What rakish things have authors you study done?
I have been looking at new tv programs about Vallejo and Arguedas. These are some very famous Peruvians and I would like to discuss some of their less famous, or less worshipped activities. For instance, what do you think Vallejo’s issue was with all those girlfriends? He kept falling in love, but the relationships filled him with anxiety and he attempted suicide over one of them (Zoila Rosa Cuadra). He may have suffered but at the same time he was quite audacious.
He recovered from the suicide attempt, moved to Lima and dated a colleague’s underage sister in law (Otilia, of Trilce). When she got pregnant, he refused to get married. She went off to the chacra and he never saw the child; there may have been an abortion. People wonder at his feelings of guilt and obsession with orfandad but child abandonment could explain some of this.
There are also the reports Vallejo’s activities in Santiago de Chuco before the act of arson he was imprisoned for allegedly instigating. Armed, he strutted about saying ahora sí que me las van a tener que pagar like a soap opera star. After the incident he hid out, hoping to avoid arrest.
Stephen Hart takes this as an indication of guilt; I do not necessarily, but it was extreme and unusual to carry a pistol. Later in Europe, where he lived on potatoes and I have heard, cats, Vallejo and Larrea apparently bonded over drugs and alcohol as well as poetry.
In the more respectable profile Vallejo was a poor mestizo with a difficult life. He was a hungry witness to greater hunger and had intestinal trouble intermingled with emotional pain, and he was sad over the separation from his mother and the death of God. But there is also evidence to construct him as:
◊ hard drinking
◊ gun toting!
◊ drug abusing
◊ parole violating
◊ child abandoning
◊ possibly guilty of his crime!
◊ heavily neurotic
◊ mentally ill.
He got to Paris in 1923 thanks to Julio Gálvez Orrego (later captured at Madrid and shot by nationalist forces). Soon he met Henriette, whom he threw over for Georgette; they spent her inheritance on a months-long voyage. Why did he leave Henriette for Georgette? people wonder. Because he had a preference for teenagers. This is supposed to be a picture of Henriette at the right, Vallejo of course, and Carlos More.
Don’t you think it is more fun to look at him in this way? The Larrea construction of Vallejo has had even more influence than people realize. Indeed, the whole story has been written by men of a certain stripe and era and it so smacks of it. My not being able to handle Vallejo in all periods has really been an inability to handle Vallejo scholars.
What rakish things have authors you study done?
Axé.
coldhearted scientist وداد 