-- César Vallejo, why did you come here?

-- Well, to drink coffee.

-- How did you begin to drink coffee in your life? 

-- I published my first book in Lima. A collection of poems: Black Heralds. It was in 1918.

-- What interesting events happened in Lima that year?

-- I don't know. . .I was publishing my book...over here the war was ending...I don't know.

-- What type of poetry did you create in your Black Heralds?

-- It could be called modernist poetry. It fit, yes, in Spanish modernism, in a traditional feeling with logical encrustations of americanisms 

-- Do you remember. . .?

Pablo Abril, present at the interview, is the one who remembers:

     "What is she doing now, my andean, sweet/  Rita of the wild rushes and the wild grape;/ now that Byzantium suffocates me, and my blood drowses,/ like weak cognac, within me." 

-- I have recited César Vallejo poorly,  very poorly; but not so poorly that I don't appreciate the excellences of this stanza which reveals -- and more so if one looks with a historical sense at its date -- an authentic fine poet. In him I see, for the time being. . .

-- I see for the time being, friend Vallejo, something most important in a poet and without which poets nor prose writers nor locomotives interest me: the precise adjectival use: "weak cognac."

-- Precision-- says Vallejo-- interests me to the point of being an obsession. If you were to ask me what is the greatest aspiration in these moments, I could not say more than this: the elimination of every word of accessory existence, the pure expression, that today more than ever has to be searched for in nouns and verbs. . .Since it's not possible to renounce words!

-- In Trilce, for example, can you quote some verse like this?

Vallejo looks in his book, which he's brought along to the café, and chooses the following:

"The created voice revolts and wants to be/neither net, nor love./The betrothed  are betrothed in eternity./ So don't strike 1, which will resound to infinity./And don't strike 0, which will be so silent/ until it rouses and raises the 1."

-- Very good. Can you tell me why you titled your book Trilce? What does "Trilce"  want to say?

-- Ah, well, "Trilce" wants to say nothing. I couldn't find, to my anxiety, any word with the dignity of the title, and then I invented it: "Trilce".  Isn't it a beautiful word?  After that I thought no more: Trilce.

-- When did you arrive in Europe, in Paris, Vallejo?

-- In 1923, with Trilce published the year before.

-- Did you know the modern French poets?

-- Not one. The atmosphere in Lima was otherwise. I had some curiosity; but concretely I was unaware of many things.

-- How could you write this book then, this book that, inclusive as verbal poetry, questions knowledge of every kind?

-- I gave myself to it  without pause from The Black Heralds. I knew the Spanish classics well. But I believe, honestly, that the poet has a historical sense of the idiom,  gropingly searches out with justice his expression. 

-- What people do you know in Paris?

-- Few. In the beginning I didn't  search for writers. Later I met a Chilean, Vicente Huidobro, and a Spaniard, Juan Larrea.

-- To end, friend Vallejo, have you unfinished works?

-- A drama, "Screen." A new book of poetry.

-- What's the title?

-- Well. . . "Central Institute of Work"
 

Dead Idyll
 

           What is she doing now, my andean, sweet 
Rita of the wild rushes and the wild grape; 
now that Byzantium suffocates me, and my blood drowses, 
like weak cognac, within me. 

           Where are her hands that used to contritely iron 
in the afternoons, those whitenesses of the hereafter;
now, in this rain that takes away even 
my desire to live. 

           What has become of her flannel skirt; of her
worries; of her way 
of walking; of her savoring the sugar cane brandies of May.

           She must be at the door watching some sign in the sky, 
and finally, she'll say trembling..."Jesus, it's cold!"
And in the roof's thatched canes, a wild bird will cry.
 

V

Dicotyledon group. Overturing
petrels, propensities of trinity,
finales that begin, ohs of sighs
believing themselves inspired by heterogeneity.
Group of two cotyledons!

Let's see. That it is without being more.
Let's see. Don't transcend
and think in the sound of being unheard,
and chrome and be unseen.
And don't gliss over the great collapse.

The created voice revolts and wants to be
neither net, nor love.
The betrothed are betrothed in eternity.
So don't strike 1, which will resound to infinity.
And don't strike 0, which will be so silent
until it rouses and raises the 1.

Oh bicardiac group.