I Am Going To Speak of Hope: Cesar Vallejo

I do not feel this suffering as Cesar Vallejo. I am not suffering now as a creative person, or as a man, nor even as a simple living being. I don't feel this pain as a Catholic, or as a Mohammedan, or as an atheist. Today I am simply in pain.

If my name weren't Cesar Vallejo, I'd still feel it. If I weren't an artist, I'd still feel it. If I weren't a man, or even a living being, I'd still feel it. If I weren't a Catholic, or an atheist, or a Mohammedan, I'd still feel it. Today I am in pain from further down. Today I am simply in pain. The pain I have has no explanations. My pain is so deep that it never had a cause, and has no need of a cause. What could have its cause been? Where is that thing so important that it stopped being its cause? Its cause is nothing, and nothing could have stopped being its cause. Why has this pain been born all on its own? My pain comes from the north wind and and from the south wind, like those hermaphrodite eggs that some rare birds lay conceived of the wind. If my bride were dead, my suffering would still be the same. If they had slashed my throat all the way through, my suffering would still be the same. If life, in other words, were different, my suffering would still be the same. Today I'm in pain from higher up. Today I am simply in pain.

I look at the hungry man's pain, and I see that his hunger walks somewhere so far from my pain that if I fasted until death, one blade of grass at least would always sprout from my grave. And the same with the lover! His blood is too fertile for mine, which has no source and no one to drink it.

I always believed up till now that all things in the world had to be either fathers or sons. But here is my pain that is neither a father nor a son. It hasn't any back to get dark, and it has too bold a front for dawning, and if they put it into some dark room, it wouldn't give light, and if they put it into some brightly lit room, it wouldn't cast a shadow. Today I am in pain, no matter what happens. Today I am simply in pain.

César Vallejo trans. by Robert Bly

Comments

[Paul Maurice Martin]

Blessed are those to whom pain is a metaphor.

Blessed are those for whom there is even a small hope that their physical pain is temporary and not until they die.

Not to minimize forms of pain that are not physical or from which there is possibility of relief; they cause great suffering and sometimes lead people to suicide. Your post is very eloquent.

Yet the possibility of a way out of pain that is physical is a beautiful thing.

When that is gone, one dies or one draws on sources of strength previously beyond imagining.

Thanks for a refreshing post. Sometimes I frankly find the positivity of contemporary blogosphere spirituality over the top and unrealistic. “Life is suffering” was the Buddha’s first premise, not “Life is peachy if you just think positive.”

[Laura]

Well said, Paul. I do think much of contemporary blogosphere spirituality is not just annoying but potentially damaging. Life is suffering, and learning how to work with that, rather than deny it, or think it is a sign that you are "doing it wrong" is critical. The happiest, easiest people to be around that I have ever known have suffered greatly. Their learning how to bear it has granted them a freedom and grace that is all too rare among those who spend all their time trying to push away difficulty.