El ensayo es una reflexión acerca del sentido (no solo la significación) en el primer libro de César Vallejo: Los heraldos negros. Tomamos como punto de partida la noción pergeñada por Michel Foucault de signatura, entendida no como ausencia del signo sino como su grado cero. Desde esta perspectiva nos concentramos en el poema-íncipit, de título homólogo al libro y «Espergesia», el poema-éxcipit bajo el método de indagar no solo por la apertura y cierre del poemario, sino también, y sobre todo, en calidad de representar los lugares semiológicos más emblemáticos del libro, para poder interrogar acerca del saber y la tensión fundante entre yo sé y yo no sé, una pareja que tensiona epistemes tanto como modalidades de la lengua coloquial. De este modo, se intenta, además, responder, a través de la dupla saber/nosaber, el conflicto de la crítica vallejiana entre cristian...

Death is an omnipresent subject in Vallejo’s poetry. In the so-called Human Poems there are many direct references and even a teleological feature is attributed to him: «To have been born to live from our death!». In his moving poems about the Spanish Civil War, Spain, Take This Cup From Me, «kill death» will be the Peruvian poet’s oxymoronic urge against the crimes of fascism. On this occasion we intend to trace the thread of the deal with death from those posthumously published poems to The Black Heralds (1919), to observe in this first poems —in a kind of journey to the origin— the nuances, the changes, but also the advances of an aesthetic identity, the first social or community pronouncements about death and its miseries, that is, the constancy and productivity of this motive in one of the most singular poetics of all time.

César Vallejo’s poetics has often been noted for the singular convergence of a radical exploration of language with a forceful social commitment. Likewise, the author is characterized by formal experimentation, and the complexity of his figures alternate with expressions of orality along with popular and historical references. But, in addition, his poetry embodies the heterogeneous conjunction produced by the impact of modernity and the persistence of the original culture; and, in this sense, it is also example of a critical and aesthetic response of a continent to the trauma of conquest. Although in Los heraldos negros (1919) we can already perceive themes and procedures of this search for his own voice, we believe that his lyrical instrument is finally forged, in all its dimension and transcendence, in Trilce (1922).