Chronicles from Paris: modernity and capitalism in Cesar Vallejo

Abstract

César Vallejo, as a journalist, represents a paradigmatic figure in the context of Peruvian journalistic history. Vallejo lived most of his adult life in Paris (the European cultural capital in the first decades of the twentieth century) sending articles to Peru as one of his few ways of subsistence. In these pages we will study the concept of modernity Vallejo developed in his articles and chronicles, and also the way in which this concept links with Parisian capitalistic society. Speed, fashion, sports, cinema and many other aspects of the city led Vallejo to think about the times and spaces in which the modern human moves, and to imagine the possibility of subverting or avoiding the coordinates that capitalism enforces. A close reading of these texts will allow us to see how aspects of the modern city shape his thoughts and can be useful for a different reading of his poetry.