more work. When the verse says beware the sickle without the hammer, beware the hammer without the sickle! (cuídate de la hoz sin el martillo, cuídate del martillo sin la hoz!), it points out, on the one hand, the need for a new political articulation between workers and peasants, but also to the fact that one part does not guarantee the effective operation of the whole. For this reason, the poem maintains that every revolution must also take care of its

7  A POET OF LOST CAUSES 

155

own revolutionaries. For Vallejo, communism, more than a solution, was a problem that “had to be reinvented in every historical sequence” (Žižek 2011b, 11). This is a poem that prompts one to observe the darkness in one’s own faith. For Badiou (2004a, b, 107), “the simulacrum has all the formal features of truth” and, thus, the subject must be alert to facts that suggest certainty when we know that there is none. The verb “take care” implies “be always attentive,” a form of vigilance before any development that is always unpredictable. Lazzarato has asserted: “To have ready-­ made answers to new problems is to let the event escape.” This is, in short, a poem that shows how faith can fracture, but at the same time, how it tries to reinvent itself despite the crisis. As with Agamben (2011, 28), we can say that Vallejo is a poet who “broke the vertebrae of his time” and who was aware of its failure and its breaking point. Vallejo’s questioning does not disassemble faith itself, but recognizes the ever-erratic nature of the future. Let’s look at a new poem (Vallejo 2012, b, 375): I like this life much less today, but I always enjoy living: no wonder. I almost touched part of my everything but refrained with a shot on the tongue behind my word. Today I finger my chin retreating, and in these momentary trousers I tell myself: So much life and never! So many years and forever my weeks! . . . My parents buried with their stone and their sad stretch unending; brothers of full body, my brothers, and lastly my own self standing, in a vest. I like life hugely, but, of course with my dear death and my coffee, observing the bushy chestnut trees of Paris, and saying: This is an eye, and that one; this a forehead, that one . . . And once again: So much life and the tune never lets me down! So many years and forever, forever, forever!

156 

V. VICH

I said vest, I said everything, part, yearning, said almost so as not to cry. I say it’s true I suffered in that hospital next-door. and that it’s wrong and right to have looked up and down my organism. I shall always like to live, even lying on my stomach, because, as I was saying and now say once more: So much life and never! So many years, and forever, lots of forever, always forever!

This poem describes an attempt at an ultimate reconciliation with life, a moment when subjectivity accepts itself with its inherent void, its structural complexity and its destructive excess. However, the poem is more than that. It is also about how this inclination to excess could open up new political possibilities. The first stanza would seem to suggest that an immense sadness is being overcome. The poem reconstructs this situation within the framework of a subjectivity that recognizes its own broken condition (I like this life much less today/ hoy me gusta la vida mucho menos) while continuing to reaffirm its vital commitment to life (but I always enjoy living: no wonder/ pero siempre me gusta vivir: ya lo decía). This is a voice that recognizes the harshness of life and its perpetually antagonistic condition but, for some reason, has decided to locate itself elsewhere and begin to celebrate other things. Thus, while the poem places us before the recognition of a limit that is difficult to accept, it also affirms a new commitment to life. The passage of time is what defines life in a figurative sense. Here, the painful loss of parents and siblings is remembered with a recognition that therein lies an unending wound (que no ha acabado) and probably never will. When Vallejo introduces images like those of coffee (café), bushy chestnut trees (castaños frondosos) and a vest (chaleco), he does so because he chose to write a poetry where the great metaphysical problems (the existential pains or the intense joys of existence) are inscribed in the simplest and most ordinary things. However, none of this results in a distressing or depressing situation. In these verses, the voice appears to have made a choice and displays greater joy and confidence.

7  A POET OF LOST CAUSES 

157

The vehemence that radiates from this poem is produced by a repetitive structure. How many times is the word always (siempre) repeated? The answer is ten times. Why does this repetition occur? Once again, this is due to the need to show an excess or, rather, to regenerate it into a new political force. This is a poem about the existential flaw, about the inherent emptiness; but its final objective seems to be reconciliation with that emptiness, despite the inevitable nature of those symptoms: I shall always like to live, even lying on my stomach/ me gustará vivir siempre, así fuese de barriga, say the verses with dignity. Although the symptom shows a flaw that disturbs an apparent state of normality, and its presence reveals the way in which the drive is consuming us, and although never (jamás) (another word that appears frequently in the poem) is connected with the symptomatic, in which nothing works perfectly, the adverb always appears to channel that never elsewhere, to give it a different and more positive course. This is a poem that celebrates having been able “to go through the ghost,” having been able to identify with an excess in order to try to do something with it (Lacan 2005a, 281; Žižek 2001, 63). If Vallejo is a writer of the void and the excess, he is so because, from the beginning, he realized that “the only way to be truly human was to exceed the ordinary humanity” (Žižek 2011, 445). Vallejo is a writer who believes in truth as excess. He believes that excesses bring with them something disproportionate that disrupts the world and that, therefore, pose a threat to the social order. For this reason, his poetry does not run away from them and rather chooses to affirm them faithfully. In fact, in the last decade of his life, Vallejo put all his faith in the “communist idea” because he understood that this was the pivotal point around which the history of humankind could be reinvented. In the face of a long history of social oppression and a society unhinged by the movement of capital, Vallejo understood communism to be a utopian future that must always be defended. Let’s comment on a very political poem (Vallejo 2012, b, 563–565). He used to write in the air with his long finger ‘Long live the comrades! Pedro Rojas’: of Miranda de Ebro, the father and the man, the husband and the man, the railroad worker and the man, the father and even more the man, Pedro and both his deaths. Paper of wind, they killed him: pass! Quill of flesh, they killed him: pass! Warn all comrades, make haste!

158 

V. VICH

Pole on which they hung his rod, they killed him; they killed him at the foot of his long finger! They killed Pedro and Rojas, both at once! Long live the comrades at the head of his written air; and with this v of the vulture in the entrails of Pedro and of Rojas, of the hero and the martyr! Dead, they examined him, finding in his body a greater body for the soul of the world, and inside his jacket a dead spoon. Pedro used to eat as well, among the children of his flesh, and to clean and paint the table and live sweetly as a representative of the whole world. And this spoon remained in his jacket always, when he lay awake or when he slept, a dead living spoon and its symbols. Warn all comrades, make haste! Long live the comrades at the foot of this spoon forever! They have killed him, forcing him to die, Pedro, Rojas, the worker, the man, he who was born a tiny child, looking at the sky, and then grew up, turned red and fought against his cells, his nos, his not yets, his hungers, his bits and pieces. They have killed him gently amid the hair of his wife, Juana Vásquez, at the hour of the fire, in the year of the gunshot and when he was already closer to everything. Thus Pedro Rojas, after death, stood up, kissed his bloodied catafalque, cried for Spain

7  A POET OF LOST CAUSES 

159

and once again wrote in the air with his finger: ‘Long live the comrades! Pedro Rojas’. His corpse was full of world.

This poem narrates the death of an anonymous character, Pedro Rojas, but a death that does not mean a political defeat, much less the end of the battle.1 To the contrary: the need to communicate his death and the rumor that it activates by word of mouth serve as a cohesive instance of community, a force that will defeat injustice and change the social order. If something characterizes Pedro Rojas, it is his great political passion. A politics that he never tires of activating and that, after his sacrifice, survives in the spoken word of his companions. The epic—said Badiou (2009a, b, c, 50)—is the genre “that exhibits the courage of truth.” Indeed, this is the story of a character who is heroic in his stubbornness and faith. The verses present him as an agitator who felt he was the bearer of a truth that needed to be communicated. He is not, therefore, just any character but a complete militant. His very name, Pedro Rojas, is loaded with biblical and historical references. It refers both to the apostle who Jesus commissioned to build the church and to the communist event that heralds the arrival of an egalitarian world. We can say with Badiou (1999, 5) that Pedro Rojas’ entire life is reduced to a single enunciation. In repeating again and again long live the comrades (¡Viban los compañeros!) the character is sustaining what Marx and Engels proposed in the final evocation of the Communist Manifesto: “Proletarians of the world, unite” (Marx 1983, 61). In other words: this is a character who recognizes that there has been an event, an eruption of truth, and that its life mission is to tirelessly declare it. It is about a subject that arises parallel to the truth it declares. This person teaches that what matters is a permanent conviction. That faith, the truth that Pedro Rojas cannot fail to communicate, affirms that the world will only change once all human beings unite in the struggle to create a communist future. The verses compare the character to Christ because he has been killed by being forced to die: They have killed him, forcing him to die; pole on

1  In addition to the historical studies by Vélez and Merino (1984) on the origin of the poem, today we can add Santoja’s work (2018) who identified the possible identity of the character.

160 

V. VICH

which they hung his rod (obligándole a morir, lo han matado; palo en el que han colgado su madero). He has been killed on a tree, although he is also represented as an ordinary man, a simple railroader who had a wife and children, who painted in his house, and who lived like everyone else. Pedro writes with an erroneous spelling that, nevertheless, Vallejo recovers and makes his own (with this v of the vulture in the entrails/ con esta b de buitre en las entrañas) because he is the symbol of the popular from which a new political project must be born; a symbol that questions all imposition from above and that strives to construct a language between orality and the written word (Cornejo 1994, 241). Pedro Rojas was born in Miranda de Ebro but, like Lazarus, was resurrected in Spain to fight with conviction with his cells, his nos, his not yets, his hungers, his bits and pieces (con sus células, sus nos, sus todavías, sus hambres, sus pedazos). The poem recounts how Pedro finally cried for Spain, accepting defeat and bearing out the failure of his struggle. However, this does not mean that he stops fighting or changes sides. This poem is extremely solemn when it narrates how, after his death, Pedro Rojas performed a new act to communicate the truth of the communist event. Thus, by rewriting long live the comrades! (Viban los compañeros!) this character vindicates the meaning of his life, but also completes his life and intensifies it. It can be said, then, that this last sentence radically duplicates everything done previously (Butler 2001, 24–26). If his corpse was full of world (su cadáver estaba lleno de mundo), it was so due to a desire tirelessly affirmed and therein we can recognize “the indelible character of what is” (Lacan 2005a, 279). This is a poem in which truth triumphs over death because it points to something that is universal. Its project is excessive because its last words exceed the temporality of the enunciation and seek to become eternal. In fact, the poem places us before a victory that generates hope for the survivors. The figure of Pedro Rojas acquires a heroic character because his fidelity causes the event to resound through time. Beyond his apparent failure and the “lost causes,” Pedro Rojas is a militant who realizes that politics is “the continuation of the war for words” (Badiou 2007a, b, 7). Let us look at a new poem about this (Vallejo 2012, b, 585–587): Children of the world, If Spain falls—it’s a mere saying— if she falls from the sky downwards, let two earthly

7  A POET OF LOST CAUSES 

plates grab her forearm with a halter; children, what an age this of the concave brows! How early in the sun what I was telling you about! How soon on your chest the ancient din! How old your 2 in the notebook! Children of the world, mother Spain is burdened with her belly; our teacher is present with her ferules, she is mother and teacher, cross and wood, because she gave you height, vertigo and division and sum, children; she is with herself, litigant parents! If she falls—it’s a mere saying—if Spain falls from the earth downwards, children, how much you will stop growing! How the year will punish the month! How the teeth will still be ten, the down-stroke still be diphthonged, the medal still be tears! How long is the lamb going to remain tied by the leg to the big inkwell! How you will go down the steps of the alphabet as far as the letter in which sadness was born! Children, sons of the warriors, in the meantime, lower your voice, for Spain is presently disbursing her energy among the animal kingdom, the flowers, the comets and men. Lower your voice, for she is with her rigour, so big, not knowing what to do, and on her hand the skull is talking, and it talks and talks, the skull, the one with the braid, the skull, the one of life! Lower your voice, I tell you; lower your voice, the song of the syllables, the crying of matter and the lower rumour of the pyramids, and even of the brows that walk on two stones! Lower your breath, and

161

162 

V. VICH

if the forearm lowers, if the ferules sound, if night falls, if the sky fits inside two earthly limbos, if there’s noise in the sound of doors, if I’m late, if you see no one, if you are frightened by the tipless pencils, if mother Spain falls—it’s a mere saying— go out, children of the world, go look for her! . . .

This is a poem that builds a new “subjective position” in those who have been defeated. By “subjective position” is meant a new way of coming face to face with reality, a way of upholding certain truths. It is not a matter of transmitting new knowledge, but of challenging children to not decline, to insist with stubbornness on building a just society. Vallejo was a primary school teacher and this poem draws on that experience. The poem leaves the children with a “task” that boils down to one idea: if Spain falls, we must persist; if it falls, we must not stop fighting. The entire anaphoric structure of the poem fulfills the same tireless function. If Spain falls, that defeat cannot become synonymous with oblivion; if Spain falls, we must maintain a stubborn will to fight. For Vallejo, the point is that there has been an event and that is a test of truth. What then is the location of the event? What is its proper name if it has one? What, in short, is the event itself? Again, it is the eruption of the “communist idea” as a historical vision of the future, as a reactivation of old political struggles, as a permanent demand for equality (of void) and justice (of excess). Vallejo feels that this cannot be doubted and that we must start from there. Although he observes that the war is being lost, although he realizes that something is abated (the entire poem is written repeating the conditional), although he recognizes, tearfully, that there is something that can fall from the sky downwards, let two earthly plates grab her forearm (del cielo abajo su antebrazo que asen), this does not mean that the revealed truth has to be abandoned. From the beginning of the poem, Spain appears as “mother” and “teacher.” As “mother,” it represents protection, shelter, a bond that survives burdened with her belly (vientre a cuestas), with her ferules (férulas), with her internal division (división), and with the fear of being close to death. In fact, here the mother is about to be crucified. Hence the allusion to children becomes urgent. They must save her, help her, and be the

7  A POET OF LOST CAUSES 

163

ones to affirm that life can defeat death and that justice can defeat power. Here, an important representation arises through the figure of the children: Vallejo justifies the need to declare himself a “child” of this event. In other words: what must come will no longer be a time of the “father” but a “time of the son,” a new time that must no longer be based on the “wise discourse” but on faith, on the absolute conviction of being part of a truth (Badiou 1999, 46). In this poem, children represent this new conviction. The “teacher” symbol is more dispersed throughout the poem. The entire text is loaded with a school-house vocabulary referring to a learning process that could be truncated if fascism wins (Higgins 1989; Rowe 2006): plates (laminas), down-stroke (palote), diphthonged (diptongo), alphabet (alfabeto), syllables (sílabas), tipless pencils (lápices sin punta) are words that run through the verses and have been put forward due to the number of symbols that each of them summons. Vallejo thought that the volunteers for the Republic were “teaching” the world how to affirm a truth, how to defend it, how to take the first steps towards a truly communist society. The poem realizes that this project is close to being truncated and defeated, but, despite it all, the verses don’t hesitate to say that Spain must continue to be a “teacher” and set an example to the world. The poem is writing its own apocalyptic discourse and that is why images announcing what will happen if Spain falls appear. Vallejo has changed the expression “procedural parts” to “procedural parents” to describe an authoritarian discourse that wants to impose itself with violence. How soon on your chest the ancient din! (¡Qué pronto en vuestro pecho el ruido anciano!), he says in another verse to affirm the historical setback implied by fascism. That is why—if fascism wins the war—children will stop growing, nature will no longer be free, and a single version of history will be imposed. Ortega (2014, 221) has argued that, for this poem, this defeat will be so brutal that children will lose their language and adults will lose their humanity (Higgins 1989). However, the poem ends with a new battle tactic, which is for the children to keep the noise down. From there, the idea is to generate a complicity between the poetic enunciation and its own referent. The expression lower your voice (bajad la voz) is important because the idea is to extract strength from defeat, courage from pain, and fortitude from fragility. Eagleton (2010a, b, c, 100) has asserted that “power abhors weakness because it rubs its secret weakness in it,” and that is why these verses opt

164 

V. VICH

for the “minor tone” in what is almost an apology for weakness. Put another way, where power is ever loquacious, the poem proposes that resistance must be silent; where power speaks aloud, resistance must opt for rumor. If Spain is dying, the children must resurrect it through a duel. Julio Vélez has pointed out that the mention of the skull (calavera) is an allusion to Hamlet’s famous monologue, but perhaps it is also an allusion to the episode of the cemetery when Hamlet finds the skull of the jester with whom he played as a child (act five, scene I). When he sees it, he is saddened because he realizes that death is a force capable of erasing everything. Then, he notes with horror that death unifies all people because any skull (Hamlet thinks, for example, in that of Alexander the Great) can be equated to the one he holds in his hands. However, the gravedigger tells him that the skulls of the workers are much better preserved because, due to the effects of work, they tan less, and thus their uniqueness perseveres a little longer. Perhaps, then, the message of the poem becomes a little clearer: popular demands are better able to withstand the test of time. Let us return to some verses: Lower your voice, I tell you; lower your voice, the song of the syllables, the crying of matter and the lower rumour of the pyramids, and even of the brows that walk on two stones!

The last verse alludes to the gulf that exists between thinking and acting. Notice how, in the end, reason can cower before the subject—as if it were carrying two stones—making it impossible for reason to do anything about it. “What is more noble for the soul? To suffer the blows and darts of an outrageous fortune or to arm oneself against a sea of sorrows and having to face them,” Hamlet asks himself in the famous monologue (Shakespeare 2017, 128). In fact, his is the story of a postponed revenge, of the dilemma that lies between acting and not acting, and this poem takes up that dilemma again but redirects it elsewhere: it is not a question of remaining unmoved in the face of adversity nor of uncontrollably challenging existing dangers, but of sustaining a silent but stubborn resistance and continuing to challenge the exercise of power. That is why, unlike Hamlet, who remains largely on the meditative plane because he finds it difficult to reconcile reflection and action, the poem calls for a new task, with a new political strategy. Vallejo does not invoke the children of Spain as nationalistic subjects. Any kind of historical

7  A POET OF LOST CAUSES 

165

particularism is discarded because Vallejo knows that the truth of the event names a universal movement. Hence, the verses call on the children of the world, because what is happening in Spain is something that concerns the whole of humanity, something that will have consequences throughout history. Read the following verses again: lower your voice, for Spain is presently disbursing her energy among the animal kingdom, the flowers, the comets and men.

In this poem, Spain has become a cosmic place irradiating energy into the flora, fauna, stars, and human beings all over the world. Spain has become the “part” that represents the “whole.” Even more, it has become that “part” from which the whole could be reconstructed. Vallejo is a poet of universalism, but not one who invents classical humanism (based on the construction of human “essences” removed from power relations). Instead, his poetry is one that emerges from historical antagonisms and from those who have been excluded from everything. Vallejo’s strategy is therefore to propose patience and perseverance: as Badiou (1999, 101) has sustained: “hope is not hope of an objective victory; it is the subjective modality of a victory of the universal.” In short, this is a poem that incites a defense of the “communist idea” beyond its defeat. With courage, the verses invite the defense of those “lost causes” that stand for nothing other than equality and the need for justice. It is these children who must re-subjectivize humanity because what characterizes them as children is precisely the act of living with an openness to new identities (Agamben 2012, 29). What is this opening in history? What is the goal? We must repeat it to the point of exhaustion: that of a just and equal world, at last. “The event,” says Badiou (1999: 53), “has not come to prove something; it is always just the beginning.” * * * Let us comment, finally, on the famous poem “Masses” (“Masa”). In Vallejo’s poetry the recovery of the will is understood as an adherence to the truth, as a decision not to give up, as the stubborn insistence on defending everything that has been activated by an event. In this poem, Vallejo honors those who, with conviction, form a new collective project, gain new political spaces and

166 

V. VICH

build what Hallward (2010, 112) has called a “communism of the will.” Let us go directly to the text (Vallejo 2012, b, 581): At the end of the battle, and the combatant dead, a man came unto him and said: ‘Do not die, I love you so much!’ But the corpse, alas, kept on dying. Two men approached and repeated: ‘Do not leave us! Be brave! Come back to life!’ But the corpse, alas, kept on dying. Twenty, a hundred, a thousand, half a million came toward him, shouting: ‘So much love, and nothing can be done against death!’ But the corpse, alas, kept on dying. Millions of people surrounded him, with one common plea: ‘Stay here, brother!’ But the corpse, alas, kept on dying. Then, all the men of the earth surrounded him; moved, the sad corpse looked at them; he rose up slowly, embraced the first man; started to walk . . .

This poem emerges from a dramatic moment: the dead man is dead. It maintains that he has died recently and that his story is already a problem of the past. However, this begins to change due to a remarkable collective effort, an incitement born from the present moment. The poem thus acquires an unusual political force, stemming from an impossible act: a common plea brings together innumerable people in order to resurrect this dead man.2 Note that temporality is fundamental to these verses. As does Walter Benjamin (1989), we can argue that the poem proposes that pending historical accounts can be settled, that something can be done with the past

2  As we know, the image of this poem had already been advanced in a 1929 card: “The piety and mercy of people for people. If at the hour of a person’s death, the pity of all people were gathered together to prevent the death, that person would not die” (Vallejo 2002c, 523).

7  A POET OF LOST CAUSES 

167

and begin to radically transform it. In this poem, there is something of the past that “jumps in from behind” and breaks with the present. This text constructs a different temporality because the past can be redeemed. Consequently, the present is never adequately the present, but a moment that seems to be in flux, inserted in between a pending past and a future that can always become something different. Let us analyze the rhetorical progression and propose that the possibility of returning to the past to resurrect the dead carries with it two requirements. The first is the formation of a universal community. The key word of the poem is the adjective all (todos). It is only once all people in the world have gathered that it is possible for the dead man to rise. If someone were missing from this gathering, the dead man could not rise and would continue to die. Therefore, the gathering of all people in the world emerges as the first requirement for overcoming death and for realizing the impossible. Thanks to the adjective all, it is possible to overcome existing particularisms and avoid the pitfall of a specific identity. Badiou (2004a, b, 53) has argued that “only the truth is indifferent to differences” in order to take up again a new universalist ideal. In this poem, there is no appeal to any kind of foundation (religious, national, ethnic, ideological, etc.) other than belonging to simple humanity. Formed under a Christian ethic and having adopted a Marxist interpretation of history, Vallejo observes that a true project of political transformation needs to summon everyone equally. Against the current of postmodernism that fragments the struggles today, this poem assumes the urgent need to once again take up the great universal project. Mariátegui (1985, 161) had argued a few years earlier that “the old epic was the exaltation of the hero; the new epic will be the exaltation of the multitude.” That, however, is not enough to resurrect the dead. A second requirement is necessary. It is also a matter of having faith, of the stubborn wager that more people will join the common cause. The poem assumes a progressive logic whereby the negative results do not manage to discourage. Even though the dead do not rise, even though they continue to die more and more radically, no one is discouraged, and everyone continues to insist on the impossible. This requirement, then, invites one to become a faithful subject who must insist, at all cost, on the truth of the event. In Walter Benjamin’s (1989) famous image, historical materialism can only win the game by turning to theology. In this poem, theology is also the “dwarf” under the chessboard. The verses reference the resurrection

168 

V. VICH

of Lazarus, and that is why the political force achieved by the masses seems to come from somewhere else. Only a messianic force can inject a dimension substantial enough to change human history. The presence of messianism in this poem symbolizes, on the one hand, “the waiting of the event as justice” (Derrida 1995, 188) and, on the other, the revolutionary act presented as the retroactive redemption of past failed acts (‘Žižek 2014, 105). Let us remember Mariátegui: But man, as philosophy defines him, is a metaphysical animal. He does not live fruitfully without a metaphysical conception of life. The myth moves man in history. Without a myth, man’s existence has no historical meaning. History is made by men possessed and enlightened by a superior belief, by a superhuman hope. (1981, 24)

The verses of this poem describe a project that is certainly disproportionate and impossible (to bring together all the people of the world) but, nevertheless, this task is proposed as the key demand of politics. Its main objective is the stubborn wager to build an enormous collective that will redeem the entirety of human history. For this poem, the formation of the community is the Real (Lacanian) political challenge. In a remarkable way, the poem recovers an old mythical image to try to overcome it historically (DidiHuberman 2006, 131). What follows is a shocking challenge: if we allow the dead to simply remain dead, if we leave the dead as dead, it will not only mean that “others” killed them, it will not only refer to what happened in the past but, most importantly, it will mean that we were incapable of resurrecting them, that we were unable to redeem the horror of history. This poem forces us to think about politics in a different way. Vallejo encourages us to think about politics as an excess understood as impossible, as a tireless fidelity that becomes a new ethic. Badiou (2009b, 68) has argued: “all truth is first of all a power. It has power over its own infinite becoming.” Unlike the orthodoxy of the moment, Vallejo knew well that the new universal class, the proletariat, was not constituted a priori, but had to result from a new political will and, above all, from a heterogeneous gathering of elements. In this poem, the universal class is no longer exactly a “class” but a new “collective will” (Laclau 2014, 17). “Masses” is one of Vallejo’s most famous poems perhaps because it shows that, despite the “lost causes,” we must never stop crying out for a possible utopia. * * *

7  A POET OF LOST CAUSES 

169

“What to do when history has broken down and we must survive among the winners?” “How to seek meaning in loss and sustain memory against all forms of forgetfulness and pessimism?” These are the questions that Ana María Amar Sánchez (2010: 10–16) asks herself when studying texts that, like “Spain takes this cup away from me,” ask about the way in which political defeat is assimilated and about the ways of resisting the rules of the prevailing system. The “ethics of the Real” always points to the ultimate horizon of desire: it is an ethics that has been detached from cultural norms because it has come into contact with a truth that is located beyond any symbolic particularism. It is an ethics that attempts to free itself from a fantasy of balance and that assumes a cause that exceeds the subject and society itself. With Bataille (2008, 117), we could say that it is about something that pushes the individual beyond his or her limits and that invokes him or her to sacrifice themself, even risking their own life. This impulse to excess brings with it a religious character that Mariátegui had already explained in the following way: Socialism and syndicalism, despite their materialistic conception of history, are less materialistic than they seem. They are based on the interests of the majority, but they tend to ennoble and dignify life. Westerners are mystical and religious in their own way. Isn’t revolutionary emotion a religious emotion? (1985, 198)

Many of Vallejo’s poems argue that the only way to be truly human is to want to exceed common humanity and aspire to something greater. This reconciliation with the excess can only arise when the subject has decided to be faithful to the truth of the event. In one of his seminars, Lacan (2005b, 379) stated that “the only thing one can be guilty of is having given in to his desire” in order to emphasize that the subject must not allow him or herself to be blackmailed by the lack of guarantees. In many ways, Vallejo’s poetry promotes fearlessness in the face of the decisions and acts that they imply. It is a poetry that invites one to insist on truths beyond defeats. We must distinguish the losers from the defeated. This means understanding the irreconcilable gap between the resignation, acceptance or even betrayal of the latter and the resistance and memory of the former. The losers do not give up; they have made the decision to resist and are stubborn, obstinate in their convictions. (Sánchez 2010, 12)

170 

V. VICH

Ultimately, Vallejo is a poet who places us before an ethic of responsibility and conviction. Despite all the failures that have occurred, his poetry insists that we must go forward and aim for the impossible. Badiou (2003) has asserted that he will “call a subject to the process of linking the event and the procedure of fidelity.” For this reason, in many of these verses (i.e., in the descriptions of the volunteers of the Republic, by Pedro Rojas, by Ramón Collar, among others), Vallejo strives to represent the sacrifice of those who chose to sustain this desire and to transform it into an “act.” Many times these characters end up alone or fail, but they are heroic because their fidelity to the truth demonstrates the inherent failings of the symbolic. They represent the will to go beyond common sense, and the courage to convert drive into desire or, rather, to channel human excess into a new political choice. Communism tries to make it possible to convert work into individual choice. It is the deliberate effort, on a world historical scale, to universalize the material conditions in which voluntary and free action can prevail over involuntary work and passivity. Or even better: communism is the project through which voluntary action seeks to universalize the conditions in which a better voluntary action can take place. (Hallward 2010: 112)

In sum, these poems invoke the continuous defense of the “communist idea” in the fact of defeat because they incorporate a truth that can never be completely destroyed. Vallejo realized that “true ideas are indestructible and return whenever their death is announced” (Žižek 2011, 11). Thus, as the poet of the defeated, he tried to generate a different temporality to find a new time. Žižek (2011, 397) has stated that “the event is only possible in the form of resurrection.” Even if history demonstrates that these causes are irrevocably lost, and we are hammered daily by the impossibility of these causes, even if we are told that capitalism is the only possibility and that social justice is not possible, Vallejo’s poetry will always invite us to go out in search of Spain, to never cease to criticize power. From this point of view, Vallejo is always a poet of the present, a poet of the future, and the most contemporary poet of the world to come (Vallejo 2012, b, 583): Father dust, compounded of iron, may God save you and shape you as a man, father dust who marches on fire.

7  A POET OF LOST CAUSES 

171

Father dust who goes on to the future, may God save you, guide you, wing you, father dust who goes on to the future.

Bibliography The Translations into English from Vallejo’s Original Poems Are Taken from the Following Books Vallejo, César. 2012. The Complete Poems. Edited and translated by Michael Smith and Valentino Gianuzzi. Bristo: Shearsman Books.

References Agamben, Giorgio. 2011. Desnudez. Buenos Aires: Adriana Hidalgo. ———. 2012. Teología y lenguaje. Del poder de Dios al juego de los niños. Buenos Aires: las cuarenta. Badiou, Alain. 1999. San pablo o la fundación del universalismo. Barcelona: Anthropos. ———. 2003. El ser y el acontecimiento. Buenos Aires: Manantial. ———. 2004a. La ética: ensayo sobre la conciencia del mal. Barcelona: Herder. ———. 2004b. La ética. Ensayo sobre la conciencia del mal. México DF: Herder. ———. 2007a. Manifiesto por la filosofía. Buenos Aires: Nueva visión. ———. 2007b. Se puede pensar la política. Buenos Aires: Nueva visión. ———. 2009a. Teoría del sujeto. Buenos Aires: Prometeo. ———. 2009b. Pequeño manual de inestética. Buenos Aires: Prometeo. ———. 2009c. Compendio de metapolítica. Buenos Aires: Prometeo. Bataille, Georges. 2008. La noción de gasto. In La conjuración sagrada. Ensayos 1929–1939. Buenos Aires: Adriana Hidalgo. Benjamin, Walter. 1989. Tesis de filosofía de la historia. In Discursos interrumpidos I. Buenos Aires: Taurus. Butler, Judith. 2001. El grito de Antígona. Barcelona: el Roure. Cornejo Polar, Antonio. 1994. Escribir en el aire. Ensayo sobre la heterogeneidad socio-cultural en las literaturas andinas. Lima: Horizonte. Derrida, Jacques. 1995. Espectros de Marx. El estado de la deuda, el trabajo del duelo, la nueva internacional. Madrid: Trotta. Didi-Huberman, George. 2006. Lo que vemos, lo que nos mira. Buenos Aires: Manantial. Eagleton, Terry. 1998. Walter Benjamin. Hacia una crítica revolucionaria. Madrid: Cátedra. ———. 2010a. Los extranjeros. Por una ética de la solidaridad. Madrid: Paidós.

172 

V. VICH

———. 2010b. Sobre el mal. Barcelona: Península. ———. 2010c. Cómo leer un poema. Madrid: Akal. Escobar, Alberto. 1973. Cómo leer a Vallejo. Lima: PLV editor. Franco, Jean. 1984. César Vallejo. La dialéctica de la poesía y el silencio. Translated by Luis Justo. Buenos Aires: Editorial Sudamericana. González Vigil, Ricardo. 2009. Claves para leer a Vallejo. Lima: San Marcos. Hallward, Peter. 2010. Comunismo del intelecto, comunismo de la voluntad. In Sobre la idea del comunismo. Analía Hounie (comp.), 105–127. Buenos Aires: Paidós. Hart, Stephen. 1987. Religión, política y ciencia en la obra de Vallejo. London: Támesis books limited. Higgins, James. 1989. César Vallejo en su poesía. Lima: Seglusa editores. Lacan, Jacques. 2005a. El seminario 11. Los cuatro conceptos fundamentales del psicoanálisis [1964]. Buenos Aires: Paidós. ———. 2005b. Seminario 7. La ética del psicoanálisis [1959–1960]. Buenos Aires: Paidós. Laclau, Ernesto. 2014. Los fundamentos retóricos de la sociedad. Buenos Aires: Fondo de Cultura Económica. Mariátegui, José Carlos. 1981 [1925]. El alma matinal y otras estaciones del hombre de hoy. Lima: Amauta. ———. 1985 [1925]. La escena contemporánea. Lima: Amauta. Marx, Karl. 1983 [1848]. El manifiesto comunista. Madrid: Sarpe. Ortega, Julio. 2014. César Vallejo, una escritura de devenir. Taurus: Lima. Rowe, William. 2006. Ensayos vallejianos. Berkeley-Lima: Latinoamericana editores. Sánchez, Ana María Amar. 2010. Instrucciones para la derrota. Narrativas éticas y políticas de perdedores. Barcelona: Anthropos. Shakespeare, William. 2017 [1603]. Hamlet. Príncipe de Dinamarca. Traducción de Alvaro Custodio. Lima: editorial Cátedra Vallejo Vallejo, César. 2002c. Ensayos y reportajes completos. Edición, estudio preliminar y notas de Manuel Miguel de Priego. Lima: Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú. ———. 2012b. The Complete Poems, edited and translated by Michael Smith and Valentino Gianuzzi. Bristol: Shearsman Books. Vélez, Julio and Merino, Antonio. 1984. España en César Vallejo. Madrid: Fundamentos. Žižek, Slavoj. 2001. El sujeto espinoso. El centro ausente de la ontología política. Buenos Aires: Paidós. ———. 2011b. Primero como tragedia, después como farsa. Madrid: Akal. ———. 2014. Acontecimiento. Madrid: sexto piso.

CHAPTER 8

Vallejo and Political Art Beyond Death (Conclusions)

In this age of decadence of the social order, the artist’s most imperative duty is truth. José Carlos Mariátegui The future can only be anticipated in the form of risk. Jacques Derrida

César Vallejo would have been happy with an argument that underlined the usefulness of his work and his poetry. Without a doubt, it would have been a compliment for him to hear that his art revives an old didactic tradition and that it transcends its purely aesthetic function (Jameson 1992, 2013, 13). All of his writings observe that, although human beings, society, and art itself are alienated, this alienation is never definitive because “something” decisive can always occur. In this book, I have tried to argue that this “something” is the event, a turning point that reveals the presence of a truth. The poetry of César Vallejo does not shy away from making an affirmation and thus creates a poetic space where unquestionable truths are revealed. What is it? It is the “communist idea” understood as a political future, as the urgent need to regain control over the world and to build a just and egalitarian society. Vallejo’s poetry is consequential today amid postmodern disorientation, individualistic choice, authoritarian temptation, political cynicism, and hedonistic narcissism, because it constructs © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2024 V. Vich, César Vallejo, Studies in Revolution and Literature, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-33513-6_8

173

174 

V. VICH

images that force us to look at history from another perspective and to ask ourselves fundamental questions about the meaning of existence. His writings impress upon us an “ethical requirement” (Butler 2017, 104). I do not live comparing myself to anyone, nor to defeat anyone, nor even to outbid anyone. I live in solidarity and, at most, referring concentrically to others, but not competing with them. I’m not looking to break any records. I seek in myself the free and universal triumph of life. I do not seek to break the record of man over man, but the centripetal and centrifugal overcoming of life. One thing is the record of life and another thing is the triumph of life. Life is not war or a farce of war. It is hardly stimulus and noble stimulation. (Vallejo 2002a, 477 [1927])

In this book I have argued that Vallejo was a political poet from his first book of poetry onwards and that, little by little, he turned the “death drive” into a tool of political transformation. Although, in his early writings, the condition of pain was presented as a threat, his verses progressively reveal that he knew how to do something else with it. Pain is the sign of a void or an excess attached to the subject, but it is not necessarily something negative. Vallejo observed that lack activates desire and that this inclination to excess could be channeled differently. In fact, the nihilistic temptation is quickly overcome in this poetry because he is a writer who does not conceive of himself as a liberal subject. In Vallejo—this is very clear—the other comes first, first comes the bond, then the subject. Vallejo committed himself to questioning ordinary humanity in order to build new possibilities and point to the Real of existence. It was not a question, then, of representing humanity as it was, but of recognizing that humans are always capable of exceeding themselves when they are impacted by a truth. Vallejo saw in these marginal characters, the Russian proletarians and the volunteers who gave their lives for the Spanish Republic, the manifestation of a political force that could reverse human pain. His is, therefore, a poetic project that aims at the “human animal” (to vindicate the traumatic nature of humankind), but he does it to reach the “human being” who is nothing more than a just and solidary human, one who is truly integrated into (and never confronted by) his or her community. In this book, I have argued that there are two central elements that underly Vallejo’s poetry. These are the “ethics of the Real” and the “testimony of the event.” The first points to the “the part with no part” and, either through a lack or an excess, his poetry affirms that it is always possible to summon the emergence of something new. Vallejo is a poet who

8  VALLEJO AND POLITICAL ART BEYOND DEATH (CONCLUSIONS) 

175

writes from the materiality of the world to try to capture both what destabilizes it and what opens it up to new possibilities. As a dialectic writer, Vallejo shows existing antagonisms, but also the political possibilities that those contradictions can generate. “The radical politics - Athanasiou and Butler (2017: 149) have sustained  - faces the challenge of committing itself with a certain tension between the affirmative and the deconstructive.” This is, without a doubt, a poetry that always starts from a particular situation, but has the courage to recognize that there has been an event, a universal truth, and that it can exceed itself. Vallejo understands that the Real is the impossible, but he has discovered that something of that impossible has indeed occurred, thus allowing us to draw certain political lessons. He said it very clearly: “There are unanswered questions, which are the spirit of science and common sense made restless. There are answers without questions, which are the spirit of art and the dialectic conscience of things” (Vallejo 2002c, 483). The “ethics of the Real” is, then, an ethics that theorizes the excess or lack that splits the symbolic to build a truth, a policy, an answer, a “driving force of desire” (Žižek 2013, 159). The Real is the nucleus that reveals the very crisis of what we have understood by “reality.” Vallejo’s poetry discovers how the symbolic always presupposes a point of excess that works (politically) as the sign of a truth. In Vallejo’s poetry, truth concerns the subjective construction of a new world to inhabit, and the fact that the unfolding of that world inevitably passes through the attempt at a new nomination. To nominate is the main task of the poems, which works as the consequence of an ethics that has been built on the conscience of the lack or the excess (Montalbetti 2019). In its attempt to point to the truth this nomination, however, is transgressive because the existing symbolic order does not have the tools or because this disproportionate attempt exceeds the existing statutes. For that reason, Vallejo’s poems always start from a place of “non-knowledge” and are usually presented as an exercise in questioning the status of what is true. In this poetry, the very foundation of our social fabric—the foundation of language—is always being questioned. However, the crisis of truth does not activate a nihilistic skepticism but, rather, the search for and affirmation of alternatives. The theory of the event is one that aims to portray the discovery of a universal truth that lies beyond any particularism. Its encounter and genesis activate a personal resubjectivation and a commitment to share it. In his poetry, Vallejo celebrated those characters who wanted to change the coordinates of the

176 

V. VICH

possible and become what Badiou (2009a, b, c, 195) has called “act and place, an anonymous obstinacy.” Vallejo knew that real changes can only occur when driven by a consistent and affirmative willpower. Vallejo also knew that politics begins when one sets out, not to represent the victims, but to be faithful to the events of which the victims speak. That fidelity is only manifested by a decision. And that decision does not promise anything to anyone, in turn it is tied to a hypothesis. It is about the hypothesis of a politics of no domination, of the communist hypothesis established by Marx and that today must be re-founded. (Badiou 2007a, b, 52)

The defeat of Spain (as a hiatus in the “communist idea,” as it waits for a new universal project to emerge) was extremely painful and dramatic. However, today these verses invite us to continue to uphold these ideas despite this failure. Vallejo’s poetry defends communism as a political future that must continue to shape the world’s struggles; a force that must remain resolute in its attempt to transform the present. For Vallejo, communism was not just a discourse, but a stubborn practice, an inexorable political ethic. If communism is truly an ‘eternal’ Idea, then it functions as a Hegelian ‘concrete universality’: it is eternal not in the sense of a set of abstract universal characteristics that can be applied everywhere, but in the sense that it has to be reinvented with each new historical situation. (Žižek 2011, 11)

Despite the failures, Vallejo intuited that defeats accumulate energy and that the event cannot be discredited because of one crisis at a specific juncture: If mother Spain falls—It’s a mere saying—go out, children of the world, go look for her! (si la madre España cae—digo, es un decir—salid, niños del mundo; id a buscarla!). With this image, Vallejo affirmed that, despite the errors and defeats, it is not possible to give up on the need to build a just and unalienated world, a human world. Žižek has called this idea, that represents the stubborn choice to insist on the struggle despite the defeats, the act of “repeating Lenin.” What does this mean? REPEATING Lenin does NOT mean RETURNING Lenin; repeating Lenin is accepting that “Lenin is dead”, that his particular solution was a failure, even a monstrous failure, but that there was a spark of utopia in it that was worthy of salvation. To repeat Lenin is to distinguish between what

8  VALLEJO AND POLITICAL ART BEYOND DEATH (CONCLUSIONS) 

177

Lenin actually did and the field of possibilities he opened up, the tension between what he actually did, what “in Lenin was more than Lenin himself”. To repeat Lenin is to repeat not what Lenin did, but what he left to do, his lost opportunities. (Žižek 2011, 335)

Although, for a good part of the twentieth century, philosophy and art chose to deconstruct truths instead of affirming them and, for good reason, to warn us of the danger (political and epistemological) that any incisive affirmation of a truth brings with it, today, at the beginning of the twenty-first century, Vallejo’s poetry resurfaces to affirm that the recognition of errors and failures cannot presuppose abandoning the emergence of a truth—the demand for social justice, the communist truth. Indeed, this is something that must continue to challenge us at a profound level. Many of Vallejo’s poems show that history is not over and that, despite the defeats, the complete transformation of history remains an urgent task. Vallejo observes that the event takes something away from the world in order to open it up and point it towards something not yet realized, towards new possibilities. His poetry—and his literary work in general— tried to be faithful to this principle: always insist, persevere until the end, never give up: There are things like honor, shame, freedom and others worth dying for. Life is not merely life. Life is always accompanied by a certain excess; something for which one can risk one’s life. This is why I believe that we should rehabilitate today such terms as eternity, decision, courage and heroism. (Žižek 2006b, 103)

His poetry is didactic because he asks himself how to effectively transmit a rhetoric describing a truth that has been discovered. Vallejo knew that it is the function of art to show the limits of language and of our relationship to culture and thus reveal its arbitrary and historical character. That is why he always represents the fundamental incongruities—of the subject and of society—in order to underline how they, far from being a limitation, can become a positive predicament that spurs new political action (Žižek 2006a, 128). On the one hand, through his verses Vallejo revealed that the meaning of life is always in crisis but, on the other hand, he understood that art could never relinquish some form of response. Like all responses, his was a personal one, but also one that offered a universal idea; it was a testimony in its own right but, at the same time, a device for communicating a truth. Badiou (2009b, 68) explained it as follows:

178 

V. VICH

The poem is the local figure of a truth. It is also a programme of thought, a powerful anticipation, a forcing of the language by the advent of another language that is both immanent and created.

Vallejo wrote a poetry that explored culture’s latent possibilities. His poems are political for several reasons: because they do something new with language (they reach the edge of the unspeakable), because they propose new representations of the subject and society, and because they try to form an opinion. Vallejo is a poet who is not content with purely formal linguistic achievements because he understands poems as representations of a truth, a testimony of something true that is always seeking to unfold beyond itself. Vallejo understood that the meaning of life (and of art) lines in fidelity to the truth and in the stubborn insistence on it. That is why his poetry tried to merge the historical with the religious and Marxism with theology. Vallejo saw in Pedro Rojas not only a communist militant, but also the image of an artist who insists on giving course to what “does not cease to be written,” to what affirms what is true beyond death itself. (Lacan 2006, 114) It is often said that political art is “bad” because it is very circumstantial and has a short life. Many critics have repeated—to the point of exhaustion—that art that depends on a set of ideas ultimately becomes impoverished in both form and content. Vallejo’s poetry contradicts these statements and, rather, challenges us to define the artistic subject in ever more complex ways. “If one wants to perceive art in a strictly aesthetic way, it ceases to be perceived aesthetically,” Adorno (1971, 16) has argued with great lucidity. A great work of art sets a new era in motion. Vallejo wrote a radically political poetry that today appears to be one of the most powerful witnesses of humankind’s contemporary constitutive disorientation but also of that stubborn insistence on promoting real social change. “Contemporary,” says Agamben (2011, 22), “is the one who receives in full face the beam of darkness that comes from his time.” In Vallejo’s poetry, however, it is not a blinding darkness that proposes a cynical distance, but one that unleashes a greater commitment to the truth of the event. Badiou (2015, 144) has stated that “the tragic hero is always the one who chooses truth over meaning.” It is about the courage to elicit change. In this sense, Vallejo’s poetry is not afraid to confront the Real and, in turn, use it as a springboard from which to affirm a sense of agency and a project. Finally, Vallejo produced an art that always seeks to remake

8  VALLEJO AND POLITICAL ART BEYOND DEATH (CONCLUSIONS) 

179

itself beyond its fracture, an art that imagines the impossible, which is always current and which never dies because, as a result of the profound truth that it ushers, it has established itself as immortal (Agamben 2005, 91–95).

Bibliography References Adorno, Theodor. 1971. Teoría estética. Madrid: Taurus. Agamben, Giorgio. 2005. El hombre sin contenido. Barcelona: Altera. ———. 2011. Desnudez. Buenos Aires: Adriana Hidalgo. Badiou, Alain. 2007a. Manifiesto por la filosofía. Buenos Aires: Nueva visión. ———. 2007b. Se puede pensar la política. Buenos Aires: Nueva visión. ———. 2009a. Teoría del sujeto. Buenos Aires: Prometeo. ———. 2009b. Pequeño manual de inestética. Buenos Aires: Prometeo. ———. 2009c. Compendio de metapolítica. Buenos Aires: Prometeo. ———. 2015. Rapsodia para el teatro. Buenos Aires: Adriana Hidalgo. Butler, Judith. 2017. Cuerpos aliados y lucha política. Hacia una teoría performativa de la asamblea. Buenos Aires: Paidós. Butler, Judith, and Athena Athanasiou. 2017. Desposesión: lo performativo en los político. Buenos Aires: Eterna Cadencia. Jameson, Frederic. 1992. El posmodernismo o la lógica cultural del capitalismo tardío. Barcelona: Paidós. Jameson, Fredric. 2013. Bretch y el método. Buenos aires: Manantial. Lacan, Jacques. 2006. El seminario 20. Aun [1972–1973]. Buenos Aires: Paidós. Montalbetti, Mario. 2019. El pensamiento del poema. Santiago: Marginalia editores. Vallejo, César. 2002a. Artículos y Crónicas completas. Tomos I y II. Recopilación, prólogo, notas y documentación por Jorge Puccinelli. Lima: Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú. ———. 2002b. Correspondencia completa. Edición, estudio preliminar y notas de Jesús Cabel. Lima: Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú. ———. 2002c. Ensayos y reportajes completos. Edición, estudio preliminar y notas de Manuel Miguel de Priego. Lima: Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú. Žižek, Slavoj. 2006a. Órganos sin cuerpo: sobre Deleuze y consecuencias. Valencia: Pretextos. ———. 2006b. Arriesgar lo imposible. Conversaciones con Glyn Daly. Madrid: Trotta. ———. 2011. Primero como tragedia, después como farsa. Madrid: Akal. ———. 2013. El resto indivisible. Buenos Aires: Ediciones Godot.



List of Analyzed Poems Per Chapter

Chapter 2 Trilce XIII Trilce LXXIII I am going to speak of hope Payroll of bones Considering coldly, impartially Strumble between two stars Some days I get a fruitful, political desire

Chapter 3 Trilce LV Trilce XLIV Intensity and height A man passes with a loaf of bread on his shoulder… And if after all these words… The peace, the wasp, the heel, the flowing…

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2024 V. Vich, César Vallejo, Studies in Revolution and Literature, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-33513-6

181

182 

LIST OF ANALYZED POEMS PER CHAPTER

Chapter 4 The starving man’s wheel Standing on a stone… There is a man mutilated… He has just passed, the one who will come… The miners came out of the mine The beggars fight for Spain…

Chapter 5 Trilce LXXV The discovery of life Hear your mass, your comet… The wretched Trust the eyeglass, not the eye… Paris, October 1936

Chapter 6 Agape Trilce XIV Something identifies you with the one going away… The wretched supper The nine monsters Hymn for the volunteers of the Republic Battles

Chapter 7 He goes running, walking… Famished, solomonic, decent… Farewell recalling a goodbye Beware, Spain, of your own Spain! I like this life much less today… He used to write in the air with his long finger… Spain, let this cup pass from me Masses

Spanish Versions of the Analyzed Poems

Chapter 2 Trilce XIII Pienso en tu sexo. Simplificado el corazón, pienso en tu sexo, ante el hijar maduro del día. Palpo el botón de dicha, está en sazón. Y muere un sentimiento antiguo degenerado en seso. Pienso en tu sexo, surco más prolífico y armonioso que el vientre de la Sombra, aunque la Muerte concibe y pare de Dios mismo. Oh Conciencia, pienso, sí, en el bruto libre que goza donde quiere, donde puede. Oh, escándalo de miel de los crepúsculos. Oh estruendo mudo. ¡Odumodneurtse!

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2024 V. Vich, César Vallejo, Studies in Revolution and Literature, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-33513-6

183

184 

SPANISH VERSIONS OF THE ANALYZED POEMS

Trice LXXIII Ha triunfado otro ay. La verdad está allí. Y quien tal actúa ¿no va a saber amaestrar excelentes dijitígrados para el ratón Sí ...No ... ? Ha triunfado otro ay y contra nadie. Oh exósmosis de agua químicamente pura. Ah míos australes. Oh nuestros divinos. Tengo pues derecho a estar verde y contento y peligroso, y a ser el cincel, miedo del bloque basto y vasto; a meter la pata y a la risa. Absurdo, sólo tú eres puro. Absurdo, este exceso sólo ante ti se suda de dorado placer.

Voy a hablar de la esperanza

Yo no sufro este dolor como César Vallejo. Yo no me duelo ahora como artista, como hombre ni como simple ser vivo siquiera. Yo no sufro este dolor como católico, como mahometano ni como ateo. Hoy sufro solamente. Si no me llamase César Vallejo, también sufriría este mismo dolor. Si no fuese artista, también lo sufriría. Si no fuese hombre ni ser vivo siquiera, también lo sufriría. Si no fuese católico, ateo ni mahometano, también lo sufriría. Hoy sufro desde más abajo. Hoy sufro solamente. Me duelo ahora sin explicaciones. Mi dolor es tan hondo, que no tuvo ya causa ni carece de causa. ¿Qué sería su causa? ¿Dónde está aquello tan importante, que dejase de ser su causa? Nada es su causa; nada ha podido dejar de ser su causa. ¿A qué ha nacido este dolor, por sí mismo? Mi dolor es del viento del norte y del viento del sur, como esos huevos neutros que algunas aves raras ponen del viento. Si hubiera muerto mi novia, mi dolor sería igual. Si me hubieran cortado el cuello de raíz, mi dolor sería igual. Si la vida fuese, en fin, de otro modo, mi dolor sería igual. Hoy sufro desde más arriba. Hoy sufro solamente. Miro el dolor del hambriento y veo que su hambre anda tan lejos de mi sufrimiento, que, de quedarme, ayuno hasta morir, saldría siempre de mi tumba una brizna de yerba al menos. Lo mismo el enamorado. ¡Qué sangre la suya más engendrada, para la mía sin fuente ni consumo!

  SPANISH VERSIONS OF THE ANALYZED POEMS 

185

Yo creía hasta ahora que todas las cosas del universo eran, inevitablemente, padres o hijos. Pero he aquí que mi dolor de hoy no es padre ni es hijo. Le falta espalda para anochecer, tanto como le sobra pecho para amanecer y si lo pusiesen en una estancia oscura, no daría luz y si lo pusiesen en una estancia luminosa, no echaría sombra. Hoy sufro suceda lo que suceda. Hoy sufro solamente.

Nómina de huesos Se pedía a grandes voces: —Que muestre las dos manos a la vez. Y esto no fue posible. —Que, mientras llora, le tomen la medida de sus pasos. Y esto no fue posible. —Que piense un pensamiento idéntico, en el tiempo en que un         cero permanece inútil. Y esto no fue posible. —Que haga una locura. Y esto no fue posible. —Que entre él y otro hombre semejante a él, se interponga a         una muchedumbre de hombres como él. Y esto no fue posible. —Que le comparen consigo mismo. Y esto no fue posible. —Que le llamen, en fin, por su nombre. Y esto no fue posible. (Poesía completa, 228)

Considerando en frío, imparcialmente… Considerando en frío, imparcialmente, que el hombre es triste, tose y, sin embargo, se complace en su pecho colorado; que lo único que hace es componerse de días; que es lóbrego mamífero y se peina... Considerando que el hombre procede suavemente del trabajo y repercute jefe, suena subordinado; que el diagrama del tiempo

186 

SPANISH VERSIONS OF THE ANALYZED POEMS

es constante diorama en sus medallas y, a medio abrir, sus ojos estudiaron, desde lejanos tiempos, su fórmula famélica de masa... Comprendiendo sin esfuerzo que el hombre se queda, a veces, pensando, como queriendo llorar, y, sujeto a tenderse como objeto, se hace buen carpintero, suda, mata y luego canta, almuerza, se abotona... Considerando también que el hombre es en verdad un animal y, no obstante, al voltear, me da con su tristeza en la cabeza... Examinando, en fin, sus encontradas piezas, su retrete, su desesperación, al terminar su día atroz, borrándolo... Comprendiendo que él sabe que le quiero, que le odio con afecto y me es, en suma, indiferente... Considerando sus documentos generales y mirando con lentes aquel certificado que prueba que nació muy pequeñito... le hago una seña, viene, y le doy un abrazo, emocionado. ¡Qué más da! Emocionado... Emocionado... (Poesía completa, 260-61)

Traspié entre dos estrellas ¡Hay gentes tan desgraciadas, que ni siquiera tienen cuerpo; cuantitativo el pelo, baja, en pulgadas, la genial pesadumbre; el modo, arriba; no me busques, la muela del olvido, parecen salir del aire, sumar suspiros mentalmente, oír claros azotes en sus paladares! Vanse de su piel, rascándose el sarcófago en que nacen y suben por su muerte de hora en hora y caen, a lo largo de su alfabeto gélido, hasta el suelo.

  SPANISH VERSIONS OF THE ANALYZED POEMS 

¡Ay de tánto! ¡ay de tan poco! ¡ay de ellas! ¡Ay en mi cuarto, oyéndolas con lentes! ¡Ay en mi tórax, cuando compran trajes! ¡Ay de mi mugre blanca, en su hez mancomunada! ¡Amadas sean las orejas sánchez, amadas las personas que se sientan, amado el desconocido y su señora, el prójimo con mangas, cuello y ojos! ¡Amado sea aquel que tiene chinches, el que lleva zapato roto bajo la lluvia, el que vela el cadáver de un pan con dos cerillas, el que se coge un dedo en una puerta, el que no tiene cumpleaños, el que perdió su sombra en un incendio, el animal, el que parece un loro, el que parece un hombre, el pobre rico, el puro miserable, el pobre pobre! ¡Amado sea el que tiene hambre o sed, pero no tiene hambre con qué saciar toda su sed, ni sed con qué saciar todas sus hambres! ¡Amado sea el que trabaja al día, al mes, a la hora, el que suda de pena o de vergüenza, aquel que va, por orden de sus manos, al cinema, el que paga con lo que le falta, el que duerme de espaldas, el que ya no recuerda su niñez; amado sea el calvo sin sombrero, el justo sin espinas, el ladrón sin rosas, el que lleva reloj y ha visto a Dios, el que tiene un honor y no fallece! ¡Amado sea el niño, que cae y aún llora y el hombre que ha caído y ya no llora! ¡Ay de tánto! ¡Ay de tan poco! ¡Ay de ellos!

187

188 

SPANISH VERSIONS OF THE ANALYZED POEMS

Me viene, hay días, una gana ubérrima, política… Me viene, hay días, una gana ubérrima, política, de querer, de besar al cariño en sus dos rostros, y me viene de lejos un querer demostrativo, otro querer amar, de grado o fuerza, al que me odia, al que rasga su papel, al muchachito, a la que llora por el que lloraba, al rey del vino, al esclavo del agua, al que ocultóse en su ira, al que suda, al que pasa, al que sacude su persona en mi alma. y quiero, por lo tanto, acomodarle al que me habla, su trenza; sus cabellos, al soldado; su luz, al grande; su grandeza, al chico. Quiero planchar directamente un pañuelo al que no puede llorar y, cuando estoy triste o me duele la dicha, remendar a los niños y a los genios. Quiero ayudar al bueno a ser su poquillo de malo y me urge estar sentado a la diestra del zurdo, y responder al mudo, tratando de serle útil en lo que puedo, y también quiero muchísimo lavarle al cojo el pie, y ayudarle a dormir al tuerto próximo. ¡Ah querer, éste, el mío, éste, el mundial, interhumano y parroquial, provecto! Me viene a pelo, desde el cimiento, desde la ingle pública, y, viniendo de lejos, da ganas de besarle la bufanda al cantor, y al que sufre, besarle en su sartén, al sordo, en su rumor craneano, impávido; al que me da lo que olvidé en mi seno, en su Dante, en su Chaplin, en sus hombros. Quiero, para terminar, cuando estoy al borde célebre de la violencia o lleno de pecho el corazón, querría ayudar a reír al que sonríe, ponerle un pajarillo al malvado en plena nuca, cuidar a los enfermos enfadándolos,

  SPANISH VERSIONS OF THE ANALYZED POEMS 

189

comprarle al vendedor, ayudarle a matar al matador —cosa terrible— y quisiera yo ser bueno conmigo en todo.

Chapter 3 Trilce LV Samain diría el aire es quieto y de una contenida tristeza. Vallejo dice hoy la Muerte está soldando cada lindero a cada hebra de cabello perdido, desde la cubeta de un frontal, donde hay algas, toronjiles que cantan divinos almácigos en guardia, y versos antisépticos sin dueño. El miércoles, con uñas destronadas se abre las propias uñas de alcanfor, e instila por polvorientos harneros, ecos, páginas vueltas, sarros, zumbidos de moscas cuando hay muerto, y pena clara esponjosa y cierta esperanza. Un enfermo lee La Prensa, como en facistol. Otro está tendido palpitante, longirrostro, cerca a estarlo sepulto. Y yo advierto un hombro está en su sitio todavía y casi queda listo tras de éste, el otro lado. Ya la tarde pasó diez y seis veces por el subsuelo empatrullado, y se está casi ausente en el número de madera amarilla de la cama que está desocupada tanto tiempo ... allá ................................. enfrente.

Trilce XLIV Este piano viaja para adentro, viaja a saltos alegres. Luego medita en ferrado reposo, clavado con diez horizontes.

190 

SPANISH VERSIONS OF THE ANALYZED POEMS

Adelanta. Arrástrase bajo túneles, más allá, bajo túneles de dolor, bajo vértebras que fugan naturalmente. Otras veces van sus trompas, lentas asias amarillas de vivir, van de eclipse, y se espulgan pesadillas insectiles, ya muertas para el trueno, heraldo de los génesis. Piano oscuro ¿a quién atisbas con tu sordera que me oye, con tu mudez que me asorda? Oh pulso misterioso.

Intensidad y altura Quiero escribir, pero me sale espuma, quiero decir muchísimo y me atollo; no hay cifra hablada que no sea suma, no hay pirámide escrita, sin cogollo. Quiero escribir, pero me siento puma; quiero laurearme, pero me encebollo. No hay toz hablada, que no llegue a bruma, no hay dios ni hijo de dios, sin desarrollo. Vámonos, pues, por eso, a comer yerba, carne de llanto, fruta de gemido, nuestra alma melancólica en conserva. Vámonos! Vámonos! Estoy herido; Vámonos a beber lo ya bebido, vámonos, cuervo, a fecundar tu cuerva.

Un hombre pasa con un pan al hombro… Un hombre pasa con un pan al hombro ¿Voy a escribir, después, sobre mi doble?

  SPANISH VERSIONS OF THE ANALYZED POEMS 

Otro se sienta, ráscase, extrae un piojo de su axila, mátalo ¿Con qué valor hablar del psicoanálisis? Otro ha entrado a mi pecho con un palo en la mano ¿Hablar luego de Sócrates al médico? Un cojo pasa dando el brazo a un niño ¿Voy, después, a leer a André Bretón? Otro tiembla de frío, tose, escupe sangre ¿Cabrá aludir jamás al Yo profundo? Otro busca en el fango huesos, cáscaras ¿Cómo escribir, después, del infinito? Un albañil cae de un techo, muere y ya no almuerza ¿Innovar, luego, el tropo, la metáfora? Un comerciante roba un gramo en el peso a un cliente ¿Hablar, después, de cuarta dimensión? Un banquero falsea su balance ¿Con qué cara llorar en el teatro? Un paria duerme con el pie a la espalda ¿Hablar, después, a nadie de Picasso? Alguien va en un entierro sollozando ¿Cómo luego ingresar a la Academia? Alguien limpia un fusil en su cocina ¿Con qué valor hablar del más allá? Alguien pasa contando con sus dedos ¿Cómo hablar del no-yó sin dar un grito?

¡Y si después de tantas palabras… ¡Y si después de tantas palabras, no sobrevive la palabra! ¡Si después de las alas de los pájaros,

191

192 

SPANISH VERSIONS OF THE ANALYZED POEMS

no sobrevive el pájaro parado! ¡Más valdría, en verdad, que se lo coman todo y acabemos! ¡Haber nacido para vivir de nuestra muerte! ¡Levantarse del cielo hacia la tierra por sus propios desastres y espiar el momento de apagar con su sombra su tiniebla! ¡Más valdría, francamente, que se lo coman todo y qué más da!... ¡Y si después de tánta historia, sucumbimos, no ya de eternidad, sino de esas cosas sencillas, como estar en la casa o ponerse a cavilar! ¡Y si luego encontramos, de buenas a primeras, que vivimos, a juzgar por la altura de los astros, por el peine y las manchas del pañuelo! ¡Más valdría, en verdad, que se lo coman todo, desde luego! Se dirá que tenemos en uno de los ojos mucha pena y también en el otro, mucha pena y en los dos, cuando miran, mucha pena... Entonces... ¡Claro!... Entonces... ¡ni palabra!

La paz, la abispa, el taco… La paz, la abispa, el taco, las vertientes, el muerto, los decílitros, el búho, los lugares, la tiña, los sarcófagos, el vaso, las morenas, el desconocimiento, la olla, el monaguillo, las gotas, el olvido, la potestad, los primos, los arcángeles, la aguja, los párrocos, el ébano, el desaire, la parte, el tipo, el estupor, el alma... Dúctil, azafranado, externo, nítido, portátil, viejo, trece, ensangrentado, fotografiadas, listas, tumefactas, conexas, largas, encantadas, pérfidas...

  SPANISH VERSIONS OF THE ANALYZED POEMS 

Ardiendo, comparando, viviendo, enfureciéndose, golpeando, analizando, oyendo, estremeciéndose, muriendo, sosteniéndose, situándose, llorando... Después, éstos, aquí, después, encima, quizá, mientras, detrás, tánto, tan nunca, debajo, acaso, lejos, siempre, aquello, mañana, cuánto, cuánto!... Lo horrible, lo suntuario, lo lentísimo, lo augusto, lo infructuoso, lo aciago, lo crispante, lo mojado, lo fatal, lo todo, lo purísimo, lo lóbrego, lo acerbo, lo satánico, lo táctil, lo profundo...

Chapter 4 La rueda del hambriento Por entre mis propios dientes salgo humeando, dando voces, pujando, bajándome los pantalones... Váca mi estómago, váca mi yeyuno, la miseria me saca por entre mis propios dientes, cogido con un palito por el puño de la camisa. Una piedra en que sentarme ¿no habrá ahora para mí? Aun aquella piedra en que tropieza la mujer que ha dado a luz, la madre del cordero, la causa, la raíz, ¿ésa no habrá ahora para mí? ¡Siquiera aquella otra, que ha pasado agachándose por mi alma! Siquiera

193

194 

SPANISH VERSIONS OF THE ANALYZED POEMS

a calcárida o la mala (humilde océano) o la que ya no sirve ni para ser tirada contra el hombre, ¡ésa dádmela ahora para mí! Siquiera la que hallaren atravesada y sola en un insulto, ¡ésa dádmela ahora para mí! Siquiera la torcida y coronada, en que resuena solamente una vez el andar de las rectas conciencias, o, al menos, esa otra, que arrojada en digna curva, va a caer por sí misma, en profesión de entraña verdadera, ¡ésa dádmela ahora para mí! Un pedazo de pan, ¿tampoco habrá ahora para mí? Ya no más he de ser lo que siempre he de ser, pero dadme una piedra en que sentarme, pero dadme, por favor, un pedazo de pan en que sentarme, pero dadme en español algo, en fin, de beber, de comer, de vivir, de reposarse, y después me iré... Hallo una extraña forma, está muy rota y sucia mi camisa y ya no tengo nada, esto es horrendo. (Poesía completa: 277-278)

Parado en una piedra Parado en una piedra, desocupado, astroso, espeluznante, a la orilla del Sena, va y viene. Del río brota entonces la conciencia, con peciolo y rasguño de árbol ávido: del río sube y baja la ciudad, hecha de lobos abrazados. El parado la ve yendo y viniendo, monumental, llevando sus ayunos en la cabeza cóncava, en el pecho sus piojos purísimos y abajo su pequeño sonido, el de su pelvis, callado entre dos grandes decisiones,

  SPANISH VERSIONS OF THE ANALYZED POEMS 

195

y abajo, más abajo, un papelito, un clavo, una cerilla... ¡Este es, trabajadores, aquel que en la labor sudaba para afuera, que suda hoy para adentro su secreción de sangre rehusada! Fundidor del cañón, que sabe cuántas zarpas son acero, tejedor que conoce los hilos positivos de sus venas, albañil de pirámides, constructor de descensos por columnas serenas, por fracasos triunfales, parado individual entre treinta millones de parados, andante en multitud, ¡qué salto el retratado en su talón y qué humo el de su boca ayuna, y como su talle incide, canto a canto, en su herramienta atroz, parada, y que idea de dolorosa válvula en su pómulo! También parado el hierro frente al horno, paradas las semillas con sus sumisas síntesis al aire, parados los petróleos conexos, parada en sus auténticos apóstrofes la luz, parados de crecer los laureles, paradas en un pie las aguas móviles y hasta la tierra misma, parada de estupor ante este paro, ¡qué salto el retratado en sus tendones! ¡qué transmisión entablan sus cien pasos! ¡cómo chilla el motor en su tobillo! ¡cómo gruñe el reloj, paseándose impaciente a sus espaldas! ¡cómo oye deglutir a los patrones el trago que le falta, camaradas, y el pan que se equivoca de saliva, y, oyéndolo, sintiéndolo, en plural, humanamente, ¡cómo clava el relámpago su fuerza sin cabeza en su cabeza! Y lo que hacen, abajo, entonces, ¡ay! Más abajo, camaradas, el papelucho, el clavo, la cerilla, el pequeño sonido, el piojo padre!

Existe un mutilado…

Existe un mutilado, no de un combate sino de un abrazo, no de la guerra sino de la paz. Perdió el rostro en el amor y no en el odio. Lo perdió en el

196 

SPANISH VERSIONS OF THE ANALYZED POEMS

curso normal de la vida y no en un accidente. Lo perdió en el orden de la naturaleza y no en el desorden de los hombres. El coronel Piccot, Presidente de “Les Gueules Cassées”, lleva la boca comida por la pólvora de 1914. Este mutilado que conozco, lleva el rostro comido por el aire inmortal e inmemorial. Rostro muerto sobre el tronco vivo. Rostro yerto y pegado con clavos a la cabeza viva. Este rostro resulta ser el dorso del cráneo, el cráneo del cráneo. Vi una vez un árbol darme la espalda y vi otra vez un camino que me daba la espalda. Un árbol de espaldas sólo crece en los lugares donde nunca nació ni murió nadie. Un camino de espaldas sólo avanza por los lugares donde ha habido todas las muertes y ningún nacimiento. El mutilado de la paz y del amor, del abrazo y del orden y que lleva el rostro muerto sobre el tronco vivo, nació a la sombra de un árbol de espaldas y su existencia transcurre a lo largo de un camino de espaldas. Como el rostro está yerto y difunto, toda la vida psíquica, toda la expresión animal de este hombre, se refugia, para traducirse al exterior, en el peludo cráneo, en el tórax y en las extremidades. Los impulsos de su ser profundo, al salir, retroceden del rostro y la respiración, el olfato, la vista, el oído, la palabra, el resplandor humano de su ser, funcionan y se expresan por el pecho, por los hombros, por el cabello, por las costillas, por los brazos y las piernas y los pies. Mutilado del rostro, tapado del rostro, cerrado del rostro, este hombre, no obstante, está entero y nada le hace falta. No tiene ojos y ve y llora. No tiene narices y huele y respira. No tiene oídos y escucha. No tiene boca y habla y sonríe. No tiene frente y piensa y se sume en sí mismo. No tiene mentón y quiere y subsiste. Jesús conocía al mutilado de la función, que tenía ojos y no veía y tenía orejas y no oía. Yo conozco al mutilado del órgano, que ve sin ojos y oye sin orejas.

Acaba de pasar el que vendrá… Acaba de pasar el que vendrá proscrito, a sentarse en mi triple desarrollo; acaba de pasar criminalmente. Acaba de sentarse más acá, a un cuerpo de distancia de mi alma, el que vino en un asno a enflaquecerme; acaba de sentarse de pie, lívido.

  SPANISH VERSIONS OF THE ANALYZED POEMS 

Acaba de darme lo que está acabado, el calor del fuego y el pronombre inmenso que el animal crió bajo su cola. Acaba de expresarme su duda sobre hipótesis lejanas que él aleja, aún más, con la mirada. Acaba de hacer al bien los honores que le tocan en virtud del infame paquidermo, por lo soñado en mí y en él matado. Acaba de ponerme (no hay primera) su segunda aflixión en plenos lomos y su tercer sudor en plena lágrima. Acaba de pasar sin haber venido.

Los mineros salieron de la mina Los mineros salieron de la mina remontando sus ruinas venideras, fajaron su salud con estampidos y, elaborando su función mental, cerraron con sus voces el socavón, en forma de síntoma profundo. ¡Era de ver sus polvos corrosivos! ¡Era de oír sus óxidos de altura! Cuñas de boca, yunques de boca, aparatos de boca (¡Es formidable!) El orden de sus túmulos, sus inducciones plásticas, sus respuestas corales, agolpáronse al pie de ígneos percances y airente amarillura conocieron los trístidos y tristes, imbuidos del metal que se acaba, del metaloide pálido y pequeño. Craneados de labor, y calzados de cuero de vizcacha, calzados de senderos infinitos,

197

198 

SPANISH VERSIONS OF THE ANALYZED POEMS

y los ojos de físico llorar, creadores de la profundidad, saben, a cielo intermitente de escalera, bajar mirando para arriba, saben subir mirando para abajo. ¡Loor al antiguo juego de su naturaleza, a sus insomnes órganos, a su saliva rústica! ¡Temple, filo y punta, a sus pestañas! ¡Crezcan la yerba, el liquen y la rana en sus adverbios! ¡Felpa de hierro a sus nupciales sábanas! ¡Mujeres hasta abajo, sus mujeres! ¡Mucha felicidad para los suyos! ¡Son algo portentoso, los mineros remontando sus ruinas venideras, elaborando su función mental y abriendo con sus voces el socavón, en forma de síntoma profundo! ¡Loor a su naturaleza amarillenta, a su linterna mágica, a sus cubos y rombos, a sus percances plásticos, a sus ojazos de seis nervios ópticos y a sus hijos que juegan en la iglesia y a sus tácitos padres infantiles! ¡Salud, oh creadores de la profundidad!. . . (Es formidable)

Los mendigos pelean por España… Los mendigos pelean por España mendigando en París, en Roma, en Praga y refrendando así, con mano gótica, rogante, los pies de los Apóstoles, en Londres, en New York, en Méjico. Los pordioseros luchan suplicando infernalmente a Dios por Santander, la lid en que ya nadie es derrotado. Al sufrimiento antiguo danse, encamízanse en llorar plomo social al pie del individuo, y atacan a gemidos, los mendigos, matando con tan solo ser mendigos.

  SPANISH VERSIONS OF THE ANALYZED POEMS 

199

Ruegos de infantería, en que el arma ruega del metal para arriba, y ruega la ira, más acá de la pólvora iracunda. Tácitos escuadrones que disparan, con cadencia mortal, su mansedumbre, desde un umbral, desde sí mismos, ¡ay! desde sí mismos. Potenciales guerreros sin calcetines al calzar el trueno, satánicos, numéricos, arrastrando sus títulos de fuerza, migaja al cinto, fusil doble calibre: sangre y sangre. ¡El poeta saluda al sufrimiento armado!

Chapter 5 Trilce LXXV Estáis muertos. Qué extraña manera de estarse muertos. Quienquiera diría no lo estáis. Pero, en verdad, estáis muertos. Flotáis nadamente detrás de aquesa membrana que, péndula del zenit al nadir, viene y va de crepúsculo a crepúsculo, vibrando ante la sonora caja de una herida que a vosotros no os duele. Os digo, pues, que la vida está en el espejo, y que vosotros sois el original, la muerte. Mientras la onda va, mientras la onda viene, cuán impunemente se está uno muerto. Sólo cuando las aguas se quebrantan en los bordes enfrentados y se doblan y doblan, entonces os transfiguráis y creyendo morir, percibís la sexta cuerda que ya no es vuestra. Estáis muertos, no habiendo antes vivido jamás. Quienquiera diría que, no siendo ahora, en otro tiempo fuisteis. Pero, en verdad, vosotros sois los cadáveres de una vida que nunca fue. Triste destino. El no haber sido sino muertos siempre. El ser hoja seca sin haber sido verde jamás. Orfandad de orfandades. Y sinembargo, los muertos no son, no pueden ser cadáveres de una vida que todavía no han vivido. Ellos murieron siempre de vida. Estáis muertos.

200 

SPANISH VERSIONS OF THE ANALYZED POEMS

Hallazgo de la vida

¡Señores! Hoy es la primera vez que me doy cuenta de la presencia de la vida. ¡Señores! Ruego a ustedes dejarme libre un momento, para saborear esta emoción formidable, espontánea y reciente de la vida, que hoy, por la primera vez, me extasía y me hace dichoso hasta las lágrimas. Mi gozo viene de lo inédito de mi emoción. Mi exultación viene de que antes no sentí la presencia de la vida. No la he sentido nunca. Miente quien diga que la he sentido. Miente y su mentira me hiere a tal punto que me haría desgraciado. Mi gozo viene de mi fe en este hallazgo personal de la vida, y nadie puede ir contra esta fe. Al que fuera, se le caería la lengua, se le caerían los huesos y correría el peligro de recoger otros, ajenos, para mantenerse de pie ante mis ojos. Nunca, sino ahora, ha habido vida. Nunca, sino ahora, han pasado gentes. Nunca, sino ahora, ha habido casas y avenidas, aire y horizonte. Si viniese ahora mi amigo Peyriet, le diría que yo no le conozco y que debemos empezar de nuevo. ¿Cuándo, en efecto, le he conocido a mi amigo Peyriet? Hoy sería la primera vez que nos conocemos. Le diría que se vaya y regrese y entre a verme, como si no me conociera, es decir, por la primera vez. Ahora yo no conozco a nadie ni nada. Me advierto en un país extraño, en el que todo cobra relieve de nacimiento, luz de epifanía inmarcesible. No, señor. No hable usted a ese caballero. Usted no lo conoce y le sorprendería tan inopinada parla. No ponga usted el pie sobre esa piedrecilla: quién sabe no es piedra y vaya usted a dar en el vacío. Sea usted precavido, puesto que estamos en un mundo absolutamente inconocido. ¡Cuán poco tiempo he vivido! Mi nacimiento es tan reciente, que no hay unidad de medida para contar mi edad. ¡Si acabo de nacer! ¡Si aún no he vivido todavía! Señores: soy tan pequeñito, que el día apenas cabe en mí. Nunca, sino ahora, oí el estruendo de los carros, que cargan piedras para una gran construcción del boulevard Haussmann. Nunca, sino ahora, avancé paralelamente a la primavera, diciéndola: «Si la muerte hubiera sido otra...». Nunca, sino ahora, vi la luz áurea del sol sobre las cúpulas del Sacré-Coeur. Nunca, sino ahora, se me acercó un niño y me miró hondamente con su boca. Nunca, sino ahora, supe que existía una puerta, otra puerta y el canto cordial de las distancias. ¡Dejadme! La vida me ha dado ahora en toda mi muerte.

  SPANISH VERSIONS OF THE ANALYZED POEMS 

Oye a tu masa, a tu cometa… Oye a tu masa, a tu cometa, escúchalos; no gimas de memoria, gravísimo cetáceo; oye a la túnica en que estás dormido, oye a tu desnudez, dueña del sueño. Relátate agatrrándote de la cola del fuego y a los cuernos en que acaba la crin su atroz carrera; rómpete, pero en círculos; fórmate, pero en columnas combas; descríbete atmosférico, ser de humo, a paso redoblado de esqueleto. ¿La muerte? ¡Opónle todo tu vestido! ¿La vida? ¡Opónle parte de tu muerte! Bestia dichosa, piensa; dios desgraciado, quítate la frente. Luego, hablaremos.

Los desgraciados Ya va a venir el día; da cuerda a tu brazo, búscate debajo del colchón, vuelve a pararte en tu cabeza, para andar derecho. Ya va a venir el día, ponte el saco. Ya va a venir el día; ten fuerte en la mano a tu intestino grande, reflexiona, antes de meditar, pues es horrible cuando le cae a uno la desgracia y se le cae a uno a fondo el diente. Necesitas comer, pero, me digo, no tengas pena, que no es de pobres la pena, el sollozar junto a su tumba; remiéndate, recuerda, confía en tu hilo blanco, fuma, pasa lista a tu cadena y guárdala detrás de tu retrato. Ya va a venir el día, ponte el alma.

201

202 

SPANISH VERSIONS OF THE ANALYZED POEMS

Ya va a venir el día; pasan, han abierto en el hotel un ojo, azotándolo, dándole con un espejo tuyo... ¿Tiemblas? Es el estado remoto de la frente y la nación reciente del estómago. Roncan aún... ¡Qué universo se lleva este ronquido! ¡Cómo quedan tus poros, enjuiciándolo! ¡Con cuántos doses ¡ay! estás tan solo! Ya va a venir el día, ponte el sueño. Ya va a venir el día, repito por el órgano oral de tu silencio y urge tomar la izquierda con el hambre y tomar la derecha con la sed; de todos modos, abstente de ser pobre con los ricos, atiza tu frío, porque en él se integra mi calor, amada víctima. Ya va a venir el día, ponte el cuerpo. Ya va a venir el día; la mañana, la mar, el meteoro, van en pos de tu cansancio, con banderas, y, por tu orgullo clásico, las hienas cuentan sus pasos al compás del asno, la panadera piensa en ti, el carnicero piensa en ti, palpando el hacha en que están presos el acero y el hierro y el metal; jamás olvides que durante la misa no hay amigos. Ya va a venir el día, ponte el sol Ya viene el día; dobla el aliento, triplica tu bondad rencorosa y da codos al miedo, nexo y énfasis, pues tú, como se observa en tu entrepierna y siendo el malo ¡ay! inmortal, has soñado esta noche que vivías de nada y morías de todo...

  SPANISH VERSIONS OF THE ANALYZED POEMS 

Confianza en el anteojo, no en el ojo… Confianza en el anteojo, no en el ojo; en la escalera, nunca en el peldaño; en el ala, no en el ave y en ti sólo, en ti sólo, en ti sólo. Confianza en la maldad, no en el malvado; en el vaso, más nunca en el licor; en el cadáver, no en el hombre y en ti sólo, en ti sólo, en ti sólo. Confianza en muchos, pero ya no en uno; en el cauce, jamás en la corriente; en los calzones, no en las piernas y en ti sólo, en ti sólo, en ti sólo. Confianza en la ventana, no en la puerta; en la madre, mas no en los nueve meses; en el destino, no en el dado de oro, y en ti sólo, en ti sólo, en ti sólo.

París, octubre 1936 De todo esto yo soy el único que parte. De este banco me voy, de mis calzones, de mi gran situación, de mis acciones, de mi número hendido parte a parte, de todo esto yo soy el único que parte. De los Campos Elíseos o al dar vuelta la extraña callejuela de la Luna, mi defunción se va, parte mi cuna, y, rodeada de gente, sola, suelta, mi semejanza humana dase vuelta y despacha sus sombras una a una. Y me alejo de todo, porque todo se queda para hacer la coartada: mi zapato, su ojal, también su lodo y hasta el doblez del codo de mi propia camisa abotonada.

203

204 

SPANISH VERSIONS OF THE ANALYZED POEMS

Chapter 6 Agape Hoy no ha venido nadie a preguntar; ni me han pedido en esta tarde nada No he visto ni una flor de cementerio en tan alegre procesión de luces. Perdóname, Señor: qué poco he muerto! En esta tarde, todos pasan sin preguntarme ni pedirme nada. Y no sé qué se olvidan y se queda mal en mis manos, como cosa ajena He salido a la puerta, y me da ganas de gritar a todos: Si echan de menos algo, aquí se queda! Porque en todas las tardes de esta vida, yo no sé con qué puertas dan a un rostro, y algo ajeno se toma el alma mía Hoy no ha venido nadie; y hoy he muerto qué poco en esta tarde!

Trilce XIV Cual mi explicación. Esto me lacera de tempranía. Esa manera de caminar por los trapecios. Esos corajosos brutos como postizos. Esa goma que pega el azogue al adentro. Esas posaderas sentadas para arriba. Ese no puede ser, sido.

  SPANISH VERSIONS OF THE ANALYZED POEMS 

205

Absurdo. Demencia. Pero he venido de Trujillo a Lima. Pero gano un sueldo de cinco soles.

Algo te identifica con el que se aleja de ti…

Algo te identifica con el que se aleja de ti, y es la facultad común de volver: de ahí tu más grande pesadumbre. Algo te separa del que se queda contigo, y es la esclavitud común de partir: de ahí tus más nimios regocijos. Me dirijo, en esta forma, a las individualidades colectivas, tanto como a las colectividades individuales y a los que, entre unas y otras, yacen marchando al son de las fronteras o, simplemente, marcan el paso inmóvil en el borde del mundo. Algo típicamente neutro, de inexorablemente neutro, interpónese entre el ladrón y su víctima. Esto, asimismo, puede discernirse tratándose del cirujano y del paciente. Horrible medialuna, convexa y solar, cobija a unos y otros. Porque el objeto hurtado tiene también su peso indiferente, y el órgano intervenido, también su grasa triste. ¿Qué hay de más desesperante en la tierra, que la imposibilidad en que se halla el hombre feliz de ser infortunado y el hombre bueno de ser malvado? ¡Alejarse! ¡Quedarse! ¡Volver! ¡Partir! Toda la mecánica social cabe en estas palabras.

La cena miserable Hasta cuándo estaremos esperando lo que no se nos debe… Y en qué recodo estiraremos nuestra pobre rodilla para siempre! Hasta cuándo la cruz que nos alienta no detendrá sus remos. Hasta cuándo la Duda nos brindará blasones por haber padecido…        Ya nos hemos sentado

206 

SPANISH VERSIONS OF THE ANALYZED POEMS

mucho a la mesa, con la amargura de un niño que a media noche, llora de hambre, desvelado… Y cuándo nos veremos con los demás, al borde de una mañana eterna, desayunados todos. Hasta cuándo este valle de lágrimas, a donde yo nunca dije que me trajeran.        De codos, todo bañado en llanto, repito cabizbajo y vencido: hasta cuándo la cena durará… Hay alguien que ha bebido mucho, y se burla, y acerca y aleja de nosotros, como negra cuchara de amarga esencia humana, la tumba…        Y menos sabe ese oscuro hasta cuándo la cena durará!

Los nueve monstruos I, desgraciadamente, el dolor crece en el mundo a cada rato, crece a treinta minutos por segundo, paso a paso, y la naturaleza del dolor, es el dolor dos veces y la condición del martirio, carnívora, voraz, es el dolor dos veces y la función de la yerba purísima, el dolor dos veces y el bien de sér, dolernos doblemente. Jamás, hombres humanos, hubo tánto dolor en el pecho, en la solapa, en la cartera, en el vaso, en la carnicería, en la aritmética! Jamás tánto cariño doloroso, jamás tan cerca arremetió lo lejos, jamás el fuego nunca jugó mejor su rol de frío muerto! Jamás, señor ministro de salud, fue la salud más mortal y la migraña extrajo tánta frente de la frente! Y el mueble tuvo en su cajón, dolor, el corazón, en su cajón, dolor, la lagartija, en su cajón, dolor.

  SPANISH VERSIONS OF THE ANALYZED POEMS 

Crece la desdicha, hermanos hombres, más pronto que la máquina, a diez máquinas, y crece con la res de Rousseau, con nuestras barbas; crece el mal por razones que ignoramos y es una inundación con propios líquidos, con propio barro y propia nube sólida! Invierte el sufrimiento posiciones, da función en que el humor acuoso es vertical al pavimento, el ojo es visto y esta oreja oída, y esta oreja da nueve campanadas a la hora del rayo, y nueve carcajadas a la hora del trigo, y nueve sones hembras a la hora del llanto, y nueve cánticos a la hora del hambre y nueve truenos y nueve látigos, menos un grito. El dolor nos agarra, hermanos hombres, por detrás, de perfil, y nos aloca en los cinemas, nos clava en los gramófonos, nos desclava en los lechos, cae perpendicularmente a nuestros boletos, a nuestras cartas; y es muy grave sufrir, puede uno orar... Pues de resultas del dolor, hay algunos que nacen, otros crecen, otros mueren, y otros que nacen y no mueren, otros que sin haber nacido, mueren, y otros que no nacen ni mueren (son los más). Y también de resultas del sufrimiento, estoy triste hasta la cabeza, y más triste hasta el tobillo, de ver al pan, crucificado, al nabo, ensangrentado, llorando, a la cebolla, al cereal, en general, harina, a la sal, hecha polvo, al agua, huyendo, al vino, un ecce-homo, tan pálida a la nieve, al sol tan ardio! ¡Cómo, hermanos humanos, no deciros que ya no puedo y ya no puedo con tánto cajón,

207

208 

SPANISH VERSIONS OF THE ANALYZED POEMS

tánto minuto, tánta lagartija y tánta inversión, tanto lejos y tánta sed de sed! Señor Ministro de Salud: ¿qué hacer? ¡Ah! desgraciadamente, hombres humanos, hay, hermanos, muchísimo que hacer. (Poesía completa, 319-321)

Himno a los voluntarios de la República Voluntario de España, miliciano de huesos fidedignos, cuando marcha a morir tu corazón, cuando marcha a matar con su agonía mundial, no sé verdaderamente qué hacer, dónde ponerme; corro, escribo, aplaudo, lloro, atisbo, destrozo, apagan, digo a mi pecho que acabe, al que bien, que venga, y quiero desgraciarme; descúbrome la frente impersonal hasta tocar el vaso de la sangre, me detengo, detienen mi tamaño esas famosas caídas de arquitecto con las que se honra el animal que me honra; refluyen mis instintos a sus sogas, humea ante mi tumba la alegría y, otra vez, sin saber qué hacer, sin nada, déjame, desde mi piedra en blanco, déjame, solo, cuadrumano, más acá, mucho más lejos, al no caber entre mis manos tu largo rato extático, quiebro con tu rapidez de doble filo mi pequeñez en traje de grandeza! Un día diurno, claro, atento, fértil ¡oh bienio, el de los lóbregos semestres suplicantes, por el que iba la pólvora mordiéndose los codos! ¡oh dura pena y más duros pedernales! !oh frenos los tascados por el pueblo! Un día prendió el pueblo su fósforo cautivo, oró de cólera y soberanamente pleno, circular, cerró su natalicio con manos electivas; arrastraban candado ya los déspotas y en el candado, sus bacterias muertas...

  SPANISH VERSIONS OF THE ANALYZED POEMS 

¿Batallas? ¡No! Pasiones. Y pasiones precedidas de dolores con rejas de esperanzas, de dolores de pueblos con esperanzas de hombres! ¡Muerte y pasión de paz, las populares! ¡Muerte y pasión guerreras entre olivos, entendámonos! Tal en tu aliento cambian de agujas atmosféricas los vientos y de llave las tumbas en tu pecho, tu frontal elevándose a primera potencia de martirio. El mundo exclama: “¡Cosas de españoles!” Y es verdad. Consideremos, durante una balanza, a quemarropa, a Calderón, dormido sobre la cola de un anfibio muerto o a Cervantes, diciendo: “Mi reino es de este mundo, pero también del otro”: ¡punta y filo en dos papeles! Contemplemos a Goya, de hinojos y rezando ante un espejo, a Coll, el paladín en cuyo asalto cartesiano tuvo un sudor de nube el paso llano o a Quevedo, ese abuelo instantáneo de los dinamiteros o a Cajal, devorado por su pequeño infinito, o todavía a Teresa, mujer que muere porque no muere o a Lina Odena, en pugna en más de un punto con Teresa... (Todo acto o voz genial viene del pueblo y va hacia él, de frente o transmitidos por incesantes briznas, por el humo rosado de amargas contraseñas sin fortuna) Así tu criatura, miliciano, así tu exangüe criatura, agitada por una piedra inmóvil, se sacrifica, apártase, decae para arriba y por su llama incombustible sube, sube hasta los débiles, distribuyendo españas a los toros, toros a las palomas... Proletario que mueres de universo, ¡en qué frenética armonía acabará tu grandeza, tu miseria, tu vorágine impelente, tu violencia metódica, tu caos teórico y práctico, tu gana dantesca, españolísima, de amar, aunque sea a traición, a tu enemigo!

209

210 

SPANISH VERSIONS OF THE ANALYZED POEMS

¡Liberador ceñido de grilletes, sin cuyo esfuerzo hasta hoy continuaría sin asas la extensión, vagarían acéfalos los clavos, antiguo, lento, colorado, el día, nuestros amados cascos, insepultos! ¡Campesino caído con tu verde follaje por el hombre, con la inflexión social de tu meñique, con tu buey que se queda, con tu física, también con tu palabra atada a un palo y tu cielo arrendado y con la arcilla inserta en tu cansancio y la que estaba en tu uña, caminando! ¡Constructores agrícolas, civiles y guerreros, de la activa, hormigueante eternidad: estaba escrito que vosotros haríais la luz, entornando con la muerte vuestros ojos; que, a la caída cruel de vuestras bocas, vendrá en siete bandejas la abundancia, todo en el mundo será de oro súbito y el oro, fabulosos mendigos de vuestra propia secreción de sangre, y el oro mismo será entonces de oro! ¡Se amarán todos los hombres y comerán tomados de las puntas de vuestros pañuelos tristes y beberán en nombre de vuestras gargantas infaustas! Descansarán andando al pie de esta carrera, sollozarán pensando en vuestras órbitas, venturosos serán y al son de vuestro atroz retorno, florecido, innato, ajustarán mañana sus quehaceres, sus figuras soñadas y cantadas! ¡Unos mismos zapatos irán bien al que asciende sin vías a su cuerpo y al que baja hasta la forma de su alma! ¡Entrelazándose hablarán los mudos, los tullidos andarán! ¡Verán, ya de regreso, los ciegos y palpitando escucharán los sordos! ¡Sabrán los ignorantes, ignorarán los sabios! ¡Serán dados los besos que no pudisteis dar! ¡Sólo la muerte morirá! ¡La hormiga

  SPANISH VERSIONS OF THE ANALYZED POEMS 

traerá pedacitos de pan al elefante encadenado a su brutal delicadeza; volverán los niños abortados a nacer perfectos, espaciales y trabajarán todos los hombres, engendrarán todos los hombres, comprenderán todos los hombres! ¡Obrero, salvador, redentor nuestro, perdónanos, hermano, nuestras deudas! Como dice un tambor al redoblar, en sus adagios: qué jamás tan efímero, tu espalda! qué siempre tan cambiante, tu perfil! ¡Voluntario italiano, entre cuyos animales de batalla un león abisinio va cojeando! ¡Voluntario soviético, marchando a la cabeza de tu pecho universal! ¡Voluntarios del sur, del norte, del oriente y tú, el occidental, cerrando el canto fúnebre del alba! ¡Soldado conocido, cuyo nombre desfila en el sonido de un abrazo! ¡Combatiente que la tierra criara, armándote de polvo, calzándote de imanes positivos, vigentes tus creencias personales, distinto de carácter, íntima tu férula, el cutis inmediato, andándote tu idioma por los hombros y el alma coronada de guijarros! ¡Voluntario fajado de tu zona fría, templada o tórrida, héroes a la redonda, víctima en columna de vencedores: en España, en Madrid, están llamando a matar, voluntarios de la vida! ¡Porque en España matan, otros matan al niño, a su juguete que se para, a la madre Rosenda esplendorosa, al viejo Adán que hablaba en alta voz con su caballo y al perro que dormía en la escalera. Matan al libro, tiran a sus verbos auxiliares, a su indefensa página primera!

211

212 

SPANISH VERSIONS OF THE ANALYZED POEMS

Matan el caso exacto de la estatua, al sabio, a su bastón, a su colega, al barbero de al lado -me cortó posiblemente, pero buen hombre y, luego, infortunado; al mendigo que ayer cantaba enfrente, a la enfermera que hoy pasó llorando, al sacerdote a cuestas con la altura tenaz de sus rodillas... ¡Voluntarios, por la vida, por los buenos, matad a la muerte, matad a los malos! ¡Hacedlo por la libertad de todos, del explotado, del explotador, por la paz indolora —a sospecho cuando duermo al pie de mi frente y más cuando circulo dando voces— y hacedlo, voy diciendo, por el analfabeto a quien escribo, por el genio descalzo y su cordero, por los camaradas caídos, sus cenizas abrazadas al cadáver de un camino! Para que vosotros, voluntarios de España y del mundo, vinierais, soñé que era yo bueno, y era para ver vuestra sangre, voluntarios... De esto hace mucho pecho, muchas ansias, muchos camellos en edad de orar. Marcha hoy de vuestra parte el bien ardiendo, os siguen con cariño los reptiles de pestaña inmanente y, a dos pasos, a uno, la dirección del agua que corre a ver su límite antes que arda.

Batallas Hombre de Extremadura, oigo bajo tu pie el humo del lobo, el humo de la especie, el humo del niño, el humo solitario de dos trigos, el humo de Ginebra, el humo de Roma, el humo de Berlín y el de París y el humo de tu apéndice penoso

  SPANISH VERSIONS OF THE ANALYZED POEMS 

y el humo que, al fin, sale del futuro. ¡Oh vida! ¡Oh tierra! ¡Oh España! ¡Onzas de sangre, metros de sangre, líquidos de sangre, sangre a caballo, a pie, mural, sin diámetro, sangre de cuatro en cuatro, sangre de agua y sangre muerta de la sangre viva! Extremeño, ioh no ser aún ese hombre por el que te mató la vida y te parió la muerte y quedarse tan sólo a verte así, desde este lobo, cómo sigues arando en nuestros pechos! iExtremeño, conoces el secreto en dos voces, popular y táctil, del cereal: jque nada vale tanto una gran raíz en trance de otra! Extremeño acodado, representando el alma en su retiro acodado a mirar el caber de una vida en una muerte! iExtremeño, y no haber tierra que hubiere el peso de tu arado, ni más mundo que el color de tu yugo entre dos épocas; no haber el orden de tus póstumos ganados! iExtremeño, dejásteme verte desde este lobo, padecer, pelear por todos y pelear para que el inviduo sea un hombre, para que los señores sean hombres, para que todo el mundo sea un hombre, y para que hasta los animales sean hombres, el caballo, un hombre, el reptil, un hombre, el buitre, un hombre honesto, la mosca, un hombre, y el olivo, un hombre y hasta el ribazo, un hombre y el mismo cielo, todo un hombrecito! Luego, retrocediendo desde Talavera, en grupos de uno a uno, armados de hambre, en masas de a uno, armados de pecho hasta la frente, sin aviones, sin guerra, sin rencor,

213

214 

SPANISH VERSIONS OF THE ANALYZED POEMS

el perder a la espalda, y el ganar más abajo del plomo, heridos mortalmente de honor, locos de polvo, el brazo a pie, amando por las malas, ganando en español toda la tierra, retroceder aún, y no saber dónde poner su España, dónde ocultar su beso de orbe, dónde plantar su olivo de bolsillo! Mas desde aquí, más tarde, desde el punto de vista de esta tierra, desde el duelo al que fluye el bien satánico, se ve la gran batalla de Guernica. Lid a priori, fuera de la cuenta, lid en paz, lid de las almas débiles contra los cuerpos débiles, lid en que el niño pega, sin que le diga nadie que pegara, bajo su atroz diptongo y bajo su habilísimo pañal, y en que la madre pega con su grito, con el dorso de una lágrima y en el que el enfermo pega con su mal, con su pastilla y su hijo y en que el anciano pega con sus canas, sus siglos y su palo y en que pega el presbítero con dios! Tácitos defensores de Guemica! ioh débiles! ioh suaves ofendidos que os eleváis, crecéis, y llenáis de poderosos débiles el mundo! En Madrid, en Bilbao, en Santander, los cementerios fueron bombardeados, y los muertos inmortales, de vigilantes huesos y hombro eterno, de las tumbas, los muertos inmortales, de sentir, de ver, de oír tan bajo el mal, tan muertos a los viles agresores, reanudaron entonces sus penas inconclusas, acabaron de llorar, acabaron de sufrir, acabaron de vivir, acabaron, en fin, de ser mortales!

  SPANISH VERSIONS OF THE ANALYZED POEMS 

¡Y la pólvora fue, de pronto, nada, cruzándose los signos y los sellos, ya la explosión salióle al paso un paso, y al vuelo a cuatro patas, otro paso y al cielo apocalíptico, otro paso y a los siete metales, la unidad, sencilla. justa, colectiva, eterna. Málaga sin padre ni madre ni piedrecilla, ni horno, ni perro blanco! Málaga sin defensa, donde nació mi muerte dando pasos y murió de pasión mi nacimiento! Málaga caminando tras de tus pies, en éxodo, bajo el mal, bajo la cobardía, bajo la historia cóncava, indecible, con la yema en tu mano: tierra orgánica! y la clara en la punta del cabello: todo el caos! iMálaga huyendo de padre a padre, familiar, de tu hijo a tu hijo, a lo largo del mar que huye del mar, a través del metal que huye del plomo, a ras del suelo que huye de la tierra y a las órdenes iay! de la profundidad que te quería! iMálaga a golpes, a fatídico coágulo, a bandidos, a infiernazos a cielazos, andando sobre duro vino, en multitud, sobre la espuma lila, de uno en uno, sobre huracán estático y más lila, y al compás de las cuatro órbitas que aman y de las dos costillas que se matan! iMálaga de mi sangre diminuta y mi coloración a gran distancia, la vida sigue con tambor a tus honores alazanes, con cohetes, a tus niños eternos y con silencio a tu último tambor, con nada, a tu alma, y con más nada, a tu esternón genial! iMálaga, no te vayas con tu nombre! iQue si te vas, te vas

215

216 

SPANISH VERSIONS OF THE ANALYZED POEMS

toda, hacia ti, infinitamente en son total , concorde con tu tamaño fijo en que me aloco, con tu suela feraz y su agujero y tu navaja antigua,atada a tu hoz enferma y tu madero atado a un martillo! iMálaga literal y malagüeña, huyendo a Egipto, puesto que estás clavada, alargando en sufrimiento idéntico tu danza, resolviéndose en ti el volumen de la esfera, perdiendo tu botijo, tus cánticos, huyendo con tu España exterior y tu orbe innato! ¡Málaga por derecho propio y en el jardín biológico, más Málaga! ¡Málaga, en virtud del camino. en atención al lobo que te sigue y en razón del lobezno que te espera! ¡Málaga. que estoy llorando! ¡Málaga. que lloro y lloro!

Chapter 7 Va corriendo, andando, huyendo… Va corriendo, andando, huyendo de sus pies... Va con dos nubes en su nube, sentado apócrifo, en la mano insertos sus tristes paras, sus entonces fúnebres! Corre de todo, andando entre protestas incoloras; huye subiendo, huye bajando, huye a paso de sotana, huye alzando al mal en brazos, huye directamente a sollozar a solas. Adonde vaya, lejos de sus fragosos, cáusticos talones,

  SPANISH VERSIONS OF THE ANALYZED POEMS 

lejos del aire, lejos de su viaje, a fin de huir, huir y huir y huir de sus pies –hombre en dos pies, parado de tánto huir– habrá sed de correr. ¡Y ni el árbol, si endosa hierro de oro! ¡Y ni el hierro, si cubre su hojarasca! Nada, sino sus pies, nada sino su breve calofrío, sus paras vivos, sus entonces vivos...

Transido, salomónico, decente… Transido, salomónico, decente, ululaba; compuesto, caviloso, cadavérico, perjuro, iba, tornaba, respondía; osaba, fatídico, escarlata, irresistible. En sociedad, en vidrio, en polvo, en hulla, marchóse; vaciló, en hablando en oro; fulguró, volteó, en acatamiento; en terciopelo, en llanto, replegóse. ¿Recordar? ¿Insistir? ¿Ir? ¿Perdonar? Ceñudo, acabaría recostado, áspero, atónito, mural; meditaba estamparse, confundirse, fenecer. Inatacablemente, impunemente, negramente, husmeará, comprenderá; vestiráse oralmente; inciertamente irá, acobardárase, olvidará.

Despedida recordando un adiós Al cabo, al fin, por último, torno, volví y acábome y os gimo, dándoos la llave, mi sombrero, esta cartita para todos. Al cabo de la llave está el metal en que aprendiéramos a desdorar el oro, y está, al fin de mi sombrero, este pobre cerebro mal peinado, y, último vaso de humo, en su papel dramático, yace este sueño práctico del alma. ¡Adiós, hermanos san pedros,

217

218 

SPANISH VERSIONS OF THE ANALYZED POEMS

heráclitos, erasmos, espinozas! ¡Adiós, tristes obispos bolcheviques! ¡Adiós, gobernadores en desorden! ¡Adiós, vino que está en el agua como vino! ¡Adiós, alcohol que está en la lluvia! ¡Adiós también, me digo a mí mismo, adiós, vuelo formal de los milígramos! ¡También adiós, de modo idéntico, frío del frío y frío del calor! Al cabo, al fin, por último, la lógica, los linderos del fuego, la despedida recordando aquel adiós.

¡Cuídate, España, de tu propia España!...

¡Cuídate, España, de tu propia España! ¡Cuídate de la hoz sin el martillo, cuídate del martillo sin la hoz! ¡Cuídate de la víctima a pesar suyo, del verdugo a pesar suyo y del indiferente a pesar suyo! ¡Cuídate del que, antes de que cante el gallo, negárate tres veces, y del que te negó, después, tres veces! ¡Cuídate de las calaveras sin las tibias, y de las tibias sin las calaveras! ¡Cuídate de los nuevos poderosos! ¡Cuídate del que come tus cadáveres, del que devora muertos a tus vivos! ¡Cuídate del leal ciento por ciento! ¡Cuídate del cielo más acá del aire y cuídate del aire más allá del cielo! ¡Cuídate de los que te aman! ¡Cuídate de tus héroes! ¡Cuídate de tus muertos! ¡Cuídate de la República! ¡Cuídate del futuro!...

Hoy me gusta la vida mucho menos…

Hoy me gusta la vida mucho menos, pero siempre me gusta vivir: ya lo decía. Casi toqué la parte de mi todo y me contuve con un tiro en la lengua detrás de mi palabra. Hoy me palpo el mentón en retirada

  Spanish Versions of the Analyzed Poems 

y en estos momentáneos pantalones yo me digo: ¡Tánta vida y jamás! ¡Tántos años y siempre mis semanas!... Mis padres enterrados con su piedra y su triste estirón que no ha acabado; de cuerpo entero hermanos, mis hermanos, y, en fin, mi sér parado y en chaleco. Me gusta la vida enormemente, pero, desde luego, con mi muerte querida y mi café y viendo los castaños frondosos de París y diciendo: Es un ojo éste, aquél; una frente ésta, aquélla... Y repitiendo: ¡Tánta vida y jamás me falla la tonada! ¡Tántos años y siempre, siempre, siempre! Dije chaleco, dije todo, parte, ansia, dije casi, por no llorar. Que es verdad que sufrí en aquel hospital que queda al lado y está bien y está mal haber mirado de abajo para arriba mi organismo. Me gustará vivir siempre, así fuese de barriga, porque, como iba diciendo y lo repito, ¡tánta vida y jamás! ¡Y tántos años, y siempre, mucho siempre, siempre siempre!

Solía escribir con su dedo grande en el aire...

Solía escribir con su dedo grande en el aire: “¡Viban los compañeros! Pedro Rojas”, de Miranda de Ebro, padre y hombre, marido y hombre, ferroviario y hombre, padre y más hombre, Pedro y sus dos muertes. Papel de viento, lo han matado: ¡pasa! Pluma de carne, lo han matado: ¡pasa! ¡Abisa a todos los compañeros pronto! Palo en el que han colgado su madero, lo han matado;

219

220 

Spanish Versions of the Analyzed Poems

¡lo han matado al pie de su dedo grande! ¡Han matado, a la vez, a Pedro, a Rojas! ¡Viban los compañeros a la cabecera de su aire escrito! ¡Viban con esta b del buitre en las entrañas de Pedro y de Rojas, del héroe y del mártir! Registrándole, muerto, sorprendiéronle en su cuerpo un gran cuerpo, para el alma del mundo, y en la chaqueta una cuchara muerta. Pedro también solía comer entre las criaturas de su carne, asear, pintar la mesa y vivir dulcemente en representación de todo el mundo. Y esta cuchara anduvo en su chaqueta, despierto o bien cuando dormía, siempre, cuchara muerta viva, ella y sus símbolos. ¡Abisa a todos los compañeros pronto! ¡Viban los compañeros al pie de esta cuchara para siempre! Lo han matado, obligándole a morir a Pedro, a Rojas, al obrero, al hombre, a aquel que nació muy niñín, mirando al cielo, y que luego creció, se puso rojo y luchó con sus células, sus nos, sus todavías, sus hambres, sus pedazos. Lo han matado suavemente entre el cabello de su mujer, la Juana Vázquez, a la hora del fuego, al año del balazo y cuando andaba cerca ya de todo. Pedro Rojas, así, después de muerto, se levantó, besó su catafalco ensangrentado, lloró por España y volvió a escribir con el dedo en el aire: “¡Viban los compañeros! Pedro Rojas”. Su cadáver estaba lleno de mundo.

  Spanish Versions of the Analyzed Poems 

España, aparta de mi este cáliz Niños del mundo, si cae España –digo, es un decir– si cae del cielo abajo su antebrazo que asen, en cabestro, dos láminas terrestres; niños, ¡qué edad la de las sienes cóncavas! ¡qué temprano en el sol lo que os decía! ¡qué pronto en vuestro pecho el ruido anciano! ¡qué viejo vuestro 2 en el cuaderno! ¡Niños del mundo, está la madre España con su vientre a cuestas; está nuestra maestra con sus férulas, está madre y maestra, cruz y madera, porque os dio la altura, vértigo y división y suma, niños; está con ella, padres procesales! Si cae –digo, es un decir– si cae España, de la tierra para abajo, niños ¡cómo vais a cesar de crecer! ¡cómo va a castigar el año al mes! ¡cómo van a quedarse en diez los dientes, en palote el diptongo, la medalla en llanto! ¡Cómo va el corderillo a continuar atado por la pata al gran tintero! ¡Cómo vais a bajar las gradas del alfabeto hasta la letra en que nació la pena! Niños, hijos de los guerreros, entretanto, bajad la voz, que España está ahora mismo repartiendo la energía entre el reino animal, las florecillas, los cometas y los hombres. ¡Bajad la voz, que está con su rigor, que es grande, sin saber qué hacer, y está en su mano la calavera hablando y habla y habla, la calavera, aquella de la trenza, la calavera, aquella de la vida!

221

222 

Spanish Versions of the Analyzed Poems

¡Bajad la voz, os digo; bajad la voz, el canto de las sílabas, el llanto de la materia y el rumor menor de las pirámides, y aún el de las sienes que andan con dos piedras! ¡Bajad el aliento, y si el antebrazo baja, si las férulas suenan, si es la noche, si el cielo cabe en dos limbos terrestres, si hay ruido en el sonido de las puertas, si tardo, si no veis a nadie, si os asustan los lápices sin punta, si la madre España cae –digo, es un decir–, salid, niños del mundo; id a buscarla!...

Masa

Al fin de la batalla, y muerto el combatiente, vino hacia él un hombre y le dijo: “No mueras, te amo tánto!” Pero el cadáver ¡ay! siguió muriendo. Se le acercaron dos y repitiéronle: “No nos dejes! ¡Valor! ¡Vuelve a la vida!” Pero el cadáver ¡ay! siguió muriendo. Acudieron a él veinte, cien, mil, quinientos mil, clamando: “Tánto amor, y no poder nada contra la muerte!” Pero el cadáver ¡ay! siguió muriendo. Le rodearon millones de individuos, con un ruego común: “¡Quédate hermano!” Pero el cadáver ¡ay! siguió muriendo. Entonces, todos los hombres de la tierra le rodearon; les vio el cadáver triste, emocionado; incorporóse lentamente, abrazó al primer hombre; echóse a andar... (Poesía completa, 378)

Bibliography

Other English Translations Are as Follow Selected Writings of César Vallejo. Edited by J. Mulligan. Middletown: Wesleyan University Press, 2015. The complete poetry of César Vallejo: a bilingual edition. Edited and translated by Clayton Eshleman. Berkeley: Berkeley University Press, 2007. Vallejo, César. 1995. The Black Heralds. Trans. B.  Fogden. Allardyce, Barnett, Publishers. ———. 2008. Spain, take this chalice from me and other poems. Trans. M. S. Peden. London: Penguin Random House.

References Aristóteles. 2010. Etica a Nicómaco. Madrid: Mestas. Badiou, Alain. 2014a. Filosofía y política. Una relación enigmática. Buenos Aires: Amorrortu. ———. 2014b. The Age of the Poets and other Writtings on Twentieth Century Poetry and Prose. London: Verso. ———. Does the notion of activist art still have meaning? En: http://www.lacan. com/thesymptom/?page_id=1580. Balso, Judith. 2010. Estar presente en el presente. In Sobre la idea del comunismo. Analía Hounie (comp), 33–50. Buenos Aires: Paidós. Basadre, Jorge. 1929. Elogio y elegía de José María Eguren. Amauta 21 (Lima, febrero-marzo de): 21–31.

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2024 V. Vich, César Vallejo, Studies in Revolution and Literature, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-33513-6

223

224 

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Bosteels, Bruno. 2010. La teoría del sujeto de Alan Badiou: el reinicio de materialismo dialéctico. In Lacan. Lo interlocutores mudos, ed. Slavoj Žižek. Madrid: Akal. Butler, Judith. 2010. Marcos de guerra. Las vidas lloradas. Buenos Aires: Paidós. Caudet, Fernando. 1988. “César Vallejo y el marxismo”. En: Cuadernos Hispanoamericanos 456–457. 779–802. Clayton, Michelle. 2011. Poetry in Pieces: César Vallejo and Lyric Modernity. Berkeley: University of California Press. Cros, Deledda. “Arte y trabajo: una relación de identidad en Marx”. En: http:// kalathos.metro.inter.edu/Num_13/Arte%20y%20trabajo.pdf Derrida, Jacques. 1986. De la gramatología. México D.F: Siglo XXI. Eagleton, Terry. 2008. Terror santo. Buenos Aires: Debate. Fernández Cosman, Camilo. 2014. Las técnicas de argumentativas y la utopía dialógica en la poesía de César Vallejo. Lima: Cátedra Vallejo. Franco, Jean, and César Vallejo. 1984. La dialéctica de la poesía y el silencio. Traducción de Luis Justo. Buenos Aires: editorial sudamericana. Hardt, Michael. 2010. Lo común en el comunismo. In Sobre la idea del comunismo. Analía Hounie (comp.), 129–144. Paidós: Buenos Aires. Lacan, Jacques. El seminario 23. El sinthome, 200. Buenos Aires: Paidós. Luxemburgo, Rosa. Obras escogidas. Buenos Aires: antídoto, s/f. Machín, Horacio. 1996. El individualismo colectivo en César Vallejo. Revista Iberoamericana LXII (175): 507–521. McDuffie, Keith A. 1971. Babel y lo babilónico. In Aproximaciones a César Vallejo, ed. Angel Flores, 51–64. New York: Las Américas. Rowe, William, and Gustavo Gutiérrez. 2010. Vallejo: el acto y la palabra. Lima: Fondo Editorial del Congreso del Perú. Santoja Gómez-Agero, Gonzalo. 2018. Donde se revela el nombre en muerte de Pedro Rojas. Archivo Vallejo. Revista de investigación del centro de estudios vallejianos 1 (1): 17–22. Soria, López, and José Ignacio. 1971. El no saber. In Aproximaciones a César Vallejo, ed. Angel Flores. New York: Las Américas. Stravrakakis, Yannis. 2007. Lacan y lo político. Buenos Aires: Prometeo. Sucre, Guillermo. 1985. Vallejo: inocencia y utopía. In La máscara, la transparencia. Ensayos sobre poesía hispanoamericana. México: Fondo de Cultura Económica. Tono, Lucía. 1992. La pluralidad semántica en Hoy me gusta la vida mucho menos. Inti. Revista de literatura hispánica 1 (36): 75–80. Traverso, Enzo. 2018. Melancolía de izquierda. Marxismo, historia y memoria. Buenos Aires: Fondo de Cultura Económica. Vallejo, César. 1996. Poemas en prosa. Poemas humanos. España a parta de mí este cáliz. Edición crítica Madrid: Cátedra. Vélez, Julio. 1984. In España en César Vallejo, ed. Antonio Merino. Madrid: Fundamentos. Žižek, Slavoj. 2012. Viviendo al final de los tiempos. Madrid: Akal.

Index of Authors1

A Adorno, Theodor, 178 Agamben, Giorgio, 56, 57, 152, 155, 165, 178, 179 Aristóteles, 11 B Badiou, Alain, 1–5, 13, 16, 38, 41, 42, 44, 55, 57, 71, 83, 84, 89, 90, 95, 99–101, 122, 124, 129, 131, 142, 146, 155, 159, 160, 163, 165, 167, 168, 170, 176–178 Bataille, Georges, 169 Benjamin, Walter, 134, 142, 166, 167 Berman, Marshall, 78 Bosteels, Bruno, 4, 84, 88, 94, 123 Braunstein, Nestor, 10 Butler, Judith, 18, 24, 33, 34, 90, 160, 174, 175 Byung-Chul, Han, 109

1

C Cohn, Norman, 132 Cornejo Polar, Antonio, 106, 160 D Derrida, Jacques, 168, 173 Didi-Huberman, George, 81, 168 E Eagleton, Terry, 10, 28, 31, 45, 46, 52, 119, 121, 153, 163 Engels, Federico, 76, 106, 113, 159 Escobar, Alberto, 20, 85, 110, 149 Espejo Asturrizaga, Juan, 85 Espósito, Roberto, 107, 110

 Note: Page numbers followed by ‘n’ refer to notes.

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2024 V. Vich, César Vallejo, Studies in Revolution and Literature, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-33513-6

225

226 

INDEX OF AUTHORS

F Ferrari, Américo, 20, 46, 121 Franco, Jean, 67, 76, 149 Freud, Sigmund, 8 G González Vigil, Ricardo, 20, 37, 52, 53, 87, 96, 115, 147, 149 Groys, Boris, 5, 132 H Hallward, Peter, 4, 166, 170 Hart, Stephen, 20, 127, 152, 153 Higgins, James, 20, 21, 23, 50, 61, 64, 108, 110, 111, 119, 163 J Jameson, Fredric, 23, 62, 173 L Lacan, Jacques, 3, 8, 55, 71, 157, 160, 169, 178 Laclau, Ernesto, 168 Lambie, George, 105, 126–128, 142 M Mariátegui, José Carlos, 2, 124, 125n2, 142, 167–169, 173 Marx, Karl, 2, 22, 48, 63–65, 71, 76, 77, 97, 106, 113, 119, 123, 130, 132, 133, 134n3, 138, 159, 176 McDuffie, Keith A., 52

N Nancy, Jean-Luc, 4 Neale Silva, Eduardo, 43, 110 O Ortega, Julio, 24, 37, 46, 48, 81, 87, 136n4, 163 P Paoli, Roberto, 27, 28, 30 R Rancière, Jacques, 59, 81 Recalcati, Massimo, 38, 129 Rowe, William, 7, 122, 163 S Sánchez, Ana María Amar, 169 Spivak, Gaytri, 27 Sucre, Guillermo, 99 Y Yurkievich, Saúl, 56 Z Žižek, Slavoj, 5, 8, 11, 27, 33, 43, 72, 84, 89, 92, 124, 126, 132, 155, 157, 168, 170, 175–177 Zupancic, Alenka, 3, 4, 11

Index of Categories

C Communism, 4, 83, 84, 105, 106, 122–124, 132, 142, 155, 157, 166, 170, 176 E Ethic of the Real, 24 Event, 1–4, 21, 28, 32, 50, 71, 76, 79–81, 83–101, 105–142, 146–148, 150, 151, 154, 155, 159, 160, 162, 163, 165, 167–170, 173–178 Excess, 3, 7, 8, 11–13, 16, 18, 24, 30–33, 40, 45, 55, 88, 90, 95, 116, 123, 124, 129, 146, 149, 156, 157, 162, 168–170, 174, 175, 177 L Lack, 1, 3, 7, 11, 12, 14, 26, 29, 38, 41, 52, 54, 55, 57, 63, 70–72, 81, 87, 107, 146, 150, 169, 174, 175

Lost causes, 5, 137, 145–170

P Part with no part, 59–81, 174

T Truth, 1, 2, 4, 5, 7, 11–15, 22, 27, 28, 32, 40–43, 48, 50, 55, 56, 60, 62, 66, 71, 76, 77, 79–81, 83, 84, 86, 87, 90–92, 94, 97, 99–101, 105, 123, 124, 126–129, 132, 135, 138, 141, 142, 145–148, 150–152, 155, 157, 159, 160, 162, 163, 165, 167–170, 173–175, 177–179

U Universalism, 30, 79, 141, 165

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2024 V. Vich, César Vallejo, Studies in Revolution and Literature, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-33513-6

227