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drkshadow03's review against another edition
2.0
“A book remained at the edge of his dead waist,
A book was sprouting from his dead corpse.
The hero was carried off,
& corporeally & evilly his mouth entered our breath;
All of us sweated, carrying our navels on our shoulders;
Wanderers the moons were following us;
The dead man also was sweating from sadness.”
These fifteen poems by Cesar Vallejo captures his experiences and his reflections of the Spanish Civil War. In the poems, Vallejo celebrates and mourns his fallen comrades fighting for the Republic, documents different battles that took place, and presents the Spanish Civil War as part of the larger fight for freedom and liberation worldwide. His imagery of the hammer and sickle depicts his affinity for Communism.
He honors fallen soldiers such as Pedro Rojas who becomes the representative of the common man and the everyman, “a representative of everyone.” His soldiers are men born from the land “arming you with dust” and “armed with hunger.” The poems try to bring out the everyday human qualities of his fallen soldiers, while representing their fight and struggle as part of the larger fight and struggle for everybody— for all of humanity. He doesn’t, however, only present soldiers as heroic sacrifices for a greater cause and glorify fighting, but poems like “Spanish Image of Death” capture the gritty and brutal side of war as it describes Lady Death making her way through the battlefield.
He records in his poetry not just heroism of valiant peasant soldiers, but also the many innocent who have died. He offers this poetic description of Guernica, which was destroyed by German aircraft during the Spanish Civil War.
“But from here, later,
From the viewpoint of this land,
From the sorrow to which the satanic good flows,
The great battle of Guernica can be seen.
An a priori combat, unforeseen,
Combat in peace, combat of weak souls,
Against weak bodies, combat in which the child strikes,
Without anyone telling him to strike,
Beneath his atrocious diphthong
& beneath his very clever diaper,
& in which a mother strikes with her scream, with the backside
Of a tear,
& in which a mother strikes with his disease, with his pill & his son,
& in which the old man strikes
With his white hair, his centuries & his stick
& in which the priest strikes with God!
Silent defenders of Guernica!
Oh weak ones, oh offended gentle ones,
Who rise up, grow up, & fill up the world with powerful weak ones!”
The combatants here are not soldiers. They are ordinary innocent weapon less people who fight only with their screams and their symbols of innocence. The Old man can fight only with his old age, while the baby can fight only with his diaper. The choice of images show these are not real combatants and reveal just how horrifying an act the razing of Guernica is.
Probably my favorite poem in the collection was “XII. Mass” which was a repetitive poem of people coming up to a corpse and trying to resurrect them with their love, but continually failing, until “all the inhabitants of the earth” come and they manage to revive the dead man. This displays the universalism of humanity and the universalism of the fighting and sacrifice, but the poem depicts it in such a touching way by using fairly simple language and literary techniques.
Some of the poems also incorporate biblical allusions. For example, poem “XIII. Funereal Drumroll for the Ruins of Durango” implores through the repetition at the beginning of each stanza Father Dust, which alludes to the creation of man from the earth and dust. The dust itself is our father. At one point in the poem, he implores God to give Father Dust human form, alluding to the Genesis episode more explicitly. He also describes Father Dust as the “sandal of the pariah” invoking images of Adam leaving the Garden of Eden after his banishment, but also Moses wandering through the desert as an exile. Likewise the title of the collection and poem “XIV. Spain, Take this Cup From Me” alludes to Luke 22:42 and Matthew 26:39 where Jesus begs God in the garden of Gethsemane to take the cup and responsibility of his future sacrifice for humanity away from him. The poem warns imaginary children of the possibility of Spain falling and implores them to go out and find Spain should that happen, similar to Jesus’s disciples spreading his teachings. The title and the content suggest it is easy for the world to pass the buck of responsibility for the suffering happening in the country and the fall of Spain, but ultimately every struggle is interconnected. Spin and the ideas it represents will live on outside of the actual country should it fall in the war.
A book was sprouting from his dead corpse.
The hero was carried off,
& corporeally & evilly his mouth entered our breath;
All of us sweated, carrying our navels on our shoulders;
Wanderers the moons were following us;
The dead man also was sweating from sadness.”
These fifteen poems by Cesar Vallejo captures his experiences and his reflections of the Spanish Civil War. In the poems, Vallejo celebrates and mourns his fallen comrades fighting for the Republic, documents different battles that took place, and presents the Spanish Civil War as part of the larger fight for freedom and liberation worldwide. His imagery of the hammer and sickle depicts his affinity for Communism.
He honors fallen soldiers such as Pedro Rojas who becomes the representative of the common man and the everyman, “a representative of everyone.” His soldiers are men born from the land “arming you with dust” and “armed with hunger.” The poems try to bring out the everyday human qualities of his fallen soldiers, while representing their fight and struggle as part of the larger fight and struggle for everybody— for all of humanity. He doesn’t, however, only present soldiers as heroic sacrifices for a greater cause and glorify fighting, but poems like “Spanish Image of Death” capture the gritty and brutal side of war as it describes Lady Death making her way through the battlefield.
He records in his poetry not just heroism of valiant peasant soldiers, but also the many innocent who have died. He offers this poetic description of Guernica, which was destroyed by German aircraft during the Spanish Civil War.
“But from here, later,
From the viewpoint of this land,
From the sorrow to which the satanic good flows,
The great battle of Guernica can be seen.
An a priori combat, unforeseen,
Combat in peace, combat of weak souls,
Against weak bodies, combat in which the child strikes,
Without anyone telling him to strike,
Beneath his atrocious diphthong
& beneath his very clever diaper,
& in which a mother strikes with her scream, with the backside
Of a tear,
& in which a mother strikes with his disease, with his pill & his son,
& in which the old man strikes
With his white hair, his centuries & his stick
& in which the priest strikes with God!
Silent defenders of Guernica!
Oh weak ones, oh offended gentle ones,
Who rise up, grow up, & fill up the world with powerful weak ones!”
The combatants here are not soldiers. They are ordinary innocent weapon less people who fight only with their screams and their symbols of innocence. The Old man can fight only with his old age, while the baby can fight only with his diaper. The choice of images show these are not real combatants and reveal just how horrifying an act the razing of Guernica is.
Probably my favorite poem in the collection was “XII. Mass” which was a repetitive poem of people coming up to a corpse and trying to resurrect them with their love, but continually failing, until “all the inhabitants of the earth” come and they manage to revive the dead man. This displays the universalism of humanity and the universalism of the fighting and sacrifice, but the poem depicts it in such a touching way by using fairly simple language and literary techniques.
Some of the poems also incorporate biblical allusions. For example, poem “XIII. Funereal Drumroll for the Ruins of Durango” implores through the repetition at the beginning of each stanza Father Dust, which alludes to the creation of man from the earth and dust. The dust itself is our father. At one point in the poem, he implores God to give Father Dust human form, alluding to the Genesis episode more explicitly. He also describes Father Dust as the “sandal of the pariah” invoking images of Adam leaving the Garden of Eden after his banishment, but also Moses wandering through the desert as an exile. Likewise the title of the collection and poem “XIV. Spain, Take this Cup From Me” alludes to Luke 22:42 and Matthew 26:39 where Jesus begs God in the garden of Gethsemane to take the cup and responsibility of his future sacrifice for humanity away from him. The poem warns imaginary children of the possibility of Spain falling and implores them to go out and find Spain should that happen, similar to Jesus’s disciples spreading his teachings. The title and the content suggest it is easy for the world to pass the buck of responsibility for the suffering happening in the country and the fall of Spain, but ultimately every struggle is interconnected. Spin and the ideas it represents will live on outside of the actual country should it fall in the war.
dustyduck's review
5.0
Simple, accessible, yet strikingly powerful- poems here vary from short snippets of life in Peru, to more abstract internalization of his life thus far. The introductions and short biographical elements included in the editors help make these snapshots more personal. Will reread this some time at a later date- didn't particular understand some of the narratives present here, but I'm sure it'll be clearer soon.
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