Parisian chronicles

By Cesar Vallejo

"Rotunda"

Here it is - an ambiguous crypt, a rainbow haunt, a buzzing hive of cosmopolitan mange. Here it is, a noisy cafe, a favorite haunt of artists and artists, tramps, snobs, and dubious women, from Mimi to Marguerite, from Grisette to Garcon.

"Rotunda"! Boulevard Montparnasse on an autumn night in a sad rain, where aerial wires flow from your very temples with news from distant lagoons, winding in the chestnuts of the boulevard near the walking shadows and the pale ear of the exile. "Rotunda"! Mysterious bonfire with shaky flames in the olive grove of the Night.

"Rotunda"! Here are infinitely long canapes enveloping you, furious canvases of the last exhibition “NOVIESPACIAL”, and head waiters with small mustaches, in impeccable jackets. A multilingual crowd fills dance halls, amorous salons, and terraces. Here we see Aisha, a laughing Senegalese woman in a green grass turban, who does not forget to pose for the Montparnasse Academy and a famous Swede, relaxed and sad, in a white pleated turban, such as they wear in Hyderabad ... In one corner, where two crimson apricots are crushed, not of the world this, a Briton, can be seen the corpulent figure of the Japanese artist Fujita in large horn-rimmed glasses, from which expressive jubilant eyes crawl out. Madame Luriti from the Pitoev Theater is about to appear, later Hilda de Nys, a charm, not a singer who gave a wonderful Wagner concert not so long ago ...

"Rotunda"! Maurice Maeterlinck usually winds in this cafe, shaking his lush, almost snow-white hair, and next to him is Enrique Gomez Carillo, no less aged, inseparable from him, there the strikingly pale Claude Farrer spends the rainy twilight, calmly contemplating his surroundings, and here is Tristan Tzara, Max Jacob and Pierre Reverdy and all his Dadaist fraternity drink and make faces for the gallery, showing the public their masks of absurd catchers of chance.

What an enticing sight this noisy center of general nervousness, which has an orgy of fame, seems to have a smoldering fuse woven from many irritants that disturb the artist and writer - these are eccentric rich people who look here out of pure curiosity to stare at the immortals. , and ultra-modern Parisians, and tourists, and sybarites. An ambiguous crypt, I said, a rainbow haunt, a buzzing hive of cosmopolitan mange, with fingernails to scratch our most intimate and inexplicable sores.

The heart looks for its place to the left and taps with the sound of a matchbox - are there any matches left, know for yourself that it will light these yellow sticks all night long. The rain poured and poured, and sometimes the match drops large drops of sweet fat. <…>

1924

(Translated from Spanish by P. Grushko)

Cesar VALLEJO

Published in the journal Foreign Literature, number 2, 1999