pablo neruda, the chronicler of all things- jaime alazraker

8/13/2019 Pablo Neruda, The Chronicler of All Things- Jaime Alazraker

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Board of Regents of the University of Oklahoma

University of Oklahoma

Pablo Neruda, the Chronicler of All ThingsAuthor(s): Jaime AlazrakiSource: Books Abroad, Vol. 46, No. 1 (Winter, 1972), pp. 49-54Published by: Board of Regents of the University of OklahomaStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/40125878.

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Pablo Neruda, the Chroniclerof all Things

Commentaries

By JAIME ALAZRAKIthose familiar with Pablo Neruda'swork and his literarycareerthe recentawardof the Nobel Prize for literature comes as no surprise.For nearly twenty years hisname has been among the candidates considered by the Swedish Academy for thecoveted prize. Any student of Latin American literatureknows that if one were tochoose a poet who best echoed the hopes and strugglesof a whole continent, this poetwould undoubtedly be Pablo Neruda. What is not so self-evident, however, is thefact that Neruda's work has been a sort of seismograph through which one couldlearn what was happening not only in the poetry of Latin America but also in con-

temporarypoetryat large.If with Ruben Dario and the modernist poets Latin America shapes a poetic lan-guage of its own, with Neruda and the poets of his generation that poetic languagereaches adulthood. Neruda himself has said, referring to Dario: "Without him wewould not speak our own tongue, that is, without him we would still be talking ahardened, pasteboard,tasteless language" (Viajes). It is not surprising, therefore,tofind in Neruda's first published book Crepusculario(Twilight Book, 1923) clearimprints of Dario's dazzling brilliance "which so radically modified the Spanishlanguage."With the publication of Veinte poemas de amor y una cancion desesperada(Twenty Love Poems and One Song of Despair) one year later, Neruda gave ex-pressionto a new poetic mood. Love is no longer approachedas in modernismby wayof mythological gods and godesses, nymphs and satyrs,Sirens and Tritons. In a muchmore straightforwardfashion, Neruda takes the reader to the scene where love isbeing made and describes,uninhibitedly, a true feast of the senses, at times splashedwith suggestive birds, wild flowers, woods, cherries, and chestnuts reminiscent ofTagore's poem which the young poet was then reading. With this brief collectionNeruda won an early popularitythat he has enjoyed ever since and his name becamea myth among youngsters and lovers.From this openly romantic tone, he moved to a totally different form. At ap-proximately the same time the first SurrealistManifesto appeared,Neruda wrote along poem Tentativa del hombre infinite (Venture of Infinite Man)- published in1925,which bears all the traits of surrealisttheory. The paradox can be explained ifone remembers that Neruda was then reading the French romantic and symbolistpoets who were later to become the major sources of many surrealist innovationsand techniques. The little book was ignored (even today it has remained as one of


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50 BOOKS ABROADhis least studied works), but for Neruda it paved the road to the poetry of Residenciaen la tierra (Residence on Earth), one of his finest achievements.The two volumes of Residencia contain poems written between 1925 and 1935.Unlike most surrealistpoetsof that periodNeruda did not attemptto prove any theoryor illustrate any manifesto. He sought more effective means to express his ferociousloneliness and an altogether bitter and absurd view of life; he found some of thosemeans in surrealism. He did not have any commitment to surrealism or any otherliteraryschool. His only commitment was to his world of experience and feeling andhe put it in blunt words the year he published Tentativa: "Yo tengo un conceptodramatico de la vida, y romantico; no me corresponde o que no llega profundamentea mi sensibilidad."The result was a poetry in which form and experience fully inte-grate, bringing forth a poetic equilibrium one misses in much of the deliberatesur-realist poetry.Neruda was not then, and has never been, interested in experimentingwith form for its own sake. Form was to him, as it has always been to poets in allages, the flesh through which experience is born in the lines of a text. It was thisapproach o literaturewhich, perhaps,preserved he poetryof Residencia from a steriledrabnessone often finds in surrealistpoetry. It is also his response to human sensi-bilities, no matter how gloomy they may be in the poems of Residencia, that presum-ably moved one critic to state that they are "the greatest surrealistpoems yet writtenin a western language."One may agree with such a verdict, but the fact remains thatwhile a great deal of surrealistpoetry has aged and become merely objectsof literarycuriosity, the poems of Residencia have kept an urgency which is the hallmark ofpoetry at its best. Miguel Hernandez a Spanish poet of Neruda's generation wroteafter his reading of Residencia: "I must communicate the enthusiasm that stirs mesince I have read Residencia en la tierra. I feel like throwing handfuls of sand in myeyes, like getting my fingerscaught in the doors,like climbing to the top of the tough-estandtallestpine "A great deal of poetry included in Residencia was written while Neruda livedisolatedfrom his people and his language in countriessuch as Burma,Java,Singapore,and Ceylon as the consul of Chile from 1927to 1932. In 1934 he was appointed to thesame consular post in Barcelona,and the year after in Madrid. It was during thoseyears in Spain, and particularly after the Civil war broke out, that the so-called"poeticconversion" of Neruda took place. With Espana en el corazon (Spain in theHeart, 1937) the seemingly hermetic texture of his poetry yielded to a quasi-conversa-tional language with which the poet explained the motives of his "conversion." n apoem titled "Explico algunas cosas" (Explaining a Few Things), Neruda wrote thatin an agonizing Spain flooded by gunpowder and blood, burned and murdered,sacked and broken there was no place for exquisite poetry:

Preguntareis or quesu poesiano noshabladelsueno,de lashojas,de losgrandesvolcanesde su paisnatal?Venida verla sangreporlascalles,venid a verla sangreporlascalles,venida ver la sangreporlas calles!


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ALAZRAKI 51The truth is that Neruda's poetry was never exquisite. In fact he himself has coinedthe concept of "impure poetry" (as opposed to the French idea of "pure poetry"),which best defines his own poetic credo. Before and after the "conversion"Neruda'spoetrywas and remainedopen to human experience.Before, it aired much of his ownsolitude and anguish, but at the same time it revealed what was throbbing deep inthe heart of modern man. Afterward, his poetry moved from the emotions of theinner ego to the emotions of the outer world. Neruda could no longer see himselfdetached from the conflicts and problems of his time. When he took sides with theLoyalists, he did so shocked by the bloody violence of the war rather than coldlyconvincedby politicalarguments.What happenedto him happenedto a great numberof well established poets and writers from many parts of the world. In Neruda itproduced a drastic turn in the themes of his poetry and the turn itself became a fa-vorite motif. He treated it again and again in order to present and justify his newpoetic faith. In 1942,while he was in Mexico as the consul of Chile, he wrote a poemof solidaritywith the defense of Stalingrad.When the poetic value of the poem wasquestioned, Neruda answered by writing a new poem "Nuevo canto de amor aStalingrado"as well as his own "committed"poetry:"Yo escribisobre el tiempo y sobreel agua / describi el luto y su metal morado,/ yo escribi sobre el cielo y la manzana, /ahoraescribo sobreStalingrado."The long poem is a sort of "mea culpa"for his pastindividualisticand introvertedpoetry,but at the sametime it is an apology for his newpoetic creed. Neruda chose the same meter (hendecasyllable) and the same rhyme(abab) chosen by his master Ruben Dario in 1905 to explain a similar poetic turn inthe poem "Yo soy aquel que ayer no mas decia . . . ." The two poems came to repre-sent a watershedin the work of both poets.After returning to Chile in October of 1937, Neruda actively engaged in thepolitical life of his countryand in 1945 he was elected senatorfor Tarapacaand Anto-fagasta.Between 1940 and 1950,alternatingwith his diplomaticand political activities,he completedhis most ambitious work Cantogeneral. Somebodyhas called the book"the Bible of the Americas"because it traces a poetic account of the continent's his-tory since its origins, through pre-Columbiantimes and the Spanish conquest up tothe most recent events. One feels tempted to call it an epic poem, but it is not. Thevery difficulty in categorizing the book indicates that Neruda has achieved in it aform without counterpart n Western poetry.It is comprisedof fifteen sections whichdepict a gigantic poetic mural of the Americas. The first edition, in fact, published inMexicoin 1950, ncludes two platesof mini-muralsspeciallydesignedfor the bookby theMexican muralistsDiego Rivera and Alfaro Siqueiros.The first section is the storyofthe continent'sgenesis: its vegetation, its birds and beasts, its rivers and minerals, itspeople.The second is devoted to Macchu Picchu as the grandestmonument in all pre-Columbian America, as the most majestic witness of an untold past. Yet in thesetwo, as in other sections,Neruda is not merely chronicling historicalevents. The poetis always present throughout the book not only because he describesthose events, in-terpretingthem accordingto a definite outlook on history,but also becausethe epic ofthe continent intertwines with his own epic. Thus he presentsMacchu Picchu as theplace where the continent on one hand, and the poet on the other,become fully awareof their plight. In parts III, IV and V of "Alturas de Macchu Picchu," for example,


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52 BOOKS ABROADNeruda tells the story of his constant intercourse with death. In parts VI and VIIhe recounts his climbing to Macchu Picchu which truly occured in Octoberof 1943*where he discovers that the "alto arrecife de la aurora humana" is also inhabited bydeath. After exalting the city's magnificenceby means of a stringof eighty-sixsplendidmetaphorsin poem IX, X is dedicatedto indict those who built the city at the expenseof the people: "MacchuPicchu, pusiste / piedra en la piedra,y en la base, harapo? /Carbonsobrecarbon,y en el f ondo la lagrima? / Fuego en el oro, y en el, temblandoel rojo / goteron de la sangre? / Devuelveme el esclavo que enterraste!"Here, as inthe rest of the poem, the destiny of Macchu Picchu can be understood as the destinyof the entire continent. The last poem of this section is an appeal for hope and anexhortation to be reborn from those same ashes of tatters, tears, and blood in whichprimeval America was buried. Neruda has managed to coalesce his own personalsearch ("y, como un ciego, regreseal jazmin de la gastada primaverahumana") withthe expectationsof a whole continent: "Piedraen la piedra,el hombre,donde estuvo?/Aire en el aire, el hombre, donde estuvo?/ Tiempo en el tiempo, el hombre, dondeestuvo?"He furthermanagesto do the same with the book as a whole. Parallelingthehistoryof the continent describedthroughoutthe entire book, the last sectionof Cantogeneral is devoted to the storyof the poet's life. By bringing togetherhis own odysseyand the drama of the continent, Neruda has simultaneously given to Canto generalthe quality of a lyric and an epic poem. The lives of conquistadores,martyrs,heroes,and just plain people recover a refreshing actuality because they become part of thepoet'sfate and, conversely,the life of the poet gains a new depth becausein his searchone recognizes the continent'sstruggles.Cantogeneral is, thus, the song of a continentas much as it is Neruda's own song.Since Neruda joined the Communist partyin 1945,much of his poetryhas becomeheavily politicized. Neruda himself calls it "poesiapolitica"and in 1953he publisheda two-volume anthology {Poesia politica) of this type of poetry.He believes that withthis poetry he fulfills one of his "deberesde poeta" (duties of a militant poet). Thetrouble is that today's politics changes so fast all over the world that the man whois today glorified as a hero could tomorrowbecome an execrabletyrant.These changeshave often been an embarrassment to Neruda's "poesia politica." In Las uvas y elviento (The Grapesand the Wind, 1954), for example,Stalin is portrayedas a beaconof peace sending doves to the most distantpeoples on earth ("En su muerte"); fifteenyearslater,in Fin de mundo (1969), Stalin'slamblike mustacheturned into a jaguar'sthreateningwhiskers ("El culto, II"). Mao Tse-tung goes through a similar transmu-tation.

In spite of his "deberes de poeta"Neruda continued to write good poetry. Thesame yearthat he publishedLas uvas y el viento, his first volume of Odas elementales(Elemental Odes) appeared.Here he inaugurated a new poetic form with which hecelebrated(or, at times, execrated) things and beings of the elemental world: a pairof socks, a tomato, the dictionary,a lizard, laziness, a bicycle, an orange, a rooster,asaw, numbers, fire, the skull, etc. Neruda rediscoveredin these objects and creatures

#Afterclimbing Macchu Picchu Neruda stated that it was there that "the idea of an AmericangeneralCanto had begun to grow. Before,I had the idea of a general Canto of Chile, as a chronicle.Now I wasseeing America as a whole from the heights of Macchu Picchu."


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ALAZRAKI 53from daily life an essential beauty that use and routine seemed to have worn out. Ifpoetry is a form of rediscoveringor rather reinventing reality, these odes epitomizethat understanding of poetry. Neruda turns here to forgotten things and in theirmaterial substancehe finds a hidden soul poets have always sought. He also finds atransparent anguage which may have been motivated by his efforts to make poetry"utilitariay util, como metal o harina,/ dispuesta a ser arado,/ herramienta,/ pan yvino, . . ." ("Oda a la poesia") hence the frequent moralizing and didactic overtonesof the odes , but which could only have been achieved by the consummate and ripepoet Neruda was when he wrote them. The lyric clarityhe reached in the "elementalodes" is a point of arrival in his poetic development. Neruda produced four full vol-umes of these odes before he realized that the svelte and agile odes were growing fatand showing signs of exhaustion.While Neruda was still writing "elemental odes," he published Estravagario(Book of Vagaries, 1958), a new form of poetry in which the militant poet gives wayto a poet perplexedand amusedby the bizarreparadoxesof his own personallife. Thetone is sardonic:

Paraqueme caseen BataviaFui caballeroincastillo,improcedente asajero,persona inropay sinoro,idiotapuroy errantePorquevivi en Rangoonde Birmaniala capitalexcrementiciademis navegantesdolores?Porque,porquetantoscaminos,tantasciudadeshostiles?Quesaquede tantosmercadosCuales la florqueyo buscaba?Porqueme movidemi sillay me vesti de tempestuoso?

("Itinerarios")Combining irony and jest, Neruda has a good laugh at people and events that, earlier,would have awakened rage and triggered deprecation.There are no facile answers tothe oddities of life and Neruda acknowledges this: "Nadie lo sabe ni lo ignora." Inspite of his commitment to clarityin his early"elementalodes" (see, for example,"Odaa la claridad"),Neruda confessesto himself towardsthe end of Estravagario hat "todaclaridades oscura"("Testamentode otofio"). Approaching the autumn of his life, hehas come to terms with a notion that poets seemed to have acceptedsince Baudelaire,merely the idea that the "essentialobscurityof poetry is due to the fact that it is thehistory of a soul and that it seeks to comply with the mystery of that soul; but thisobscurityis luminous . . . ," in JeanRoyere'swords. Without deserting his "deberesdepoeta" Neruda vindicates that "essentialobscurity"with which poetry attempts totouch light. In the last poem of Plenos poderes (Full Powers, 1962) Neruda closes thebook with this lapidaryverse: "A plena luz camino por la sombra."


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54 BOOKS ABROADBut Neruda is an unpredictable poet. He can write a book of sonnets {Ciensonetos de amor, 1960), a book on the stones of Chile {Las piedras de Chile, 1960), afive-volume autobiographyin verse {Memorial de Isla Negra, 1964), a fable which

reenactsthe eternalhistoryof love {La espadaencendida, 1970), and, at the same time,poems which dig deep into "the mysteries of the human soul," poems on the birds,trees, and rivers of Chile, poems on Cuba and Vietnam, poems on sex and bombs,poems on roses and silences.This exuberance is reminiscent of Walt Whitman's, andNeruda himself has provided a suitable explanation: "Poetry in South America is adifferent matter altogether.You see, there are in our countries rivers which have nonames, trees which nobody knows, and birds which nobody has described .... Ourduty, then, as we understandit, is to expresswhat is unheard of. Everything has beenpainted in Europe, everything has been sung in Europe. But not in America. In thatsense, Whitman was a great teacher. Because what is Whitman? He was not onlyintensely concious,but he was open-eyed!He had tremendouseyes to see everythinghe taught us to see things. He was our poet."Traces of Whitman's influence on thework of Neruda are not hard to find. In the section "I Wish the Wood-cutterWouldWake Up" of Canto general he significantly invokes Walt Whitman's voice: "Dametu voz y el peso de tu pecho enterrado/ Walt Whitman, y las graves/ raices de turostro/ para cantar estas reconstrucciones."But what is even more significant is thefact that Neruda has defined Whitman in the same terms he now defines himself. Ina poem from La barcarola(1967) he wrote: "Pablo Neruda, el cronista de todas lascosas" (Pablo Neruda, the chroniclerof all things).

Universityof California,San Diego

Pablo Neruda in Books Abroad (1929-72)

54 BOOKS ABROAD

1. Crepusculario Santiago de Chile. Renacimiento.1926), reviewed by Willis KnappJonesin BA 3:1, p. 42.2. Maurice Halperin, "Pablo Neruda in Mexico" in BA 15:2,pp. 164-68.3. With CarlosPellicerand JorgeCarreraAndrade.3 SpanishAmerican Poets. LloydMallan, Mary and C. V. Wicker, &JosephLeonard Grucci, trs. (Albuquerque. SageBooks. 1942), reviewed by Byron Chew in BA 17:4,p. 386.4. Residenceon Earth.Selected Poems. Angel Flores, tr. (New York. New Directions.1946), reviewed by Roy Temple House in BA 22:1, p. 92.5. Todo el amor. (Santiago de Chile. Nascimento. 1953), reviewed by Manuel H.Guerra in BA 30:2, p. 176.6. Viajes. (Santiago de Chile. Nascimento. 1955), reviewed by Albert Guerard, Sr.in BA 31:2,pp. 148-49.

pablo neruda, the chronicler of all things- jaime alazraker

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