Spain, Take This Chalice from Me and Other Poems

by Vallejo, Cesar; Peden, Margaret Sayers; Stavans, Ilan

• ISBN13: 9780143105305
• ISBN10: 0143105302
• eBook ISBN(s): 9781101201565
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2008-03-25
• Publisher: Penguin Classics
• More Book Details
• Purchase Benefits

Summary

A major new bilingual edition of the Peruvian poet’s work Cesar Vallejo is one of the best-known Latin American poets of the twentieth century. Challenging, intense, and difficult to translate, Vallejo’s work has often been overshadowed by his fervent endorsement of communism. Noted scholar Ilan Stavans tackles the avant-garde poet’s politics head-on in an enlightening new introduction that places Vallejo in his proper literary context, while Margaret Sayers Peden’s new translation does full justice to Vallejo’s complex literary style. Including Spanish and English versions of more than eighty poems that span the arc of his career, this volume is certain to become the leading collection of Vallejo’s work for years to come.

Author Biography

Cesar Vallejo (1892-û1938) published his first book of poems, Los Heraldos Negros, in 1919. He spent most of his life in Europe and died in dire poverty in Paris.
Margaret Sayers Peden is a recipient of the Gregory Kolovakos Award for Translation from the PEN Foundation and a translator of more than thirty books by authors including Isabel Allende, Pablo Neruda, and Octavio Paz.
Ilan Stavans is a professor at Amherst College and the author of several books, including On Borrowed Words.

Table of Contents

Introduction
Translator's Note
Chronology
A Note on the Text
Black Heralds	p. 1
Black Heralds	p. 3
Agile Soffits	p. 4
Half Light	p. 5
Absent	p. 7
Deep Sea Divers	p. 8
The Spider	p. 9
Babel	p. 11
Pilgrimage	p. 13
Of the Earth	p. 16
Summer	p. 17
Dregs	p. 19
White Primer	p. 21
Imperial Nostalgias	p. 22
Imperial Nostalgias	p. 23
I	p. 23
Iii	p. 23
Huaco	p. 27
Dead Idyll	p. 29
Thunder	p. 30
Agape	p. 31
White Rose	p. 33
Our Daily Bread	p. 35
Retable	p. 39
Pagan Woman	p. 41
Eternal Dice	p. 43
Rain	p. 45
Amor	p. 47
God	p. 49
Unity	p. 51
Muleteers	p. 53
Songs of the Hearth	p. 54
Fevered Lace	p. 55
Distant Steps	p. 57
To My Brother Miguel	p. 59
Januariad	p. 61
Espergesia	p. 65
Trice: III	p. 71
Trice: X	p. 75
Trice: XI	p. 77
Trice: XIII	p. 79
Trice: XIV	p. 81
Trice: XV	p. 83
Trice: XVI	p. 85
Trice: XXIV	p. 87
Trice: XXVIII	p. 89
Trice: XXXIV	p. 93
Trice: XXXV	p. 95
Trice: XXXVI	p. 99
Trice: LVI	p. 103
Trice: LXV	p. 105
Human Poems	p. 109
Trilce	p. 111
Violence of the Hours	p. 115
The Windows Have Shuddered...	p. 119
The Lowest Moment of My Life	p. 127
Bone Nomenclature	p. 131
I Am Going to Talk About Hope	p. 133
Height and Hair	p. 137
Until the Day I Come Back, from This Rock...	p. 139
Today I Am Much Less Fond of Life...	p. 141
Epistle to Passersby	p. 145
Reliance on the Eyeglasses, Not the Eye...	p. 149
Today I Would Like to Be Happy Willingly...	p. 151
And If After So Many Words...	p. 155
Nine Monsters	p. 159
There Are Days I Am Struck by an Overflowing, Politic Longing...	p. 165
Black Stone on a White Stone	p. 169
Poem to Be Read and Sung	p. 171
Life, This Life...	p. 173
Paris, October 1936	p. 177
Farewell Recalling an Adios	p. 179
And Don't Say a Word to Me...	p. 181
In Short, I Have Nothing That Can Express My Life but My Death...	p. 183
The Forsaken	p. 187
Oh Empty Bottle of Wine! Oh Wine...	p. 191
Racked, Solomonic, Decent...	p. 195
Alfonso, You Are Looking at Me, I'm Aware...	p. 197
Possibly I Am Someone Else...	p. 201
Wedding March	p. 203
Anger That Breaks the Man into Boys...	p. 205
Sweetness Through Heart Sweetness!...	p. 207
It's All Because the Place Where I Put On...	p. 211
Sermon on Death	p. 215
Spain, Take this Chalice from Me	p. 219
Hymn to the Volunteers of the Republic	p. 221
Battles	p. 233
He Used to Write in the Air with His Big Toe...	p. 243
The Beggars Fight for Spain	p. 247
Spanish Image of Death	p. 249
Procession Following the Capture of Bilbao	p. 253
Several Days the Air, Companeros...	p. 257
Here...	p. 261
Brief Funeral Prayer for a Hero of the Republic	p. 265
Winter in the Battle of Teruel	p. 267
I Looked at the Corpse...	p. 271
Mass	p. 273
Funeral Drumroll for the Rubble of Durango	p. 275
Be Wary, Spain, of Your Own Spain...	p. 279
Spain, Take This Chalice from Me	p. 281
Index of Titles and First Lines	p. 285
Table of Contents provided by Blackwell. All Rights Reserved.