The Black Heralds Spanish Edition

Hay golpes en la vida, tan fuertes... ¡Yo no sé! Golpes como del odio de Dios; como si ante ellos, la resaca de todo lo sufrido se empozara en el alma... ¡Yo no sé!. Son pocos; pero son... Abren zanjas oscuras en el rostro más fiero y en el lomo más fuerte. Serán tal vez los potros de bárbaros Atilas; o los heraldos negros que nos manda la muerte. Son las caídas hondas de los Cristos del alma, de alguna fe adorable que el Destino blasfema. Esos golpes sangrientos son las crepitaciones de algún pan que en la puerta del horno se nos quema. - Taken from "Los Heraldos Negros" written by Cesar Vallejo

Poetry. Latino/Latina Studies. Translated from the Spanish by Barry Fogden. THE BLACK HERALDS, César Vallejo's first book of poems, appeared in 1919. It clearly has late-Romantic and late-modernista roots, but, as D. Gallagher says in his survey "Modern Latin American Literature, " "what is remarkable about 'Los heraldos negros ' is the sense one gets now and then of a personal voice emerging. In many of the poems, Vallejo's own experiences, his own personality, begin confidently to express themselves, and with them there tentatively burgeons a new language, the beginnings of maybe the most original voice in Latin American poetry."

Originally published in Peru in 1919 before the poet fled to Europe to avoid incarceration, this collection of poems is the first from aman who would become a significant voice of Latin American poetry. Cesar Vallejo's work reveals a mystical and social vision that penetrates the deepest recesses of the human spirit and consciousness, and is influenced by the many experiences he had in his relatively short life of 49 years, including time in jail, the alienation of exile, poverty, exploitation, and war."

Before writing his breakthrough poem sequence 'Trilce', César Vallejo published 'The Black Heralds', his first book of poems, in 1919. Although heavily indebted to the aesthetics of modernismo, Vallejo's early volume finds a way to escape the merely decorative, and includes poems of indubitable originality, harbingers of his later masterpieces. In this varied book, lyrics of existential angst and romantic frustration appear amid descriptions of family life and Andean landscapes. 'The Black Heralds' includes many of Vallejo's best-known poems, and its deceptive straightforwardness has garnered a lasting appeal among poetry readers. This bilingual edition presents a new translation of 'The Black Heralds', and is based upon the latest textual discoveries, such as variants in some copies of the first edition. Aside from the contents of his first book, an appendix gathers all of Vallejo's early uncollected poems, as well as those which only survive in fragments. Together with 'Trilce' and 'The Complete Later Poems 1923-1938', this volume makes available, for the first time in English, all of César Vallejo's poetry. The new translations presented here are by the Irish poet, and award-winning translator, Michael Smith, and the Peruvian scholar Valentino Gianuzzi.

"César Vallejo is the greatest Catholic poet since Dante—and by Catholic I mean universal."—Thomas Merton, author of The Seven Storey Mountain "An astonishing accomplishment. Eshleman's translation is writhing with energy."—Forrest Gander, author of Eye Against Eye "Vallejo has emerged for us as the greatest of the great South American poets—a crucial figure in the making of the total body of twentieth-century world poetry. In Clayton Eshleman's spectacular translation, now complete, this most tangled and most rewarding of poets comes at us full blast and no holds barred. A tribute to the power of the imagination as it manifests through language in a world where meaning has always to be fought for and, as here, retrieved against the odds."—Jerome Rothenberg, co-editor of Poems for the Millennium "Every great poet should be so lucky as to have a translator as gifted and heroic as Clayton Eshleman, who seems to have gotten inside Vallejo's poems and translated them from the inside out. The result is spectacular, or as one poem says, 'green and happy and dangerous.'"—Ron Padgett, translator of Complete Poems by Blaise Cendrars "César Vallejo was one of the essential poets of the twentieth century, a heartbreaking and groundbreaking writer, and this gathering of the many years of imaginative work by Clayton Eshleman is one of Vallejo's essential locations in the English tongue."—Robert Hass, former Poet Laureate of the United States "This is a crucially important translation of one of the poetic geniuses of the twentieth century." —William Rowe, author of Poets of Contemporary Latin America: History and the Inner Life "Only the dauntless perseverance and the love with which the translator has dedicated so many years of his life to this task can explain why the English version conveys, in all its boldness and vigor, the unmistakable voice of César Vallejo."—Mario Vargas Llosa

Thoughtful textured poems by a poet who is able to fuse the intellectual with the visceral.--Library Journal

The most inclusive single-volume anthology of Latin American poetry intranslation ever produced.