Chekhov's Mistress
Pen World Voices: Report from the tribute to Cesar Vallejo
Do you know this poem?
Agape
Today no one has come to inquire:
nor have they asked me for anything this afternoon.
I have not seen a single cemetery flower
in such a happy procession of lights.
Forgive me, Lord: how little I have died!
This afternoon everybody, everybody passes by
without inqiring or asking me for anything.
And I do not know what they forget and feels
wrong in my hands, like something that is not mine.
I have gone to the door,
and I feel like shouting at everybody:
If you are missing anything, here it is!
Because in all the afternoons of this life,
I do not know what doors they slam in a face,
and my soul is seized by someone else’s thing.
Today no one has come;
and today I have died so little this afternoon!
That is how I knew César Vallejo (1892 – 1938), but today I know this Andean poet a little better from attending a tribute on the occasion of Clayton Eshleman’s publication of Vallejo’s Collected Poems.
Vallejo’s poetry – of which his fellow Peruvian Mario Vargas Llosa says contains “within their seeming transparency, a nucleus irreducible to pure reason, a secret heart that eludes every effort the rational mind makes to hear it beat.” – was first read in Spanish, then in translation, sifting through small pieces of the collection, with additional poems from each of Vallejo’s three major works – Los Heraldos Negros, Trilce, and Poemas Humanos – read in English without their Spanish originals.
I’m not fluent in Spanish, but I love the sound of the language and I do enjoy hearing poems in their original form, particularly those where the music of the language should be brought out above all else. The readings were all basically good, although I’m of a mind that poems should not be dramatized; the drama is in the words, and I felt Sam Shepard and one other reader was a little over the top when he/she could have just let the words do the work and let the lines fall into place.
It’s impossible to say how many were Vallejo fans in particular, Poetry Project regulars, or fans there to watch Sam Shepard read, but St. Marks Church appeared to be at capacity. While it lacks the intimacy of Nuyorican Poet’s Cafe, it was perfectly comfortable for this largish (particularly for a poetry reading) crowd. I got in early enough to stake out a lounging place in the carpeted side-steps – pillow, fat book of poems, and video camera – and watch the readers and the crowd. Like a live music performance, readings give a work life that might have previously gone unnoticed, so now, as I read Trilce, I carry with me the sound of at least some of it in Español.
comments
Thank you so much for this, Bud! It’s truly exciting to see the attention given to such a well-respected Latin American writer.
(I’ve been living vicariously through these posts!)
– amcorrea (05/02 at 09:47 PM)
Page 1 of 1 pages of comments
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About this Post
- Posted by: Bud Parr
- Date: April 30, 2007
- Filed Under:
Reading Railroad: Events
- Comments:1
- Links to this Post: Technorati
