Pablo Neruda and the U.S. Culture Industry

Teresa Longo

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9781134754489
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Literary Criticism
• Index: Literature

In this compelling collection, Teresa Longo gathers a diverse group of critical and poetic voices to analyze the politics of packaging and marketing Neruda and Latin American poetry in general in the United States.

Part 1 Reading Neruda

Chapter 1

Pablo Neruda, Interpreter of Our Century

Giuseppe Bellini

Translated by Janice A. Jaffe

A little more than a decade has passed since the death of Pablo Neruda and now the time has come for taking stock of his achievement. The process has begun in recent years, though during the poet's lifetime many attempts were also made to explain the permanent value of his poetic message, and attacks on the permanence of that message have been equally numerous. Praisers and detractors have appeared from all sides, representing various ideologies, and with clear contrasts even within the same ideological sectors. What the negative criticism has not managed to do, however, is destroy the poet, who today is recognized to be among the most representative of the twentieth century, a classic, as Amado Alonso defined Neruda in his commentary on his hermetic poetry.

I still recall the content of a letter by Neruda's most obstinate detractor, Ricardo Paseyro, which I have kept. In it this enemy of Neruda is disturbed by my professed appreciation for Neruda's poetry and reaches the point of denouncing my bad taste as a reader of poetry, reproaching me for my contribution to, in his definition, the “shameful myth of Neruda, swindler of poetry, glutton for prizes, buffoon of honors,” and summoning me for the first day of the year 2000: “On that day I will arrange to meet with you,” wrote Paseyro, “and then, with the benefit of time, we will make a thorough accounting of this quarrel that divides us. I do not know if I will win, but I am sure that you will lose.”

Since that seventeenth day of August of 1967, the date of the aforementioned letter, “the years have passed slowly,” in the words of Neruda, but they have been “slow and deathly” for his detractors, not for him. His verses now occupy a permanent place in the house of poetry and in our spirit; they have made a deep mark on an era, the external and internal history of a century, with a dramatic stamp but also with an obstinate hope, an unbroken faith in an auspicious future. On another occasion I defined Neruda as an indefatigable inventor of utopias: happy utopias that enable one to resist a sudden attack of despair in the face of evil and injustice.

Neruda has indeed been the interpreter of a century. No one has lived it with such intensity and passion as he. We may say whatever we like about his “humanity,” criticize him for his political errors—which he tried at times to justify, rather clumsily—but no one can deny his role as interpreter of an entire age. Through his verse the world of the suffering, conquered races and oppressed peoples have found their voice. When Neruda declared, in Canto general, “Yo estoy aquí para contar la historia” (“I am here to tell the story”)¹ he was defining precisely his reason for being a poet. In the speech given in Stockholm on the occasion of the Nobel Prize, recalling a verse by Rimbaud, “A l'aurore, armés d'une ardente patience, nous entrerons aux splendides Villes,” he reaffirmed the reason for poetry, and for his poetry: “el entero porvenir fue expresado en esa frase de Rimbaud: sólo con una ardiente paciencia conquistaremos la espléndida ciudad que dará luz, justicia y dignidad a todos los hombres. Así la poesía no habrá cantado en vano” (“the entire future was expressed in that statement by Rimbaud: only with a burning patience will we conquer the splendid city which will give light, justice and dignity to all men. Thus poetry will not have sung in vain”).

With tenacious dedication Neruda has gone about reconstructing hope, “teje que teje, como una costurera” (“thread by thread, like a seamstress”). This was the function of the poet and he underscored it in a book of intense drama, Fin de mundo, (End of the World) where, reflecting on the horrible death of a journalist, he offered a Quevedian warning:

Preparémonos a morir
en mandíbulas maquinarias.

Let us prepare to die
In the jaws of the machine.

He was convinced that the function of the poet consisted of accompanying man on his difficult residence on earth, encouraging him always to believe in a better day to come, in a world of justice and peace, where, finally, all would be brothers. In spite of the cruel reality that greeted him everywhere, and which he reflects dramatically in his poetry, Neruda always gave precedence to a utopia of a happy future, that he stubbornly defended, both with toughness and with tenderness, as Lorca emphasized when he introduced his young friend at the University of Madrid.

It is for that reason that Neruda's poetry resonates so deeply and intimately in the reader. Those who have read Neruda free from prejudice or partisanship easily overcome the discomfort caused by his paying some tribute to political propaganda. They cling to the profound Neruda, a poet who, like Quevedo—though with greater tenderness—seizes hold of us who see our problems, our sorrows, and our hopes reflected and expressed in his poems as well as we could ever imagine, just as Neruda had experienced with the great Spanish poet of the seventeenth century. Above all, in Neruda's poetry we perceive the constant presence of a man, in an autobiographical dimension that allows us to participate in his problems, which include, legitimately, his political beliefs. On one occasion, Neruda expressed to me his disapproval of the attention that was once devoted exclusively to his “commited” poetry, while ignoring the poetry that presented his existential concerns. In his opinion, it was unfair to isolate any aspect, since it was all part of his “humanity,” his moral character. And all of his work constituted “commitment,” a commitment essentially related to mankind. I believe it is from this comprehensive perspective that Neruda's poetry must be regarded. Stripped bare of all exaggeration, prolixity and the most shocking note of partisan political propaganda, the body of his verse constitutes the record of great human emotion.

For that reason, we feel intimately drawn every time we read a poem by Neruda. I think there are books or poems among the production of the great Chilean that are still insufficiently appreciated. His creative frenzy, which led him to write so much, is an obstacle to the clearest possible reflection on his poetry. The reader is struck by the sheer volume of his books. His work displays itself as abundance, like a torrential river dragging precious jewels, incredible stones, and amazing debris in its wake. But it only takes a moment to get over this impression: there is no Nerudian verse that, once read, does not resonate permanently and ever more deeply in our intimate selves. Of all Hispanic American poets of the twentieth century, surely Neruda is the one who has had the greatest impact on us.

Between anguish and hope the poet's life passed, and through it his poetry found expression. He had declared, at one time, his fortunate condition for having known the brotherhood of strangers; that had been an extraordinary experience for him, because it broadened the human being to embrace “todas las vidas” (“every life”). When we consider these words, we are more deeply moved by the unfortunate moment in which Neruda's death occurred. We still remember the chilling scene, broadcast on television and in newspapers, of the wake in his Santiago home that had been sacked. Alberti drew the world's attention to such iniquity dramatically, purposefully evoking verses the poet had dedicated to Spain, and concluding:

come and see his body fallen there,
his immense heart spilled out there
on the slag heap of his broken dreams,
while the blood continues to flow in the streets.

Confronted with this spectacle of human suffering, the work of the Chilean poet became tinged with sombre colors, which are, in fact, the ones that dominated his works from the start because of the gravity of the issues they discussed. Now the defenseless condition of man in the face of death, which Neruda had denounced so many times in his poetry, was his own condition. It is precisely this indelible scene that casts a disturbing light on his entire poetic production, and leads us irresistibly to consider its existential stance, swinging continually between despair and hope.

The three books of Residencia en la tierra (Residence on Earth) (1933, 1935, 1947) are fundamental texts that offer evidence of the despair mentioned above. We must remember that at one time Neruda, during his Marxist conversion, rejected these books, but he must have always considered them to be fundamental to his poetic oeuvre, since, when I was preparing an anthology of his verse in 1960, he wrote an insistent letter urging me to include an abundance of poems from the Residencias.

The negative vision of the world, we know, predominates up to Tercera residencia (Third Residence), when Neruda discovers his mission as a poet to give encouragement to man. In Canto general (1950) his vision of the future becomes vitalistic:

Yo tengo frente a mí sólo semillas
desarrollos radiantes y dulzura.

I have before me only seeds
radiant growth and sweetness.

The “día de los desventurados” (“day of the unfortunates”), the “día pálido” (“pale day”) denounced in “Débil del alba” (“Dawn's Feeble Light”) seems to be completely forgotten, the bitter tone in “Entierro en el este” (“Burial in the East”) has been overcome; the terrible impression of a burned corpse “junto al turbio río” (“by the muddy river”), the scattered ashes being the only remains of apparently such:

poderosos viajeros
que hicieron arder algo sobre las negras aguas, y devoraron
un aliento desaparecido y un licor extremo.

powerful travelers
that they set something ablaze over the black waters, and
devoured
a dying breath and a consummate libation.

The destructive tongue of dust, the erosion of time, with its deep Quevedian roots, death “vestida de Almirante” (“dressed in Admiralty”), that awaits us in some dead-end port at the end of a journey, regardless of whether it's short or long; these are now distant worries. And nevertheless, they persist and dominate the poet's private thoughts. In Memorial de Isla Negra (Memorial of Isla Negra) (1964) he again affirms the perennial value of the lesson he received during his residence in Asia:

Y si algo vi en mi vida fue una tarde
en la India, en las márgenes de un río,
arder una mujer de carne y hueso.

And if I saw anything in my life it was an afternoon
in India, on the banks of a river,
a woman of flesh and blood ablaze.

Doubt about the beyond insinuates itself:

y no sé si era el alma o era el humo
lo que del sarcófago salía.

and I do not know if it was the soul or smoke
that escaped from the sarcophagus.

On the other hand, Canto general is also a song of death and disillusionment. America's history is hardly encouraging; when Neruda searches for the root of the American being in her amazing geography, the heights of Macchu Picchu, he finds only blood and pain. And the story of every part of America he sings of in his poetry is again one of blood and pain. Their dazzling chromatic qualities notwithstanding, the Odas themselves, in the several books they comprise, ultimately only bring into sharper focus a whole universe destined for destruction, against a background of imperturbable and eternal elements—the ocean, rocks, time. The Biblical memento dominates “Oda a unas flores amarillas” (“Ode to Some Yellow Flowers”): “Polvo somos, seremos” (“Dust we are, dust we will be”). This message reminds us of the fundamental lesson learned in Quevedo, a lesson Neruda takes to heart in the singular work “Viaje al corazón de Quevedo”(“Joumey to the Heart of Quevedo”) but with a deeper anguish, denouncing death with a question that for the Chilean poet remains unanswered:

Hay una sola enfermedad que mata, y ésa es la vida. Hay un solo paso, y es el camino hacia la muerte. Hay una manera sola de gasto y de mortaja, es el paso arrastrador del tiempo que nos conduce. Nos conduce ¿adónde?

There is only one illness that kills, and that is life. There is only one path, and it is the road toward death. There is only one form of expense and one shroud; it is the sweeping passage of time leading us along. Leading us where?

After the Residencias comes Estravagario (Extravagaria) (1958), the book that offers us the most profound dimension of Nerudian concerns. This book has frequently been described as a humorous display, when what prevails in it is, on the contrary, the most profound existential questioning. The elegiac character, already so evident in the Odas, in Canto general and in the Residencias, is felt in the love song here, but it gives way above all to desolation. Neruda is not devoted to metaphysical speculation; nevertheless, he develops themes of great import: the indifference of time to the course of human life, how little we matter, the tempering impact of death on pride, an unplanned departure into the unknown, the here and now precipitating at death into the eternity of not being.

Disturbing questions about the why of human existence and its duration follow one upon another, and, without the poet's declaring it openly, the question of the beyond is raised again. In the last of the Cien sonetos de amor (One Hundred Love Sonnets) (1960) this concern evolves into a suggestive pantheism, providing redemption from the fear of absence and death:

En medio de la tierra apartaré
las esmeraldas para divisarte
y tú estarás copiando las espigas
con una pluma de agua mensajera.

In the center of the earth I will push aside
the emeralds so that I can see you—
you like an amanuensis, with a pen
of water, copying the green sprigs of plants.

A temporary solution, to be sure, given that Neruda continually returns to the theme. In Canción de gesta (Song of Protest) (1960) what will concern him is the “agricultura de la muerte” “agriculture of death”; in Las piedras de Chile (The Stones of Chile) (1961) time and death are the grand protagonists of the tragedy of man. Recent disasters in Chile contribute to the worried tones that dominate the Cantos ceremoniales (Ceremonial Songs) (1961). The theme of time and death is also pervasive in Las manos del día (Hands of the Day) (1968), with the tragedy of Vietnam. More and more Neruda is becoming an “autumnal” poet, as he defined himself, in the sense of reflecting and meditating upon the great problems of man. With Fin de mundo (End of the World), which appears in 1969, it is clear that the poet has reached his dramatic peak. Interpreter of his century, he sees it demonically defying the views of goodness that he has expressed and obstinately defended. In its waning twilight, the twentieth century presents itself to the poet as an immense and remorseless machine of death. This is where he advises us of the danger that devouring “mandíbulas maquinarias” (“jaws of the machine”) threaten man. It is the age of ash, of massacred innocents. That great Nerudian sympathy colors with vibrant tenderness the tragic condition of innocent youth destroyed by war, and, in the doll from Asia that survives the death of her diminutive owner, he offers us an equally unforgettable image:

Muñeca del Asia quemada
por los aéreos asesinos,
presenta tus ojos vacíos
sin la cintura de la niña
que te abandonó
cuando ardía
bajo los muros incendiados
o en la muerte...

Table of contents

• Front Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Hispanic Issues
• Dedication
• Acknowledgments
• Contents
• Introduction
• Part 1 Reading Neruda
• Part 2 Neruda Reconfigured: Culture, History, Politics
• Part 3 Linking Theory to Praxis: U.S. Latino Responses
• Afterword
• Contributors
• Index