Traducciones de poemas de Vallejo por Rebecca Seiferle y otros

Traducciones de poemas de César Vallejo

4 poems (translated by Rebecca Seiferle)

1..

altura y pelos

¿Quién no tiene su vestido azul?
¿Quién no almuerza y no toma el tranvía,
con su cigarillo contratado y su dolor de bolsillo?
¡Yo que tan sólo he nacido!
¡Yo que tan sólo he nacido!

¿Quién no escribe una carta?
¿Quién no habla de un asunto muy importante,
muriendo de costumbre y llorando de oído?
¡Yo que solamente he nacido!
¡Yo que solamente he nacido!

¿Quién no se llama Carlos o cualquier otra cosa?
¿Quién al gato no dice gato gato?
¡Ay! yo que sólo he nacido solamente!
¡Ay! yo que sólo he nacido solamente!


height and hairs

Who doesn't own a blue suit?
Who doesn't eat lunch and take the streetcar
with his bargained for cigarette and his pocket pain?
I who was born so alone.
I who was born so alone.

Who doesn't write a letter?
Who doesn't talk about a very important subject,
dying from habit and crying from hearing?
I who alone was born.
I who alone was born.

Who isn't called Carlos or some other thing?
Who doesn't say cat, cat, to the cat?
Aie! I who alone was born so alone.
Aie! I who alone was born so alone.


2.

Entre el dolor y el placer median tres criaturas,
de las cuales la una mira a un muro,
la segunda usa de ánimo triste
y la tercera avanza de puntillas;
pero, entre tú y yo,
sólo existen segundas criaturas.

Apoyándose en mi frente, el día
conviene en que, de veras,
hay mucho de exacto en el espacio;
pero, si la dicha, que, al fin, tiene un tamaño,
principia, ¡ay! por mi boca,
¿quien me preguntará por mi palabra?

Al sentido instantáneo de la eternidad
corresponde
este encuentro investido de hilo negro,
pero a tu despedida temporal,
tan sólo corresponde lo inmutable,
tu criatura, el alma, mi palabra.


Between pain and pleasure three creatures mediate,
of which the first looks at a wall,
the second uses an animal sadness,
and the third advances on tiptoe,
but, between you and me,
only second creatures exist.

Leaning on my forehead, the day
agrees that, truthfully,
there's much precision in space,
but, if that happiness, which, at last, has size
begins, aie! in my mouth,
who will ask me for my word?

To the instantaneous sense of eternity
corresponds
this encounter invested with black thread,
but to your temporal farewell
corresponds only the immutable,
your creature, the soul, my word.



3.

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 de más abajo. Hoy sufro
solamente.

Me duelo ahora sin explicaciones. Mi dolor es tan hondo, que no tuvo
ya causa ni carece de causa. Que 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 hubiese 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 mas 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 mas engendrada, para la mía sin fuente ni consumo!

Yo creía hasta ahora que todas las cosas del universo eran, inevitablemente,
padres e 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.


I'm going to speak of hope

I don't suffer this pain as César Vallejo. I don't ache now as an artist, a man,
or even a simple living being. I don't suffer this pain as a Catholic, a Mohammedan
or an atheist. I only suffer. If I weren't called César Vallejo, I would still suffer this
same pain. If I weren't an artist, I'd still suffer it. If I weren't a man nor a living
being, I'd still suffer it. If I weren't a Catholic, atheist or Mohammedan, I'd still
suffer it. Today I suffer from the furthest below. Today I only suffer.

I ache now without explanation. My pain is so deep, it had no cause nor
does it lack one now. What could have been its cause? Where is that former
thing so important that stopped being its cause? Nothing is its cause; nothing
could stop being its cause. What has this pain been born for, for its very self? My
pain is of the north wind and the south wind, like those neuter eggs which some rare birds
lay in the wind. If my sweetheart had died, my pain would be the same. If they had
cut my throat to the root, my pain would be the same. If life were, at last, some
other way, my pain would be the same. I suffer from the furthest above. Today I only
suffer.

I look at the pain of the starving man and see that his hunger walks so far from my
suffering, that if I were to fast to death, at least a blade of grass would always sprout
from my grave. The same with the lover. How engendered his blood, in comparison
to mine without origin or consumption!

I used to believe until now that all things in the universe were, inevitably, fathers and
sons. But behold, my pain today is neither father nor son. It lacks shoulders to grow
dark, as well as having too much breast to dawn and if they put it in a dark room, it
would give no light and if they put it in a luminous room, it would cast no shadow.
Today, come what may, I suffer. Today I only suffer.


4.

Intensidad y altura

Quiero escribir, pero me sale espuma,
quiero decir muchísimo y me atollo;
no hay cifra halada 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;
vánomos a beber lo ya bebid,
vámonos, cuevro, a fecundar tu cuerva.

27 Oct. 1937


Intensity and height

I want to write, but out leaps foam,
I want to say so much and get stuck in mud,
there's no spoken cipher that will not be a sum,
there's no written pyramid, without a heart.

I want to write but feel myself a puma,
I want to laurel myself but stew in onions.
There's no spoken achoo! that doesn't end in mist,
there's no god nor son of god, without unfolding.

Let's go, then, this way, to eat grass,
flesh of crying, fruit of moaning,
our melancholic soul in jam.

Let's go! Let's go! I'm wounded.
Let's go to drink what's already drunk.
Let's go, raven, to impregnate your rook.

27 Oct. 1937

Extraídos de: www.hamiltonstone.org/hsr5poetry.html#4%20poems

-----------------------------------------
Three Poems
César Vallejo

Weary Rings


There's the desire to return, to love, to not be absent,
and the desire to die, fought by two
opposing waters that are never to be an isthmus.

There's the desire for a great kiss that shrouds Life,
that ends in the Africa of burning, suicidal
death throes!

There's the desire... to have no desire, Lord;
I point the finger of deicide at you:
there's the desire to have never had a heart.

Spring returns, and will go away. And God,
curved in time, repeats himself, and walks by, walks by
carrying on his back the backbone of the Universe.

When my temples play their lugubrious drum,
when the dream engraved on a dagger hurts me,
there's the desire to remain rooted in this verse!

---


Eternal Bridal Bed


Only when it ceases to be is Love strong!
And the tomb will be the great pupil of the eye,
in whose depth, the anguish of love
survives and cries, as if in a chalice
of sweet eternity and black dawn.

And the lips curl up for the kiss,
like something full that overflows and dies,
and, in each twitching union,
each mouth renounces for the other
a life of death throes.

And when I think like this, sweet is the grave
where, at last, everyone interpenetrates
in one loud noise;
sweet is the shadow where everyone's wedded
in love's universal tryst.

---


Lines


Each ribbon of fire,
that in search of Love,
I cast and vibrate in lamentable roses,
births me to the burial of my eve.
I don't know if the throbbing where I search
will be the painting of rock,
or the perennial birthing of heart.

There is stretched out in the very depth of being,
an ultranervous axis, a profound plumb line.
The thread of destiny!
Love will deflect such a law of life
toward the voice of Man;
and will give us supreme liberty
in blue transubstantiation, virtuous,
against what is blind and fatal.

May there throb in each cipher,
hidden away in fragile dawns,
a even better Jesus of another great Yolk!

And afterwards... The other line...
A Baptist who watches, watches, watches...
And, riding the intangible curve,
a foot bathed in purple.


Translated from the Spanish by Rebecca Seiferle

Extraídos de : http://www.conjunctions.com/webcon/vallejo.htm

---

The moment, the tennis player serves masterfully

his bullet, he possesses total animal innocence;

the moment,

the philosopher surprises a new truth,

he's a complete beast.

Anatole France affirms

that religious sentiment

is the function of a special organ in the human body,

until now, unknown, and it's possible

to say that, then,

at the exact moment such an organ

entirely functions

the believer is so free of malice,

he could be said to be a vegetable.

Oh soul! Oh thought! Oh Marx! Oh Feuerbach!



***



In front of the French Comedy, there's the Cafe

Regency: in which there's a hidden

room with a orchestra seat and a table.

When I enter, the motionless dust is already rising.



Between my lips of rubber, the coal

of a cigarette smokes, and in the smoke can be seen

two intensive smokes, the thorax of the Cafe

and in the thorax, the profound oxide of sadness.



It's important that autumn graft into autumns,

it's important that autumn integrates to sprouts,

the cloud, to semesters; the cheekbones, to wrinkle.



It's important to smell like a postulating lunatic

how warm the snow is, how the turtle flies,

the how so simple, so fulminant the when!



***



Confidence in the eyeglass, not in the eye;

confidence in the staircase, not in the step;

in the wing, not in the bird,

and in yourself alone, in yourself alone, in yourself alone.



Confidence in wickedness, not in the wicked;

in the glass, but never in the liquor;

in the corpse, but not in the man

and in yourself alone, in yourself alone, in yourself alone.



Confidence in many, but no longer in one;

in the river bed, never in the current;

in the trousers, not in the legs

and in yourself alone, in yourself alone, in yourself alone.



Confidence in the window, not in the door;

in the mother, not in the nine months;

in destiny, not in the golden dice,

and in yourself alone, in yourself alone, in yourself alone.



**********



A man passes by with bread on his shoulder.

Am I going to write, then, of my double?



Another sits down, scratches himself, extracts a louse from his armpit, kills it.

What use in speaking of psychoanalysis?



Another has entered my chest with a stick in his hand.

To speak, then, of Socrates to the doctor?



A cripple walks by, giving his arm to a child.

Am I going to read, then, Andre Breton?



Another shivers with cold, coughs, spits blood.

To play ever at alluding to the profound I?



Another searches in mud for bones, rinds.

How to write, then, of infinity?



A bricklayer falls from the roof, dies, no longer eats lunch.

To innovate, then, the trope, the metaphor?



A merchant steals a gram of weight from a client.

To speak, then, of the fourth dimension?



A banker falsfies his balance.

With what face to cry in the theatre?



A pariah sleeps with his foot to his back.

To speak, then, to anyone of Picasso?



Someone goes to a funeral sobbing.

How, then, to enter the Academy?



Someone cleans a rifle in his kitchen.

What use in speaking of the beyond?



Someone passes by, counting on his fingers.

How, then, to speak of the not-i without screaming?



*************



Stumble between two stars



There are people so wretched, that they don't have

even a body; quantitative hair,

below, in inches, the genial grief;

the way, on high;

don't look for me, molar of oblivion,

they seem to emerge from air, to add sighs mentally, to hear

light whips on their palates!



They leave the skin, scratching the sarcophagus in which they are born

and rise through death hour by hour

and fall, along their gelid alphabet, to the ground.



Aie of so much! aie of so little! aie for them!

Aie in my room, hearing them with lenses!

Aie in my throrax, when they buy suits!

Aie of my white dirt, in its combined dregs!



Beloved be the sanchez ears,

beloved those who sit down,

beloved the stranger and his wife,

the neighbor with sleeves, neck and eyes!



Beloved be the one who has bedbugs,

the one who wears a torn shoe in rain,

the one who keeps vigil over the corpse of bread with two matches,

the one who catches a finger in a door,

th one who doesn't have birthdays,

the one who lost his shadow in a fire,

the animal, the one who seems a parrot,

the one who seems a man, the poor rich,

the pure miserable the poor poor!



Beloved be

the one who is hungry or thirsty, but has no

hunger with which to satisfy his thirst,

no thirst with which to satisfy all his hungers!



Beloved be the one who works daily, nightly, hourly,

the one who sweats from pain or shame,

that one who goes, ordered by his hands, to the movies,

the one who pays with what he lacks,

the one who sleeps on his back,

the one who no longer recalls his childhood; beloved be

the bald one without a hat,

the just one without thorns,

the thief without roses,

the one who wears a watch and has seen God,

the one who has one honor and doesn't fail!



Beloved be the child, who falls and still cries,

and the man who has fallen and no longer cries!



Aie so much! Aie of so little! Aie for them!



***



Palms and guitar



Now, between us, here,

be with me, bring your body by the hand,

and let's have dinner together and pass an instant of life

in two lives, giving a part to our death.

Now, come with yourself, do me the favor

of lamenting you in my name and in the light of teneblous night

where you bring your soul by the hand

and we flee ourselves on tiptoes.



Come to me, yes, and to you, yes,

even stepped, to see the two of us out of step,

marking the step of good-bye.

Until we return! Until the turn!

Until we read, ignoramuses!

Until we return, let's say good-bye to ourselves!



What do the rifles matter to me,

listen to me;

listen to me, what does it matter to me,

if the bullet already circulates in the rank of my sign?

What do the bullets matter to you,

if the rifle is already smoking in your odor?

This very day, we will pass by

our star in the arms of the blind

and, once you sing to me, we will cry.

This very day, beautiful one, with your two step

and your trust where my fear will arrive,

we'll emerge from ourselves, two to two.

Until we are blind!

Until

we cry of so much returning!



Now,

between us, bring

your sweet person by the hand

and we'll have dinner together and pass an instant of life

in two lives, giving a part to our death.

Now, come with yourself, do me the favor

of singing something

and of playing in your soul, clapping hands.

Until we return! Until then!

Until we part, let's say good-bye to ourselves!

Alfonso: you're looking at me, I see,

from that implacable plane inhabited

by the linear always, the lineal nevers.

(That night, you slept, between your dream

and mine, on the rue de Riboute)

Palpably,

your inovidable half-breed hears you walk

in Paris, senses you silenced on the phone

and touches the wire of your last act

to test its weight, to toast

to the depths, to me, to you.



I still

buy (wine, milk, counting pennies)

under my coat, so my soul won't see me,

under that coat, dear Alfonso,

and under the simple ray of my complex temple;

now I suffer, and you, no I, never, brother!

They told me in your centuries of pain,

beloved to be,

beloved to exist,

you made zeroes of wood. Is that true?



In the "drunk night" where you used to touch tangos,

touching your indignant creature, its heart,

escorted by you yourself, crying

for you yourself and for your heinous resemblance to your shadow,

Monsieur Fourgat, the patron, has grown old.

To tell him? To recount it to him? No more,

Alfonso; that, never again!



The hotel of Ecoles is still in business

and they still buy mandarin oranges

but I suffer, as I say to you,

sweetly, remembering

what we both suffered, to the death of both,

in the aperture of the double tomb,

of that other tomb with your to be

and this mahogany one with your to exist,

I suffer, drinking a glass of you, Silva,

a glass to put things right, as we used to say,

and afterwards, now we'll see what happens. .



It's this, the other toast, among three,

taciturn, diverse,

in wine, in world, in crystal, the one raised

more than once to body

and, less than once, to thought.

Today is even more different;

today I suffer sweetly, bitterly,

I drink your blood for Christ the hard,

I eat your bone for Christ the soft,

because I love you, two to two, Alfonso,

and almost could say it, eternally.



****

What's got into me, that I whip myself with the line

and believe I'm followed, at a trot, by the period?



What's got into me, that I've placed

an egg on my shoulders instead of a cloak?



What's gotten into me, that I live?

What's gotten into me, that I die?



What's got into me, that I have eyes?

What's got into me, that I have a soul?



What's got into me, that ends in my neighbor

and begins the role of wind in my cheek?



What's gotten into me, that I count my two tears,

sob earth, and hang the horizon?



What's gotten into me, that I cry from being unable to cry

and I laugh at the little I've laughed?



What's got into me, that I neither live nor die?



César Vallejo was born in Santiago de Chuco, Perú, in 1892, the youngest of eleven children. His father wanted him to become a priest as were César's two grandfathers, but he expressed no interest in a religious vocation. Vallejo began writing poetry in 1913; by 1918 he had his first book of poems published, Los heraldos negros. Two years later he was unjustly imprisoned for a period of four months. In 1922 he published Trilce,then a year later some prose pieces as well, and that he year he left Peru for Paris.

In 1928 he traveled to Russia because he believed that Communism could deliver social justice to the world. His writing from 1923 until his death strongly identifies with the plight of a suffering humanity. The next year he spent traveling back and forth between Paris and Spain. In 1931 he published his novel Tugsteno, the same year he joined the Congress of Antifascist Writers in Madrid.

Vallejo died in Paris of an intestinal infection in 1938. His Poemas humanos was published a year after his death.

REBECCA SEIFERLE'S third new poetry collection, Bitters (Copper Canyon Press, 2001) won the Western States Book Award and a Pushcart Prize. She is also the author of The Music We Dance To (Sheep Meadow, 1999), poems from which won the Hemley Award from the Poetry Society of America. Her first collection, The Ripped-Out Seam, won the Bogin Award and the Writer's Exchange Award. Her new translation of Cesar Vallejo's The Black Heralds was published by Copper Canyon Press in late 2003. She is the founding editor of The Drunken Boat, an online magazine of international poetry and poetry-in-translation.

Frank's Home

Extraídos de: http://frankshome.org/Vallejo.html

-----------------------------------

Rebecca Seiferle: Vallejo's poems are like quipus, Incaic devices of many colored strings on which knots were tied in a proto-written language. Both of these poems have a word or two which functions as a nexus or knot. In "Unity," several threads of meaning are knotted together in manzana—the "chamber" of a revolver, but, also, more commonly, "apple" and "Adam's apple," and one cannot help but hear the echo of mañana, "tomorrow," as well. Without an "apple" in the third line, the "bright red" quality of the bullet in line eight would seem merely decorative, and the poem's critique of a conventional God would be muted. In "Rain," several threads come together in me hueso from ahuesarse—"to remain useless or valueless" or to "be a merchant with nothing to sell." The word has a strong echo of hueso—"bone" (with some sexual innuendo as well)--r "tomb," particularly following as it does the "coffin" in the preceding line. The translation depends upon how these knots are unraveled.

http://www.frigatezine.com/essay/countermeasures/ecm04pst.html

Rebecca Seiferle’s third poetry collection, Bitters (Copper Canyon 2001) won the Western States Book Award and a Pushcart Prize. Her translation of Vallejo's The Black Heralds is forthcoming from Copper Canyon; her translation of Vallejo's Trilce (Sheep Meadow 1992) was the only finalist for the PenWest Translation Award. She is founding editor of The Drunken Boat.

http://www.frigatezine.com/bio/biopoets.html


------------------------

1992 Finalist PenWest Translation Award

by César Vallejo, translated by Rebecca Seiferle

XXXIV

Finished the stranger, with whom, late
at night, you returned to words for words.
Now there won't be anyone who waits for me,
readies my place, good itself ill.

Finished the heated afternoon;
your great bay and your clamor; the chat
with your exhausted mother
who offered us a tea full of evening.

Finally finished everything: the vacations,
your obedience of hearts, your way
of demanding that I not go out.

And finished the diminutive, on behalf of
my majority in the endless ache
and our having been born like this for no cause.

Copyright © 1992. Rebecca Seiferle. All Rights Reserved.

"The book was born in a complete void. I am responsible for it. I assume all responsibilites for its esthetics. Today, more than ever, I feel a sacred obligation, until now unknown, weighing upon me; that of being free! If I am not free today, I will never be. I feel the arch of my forehead desiring its heroic imperative strength . . . God knows what horrifying borders I have approached, filled with fear, terrified that everything was going to die completely so that my poor soul would live . . . I want to be free . . . But being free, at times, I feel surrounded by a dreadful ridicule with the air of a child that carries a spoon in his nostrils . . ."
— César Vallejo

César Vallejo was born in 1892 in Santiago de Chuco, a small village of the Peruvian sierra. The youngest of eleven children, he was born to a family of mixed descent: both of his grandfathers had been Spanish priests, both of his grandmothers native women. As he grew up, he traveled to school in Trujillo and, finally, Lima, though his education was often interrupted by a lack of family funds. He studied, at various times, law, medicine, the sciences, the humanities, and worked at intervals as a clerk at the mines and sugar plantations where the conditions appalled him. He had several unhappy love affairs, and, one of them with Otilia, cost him his job when he refused to marry her. His first book, Los heraldos negros (The Black Heralds) was published in 1918. He was imprisoned as "the intellectual instigator" of a local conflict that occurred during a chance visit he made to his family. He was eventually released after a group of writers and scholars protested his incarceration. He published Trilce, and, shortly thereafter, disappointed by the book's reception, left for Paris. He spent the rest of his life in Paris and did not publish any more poetry during his lifetime. He continued to publish essays, political pieces, a play, and short stories. He also became a Marxist and was very involved in the Spanish Civil War. He died in 1938 on Good Friday.
Reviews and comments:

Trilce is known as the greatest Spanish poem of the twentieth century. Rebecca Seiferle evokes the heart of the matter, Vallejo's struggle to integrate, at least for his own resolution, two opposing, irreconcilable cultures, the Incan and the Spanish. I think it is an amazing accomplishment. As with the original, the poem in translation is a stark light on a profound, explosive issue in our hemisphere.— David Ignatow

Vallejo, as a half Inca, half Spaniard, attacks the Spaniards through their language, Spanish, for having invaded and destroyed Inca America, so the language of his poems is often broken, lisping, distorted, and sometimes, it tries to be educated scientific Spanish; all for political, sexual, and family reasons.... I found reading this book like riding an emotional rollercoaster of yes! Yes! No! No! She's right! She's wrong! She doesn't understand! I don't understand! Ah, we understand! This is a very important working translation. — Alan Dugan

What wonderful translations Rebecca Seiferle has made of César Vallejo's great, and difficult, and breathtakingly human book Trilce. She helps these poems come alive, in English, in ways, I never thought possible. A tremendous achievement. — Thomas Lux

Vallejo's Trilce speaks for itself-and therein is the power of this translation. It is a muscular, accomplished cultivation, yet rendered quiet in relation to what it allows: Vallejo. — Alberto Rios

In Trilce, César Vallejo tears the language of his poetry out of Spanish and Peruvian Quechua. He fights a revolution in words not unlike that which Paul Celan was to fight in the sidestreets of the German language some years later. Rebecca Seiferle is a New Mexico poet uniquely suited to the hazards of this translation. Its pages are open to anyone who wants to read poetry at its bravest." — Stanley Moss.

César Vallejo is a high priest of heresy. The poems in Trilce break code after code-syntax, Western disciplines, and Christianity are routinely betrayed into new meanings. Vallejo's subversions constitute the special treason of the insider, the expert, the heir." — Geoffrey Gordon O'Brien

Vallejo's poetry combines excruciatingly personal emotions with imagery that at first appears facetious but turns out to be wordplay with a larger purpose...The 77 poems reflect upon the poet's dual Spanish and Peruvian Indian heritage in a dialect that mocks Spanish grammar with Incan idioms, plays on the similarity between words and tosses in medical terms...to enhance the surreal effect. Seiferle's insightful introduction and footnotes serve as necessary maps to the book's political context-Vallejo's assertion of the Incan side of his identity-and intellectual strengths. The sensitive translation of an extremely difficult text in this bilingual edition commemorates the centennial of Vallejo's birth and the 70th anniversary of the book's original publication; ironically, it also coincides with the 500th anniversary of Columbus's discovery of America. — Publishers Weekly.

Seiferle's version is attuned to more standard English. Without shirking the author's perplexities, she opts for straightforward and orderly phrasing. "Close to where the water beats the shore"offers an entry to number XX more concrete and elemental than Eshleman's "Flush with bubbling milk scum." Her introduction, addressing the sexual underpinnings and Quechua linguistic background of Vallejo's book is valuable and convincing. — LA Weekly.

Translator's note:
I began reading Vallejo in the Spanish in 1970 but was only persuaded to undertake the translation of this, his most difficult work, nearly twenty years later, in graduate school. I discovered that it was impossible to write critically of Vallejo's work while relying on the available translations. My aim in translating was to create English poems, poems that would work in English in the same way that the original works in Spanish. I also hoped that I would be able to convey the multidimensionality of Vallejo's poems, and, that the reader who is able to read both English and Spanish, would hear in the dialogue between the original and my translation, another third possibility, even though I knew that this was to take the 'risk' of being thought wrong. Vallejo's work has long been deprived of its proper context. He himself wrote of the "indigenous thread of blood" and demanded an "autocthonic" poetry from Latin American writers. Yet that aspect has been critically overlooked, despite his own words on the subject, in favor of emphasizing his connection to European writing and Modernism.

http://www.thedrunkenboat.com/trilce.htm

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The Black Heralds

By César Vallejo



Translated by Rebecca Seiferle


Under the Poplars

for Jose Garrido


Like priestly imprisoned poets,
the poplars of blood have fallen asleep.
On the hills, the flocks of Bethlehem
chew arias of grass at sunset.

The ancient shepherd who shivers
at the last martyrdoms of light,
in his easter eyes has caught
a purebred flock of stars.

Formed in orphanhood, he goes down
with rumors of burial to the praying field,
and the sheep bells are seasoned with shadow.

It survives, the blue welded
in iron, and on it, pupils shrouded,
a dog etches its pastoral howl.


Publisher's Note:

Throughout his life, Cesar Vallejo (1892-1938) focused on human suffering and the isolation of people victimized by inexplicable forces. One of the great Spanish language poets, he merged radical politics and language consciousness, resulting in the first examples of a truly new world poetry. The Black Heralds is Vallejo's first book and contains a wide range of poems, from love sonnets in which he struggles to free his erotic life from the bounds of Spanish Catholicism to the linguistically inventive sequence, "Imperial Nostalgias," where he parodies with considerable savagery the pastoral romanticism of Indian and rural life.

In this bilingual volume, translator Rebecca Seiferle attempts to undo the "colonization" of Vallejo in other translations. As Seiferle writes in her introduction: "Reading and translating Vallejo has been a long process of trying to meet him on his own terms, to discover what those terms were within the contexts of his particular time and, finally, taking his word for it."

Reviews:
The janus-like nature of Vallejo's first collection has often attracted comment. This, and the fact that his subsequent volume, Trilce, is one of the greatest masterworks of 20th Century hispanophone poetry, has tended to obscure the intrinsic qualities of the earlier book. . .Vallejo was the real thing – astoundingly original. . . Rebecca Seiferle does an excellent job with her introduction, placing the work in context and explaining the complications of the texts clearly. Her notes are full and to the point. And, to come to the real point, her translations are excellent.
—Tony Frazer Shearsman

Seiferle is a gifted poet herself, and she brings her exquisite sense of timing and precision to Vallejo's poems. In her lucid introductory essay, she claims Vallejo's work has been translated into English by American poets who impose their own "feverish assumptions about poetic practice" on his work and have misrepresented the autochthonic nature of his poetic project, that is to say the indigenous or native foundation and impulses of his writing. She has clearly researched Vallejo's work with sensitivity and insight in order to render the most authentic versions possible."
—Sima Rabinowtiz www.newpages.com

Sometimes blasphemous, other times merely irreverent, "The Black Heralds" in its surrealistic imagery, tone, diction and themes confronts pastoral traditions, colonialism and religious conformity. "Under the Poplars" glistens with explosive, religious metaphor: "poplars of blood," "flocks of Bethlehem," "arias of grass," "martyrdoms of light," "Easter eyes," "seasoned with shadow," "pastoral howl." The juxtapositions inflame the differences between religious and naturalistic impulses. For instance, "pastoral howl" combines the simple and idyllic "pastoral" with the violent and despairing "howl." A poem such as this isn't built on a preconceived understanding of craftsmanship, artistic decorum or reality. Instead, it's ripped through with brute gestures of super- or hyper-reality.

At its best, Vallejo's poetry can release you from narrow expectations of the censoring, rational parts of your psyche. "Under the Poplars" urges the exploration of what Andre Breton calls the "hidden places" of the psyche, where contradictions (past and future, real and imaginary) are wiped out. What remains is a perilous, thrilling and surreal confluence of language and imagination.
—David Biespiel,The Oregonian
***

http://www.thedrunkenboat.com/heralds.html

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Extraído de: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vsGV-d1MQb4

LOS DESGRACIADOS


There is a lost language somewhere inside my skull. It was the first language I spoke, and the first language I forgot completely, at the age of five, in an effort to adjust to life in a new land, in order to fit in, to belong to this place that would become my home. I do try, when I can, to use it, to read works in Spanish out loud to myself in order to reawaken its music in my head, and thankfully, it comes back to me in fits and starts, in dreams, in bursts of remembering, and when spanish speaking people are kind enough to speak with me and encourage me to reconnect with this long lost piece of who I am. This poem, Los Desgraciados, the title of which I once saw interpreted as "The Wretched of the Earth" was written by Peruvian poet Cesar Vallejo, and the English translation I give here was written by Sandy McKinney.


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; remiéndale, 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. 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...

(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,
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;
remiéndale, 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.
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...

( http://www.poesia-inter.net/cv30013.htm )

The Wretched of the Earth

The day's about to come;
wind up your arm, look for yourself underneath
the mattress, turn and stand
on your head, in order to walk straight.

The day's about to come,
put on your coat.
The day's about to come;
grab your gut tight in your hand, reflect
before you meditate, so it's awful
when misery overtakes you
and some tooth sinks down into you to the depths.

You have to eat, but I tell myself,
don't grieve, that's not for the poor,
grief and sobbing by the tomb;
patch yourself together, remember, trust
your white thread, smoke, check up
on your chain and hide it behind your portrait.
The day's about to come, put on your soul.
The day's about to come; they're going by,
they've opened up an eye in the hotel,
banging on it, flashing your mirror at it . . .
Are you trembling? It's the remote state of the forehead
and the recent nation of the stomach.
They're still snoring . . . What universe puts up with this snore?
The way your pores stay there, judging it!
With so many twos, ay, you're so alone!
The day's about to come, put on your dream.

The day's about to come, I repeat
through the oral organ of your silence
and the urge to turn left with hunger
and right with thirst; in any case
stop being poor with the rich,
stir up
your cold,
because within it is mixed my warmth, beloved victim.
The day's about to come, put on you body.

The day's about to come;
the morning, the sea, the meteor, are going
after your exhaustion with banners,
and by your classic pride, the hyenas
count their steps to be in time with the ass,
the baker's wife is thinking of you,
the butcher is thinking of you, fingering
the hatchet in which are imprisoned
the steel and the iron and the metal; never forget
that during the Mass there are no friends.
The day's about to come, put on the sun.

The day is here; double
your breaths, triple
your rancorous goodwill
and give the elbow to fear, nix and exclamation point;
well, you, as your crotch shows, and being
a bad one, ay, immortal,
have dreamed this night that you were living
on nothing and dying from everything.

-----

Observación: el poema en Inglés tuve que acomodarlo según los versos ordenados como los hallé en el poema (entre paréntesis ) que encontré en la página web ,cuya dirección también allí incluyo.