I've been reading an unusual amount of poetry of late - really just a coincidence, but that has resulted in some interesting juxtapositions. I won't go so far as to say that poetry and prose shouldn't be considered under the same umbrella of literature, but the reader engages with most poetry so differently than most prose. And then I begin to think of the compelling exceptions to that rule, and the duality begins to break down...There is a list of adjectives and corresponding schools easily applied to Pablo Neruda's work: surrealist, impressionist, symbolist - I thought particularly of Rimbaud as I waded into Neruda's thicket of images, but that may be only because Rimbaud is the symbolist with whom I've spent significant time. Like Rimbaud, Neruda's poetry is disorienting and intentionally so. To dramatically simplify the theories of those schools, the aesthetic experience is grounded in the distortion of reality that in turn provides a new perspective on that reality. These poets use vantage points that are equally arbitrary and profound, equally hallucinatory and visionary.I can't go along with that concept unquestioningly. It seems to me that the surrealists and the symbolists are particularly open to the charge that if a critic questions the meaningfulness of their work, they'll reply, "You just don't get it," which in turn increases the suspicion that a particular emperor may not be wearing any clothes.Case in point: in Neruda's "Melancholy in the Families," these lines are completely impenetrable to me:I keep a blue flask,inside it an ear and a portrait:when night forcesthe owl's feathers,when the raucous cherry treeshatters its lips and threatenswith husks that the ocean wind often penetrates,I know that there are great sunken expanses,quartz in ingotsslime,blue waters for a battle,much silence, manyveins of retreat and camphors,fallen things, medals, acts of tenderness,parachutes, kisses.The images come so quickly, and repeatedly are so incongruous, that I have to discard any thread of potential meaning I pick up before I have finished the next line. This is verse that makes a skeptic of me.But immediately following those lines, the clouds part and this brilliant set appears:It is only the passage from one day toward another,a single bottle moving across the seas,and a dining room to which come roses,a dining room abandonedlike a thorn...Then I wonder if I was impatient, and that maelstrom of previous images (flask, night, ocean waters, silence, acts of tenderness) is the context that makes this passage of time, this bottle moving across this sea, this empty dining room with its memories of life, so affecting.And I remember other images of domestic desolation in his poetry, other indications of loss, of heartbreak, of isolation. This from the prose-form "The Uninhabited One:"'Often, when night has fallen, I bring the light to the window and I look at myself, supported by miserable boards, stretched out in the dampness like an aged coffin, between walls brusquely feeble. I dream, from one absence to another, and at another distance, welcomed and bitter.'The collective impact of Residence on Earth, finally, is not a parade of naked emperors, but of emperors wearing the kind of haute couture that makes middle Americans scratch their heads and wonder who would ever wear something so impractical or downright absurd. That, ultimately, is missing the point. As visceral as Neruda's poetry is - ruthlessly so at times - the viscerality is the prelude to an intellectual process during which fragments of language fit back together in unexpected but revelatory ways, frequently combining fact and interpretation, thought and emotion with techniques unavailable to rationality on its own.Perhaps the emblematic "Ars Poetica" best encapsulates my experience of Neruda, expressing my relationship with his writing, with art in general (mine and others') and even with life as a whole. It is somewhat stark, but pulsing with life and the willingness - his, and hopefully mine - to risk almost anything for a glimpse of something greater.but the truth is that suddenly the wind that lashes my chest,the nights of infinite substance fallen in my bedroom,the noise of a day that burns with sacrifice,ask me mournfully what prophecy there is in me,and there is a swarm of objects that call without being answered,and a ceaseless movement, and a bewildered man.
For me, Neruda's poetry is nourishment of the richest and most inspired sort - and in Residence on Earth its beautiful, lyrical melodies ring nearly as sublime in Donald Walsh's sterling translations as in the Spanish of the Chilean Master. Off-and-on my favorite collection of Neruda's genius, one that never sits for long on my bookshelves.The day of the luckless, the pale day peers outwith a chill and piercing smell, with its forces gray,without rattles, the dawn oozing everywhere:it is a shipwreck in a void, surrounded by tears.Because the moist, silent shadow departed from so many places,from so many vain cavilings, so many earthly placeswhere it must have occupied even the design of the roots,from so many sharp and self-defending shapes.I weep amid invasion, among confusion,among the swelling taste, lending an earto the pure circulation, to the increasemaking pathless ways for what arrives,what comes forth dressed in chains and carnations,I dream, enduring my mortal remains.There is nothing precipitous, or gay, or proud in form,everything appears, taking shape with obvious poverty,the light of the earth comes from its eyelidsnot like the stroke of a bell but rather like tears:the texture of the day, its feeble canvas,serves as a bandage for the patients, serves to make signsin a farewell, behind the absence:it is the color that wants only to replace,to cover, swallow, conquer, make distances.I am alone among rickety substances,the rain falls upon me and it seems like me,like me with its madness, alone in the dead world,rejected as it falls, and without persistent shape.
What do You think about Residence On Earth (1973)?
I loved this book until I got to section IV of Third Residence, p. 248, "Spain in Our Hearts". At this point Neruda is overwhelmed by grief over the Spanish civil war and his intricate surrealist imagery gives way to dull political poetry. Section headings: "Spain poor through the fault of the rich", "General Franco in Hell", "The Unions at the Front", "A New Love Song to Stalingrad". Plenty of great stuff before that, though: "Ghost of the Cargo Boat", "El Desenterrado", and others stayed with me.
—Vogisland
This book is hard to fully get since vanguardists are wonky at best (which I tend to approve) but damn, his background makes me dislike the dude. I spent the whole class on a "what the heck? stop whining!" state of mind.I'm a subjective person trying to get rid of her emotions so I can be a somewhat of an objective adult here. I can't help but judge him though and I dislike the fact. His writing may be quite good but his constant whining without taking any action, awful views on life and extreme communism make me want to punch him in the face. Repeatedly. With a brick. Fuck this book. Just really, fuck it.-----*I may have been too harsh but this is about like and dislike not good or bad so yeah... Could have been two but no. One star. Boo me.*Required read for my Contemporary Literature exam since I can't graduate and move onto hopefully better things without a passing grade on it. Strong emphasis on required, I'm calling bullshit on life.
—Elisabeth
Mucho más complejo que el famoso "Veinte poemas de amor y una canción desesperada", aquí Pablo NERUDA se adentra en las técnicas surrealistas, empleando un lenguaje hermético y metafísico que invita a la reflexión. NERUDA es uno de los mejores y más influyentes poetas del siglo XX, y este volumen reúne sus mejores poemas.
—Martin Hernandez
