SOURCE: "César Vallejo (Peru, 1892-1938)," in Modern Latin American Literature, Oxford University Press, London, 1973, pp. 11-38.

In the essay below, Gallagher provides an overview of Vallejo's career.

Vallejo's first book of poems, Los heraldos negros (1918), is at first sight a derivative work, and one or two poems in it could easily have been written by Ruben Dario, others by Herrera y Reissig or Lugones. Take the opening stanza of 'Nochebuena' ('Christmas Eve'):

Al callar la orquesta, pasean veladas
sombras femeninas bajo los ramajes,
por cuya hojarasca se filtran heladas
quimeras de luna, pálidos celajes

['When the orchestra falls silent, veiled / female shadows stride beneath the branches / through whose foliage are filtered / frozen whims of moon, pallid skyscapes.']

—a purely decorative description that parades all the portentous hush, the hectically contrived mystery of fleeting feminine presences, the subtly filtered light effects, the delicate pallors of modernista...