Overview

First published in 1923, just before César Vallejo left Peru for France, Scales combines prose poems with short stories in a collection that exhibits all the exuberance of the author’s early experimentalism. A follow-up to Vallejo’s better-known work, Trilce, this radical collection shattered many aesthetic notions prevailing in Latin America and Europe. Intermingling romantic, symbolist, and avant-garde traditions, Scales is a poetic upending of prose narrative that blends Vallejo’s intercontinental literary awareness with his commitment to political transformation. Written in part from Trujillo Central Jail, where Vallejo would endure some of the most terrifying moments of his life, Scales is also a testament of anguish and desperation, a series of meditations on justice and freedom, an exploration of the fantastic, and a confrontation with the threat of madness. Edited and translated from the Castilian by the scholar Joseph Mulligan, this first complete English translation, published here in bilingual format and accompanied by extensive archival documentation related to Vallejo’s incarceration, this volume gives unprecedented access to one of the most inventive practitioners of Latin American literature in the twentieth century.

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9780819577238

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Reviews

This first complete English translation of Vallejo's inventive prose work gives readers the context necessary to appreciate Vallejo's text in relation to its volatile and singular historical moment. Written in part from Trujillo Central Jail and published in 1923, shortly after the well-known Trilce, the work considers innovation in language as a catalyst for social justice. Mulligan's deft translation highlights the modernist impulse toward plain language as well as lingering surrealist, symbolist, and Romantic influences....Readers sense the influence of other texts and other voices in the background through the care that Mulligan has taken in his translations. This adeptly curated, expertly framed bilingual edition is furnished with an appendix of supplementary texts, including relevant excerpts from Trilce, selected correspondence, and various documents associated with Vallejo's imprisonment, making the volume suitable for scholars and newcomers alike.-- Publishers Weekly (7/17/2017 12:00:00 AM)

.. .[T]he prose helps complicate the picture of a writer struggling with an unprecedented poetics. --David S. Wallace Los Angeles Review of Books (1/11/2018 12:00:00 AM) This first complete English translation of Vallejo's inventive prose work gives readers the context necessary to appreciate Vallejo's text in relation to its volatile and singular historical moment. --Publishers Weekly (starred review) .. .[T]he prose helps complicate the picture of a writer struggling with an unprecedented poetics. --David S. Wallace, Los Angeles Review of Books

Author Information

CÉSAR VALLEJO (1892 - 1938) was born in the Peruvian Andes and, after publishing some of the most radical Latin American poetry of the twentieth century, moved to Europe, where he diversified his writing practice to encompass theater, fiction, and reportage. As an outspoken alternative to the European avant-garde, Vallejo stands as one of the most authentic and multifaceted creators to write in the Castilian language. JOSEPH MULLIGAN is a translator and scholar whose work has focused primarily on twentieth-century Latin American vanguardismo. He is the translator of Against Professional Secrets by César Vallejo (2001) and Gustavo Faverón's novel The Antiquarian (2014), and his translations of Jorge Eduardo Eielson's poems appeared in Asymmetries: Anthology of Peruvian Poetry (2015). His translations of Sahrawi poetry appeared in Poems for the Millennium, vol. 4: The University of California Book of North African Poetry (2013). He is editor and principal translator of Selected Writings of César Vallejo (2015). Currently, he is a PhD candidate in the Romance Studies Department of Duke University.

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