Trilce and the dolls of rhetoric

Abstract

This article explores the main characteristics of Trilce, the most emblematic collection of poems by Cesar Vallejo and, without a doubt, one of the greatest works of the original avant-garde. From its conception, in a stage after the remnants of modernism in which Vallejo started writing, to its reception and reading, which was not without controversy, the history of Trilce is markedly unique. Vallejo makes a radical change: from the familiar world expressed with simplicity and clarity in poems like “To my brother Miguel” or from the tension that was already noticeable between Rubendarian modernism and a future not yet foreseeable in texts like “Spergesia” in the case of The Black Heralds, Vallejo leads us to a universe in which, without ever abandoning his original themes, he endows them with a dark, hermetic expression that defies all the conventions of his time.