[Essay] [Assignment #6] [Selected Bibliography]
PABLO NERUDA (1904-1973) (Continued)
"Poetry," Neruda affirmed, "is an act of peace. Peace goes into the making of a poet as flour goes into the making of bread." Following in the steps of Walt Whitman - with whom he has often been compared - Neruda felt a sense of his own destiny toward and responsibility for chanting the spiritual and transcendental forces that soar beyond mundane, pedestrian life. Freedom was a basic theme. Thus, "The Poet's Obligation":
To whoever is not listening to the sea thisThe poet is, furthermore, universal and ubiquitous:
Friday morning, to whoever is cooped up in
house or office, factory or woman or street
or mine or dry prison cell, to him I come,
and without speaking or looking I arrive and
open the door of his prison.
I know many may wonderAs Emerson once defined the craft, the poet is historian and prophet.
"What is Pablo doing?" I'm here.
If you look for me in this street
You'll find me with violin,
Prepared to break into song,
Prepared to die.
In 1924 Neruda's Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair established his reputation as an artist of sensuous beauty. From that point on, he endeavored to avoid the curse of poetic obscurity and to make conscious effort to reach ordinary people. His Canto General (1950), for instance, like Whitman's Leaves of Grass, is an uneven masterpiece, filled with rough, vigorous imagery in developing a highly personal, socio-political extravaganza which looks back in history and forward in time. A sense of the mystical and the transcendental surrounds Neruda's passionate verses; in Residence on Earth he moves occasionally into surrealism. For the most part though he is content to work with everyday language and experience while he examines congenital themes from traditional Romantic poetry: love, freedom, nature, and man's spiritual oneness with man and with the Universal Soul. He himself is the lonely, lyrical poet, like Whitman, the "solitary singer," whose Complete Works total some 1,500 poems written over a span of half a century.
Militant passion and the spirit of rebellion, personal and institutional, are frequently reflected in Neruda's poetic allegiances. Thinking of himself as "cosmically drunk," Pablo Neruda presents a lyrical overview of reverent optimism which emanates ironically, from his perception of mankind's modern alienation and desperation.
ASSIGNMENT #6:
Read: Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair. |