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NOTE ON THIS EDITION

The translations presented in this volume have been based on the Obras completas published by the Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú: Poesía completa I–IV (1997), edited by Ricardo Silva-Santisteban; Narrativa completa (1999) and Teatro completo I–III (1999), edited by Silva-Santisteban and Moreano; Correspondencia completa (2002), edited by Jesús Cabel; Ensayos y reportajes completos (2002), edited by Manuel Miguel de Priego; and Artículos y crónicas completos I–II (2002), edited by Jorge Puccinelli; as well as the Obras completas published by Banco de Crédito: Obra poética (1991), edited by Ricardo González Vigil, and Artículos y crónicas (1918–1939) desde Europa (1997), edited by Jorge Puccinelli.

The poems translated by Clayton Eshleman have been drawn from The Complete Poetry published in 2007 by the University of California Press, which contains translations that supersede the translator’s many previous versions that have appeared in print over the past fifty years. Due to the large number of discrepancies over the setting of many of Vallejo’s poems, this work is carefully cataloged by editors, as is the case with Eshleman’s versions. Readers are encouraged to reference his notes and commentary in The Complete Poetry.

The formatting and style of the source text, including abnormalities such as irregular capitalization, have been replicated—to the extent possible—in the following translations, except for the thesis, plays, and letters. In Romanticism in Castilian Poetry we adhere to basic norms in the presentation of analytic prose by not italicizing quoted poems, as the author did, and by offering block quotes for larger portions of text. These conventions are designed to increase the readability of the text and not to lead the reader into believing that the author was revolutionizing the form in Castilian when he was not. This is always a risk with Vallejo, since in many other places, he is in fact formally subversive.

Due to the unfinished state in which all the theatrical works remained at the time of Vallejo’s death, certain editorial decisions are required (even to set the Castilian version). As evinced by the facsimiles reproduced in Teatro completo III, where we find typescripts of La piedra cansada that Vallejo himself edited by hand, we observe that he left-aligned the play and in parentheses placed stage directions, which he could not italicize, since this function wasn’t available in his typewriter technology.

The editions of the plays edited by Silva-Santisteban and Moreano justify the dialogue and stage directions, and center-align the name of the speaker on the line preceding the dialogue. Moreover, in those editions the stage directions have been italicized. We’ve preferred to set the text flush left throughout (character names, dialogue, and stage directions) and place the stage directions in italics. In an attempt to elucidate certain portions of the dramatic movement, we’ve blocked out stage directions that don’t pertain to the speaker of that same line. This format, as in Bertold Brecht’s Mother Courage and Her Children (1939)—as translated by Eric Bentley for Grove Press in 1966—has been used to clarify how the plays are intended to be performed.

Regarding Brothers Colacho, three editions have been identified: a Castilian edition edited by Georgette de Vallejo and Enrique Ballón Aguirre, Teatro completo (1979), published by PUCP; a French typescript held by the PUCP Library; and a Castilian typescript held by the Biblioteca Nacional del Perú. A comparative reading of the three documents and the explanations offered by Silva-Santisteban lead us to believe that, while the latter two are very similar in terms of their content and stage of development, the Castilian version at the Biblioteca Nacional can be considered the most finished product and is the source of the translation we present. It’s divided into three acts, five scenes, and fifteen movements. Through the transformation of the three versions, if this supposition holds true, we see Vallejo improve the composition not only by editing but also by translating.

Although Georgette de Vallejo has stated that The Tired Stone was written in its entirety in December 1937, Silva-Santisteban has identified dubious modifications to scenes in the typescript that obstruct the plot of the play. At the end of act 2, a page is cut in half and another is pasted on top of it, such that page 20 repeats itself; on page 25 there’s the handwritten note “Cuadro onceavo” and on page 29, the note “Cuadro doceavo.” These notes contain egregious morphological errors—“onceavo” for “undécimo” (eleventh) and “doceavo” for “duodécimo” (twelfth)—which Vallejo simply could not have made. His wife Georgette, a native French speaker and infamous meddler in Vallejo’s papers, is the primary suspect. When we compare the version published by Georgette in Teatro completo (1979) against the versions published in Visión del Perú, edited by Washington Delgado, where he presents pages from the typescript with handwritten corrections, it appears that Georgette deliberately omitted Vallejo’s revisions, which most likely were made during January 1938. Silva-Santisteban has incorporated Vallejo’s handwritten changes, and the present translation is based on his version, as it appears in Teatro Completo III (1999).

Moreover, the plays Death and The Final Judgment were originally written in French and then translated to Castilian by Georgette de Vallejo. Over the years the French version of The Final Judgment went missing, which has forced us to render our English version from her Castilian. Death, on the other hand, has been translated from the original French version, as it appears in César Vallejo, su estética teatral, by Guido Podestá.

The epistolary documents present the double difficulty of their tone and multiform layout. Vallejo’s tone in his letters is overtly cordial and strikingly affectionate, yet a literal translation into English tends to turn this into saccharine verbosity. A more interpretative approach, like the one we’ve taken here, can modulate the tonality to produce a similar effect but to a different degree. Bearing in mind that the most loyal translation is never the most literal, we’ve deliberately attenuated Vallejo’s tone in his letters so that it’s evidently affectionate and noticeably intimate, but not distractingly so. With regard to the format, the PUCP’S compendium of the letters reproduces the manuscripts and typescripts exactly as the texts appear in the originals, including, when available, facsimiles. We, on the other hand, have standardized basic elements of the letters, such as greetings, salutations, and the placement of the date, location, and signature, in an attempt to increase their readability, recognizing that the heteroclite nature of the present anthology already presents the reader with considerable challenges.

Moreover, we should clarify that Castilian was Vallejo’s default language; while living in Paris, he gained proficiency in French to the extent that he successfully translated from French, published some of his own articles in French, and drafted some of his plays in French. Although he didn’t know Quechua or Russian, this didn’t stop him from scattering words from those languages (the spelling and transliteration of which he often imagined) throughout his writings as he saw fit. In the following translations, French words have been left in French, with a note for the first instance of a word or expression that’s not generally understood among modern readers of literature in English. In a few cases, we’ve corrected the French spelling to avoid confusion.

Although one may be tempted to think that César Vallejo, this native Andean, imbued a text like The Tired Stone with authentic Quechua while living in Paris, recent scholarship has confirmed that his Quechua is relegated to a modernist imagination, far from demonstrating accurate usage and correct modern spelling. Rather than updating these Quechua words, we’ve copied them verbatim, and for the first instance of words or phrases identifiable to modern Quechua scholars, we have included an endnote with a corrected spelling and definition. In addressing the Quechua vocabulary, I sought the assistance of NYU Professor Odi Gonzales and asked him to comment on a vocabulary I had selected, which admittedly doesn’t encompass every instance of Quechua in these translations. With regard to the usage of Russian words, since the transliteration of the Cyrillic alphabet to the Latin differs orthographically when it comes into the Castilian and English languages, we’ve offered new English transliterations of the Russian words and names in Vallejo’s vocabulary. The first instance of a loan word or phrase is accompanied by an annotated explanation.

Finally, we’ve included endnotes in which we offer commentaries on the translation of neologisms, obscure historical references, deliberate misspellings, drastically nonliteral renderings, and any idiosyncrasy that might otherwise be presumed a typographical error in the process of printing or an overlooked mistake in the translated composition. The notes and commentaries are meant as a reminder to the reader that the text is, in fact, a translation and as encouragement to seek out the original Castilian versions we’ve chosen to omit in order to present the reader with a wider selection.