An Ode to Pablo Neruda

According to Neruda, the survival of the human race can be partly credited to our compulsion to communicate through narratives with one another. In the poem 'The Word', Neruda personifies the 'word' by stating how it is 'born in the blood' and that it 'grew in the dark body'. We talk because we must be heard. Although Neruda wrote in Spanish, his words are not lost in translation and his poems have universal appeal. 

"If nothing saves us from death, at least love should save us from life"- wrote Pablo Neruda who had captured the hearts and feelings of readers across the globe. His romantic verses are remembered by artists such as Robin Williams, Tom Hiddleston and Glenn Close. His poetry transcends the boundaries of countries and cultures and although he wrote in Spanish, his words are not lost in translation. Neruda has captured the hearts and feelings of readers across the globe. Neruda's poetry directly influenced a great number of South American writers like Gabriel Garcia-Marquez, Julio Cortazar and Isabel Allende. Neruda won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1971; a controversial award because of his support of Stalin and his long-standing communist sympathies.

According to Neruda, the survival of the human race can be partly credited to our compulsion to communicate through narratives with one another. In the poem 'The Word', Neruda personifies the 'word' by stating how it is 'born in the blood' and that it 'grew in the dark body'. We talk because we must be heard.

In the poem Neruda boldly compares language to water by saying, "…the pure wine of language or inexhaustible water." Pablo Neruda whose original name was Neftalí Ricardo Reyes Basoalto, was born on July 12, 1904, at Parral in Chile. This legendary Chilean poet died on September 23, 1973, at Santiago. Besides being the Nobel Laureate of 1971, the Chilean poet, was a versatile personality and a diplomat and politician. He was perhaps the most important Latin American poet of the 20th century.

"I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where. I love you simply, without problems or pride: I love you in this way because I do not know any other way of loving but this, in which there is no I or you, so intimate that your hand upon my chest is my hand, so intimate that when I fall asleep your eyes close."---the poet depicts in the poem 'The Word' the feelings of hurt and suffering caused by the murders and death of the Spanish Civil War. It conveys innocence, helplessness or lack of control over what happens. The poet also laments the murder of his countries famous people, such as Lorca and Rafael. In this poem Neruda, the author personifies the 'Word' by stating how it is 'born in the blood' and that it 'grew in the dark body'. This leaves the reader with the impression that the 'word' is something that is born within ourselves and it grows trapped inside of us. By crafting words of love, Neruda transcends the boundaries of countries and cultures. The ocean of Latin American poetry shall remain unfulfilled without the fountain of love crafted by Neruda whose poems reflect a tender feeling of human adoration and exploration of the delicate qualities of human minds (which in turn creates a big chain of human beings in the globe for the eradication of violence, war, communal struggle and corruption.)

In his poetic debut 'Book of Twilight' we discover a perfectly woven relationship between a mother and child that mirrors the delightful resemblance of Jesus and Mother Mary. The very next year his collection Twenty Love Poems had appeared and in these poems he saw the entire universe through the eyes of his beloved. 'In the dark pines the wind disentangles itself' and 'the moon glows like phosphorus on the vagrant waters'; are some delightful lines from this collection. Natural imageries from Mother Earth are used to define a woman's body and words like 'pine' 'hill' 'moon' come time and again. "I have gone marking the atlas of your body with crosses of fire," wrote Neruda. Love and tenderness of women act both as preserver and destroyer. In his view God has not created feminine body for the pleasure of the phallocentric society.

In one poem 'In You the Earth' , Neruda wrote- I can scarcely measure the sky's most spacious eyes/ and I lean down to your mouth to kiss the earth. Residence on Earth is a unified series of verse collections by Neruda and they depict the universal decay for which the poet's fierce and anguished tone reflects surrealistic pessimism. At this time, he was leading the life of a self-exiled diplomat in the isolated regions of South Asia. Neruda's love excelled all boundaries and it encompasses all the events from Soviet Revolution, Stalinism, the massacre of World War II, the Cold War, the political and economic insolvency of Latin America, Fidel Castro's Revolution in Cuba or the students upheaval of 1968 in his own native land. He roared against the exploitation of Chile by American corporations in poems like 'Insomnia' where he asked 'What will become of my poor, dark country?' His use of the metaphor of the long thin ship is significant because it is a symbol of a society - I became one with my country / I met everyone of its sons/ and in me the season succeeded one another /weeping or flowering. Shortly before his death in an interview he told, "If the poetry I have written has any virtue, it is only as an organism." This is also true of his love poetry and the intrinsic self-reflective dialogues stemming from the heart of the poet is repeatedly discovered in the poetic lines that he inked. One prophecy was undoubtedly there that Neruda was going to be the emblem of love and tender human feelings. Neruda has a way of showing love more realistically compared to the fairy tale love that everyone thinks of. He makes love seem very back-and –forth as it continues to change his mind on love itself. Sometimes love makes his love and a woman seems better than the rest of the women in the world. But he does have a recurrent theme of using love to give women the supernatural abilities to control nature or place them on a pedestal. Women are always on the high pedestal and women are amazing but they are not fairies or angelic. They are real who like the 'Dark Lady of Shakespeare' tread upon the ground. This sense of realism makes his love poetry so tangible so concrete and heart touching. The love poems transcend our sterile thinking of the body or soul and our use of the word 'Love' as a cliche.

By Dr. Ratan Bhattacharjee

The writer is an associate professor and head of the postgraduate department of English at Dum Dum Motijheel College, Kolkata. He may be reached at profratanbhattacharjee@gmail.com

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