Companionable sadness : the dense, avant-garde oeuvre of Cesar Vallejo

Book review: Joseph Mulligan, editor. Selected Writings of Cesar Vallejo, Wesleyan University Press, 9780819574848. A poet who seems untranslatable may end up among the most translated. Stephane Mallarme and Paul Celan are cases in point; so is Cesar Vallejo (1892-1938). This is not really paradoxical: existing translations of the ‘untranslatable' poet are bound to seem inadequate; translators are drawn to summits of difficulty, and may be spurred on by emulation. There are at least nine selections or individual titles of Vallejo’s poetry in English, not counting the very influential Neruda & Vallejo: Selected Poems (1971), edited by Robert Bly. On top of this, there are now two translations of the complete poetry, by Clayton Eshleman and Jose Rubia Barcia(2009) and by Michael Smith and Valentino Gianuzzi (2006). Vallejo the poet has been served with devotion for a clutch of reasons, including the bold construction of a poetic idiolect that made him a one-man avant-garde, his commitment to the cause of international socialism from the late 1920s until his death, and a sensitivity to the ‘tears of things’ that infuses all his work.