3 Review(s)

This edition prints in facsimile the fifty-two handwritten manuscripts by Cesar Vallejo discovered recently in the Angel Rama archive, Montevideo. These manuscripts - which should not be confused with the typescripts which were published in Georgette's 1968 Francisco Moncloa edition - are a combination of early drafts of the majority of the dated poems of the Poemas humanos as well as a substantial number of the poems which would subsequently come together as Espana, aparta de mi este caliz. These manuscripts show how, from early September until mid-December 1937, Vallejo was writing poetry at a frantic pace, alternating between his Civil War verse and those poems with a more personal orientation. For the first time scholars will be able to see for themselves the original handwritten drafts of Vallejo's posthumous poems, and compare them with the subsequent typewritten versions. The facsimile reproductions are accompanied by two essays by Juan Flo - one of which explains the circumstances leading to his discovery of the manuscripts, the other of which evaluates the originality of Vallejo's verse - and an essay by Stephen M Hart which analyses the various stages of composition evident in the poems, from early manuscript draft to final typescript version. STEPHEN M. HART is Professor of Hispanic Studies, University College, London. JUAN FLO is Professor of Aesthetics at the Institute of Philosophy, Universidad de la Republica-Uruguay.