From Feuerbach to Marx
When an organ carries out its function fully, there is no possible malice in the body. At the moment a tennis player masterfully tosses the ball, he is possessed by animal innocence.
The same occurs with the brain. At the moment the philosopher discovers a new truth, he is a complete beast. Anatole France said that religious sentiment is the function of a special organ of the human body, yet to be discovered. One could also affirm that, at the precise moment that this organ of faith functions at its peak, the believer is also a being so devoid of malice that he could be called utterly animal.
The Head and Feet of Dialectics
Facing the stones of Darwinian risk that compose the Tuileries palace, Potsdam, Peterhof, Quirinal, the White House and Buckingham, I suffer the pain of a megatherium, who meditated standing upright, the hind legs on the head of Hegel and the front legs on the head of Marx.
Explanation of the Red Army
A man whose level of culture—I'm talking about culture based on the idea and practice of justice, which is the only true culture—a man, I was saying, whose level of culture is driven by the creative force that gives rise to the invention of a rifle, this man does not have the right to use it.
Reputation Theory
I have been in the famous Sztaron tavern on Seipel Street, in Budapest; a tavern, they say, of a secret Bolshevik company whose manager, Ossag Muchay, has been quite courteous to his clientele. Muchay has been with me for quite a while, talking at length and sipping Viennese absinth, that religious and potent liqueur, the color of an inch worm that he extracts from a strange wild grass, called sleeping spirit. This evening, the tavern was visited by a great number of parishioners, who entered, stretching out their limbs, drinking maliciously at the bar and then leaving with utter perfection. In the corner on the first floor, two young girls were playing a game of leap-frog with tiny caped turtles bedecked in ribbons. In the doorway of the same room, good Muchay and I were talking. We spoke about the superstitions of Asia Minor, about the salubrious sciences of apprehension, about witchcraft.
I said goodbye to Muchay and left the tavern. I headed toward the corner and took Prague Street, which appeared to be invaded with people. The crowd was looking over the brick walls at the police maneuvers.
I realized, through timely waning swells in vignette, that they were chasing the criminal of a high crime, one which no one could identify. A group of officers left one of the towers of the Ravulk church, leading a man in handcuffs. As they led the prisoner down the steps of the entrance hall, I could see him through the crowd, wearing a coat with lozenges, enormous eyes, a large well-bred dog, who had just bitten a queen.
I followed the throng of people to the station. The commissioner himself interrogated the prisoner in a tone of legal indignation:
"Who are you? What is your name?"
"I don't have a name, sir," said the prisoner.
His name has been sought in Loeben, the village where the shackled man was residing, but to no avail. There is no official record of his family. Nor was any paper at all discovered in his pockets. All that is proven is that he lives in Loeben, because everyone has seen him there on a daily basis, walking through the streets, sitting in the cafes, reading newspapers, talking with passersby. Yet, no one knows his name. How long has he lived in Loeben? This remains unknown, as does whether he is Hungarian or a foreigner.
I returned to Ossag Muchay's tavern and explained the case to him in great detail and even gave him the minute description of the prisoner. Muchay told me:
"That individual, in all truth, lacks a name. I am the only one who holds his name. Do you want to find out what it is?"
He took me by the arm, we went up to the second floor and he led me to a desk. There, he took a scrap of paper out of a tiny case, where appeared, in thick and loose lines, but so crumbled that it was impossible to decipher them, a signature penned in frog green ink, like the kind Hungarian country folk use. I argued with Muchay:
"Can one really take a person's name and hide it in a case, like a simple ring or bill...?"
"Nothing more or less," the tavern owner replied.
"And what is the explanation of all this? So then, what is that name?"
"Neither you nor anyone can know it, since this name is now in my sole possession. You, sir, can find out what it is, but you cannot know it..."
"Mr. Muchay, are you mocking me?"
"Not in the least. That man lost his name and he himself, although he would like to, cannot know it now. It is absolutely impossible for him, as long as he does not have in his possession the signature that you see before you."
"But if he signed it, it will be easy for him to sign it again and again."
"No. The name is but one alone. Signatures, there are many of these, no doubt, but the name is only one out of all the signatures."
His unexpected billiard subtleties began to make my mind swim. Muchay, on the other hand, spoke without faltering. He lit his pipe with two flicks on his Croatian flint. He closed the steel case and led me down.
"The life of a man," he said, walking down the stairs, "is completely revealed in only one of his acts. The name of a man is revealed in only one of his signatures. To know that representative act is to know his true life. To know that representative signature is to know his true name."
"And on what grounds do you believe that the signature you possess is the representative signature of that man? What's more, what does knowing a person's true name matter? Doesn't one know everyone's true name?
"Listen, sir," argued Muchay, placing a prudent inflection on his words, "the true name of many people remains unknown. This is why the worker from Loeben, and not the owner of the factory where heworked, was imprisoned.
"But do you know the crime he is accused of ?"
"An assault on Regent Horthy."
I lowered my eyes, blowing air into my medium-sized organs and remained Vallejo facing Muchay.
Against Professional Secrets
César Vallejo
translated from the Spanish by Joseph Mulligan
When we hear about César Vallejo, the image of the poet por excelencia emerges before our eyes. One of the giants. Not just the poet's poet, but the people's poet, too. Yet, few are aware of the breadth of the Peruvian's achievements as a writer and the scope of the man. Rarely do we think of his 244 articles, his 12 plays, his 7 volumes of fiction, 3 volumes of translation or even his 2 books of thoughts. Against Professional Secrets is one such 'book of thoughts', and it illuminates Vallejo's ideas and the trajectory of his literary production more clearly than any other
of his works.
In 1923, Vallejo expatriated from Peru after publishing three major works of literature: The Black Heralds (1918), Trilce (1922) and Scales (1923). The latter two prefigure his project in Against Professional Secrets with regards to both form and content. The form that crosscuts these works is the prose poem—first used in Trilce, developed in Scales, and mastered in Against Professional Secrets. Thematically, the revolutionary spirit of the present volume can be traced directly to Trilce through the poetic treatment of human oppression.
In Trilce, the indigenous are represented as a symbol of marginalization. There we read about those "farmhands of sapient kin", those "blighting ploughtails [that] in spasm slacken". In Against Professional Secrets this symbol expands beyond the indigenous, encompassing the international proletariat. The symbolism of human oppression here acquires a more universal and socialist meaning. Those "fraudulent silence-due crusades" of Trilce have now transformed into "the regime of capitalist competition".
Against Professional Secrets furthers this concept of Justice in the prose poem "Individual and Society", where a murderer roams free for more than a week without hiding from the police. The authorities cannot find him because he is not hiding. "To this extent the individual is free and independent of society." Yet, one of the judges of the Tribunal gives off "an astonishing likeness of the defendant". The presence of his double guarantees his death sentence: "To this extent the individual conscience is social and collective."
While Trilce has come to be known as Vallejo's poetic adventure, Against Professional Secrets can be considered his meditations. The original manuscript bears the subtitle "libro de pensamientos" (book of thoughts), and rightly so, since it affords him an informal space to explore, interpret and analyze the meanings of a wide range of phenomena.
of his works.
In 1923, Vallejo expatriated from Peru after publishing three major works of literature: The Black Heralds (1918), Trilce (1922) and Scales (1923). The latter two prefigure his project in Against Professional Secrets with regards to both form and content. The form that crosscuts these works is the prose poem—first used in Trilce, developed in Scales, and mastered in Against Professional Secrets. Thematically, the revolutionary spirit of the present volume can be traced directly to Trilce through the poetic treatment of human oppression.
In Trilce, the indigenous are represented as a symbol of marginalization. There we read about those "farmhands of sapient kin", those "blighting ploughtails [that] in spasm slacken". In Against Professional Secrets this symbol expands beyond the indigenous, encompassing the international proletariat. The symbolism of human oppression here acquires a more universal and socialist meaning. Those "fraudulent silence-due crusades" of Trilce have now transformed into "the regime of capitalist competition".
Against Professional Secrets furthers this concept of Justice in the prose poem "Individual and Society", where a murderer roams free for more than a week without hiding from the police. The authorities cannot find him because he is not hiding. "To this extent the individual is free and independent of society." Yet, one of the judges of the Tribunal gives off "an astonishing likeness of the defendant". The presence of his double guarantees his death sentence: "To this extent the individual conscience is social and collective."
While Trilce has come to be known as Vallejo's poetic adventure, Against Professional Secrets can be considered his meditations. The original manuscript bears the subtitle "libro de pensamientos" (book of thoughts), and rightly so, since it affords him an informal space to explore, interpret and analyze the meanings of a wide range of phenomena.
César Vallejo was born in 1892 in Peru. His first book defined literary Indigenism, while his second, Trilce, foreshadowed many innovations of modernism. In 1923, he moved to Paris where he became a prolific journalist. Contra el secreto profesional, written in the 20s, integrates issues of social justice with innovative poetics. During this period he traveled three times to the Soviet Union. He became a member of the Congress of Antifascist Writers in Madrid and visited the front lines of the Spanish Civil War. His later poetry, Poemas humanos, was published a year after his death in 1938.
Joseph Mulligan was born in Batavia, NY. In 2011, Roof Books published his translation Against Professional Secrets by César Vallejo. In 2014, Grove/Atlantic will publish his translation The Antiquarian by Gustavo Faverón Patriau. He has recently completed: Mawqif: poemas y ensayos de Pierre Joris, co-translated with Mario Domínguez Parra, and, as editor and principle translator, The Selected Writings of César Vallejo.
