Pablo Neruda

1904-1973

 

Here's a biography of Neruda, from the Nobel Academy.

Here's another, longer one, from Pegasos.

Pablo Neruda is one of the most popular American poets of the twentieth century. What's that, you say? He doesn't write in English? Ah, but what is America? We're so used to referring to the United States as "America" we forget we're actually the johnny-come-latelies to the name. He became increasingly popular in the U.S. following occasionally clunky but groundbreaking translations from Robert Bly and James Wright (who we'll be reading soon).

Neruda's style is often surrealist--he juxtaposes seemingly unrelated images, or describes things in unfamiliar ways. It's occasonally hard to read. More than many other poets we've read so far, you've got to take a leap of faith when you read his poems. Bridging that gap between image and meaning can do interesting things to your head (which is one of the reasons Bly and Wright translated him).

Neruda is the second poet-senator we've read this semester: he served as senator in Chile from 1945-1947 (when he had to go into hiding), and many of his poems have a political edge. People are fond of breaking poets' careers into three parts. If you had to do that for Neruda, you could characterize his early work as dealing with love, depression--romantic themes, if you will. His middle period was more intensely political--this is the time of his membership in the Communist party, his service in and troubles with the government, and the writing of his great poem Canto General, which ranges over the geography and history of Latin America. He grew disillusioned with the Communist party after its abuses in the Soviet Union became more apparent, and his later poems focus on love and everyday objects (but he retains his love for the people, and a sense of the scope of history).

Read his Nobel Prize address, from 1971. (The story he narrates in the beginning is of him fleeing Chile after the authorities ordered his arrest in the 1940's.)

(Remember, read *all* the poems below--then focus on your group's poem! The poems are all in one big file, so it's easier to print them all out at once. The same is true for the Spanish originals listed on the right.)

Poems:

 

Group poems: