César Vallejo and the shame of the survivor

Abstract

The present essay proposes to reflect about the César Vallejo poem “El pan nuestro”, as an openness to alterity, reading in his shame a guilt for living, similar to the one that the survivors of the Shoah felt. Once exclusion is a fundamental structure of our culture and Auschwitz and its victims repeat eternally, the shame continuous to hound the survivors. For these, the words failure, of course, since the true witness is the one that can’t give testimony and since the words are unbearable. But is because of that, because they lack, that the poetic word, situated always in a position of rest, can testify, can talk.