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UC Irvine FlashPoints Title Poetry in Pieces: César Vallejo and Lyric Modernity Permalink https://escholarship.org/uc/item/3704z0k8 Author Clayton, Michelle Publication Date 2011 Peer reviewed eScholarship.org Powered by the California Digital Library University of California Poetry in Pieces FlashPoints The series solicits books that consider literature beyond strictly national and disciplin- ary frameworks, distinguished both by their historical grounding and their theoretical and conceptual strength. We seek studies that engage theory without losing touch with history, and work historically without falling into uncritical positivism. FlashPoints will aim for a broad audience within the humanities and the social sciences concerned with moments of cultural emergence and transformation. In a Benjaminian mode, FlashPoints is interested in how literature contributes to forming new constellations of culture and history, and in how such formations function critically and politically in the present. Available online at http://repositories.cdlib.org/ucpress Series Editors: Ali Behdad (Comparative Literature and English, UCLA); Judith Butler (Rhetoric and Comparative Literature, UC Berkeley), Founding Editor; Edward Dimendberg (Film & Media Studies, UC Irvine), Coordinator; Catherine Gallagher (English, UC Berkeley), Founding Editor; Jody Greene (Literature, UC Santa Cruz); Susan Gillman (Literature, UC Santa Cruz); Richard Terdiman (Literature, UC Santa Cruz) 1. On Pain of Speech: Fantasies of the First Order and the Literary Rant, by Dina Al-Kassim 2. Moses and Multiculturalism, by Barbara Johnson, with a foreword by Barbara Rietveld 3. The Cosmic Time of Empire: Modern Britain and World Literature, by Adam Barrows 4. Poetry in Pieces: César Vallejo and Lyric Modernity, by Michelle Clayton Poetry in Pieces César Vallejo and Lyric Modernity Michelle Clayton university of california press Berkeley • Los Angeles • London University of California Press, one of the most distin- guished university presses in the United States, enriches lives around the world by advancing scholarship in the humanities, social sciences, and natural sciences. Its ac- tivities are supported by the UC Press Foundation and by philanthropic contributions from individuals and institu- tions. For more information, visit www.ucpress.edu. University of California Press Berkeley and Los Angeles, California University of California Press, Ltd. London, England © 2011 by The Regents of the University of California Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Clayton, Michelle, 1974– Poetry in pieces : César Vallejo and lyric modernity / Michelle Clayton. p. cm.—(FlashPoints ; 4) Includes bibliographical references and index. isbn 978-0-520-26229-4 (pbk. : alk. paper) 1. Vallejo, César, 1892–1938—Criticism and interpretation. I. Title. PQ8497.V35Z616 2011 861'.62—dc22 2010020042 Manufactured in the United States of America 20 19 18 17 16 15 14 13 12 11 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 This book is printed on Cascades Enviro 100, a 100% post consumer waste, recycled, de-inked fiber. FSC re- cycled certified and processed chlorine free. It is acid free, Ecologo certified, and manufactured by BioGas energy. Contents Acknowledgments vii Introduction: “The Whole, the Part!” 1 1. Pachyderms in Poetry and Prose 23 2. Invasion of the Lyric 50 3. Lyric Matters 89 4. Lyric Technique, Aesthetic Politics 134 5. Literature Under Pressure 151 6. Making Poetry History 192 Conclusion: Poetry and Crime 250 Appendix: Translations of Poems 257 Notes 275 Bibliography 309 Index 323 This page intentionally left blank Acknowledgments My thanks to the FlashPoints editorial committee at the University of California Press and to the Modern Language Initiative, for their sup- port of this book. I have had the extraordinary luck to work with an extraordinary editor, Ed Dimendberg, whose wit, good sense, and Ger- man references kept me lively and often laughing during the final stages of revision. Hannah Love, Lynne Withey, and Emily Park have been very helpful through the editorial phase, as has my copy editor, Sheila Berg, who has patiently removed many Irishisms; any remaining are the product of my own stubbornness. I owe a special debt of gratitude to the two manuscript reviewers, Christina Karageorgou-Bastea and Gwen Kirkpatrick, both fine readers of Spanish-language poetry, who gave me enormously useful suggestions for local and conceptual revisions. I am also grateful for comments from other anonymous readers who helped me to fine-tune certain points of the argument. This book is the product of many conversations. Not all of them had to do with Vallejo, but they all helped to trace out the broad contours of this book, reminding me constantly of the need to read widely and with an openness to unexpected connections. My most immediate debt is to my wonderful adviser at Princeton, Jim Irby, who first introduced me to Vallejo’s poetry; Jim’s rigor as a critic and his encouragement and patience as a mentor through and beyond my graduate years have given me a model not only for poetry criticism but for academic gener- osity as well. Many other faculty members at Princeton gave depth and vii viii | Acknowledgments breadth to my thinking about poetry’s forms, contents, and contexts: Arcadio Díaz-Quiñones, Ricardo Piglia, Lucía Melgar, Ricardo Krauel, Michael Wood, Eduardo Cadava, and Doug Mao. Behind them are a line of teachers who introduced me to poetry and the pleasures of Latin American literature: Charmian Arbuckle and Hilda Quinn in Ireland and Clive Griffin, Robin Fiddian, and David Constantine at Oxford. In my professional life at UCLA I have had the support of a lovely community of scholars. Colleagues in my two home departments, Com- parative Literature and Spanish & Portuguese, in English, and across the city in departments at the University of Southern California, helped to keep this project in motion, through timely encouragement or sug- gestions for further reading and thought. My special thanks go to a number of colleagues whose support went above and beyond the call of duty: Ali Behdad, Veronica Cortínez, Marzena Grzegorczyk, Michael Heim, Roberta Johnson, Kathy Komar, Katherine King, Efraín Kristal, Beth Marchant, Mark Seltzer, Ross Shideler, Shu-mei Shih, and Andrés Soria Olmedo. Staff members at UCLA—in Rolfe, Royce, and Humani- ties—provided practical support for various aspects of my research. Whatever freshness this book has is also due to the undergraduate and graduate students at UCLA who have struggled with Vallejo alongside me, energetically disproving a colleague’s early warning that “Vallejo depresses the students.” And this project also owes much to the quick- witted capabilities of research assistants at various moments in my writ- ing: Vanessa Fernández, Peter Lehman, and Román Luján. I have presented sections of this book to audiences at a variety of universities and conferences; I thank those audiences for suggestions about how to frame Vallejo for different groups and for steering me in the direction of some unsuspected connections. Conferences have al- ways reenergized my take on Vallejo, largely through surprising con- versations with colleagues in close or distant fields. For keeping me aware of the possibilities and excitements of cross-cultural poetics, I thank Chris Bush, Eric Hayot, John Marx, Barrett Watten, and Steve Yao. Within Latin American studies, I have found some remarkable models and interlocutors in Jorge Coronado, Robert Kaufman, Justin Read, Fernando Rosenberg, Gonzalo Aguilar and, right at the finish line, Anna Deeny. Gene Bell-Villada, José Antonio Mazzotti, Guido Po- destá, and Dan Balderston have been supporters of the project from its earliest days; the latter two have also pulled me onto different and fruitful critical tracks at opportune times. Jean Franco and Julio Ortega generously read sections of this book while it was in preparation, as Acknowledgments | ix did David Lloyd, whose enthusiasm for Vallejo and careful critical eye gave me an intellectual boost at exactly the right moment. A conference on Vallejo’s poetry that I organized in 2007 led to wonderful conversa- tions with the critic Stephen Hart, whose work has been so important for my own thinking, and the translator Clayton Eshleman, who has generously allowed me to use his translations in this book. Finally, I am grateful to the Revista de Estudios Hispánicos for publishing my article “Trilce’s Lyric Matters” and for giving me permission to reproduce its contents in chapter 3. Various institutions provided funding for my research in libraries in the United States and abroad. The Princeton Program in Latin Ameri- can Studies helped me get the project off the ground, supplemented later by several UCLA Senate Research Enabling Grants and by a UCLA Latin American Institute Faculty Fellowship during my sabbatical leave. Jorge Puccinelli, José Antonio Rodríguez Garrido, Fernando Velázquez, and Victor Vich showed me great intellectual generosity and hospitality in Lima, as did Jorge Fondebrider, Florencia Garramuño, and Alvaro Fernández-Bravo in Buenos Aires. This book has been a long time coming. My thanks to friends who kept this project going through dark nights of the soul and white screens of death. At Princeton: Peter Barberie, Laura Bass, Elissa Bell, Paul Firbas, Josh Gold, Andrew Krull, Kati Lovasz, José Anto- nio Lucero, Noel Luna, Eric Trudel, and Gillian White; in Los Ange- les, Kenny Berger, Mat Coleman, Tom Holden, Priya Jaikumar, Alex Purves, and Mary Thomas; in Providence