The interview of the young poet César Vallejo with Don Manuel González Prada

 

The interview of the young poet César Vallejo with Don Manuel González Prada

Source:Newspaper La Cronica Viva, Lima Peru

On the 81st anniversary of the death of Universal Vate César Vallejo, we remember him with this gem of historical journalism. Source: La Crónica Viva Newspaper, Lima Peru In the March 9, 1918 edition of the newspaper La Reforma de Trujillo, this wonderful interview by the then young poet César Vallejo with the

teacher Manuel González Prada was published. An extraordinary meeting between two of the greatest exponents of our letters. Another of the treasures found in libraries: The reading room of the Library, as always, very busy. His abstractive peace. One or another hand fumbles impatiently. The slow steps of some conservative, searching the shelves. Oil paintings by illustrious Peruvians on the walls are hurt by the light from the old windows. We passed. In the management room. From a fine welcoming attitude and sitting lightly on the sofa, as if listening to the spiritual moment, the teacher drops words that I never dreamed of hearing. The vigorous sentimental dynamism of him that subjugates and drags, the fresh expression of eternal spring of his venerable continent has something of the winged and smooth marble in which the pagan Hellas used to embody the divine gesture, the superhuman energy of the gods of her. I don't know why before this man, an extraordinary reverberation, a breath of centuries, an idea of synthesis, an emotion of unity congeals between my fibers. It would seem that on his shoulders they fly the legendary flight of an entire race; and that in his snowy apostolic head the maximum spiritual power of a hemisphere of the globe emerges in beams of white, unquenchable light. I look at him startled; My heart beats faster, and my greatest mental energies fly towards all horizons, in a thousand quick flashes, as if some directing whip suddenly whipped a million invisible arms for a miraculous work, beyond the cell... It is that González Prada, by a hypnotic virtue that in a normal state is only peculiar to genius, imposes itself, takes over us, takes possession of our spirit and ends up making us suggestive. On this visit, as in previous ones, Prada talks about art. He is not prodigal in words. His conceptual postures are always sober. But they flare with emotion and optimism and no solemnity.

 How does one detoxify in front of that immense thinking mountain! "But the doctors say no," I reply. They say that such symbolist literature is nonsense. -The doctors... Always the doctors!-. He smiles piously. Not even in his sentences does he spend pontifical solemnity. The line, in its noble silhouette, always vibrates in a fervor thirsty for truth. He does not have the pause of senescence; He feels life in full meridian, in eagerness, in restlessness that is renewal. It is not the peaceful wing that abandons itself horizontally that passes through it, but the wing in the accelerated rhythm of a flight that ascends eternally. That's why it's not solemn. Because he does not look like an old man. It is a perennial and rare equatorial flower of fertile rebellion. I ask him about our national poetry. "There is the influence of French decadentism in it," he tells me. And then, savoring a pronounced tinge of complacency, he adds: -And from Maeterlinck. There is a broad repose of conviction at the end of each of his phrases, which after being uttered seem to consolidate, to distill their substantial value into blood, strongly encasing his ideal melody in our very veins. Then I pray fervently to Renan's great commentator: -As Valdelomar told me the other day, Peru will never know how to repay the enormous gratitude that he owes it. The complexion of his face brightens into a smile that flutters silently from distant forgotten peaks. -And today's youth - he continued, as if enthusiastically hammering warm applause with his lips - is the daughter of his excellent work of freedom. "Yes, well," he answers, "we have to go against obstacles, against academics." He sparkles a hero diamond in his seeing eyes. And I remember that steel bible called Free Pages. And I think I am wrapped in the incense of a modern altarpiece without effigies. -In literature, he continues, defects in technique, inconsistencies in manner, are not important. -And the grammatical errors -I ask him-, obviously. And the audacity of expression? Smile at my naivety; and creating a gesture of patriarchal tolerance, he answers me: -Those errors are ignored. And I really like audacity. I lower my forehead. In the grave distinction of his bearing the opaque spline clarity of the room melts and withers. At his feet crawls a tongue of humble sun that appears a delicate flame of opal moons that arrived fugitively and gasping from very far away. Hearing the philosopher's last words I think of so many hostile hands, already distant. And I think that tomorrow there will be dawn. With a slight smile that curves into a subtle question, that probes and studies, González Prada.

Reserch: Walter Sosa Vivanco

With affection,

Ruben