WORD-PLAY AND BETACISM IN THE WORK OF C&AR VALLEJO
'Poetry is untranslatable.' This is how Ctsar Vallejo, the famous Peruvian poet, opens one of his most revealing articles on the poetic process. l There is, perhaps, little intrinsically striking about this comment which, after all, might have flowed from the pen of any number of twentieth-century poets.
Yet since these words were written by a poet who, for a period of his life at least, was a committed Communist, they have significant implications. For the argument which springs naturally from an affirmation of this kind leads Vallejo potentially into a position which is at variance with the often reductionist criteria of political art. In the same article from which this quotation is taken, as Vallejo goes on to stress, poetic form must never be superseded by content:
Se puede traducir solamente 10s verses hechos de ideas. Son traductibles solamente 10s poetas que trabajan con ideas. en vez de trabajar con palabras, y que ponen en un poema la letra o texto de la vtda. en vez de buscar el tono o ritmo cardiaco de la vida.
Vallejo reinforces his argument by referring to a personal opinion of his friend Juan Gris, the illustrious Spanish painter who, like Vallejo, resided for most of his adult life in Paris:
Neophilologus 69 (1985) 21&224