The Poetry of Pablo Neruda

[miyako73]

Correction: I should have said Neruda's English-translated poems.


Neruda's original:

Duerme, duerme, gato nocturno
con tus ceremonias de obispo,
y tu bigote de piedra:

Reid's Translation:

Sleep, sleep cat of the night,
with episcopal ceremony
and your stone-carved moustache.

To maintain the masculinity of Neruda's tone and imagery, the translation should have been:

Sleep, sleep, nocturnal cat
with your bishop's ceremonies
and your mustache of stone.

The differences:

nocturnal cat - masculine
cat of the night - feminine

with your bishop's ceremonies - authority/power - masculine
with episcopal ceremony - blessing/grace - feminine

and your moustache of stone - hard - masculine
and your stone-carved moustache - soft - feminine


----- the way neruda's poems have been translated, most of the time, is just too feminine and opposite to what neruda felt (as expressed by his tones and imageries) when he wrote them.

[Heteronym]

This is according to a creative writing professor:

Neruda's poems are good, nice, or what have you because they were written by Neruda. Had they been written by an unknown poet, literary critics could have easily dismissed them as too wordy, too cheesy, and too flowery.

Fascinating logic that...

So tell me, before Neruda became a known poet, why did people praise and read his poetry? Doesn't it make sense to assume that he became known exactly because of the quality of his poetry?

[miyako73]

Read my correction: Neruda's English Poems. Translation is awful.

[Heteronym]

I've only read him in translation, and he's still good

[Gregory Samsa]

Read my correction: Neruda's English Poems. Translation is awful.

I dont agree with you. I love his poems in Swedish and English. Like Nobel Prize-winner Gabriel Garcia Marquez once said: "Neruda is the greatest poet of the 20th century — in any language."

[Heteronym]

Well, now that might be an exaggeration, but I forgive Gabo for his hyperboles

More influential than T.S. Eliot and Ezra Pound on 20th century poetry he certainly wasn't. More innovative than Fernando Pessoa, who contained several poets inside him, he definitely wasn't either.

Pablo Neruda is an inventive, tender, seductive poet.

[stlukesguild]

More influential than T.S. Eliot and Ezra Pound on 20th century poetry he certainly wasn't.

Are you sure of that... or are you basing your assumptions of the importance of T.S. Eliot and Pound vs Neruda solely upon the impact of the poets on English-language literature? Neruda picks up and continues where Federico Garcia-Lorca leaves off in the whole of Spanish language poetry... and we should note that Spanish literature of the time was an absolute hothouse.
Along with Borges, Neruda is one of the central figures in the Renaissance of Latin-American literature... an equivalent of Whitman... or Diego Rivera in painting.

Neruda can indeed be a seductive, tender, lyrical poet... but he is much more than that. He builds upon a unique Spanish use of metaphor with the visionary fervor of San Juan de la Cruz, Blake, Whitman... and Garcia-Lorca... and marries these to French trends coming from Symbolism and leading toward Surrealism. Cursory readings of Residence on Earth or the Captain's Verses reveal a poet far more complex and ambitious than the popular love lyrics alone might suggest.

[Heteronym]

I'd say that in the English-speaking world, Neruda hasn't been more influential or important than Pound and Eliot. I have no doubt of that. I don't know the world of Spanish-speaking poetry well enough to judge Neruda's place in it, but I'd like to see evidence of his great influence before believing it.

[miyako73]

As I said, Neruda's poetry sounds beautiful, makes sense, and even feels minimalist in Spanish, but its English translation is awful--full of cliche, feminine punch, and soap operatic flare.

[Gregory Samsa]

As I said, Neruda's poetry sounds beautiful, makes sense, and even feels minimalist in Spanish, but its English translation is awful--full of cliche, feminine punch, and soap operatic flare.

We heard you the first time! And you have wrong he is wonderful in English translation.

[stlukesguild]

As I said, Neruda's poetry sounds beautiful, makes sense, and even feels minimalist in Spanish, but its English translation is awful--full of cliche, feminine punch, and soap operatic flare.

And why should we take your opinion as the last word when some of us who may actually be as well read or far better read than yourself are of a different opinion?

[miyako73]

It is absurd to compare Neruda to English-speaking/writing poets.

[stlukesguild]

It is absurd to compare Neruda to English-speaking/writing poets.

No... It's absurd to make such absurd proclamations. Homer is compared with Virgil and Milton. Shakespeare is compared with Dante. Baudelaire is compared with Whitman... and Whitman is compared with Pessoa and Neruda. Literature continually involves a dialog between writers of different cultures, languages, and eras.

[JCamilo]

Do an experiment. Pick a not so famous poem of Neruda and have your creative writer friend read it without saying a word that it's Neruda's. You will get the following:

Too wordy, too cheesy, too flowery.


If "I kissed her again and again under the endless sky." were written by an unknown poet, do you think it will appear in an anthology? NOPE. Cliche.

yet,

La besé tantas veces bajo el cielo infinito

is just perfect. You know what else is cliche? A writer that descend to hell...

by the way, if was Eliot and Yeats... But Pound... no sorry...

[miyako73]

why is "La besé tantas veces bajo el cielo infinito" better than "I kissed her again and again under the endless sky."?

It's the language, the nuances of Spanish, the mother tongue of Neruda.

el ciel infinito is deeper and more meaningful than the endless sky. Linguists and translation experts know what I'm talking about.

Besides, language is culture. Translating Neruda's poems without considering his culture is an ingredient for a literary disaster.