Poetry Discussion: Residence on Earth (Residencía En La Tierra) by Pablo Neruda

[Drkshadow03]

This is a thread to discuss Residence on Earth, a collection of poems, by Pablo Neruda, which he wrote between 1925 - 1945. From what I understand the "collection" actually consists of three separate collections Residence I, Residence II, and the highly political Residence III.

Possible things to think about while reading and we might wish to discuss (based partially on some of my own observations):


Share what you felt about the overall collection or particular parts
rhetorical techniques you noticed that you found interesting
Overall Style (Do the various poems have shared stylistic features? How would you describe Neruda's style?)
common motifs found throughout the work (it seems to me there are certain images/symbols that Neruda comes back to again and again. Why?)
Particular Poems that moved you or that you liked and why
What are common themes found through this collection? Are there any common themes?
Is Neruda trying to say something about the world? Or are these just expressions of emotional states?
As the introduction to my collection of poetry states, Gabriel Garcia Marquez called Neruda "the greatest poet of the twentieth century-in any language," while Juan Ramon Jimenez claimed that Neruda was "a great bad poet." Based on this collection of poems, would you say Neruda is a good poet or a bad poet? And if good, the greatest of the 20th century?
Anything else you feel worth mentioning or considering.

[Paulclem]

I've sent for the book. Are there any particular poems in the collection that we could look at online in the meantime?

[Jack of Hearts]

Will check the library for this.

Here's a tangentially related thread from years ago:

http://www.online-literature.com/forums/showthread.php?66389-Cien-sonetos-de-amor







J

[Drkshadow03]

To get us started while everybody waits for their copies to arrive, here is one poem from the collection called "Walking Around." (http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/walking-around/) This online version is translated by Robert Bly. The one I have in my book is translated by Donald Walsh.

[Paulclem]

Good poem.

First impressions are that he is a man walking around normally who can see the consequences of things - disease, ugliness and death - and who is wishing for release from this - though not so much that he is unable to be 'serene' in the last stanza.

It reminded me of that image - medieval? - of women giving birth into open graves in the lines:

steering my way in a water of wombs and ashes

When the poet says he is sick of being a man - I interpreted this as mankind - I felt he was expressing a wish for some kind of annihilation.

The only thing I want is to lie still like stones or wool.

or to have no cares and worries. To be as responsible as a rock.

Just initial thoughts.

[JBI]

Unfortunately my collection in China lacks this book. I guess I will need to sit out on the discussion for a while, until I at least can get my hands on a copy (unless somebody has a digital copy). Anyway, perhaps it is for the best as term is about to start, and I have to teach myself Chinese historical phonetics. If you post complete poems though, maybe I will pipe in. I am not as familiar with Neruda as I would have liked to be (or any Spanish language poet for that matter).

[Drkshadow03]

There is definitely elements I like about the poem. The overall tone is powerful and depressing. The imagery is beautiful and unique, with some surreal metaphors like the fifth stanza about being a root in the dark. It's extended metaphors like these that Neruda shows his true power as a poet for me. He balances his surreal tendencies in that stanza and uses it to transform our perspectives and experiences of life, which is what great literature should do. However, while each stanza as a whole is sensible and the poem as a whole I think is pretty good, I found there were lots of little lines or specific phrases that baffled me.

What do you make of "The smell of barbershops makes me break into hoarse sobs."

Now obviously this fits the melancholy tone, but why the smell of barbershops? This seems a weird connection.




The only thing I want is to lie still like stones or wool.

or to have no cares and worries. To be as responsible as a rock.

Just initial thoughts.

The stone part, too, I get. But what about the wool?



"Still it would be marvelous
to terrify a law clerk with a cut lily,
[...]"- from the 4th stanza

The overall sense of the fourth stanza is the speaker imagining himself going crazy and rebelling against society. But when I look at the specific images like the one quoted above I'm left scratchy my head. The law clerk as a rep of society I can get. But why terrify him with a cut lily?

What is a moist house exactly?

What about sulphur-colored birds? Is this supposed to be a phoenix seen through the melancholy lens of the poem in which its symbolic connection of rebirth is given a negative connotation and instead of fiery it's color is described by its unpleasant scent? Are hideous intestines supposed to be sausages, but described in terms to make a food delicious to many seem disgusting?

Why false teeth in a coffeepot? And why an orthopedic shop at the end?

[mona amon]

I thought the law clerk was a boring guy in a boring routine job, and if you show him a glimpse of the exotic and beautiful (cut lily) he's going to shy away from it - that's how I interpreted it, but really, this is why I don't read poetry. It's all so personal - how do I know what the poet actually means?

[MorpheusSandman]

I love what I've read of Neruda, but the books I have do not have this poem either. The one complete version I know of is HERE, (http://www.amazon.com/Residence-Earth-Pablo-Neruda/dp/0811215814) but I was put off buying it because of the one negative review, which is very well-reasoned and persuasive in regards to the quality of the translation. I know people can always nit-pick translations, but that reviewer makes some very good points about what makes that one less than optimal. Anyone here have any input on the matter?

[Drkshadow03]

I love what I've read of Neruda, but the books I have do not have this poem either. The one complete version I know of is HERE, (http://www.amazon.com/Residence-Earth-Pablo-Neruda/dp/0811215814) but I was put off buying it because of the one negative review, which is very well-reasoned and persuasive in regards to the quality of the translation. I know people can always nit-pick translations, but that reviewer makes some very good points about what makes that one less than optimal. Anyone here have any input on the matter?

I'm actually using The Poetry of Pablo Neruda edited by Ilan Stevens (http://www.amazon.com/The-Poetry-Pablo-Neruda/dp/0374529604/ref=cm_cr_pr_sims_t). I picked this up because it has selections from his whole career arranged by each collection and figured if there was a particular collection I really liked I could purchase the whole collection later. I'll probably be participating with just the selections from this book since it includes 20 poems from Residence I, 14 poems from Residence II, and 27 poems from Residence III . What is neat about this collection, besides that it covers most of Neruda's career, is that occasionally the editor includes two translations of the same poem back-to-back.

With that said, the vast majority of the Residence poems in this collection are from the Donald Walsh translation, the one you were considering. I agree with the negative review that often I find them impenetrably surreal, which was part of the reason I wanted to have a poetry discussion of this book in the first place. I found it off-putting and wanted to see if others felt the same way. If it was Neruda himself or just the translation of his poetry in this case.

[MorpheusSandman]

Well, to know if it was Neruda or the translation you'd have to ask a dual Spanish/English speaker. That reviewer seems to think much of it is the translation. I know that Neruda was quite diverse, so it wouldn't surprise me if he had written something surrealistically impenetrable, but what else I've read from him has not been like that. But I have heard that Residence is his most difficult work, so it's hard to say. I suspect from reading that review that much in Residence is playing on the idiosyncrasies of the Spanish language, as most great poetry plays on the nuances of its native language. Rendering that in another language always means choosing between levels of meaning, yet I tend to think that when there are so many levels of meaning, choosing the literal ones is completely missing the point, as the literal meanings were never what was really "meant" to begin with (if that makes sense).

[cafolini]

I thought the law clerk was a boring guy in a boring routine job, and if you show him a glimpse of the exotic and beautiful (cut lily) he's going to shy away from it - that's how I interpreted it, but really, this is why I don't read poetry. It's all so personal - how do I know what the poet actually means?

It is true that Neruda placed his hopes in the success of the 1917 revolution. But as a poet he went far beyond dialectical materialism, and because, regardless of politics which he had to play because nobody lives in vaccuo, a poet of this earth. And you are correct. It is because of that that he's so personal.
However, even Octavio Paz, at the end of the road, had to reconcile himself with the fact that Neruda is one of the great poets of the 20th century.

[Drkshadow03]

I thought the law clerk was a boring guy in a boring routine job, and if you show him a glimpse of the exotic and beautiful (cut lily) he's going to shy away from it - that's how I interpreted it, but really, this is why I don't read poetry. It's all so personal - how do I know what the poet actually means?

I actually like your interpretation. I was thinking of the law clerk in terms of society' representative, albeit someone on the lower end of the totem poll, but I like your association of his job with just a boring routine job and a good connection with a cut lily as symbol of the exotic and beautiful. The speaker imagines himself attacking the everyday humdrum of his life with the exotic and beautiful. I like the idea anyway!

Any thoughts on the wool? Or barbershops? Or false teeth in coffee?

[YesNo]

What do you make of "The smell of barbershops makes me break into hoarse sobs."

Now obviously this fits the melancholy tone, but why the smell of barbershops? This seems a weird connection.


It may be that Neruda only wanted to put one incongruous idea next to another for its shock effect. There may be no intended message.

[Paulclem]

What do you make of "The smell of barbershops makes me break into hoarse sobs."

Now obviously this fits the melancholy tone, but why the smell of barbershops? This seems a weird connection.



But what about the wool?



I think there's a connection between wool and barbershops. I think wool is like stone in that it is dead - although it has an organic origin. I think the barbershop and their smell extends this. Life is painful, and so he want to be wool or stone. Part of that is his delineation as a man - I think it's a gender indicator. Barbershops are for male haircuts and shaves - at that time. Hair is one of the things we use to define men and women. Man also used to wear hair oil etc.

Wool is also gender neutral, and as a material can be worn by both men and women. .

It so happens I am sick of being a man

Although I said it referred to mankind in the general sense - it also refers to man in the gender role in his references to barbers.

[Paulclem]

Still it would be marvelous
to terrify a law clerk with a cut lily,

I agree with the everyday and beautiful dichotomy which might terrify the clerk. It could also relate to the gender expectations - a man offering a man a cut lily. I don't think there's a sense of the clerk being a woman given the roles at the time he was writing.

[Drkshadow03]

I know that Neruda was quite diverse, so it wouldn't surprise me if he had written something surrealistically impenetrable, but what else I've read from him has not been like that. But I have heard that Residence is his most difficult work, so it's hard to say.

Well the poem I linked to at post # 4 seems to be pretty surreal and has a different translator. In my book I also have the translation of the same poem by Walsh.


It may be that Neruda only wanted to put one incongruous idea next to another for its shock effect. There may be no intended message.

Maybe. I was thinking about this some more today. He also mentions tailorshops and moviehouses earlier in the poem. Then Office buildings and orthopedic shops at the end. These are places of human social interactions and commerce. Buy clothes (for appearance), watch moving art (instead of experiencing life), barbershops have regenerative connotation since hair grows back and must be removed every few months, an endless repetitive cycle of meaningless degeneration and of a part of the body, which fits into the theme of him being sick of being a man.


I think there's a connection between wool and barbershops. I think wool is like stone in that it is dead - although it has an organic origin. I think the barbershop and their smell extends this. Life is painful, and so he want to be wool or stone. Part of that is his delineation as a man - I think it's a gender indicator. Barbershops are for male haircuts and shaves - at that time. Hair is one of the things we use to define men and women. Man also used to wear hair oil etc.

Wool is also gender neutral, and as a material can be worn by both men and women. .

It so happens I am sick of being a man

Although I said it referred to mankind in the general sense - it also refers to man in the gender role in his references to barbers.

I like the idea that wool is like stone in that is dead inanimate object, but also is organic. I liked a lot about this poem before, but now I'm starting to appreciate some of the confusing stuff I initially found off-putting!

[Drkshadow03]

Here is another poem from Residence I called "Unity (http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/16968)." I was comparing the translation at the link with the Donald Walsh in my book and I found some lines I preferred Walsh, while other lines I preferred Eshleman's. I'll give more details later.

Line 1: Eshleman translates: "settled in the depths," while Walsh translates it "seated in the depths." Otherwise, the two translations are identical.
Line 2: Identical
Line 3: Walsh translates: "How clear it is that the stones have touched time," which sounds much better than Eshleman's rendering in my opinion.
Line 4: "fine substance" and "smell" in Walsh versus "refined matter" and "odor" in Eshleman. I prefer Walsh here as well.

Second Stanza: Walsh expands many phrases: "the weight of the mineral, the light of the honey" versus Eshleman's translation, which minimizes them "a mineral weight, a honeyed light." The light of honey versus honeyed light is an entirely different idea/symbol.

Walsh we have "shade" versus "tint" in Eshleman. Walsh has "Stick to the sound" versus "cling to the sound" in Eshleman. Walsh also chooses to translate "noche" into night, while Eshleman keeps that one word in Spanish.

There are others, but I'll stop there. Hopefully, this will assist Morpheus. Having read both translations I definitely feel there are points where Walsh's translations is superior and more poetic, but also that second stanza it isn't clear by looking at both translations if in the original it is the "light of honey" or a honeyed light, which while it isn't hard to see how they came from the same source, end up producing different images depending on how it's translated.

[stlukesguild]

Neruda was one of the great Latin American poets who followed in the footsteps of the Spanish Modernists such as Federico Garcia Lorca, Antonio Machado, Rafael Alberti, etc... This generation of poets were profoundly inspired by French Symbolism (think of Rimbaud's Illuminations) and Surrealism. Like Rimbaud and Garcia Lorca, Neruda's poems are not always able to to broken down into a literal "meaning". Residence on Earth, along with Cesar Vallejo's Trilce represent Latin-American Modernism at its most hermetic. At times I almost think one needs to think of them as musical... conveying a certain mood or "meaning" in spite of our being unable to assign specific literal interpretations to each phrase or image put forth.

[MorpheusSandman]

Maybe. If Neruda was indeed influenced by the surrealists, then "meaningless juxtapositions used for aesthetic/visceral effect" is a pretty common technique. John Ashbery is perhaps the king of this technique in English.


There are others, but I'll stop there. Hopefully, this will assist Morpheus.Yes it did, and thanks very much. It looks like the culprit is the Neruda poem more so than the translation, so perhaps I will pick up the full Walsh translation despite the reservations of that one reviewer on Amazon. Silly me, putting so much stock in an Amazon reviewer. :/

[cacian]

I have to think about this piece. there is a lot going on. I think the somber mood and the denialism of the poet one has to come from the same place that he comes from. I am thinking the disagreeable description of everything from himself to the surrounding is a small aperture on chile state of life. delusional is the word.

It so happens that I am sick of my feet and my nails
and my hair and my shadow.
It so happens I am sick of being a man.

he is almost repulsed at being a man . he does not use the word 'person' for example. there is an underlying hint that this maybe about his physiological persona something to do with being masculine.
I could also interpret this as being a dream. or a nightmare as one may see it.

[YesNo]

he is almost repulsed at being a man . he does not use the word 'person' for example. there is an underlying hint that this maybe about his physiological persona something to do with being masculine.


I agree that Neruda was expressing a male perspective. Paulclem also mentioned the specific male perspective in the poem.

Considering that the poem is a rant, it might be useful to ask what personality disorder could be associated with someone saying things or acting out in ways that Neruda wrote. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personality_disorder

His being tired of being a man does not make me think he was suicidal because of depression. It sounds more like he believed that he was too good to be a man. He also showed no empathy toward others. This reached a low point with his desire to kill a nun. Finally, he walked calmly. Tentatively, it sounds to me like narcissism.

[Drkshadow03]

Yes it did, and thanks very much. It looks like the culprit is the Neruda poem more so than the translation, so perhaps I will pick up the full Walsh translation despite the reservations of that one reviewer on Amazon. Silly me, putting so much stock in an Amazon reviewer. :/

Here is line 3 and 4 from the first poem I linked as translated by Walsh: "withered, impenetrable, like a felt swan/navigating in a water of sources and ashes." Versus the Bly translation: "dried up, waterproof, like a swan made of felt/steering my way in a water of wombs and ashes." I think I prefer the Bly translation in this case.


Neruda was one of the great Latin American poets who followed in the footsteps of the Spanish Modernists such as Federico Garcia Lorca, Antonio Machado, Rafael Alberti, etc... This generation of poets were profoundly inspired by French Symbolism (think of Rimbaud's Illuminations) and Surrealism. Like Rimbaud and Garcia Lorca, Neruda's poems are not always able to to broken down into a literal "meaning". Residence on Earth, along with Cesar Vallejo's Trilce represent Latin-American Modernism at its most hermetic. At times I almost think one needs to think of them as musical... conveying a certain mood or "meaning" in spite of our being unable to assign specific literal interpretations to each phrase or image put forth.

In a different thread, I told Morpheus (I think) that Neruda's poetry, at least in Residence, reminded me a lot of Mallarme.

[MorpheusSandman]

Here is line 3 and 4 from the first poem I linked as translated by Walsh: "withered, impenetrable, like a felt swan/navigating in a water of sources and ashes." Versus the Bly translation: "dried up, waterproof, like a swan made of felt/steering my way in a water of wombs and ashes." I think I prefer the Bly translation in this case.One could always go word-by-word with such things. "Withered" may have went better with "waterproof" as opposed to the other words in each's translation. Felt swan or swan of felt? I usually tend to go for the more economical phrasing. Navigating or steering? The former is more complex, so perhaps it better fits what's being described. Wombs or sources? They both sound funky, honestly. My first thought was that since water has sources, that sources sounded less awkward, but wombs is certainly the more vivid (though strange) image.

[cacian]

I agree that Neruda was expressing a male perspective. Paulclem also mentioned the specific male perspective in the poem.

Considering that the poem is a rant, it might be useful to ask what personality disorder could be associated with someone saying things or acting out in ways that Neruda wrote. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personality_disorder

His being tired of being a man does not make me think he was suicidal because of depression. It sounds more like he believed that he was too good to be a man. He also showed no empathy toward others. This reached a low point with his desire to kill a nun. Finally, he walked calmly. Tentatively, it sounds to me like narcissism.

Hi YesNo I am not so sure it is personality disorder as much as feeling an out of body dislike. ie he may be feeling too masculine ie in the wrong body. many men I know suffer from it. they feel they are more feminine then masculine. the way he described his environment could be indicative of how he feels inside his own body and that is ragged worthless and literally disgust.

[YesNo]

I hadn't thought of it like that, cacian, but you may be right. Perhaps he would rather be female.

I was thinking the first line (http://elartedepecar.wordpress.com/2012/06/05/walking-around-el-caos-en-poesia/)


Sucede que me canso de ser hombre.

implied he was more "tired" ("me canso") than "sick" of being a man, although Google Translate also gives "sick", like Bly, unless I take out "sucede" ("it happens"). Perhaps he's both "sick and tired". If it were "sick" that Neruda intended perhaps he was more interested in being female than male. If it was "tired", it makes me think he was narcissistic.

----------------

Regarding Bly's translation, I think Google may do a better job of the following three lines:


Sólo quiero un descanso de piedras o de lana,
sólo quiero no ver establecimientos ni jardines,
ni mercaderías, ni anteojos, ni ascensores.

Bly translates this as:


The only thing I want is to lie still like stones or wool.
The only thing I want is to see no more stores, no gardens,
no more goods, no spectacles, no elevators.

Google's results are:


I just want a break from stones or wool,
I just want to see no more stores, no gardens,
no more goods, no spectacles, no elevators.

Neither version makes sense, so it probably doesn't matter.

One place where I think the Spanish may be more powerful than the English versions (Bly or Google) is the last two lines:


calzoncillos, toallas y camisas que lloran
lentas lágrimas sucias.

Bly writes:


underwear, towels and shirts from which slow
dirty tears are falling.

Google gives:


underpants, towels and shirts that weep
slow dirty tears.

The three words, "lentas lágrimas sucias", have a nice sound unlike the prosaic sound of the rest of the poem. There is alliteration on the first two words and the "-as" sound on all three, though not a rhyme, ties them together.

I'm not sure, but I suspect, in Spanish the line could have ended with "lentas lagrimas", but Neruda aded on the "sucias" ("dirty", "nasty", "unwashed") right at the end to emphasize his disgust. In English one can't put that word at the end, but Google seems to get it closer to the end than Bly does.

[Paulclem]

I reckon the poem expresses the kind of vision you might see in a Hieronymous Bosch painting. It seems to have that medieval gruesomeness. I don't think that the poem represents illness but more of a vision. Otherwise how could he walk around serenely? He is contemplating our deathly nature. His visions remind me of those medieval pictures of memento mori.

[Paulclem]

Hi YesNo I am not so sure it is personality disorder as much as feeling an out of body dislike. ie he may be feeling too masculine ie in the wrong body. many men I know suffer from it. they feel they are more feminine then masculine. the way he described his environment could be indicative of how he feels inside his own body and that is ragged worthless and literally disgust.

I think the disgust is about the human condition - specifically being a man himself - rather than too masculine. I don't get the sense from the text that he wants to be more feminine, rather he wants to be a stone or wool - not alive.

The only thing I want is to lie still like stones or wool.

[YesNo]

I think the disgust is about the human condition - specifically being a man himself - rather than too masculine. I don't get the sense from the text that he wants to be more feminine, rather he wants to be a stone or wool - not alive.

The only thing I want is to lie still like stones or wool.

That line in Bly's translation makes me wonder what Neruda meant by the words:


Sólo quiero un descanso de piedras o de lana

Did Bly understand this correctly? Does "descanso de" mean a break or rest from something or is the "de" signaling a possessive, as Bly suggests, the stone's rest or the wool's rest. I don't know. Either way it doesn't make sense to me to talk about the stone's rest or a need to take a break from the stones. Because of that, Bly might have the correct translation, but I suspect Bly is adding to the poem something that is not there.

I suspect Neruda is listing things that he is too good for and these include stones, wool, goods, gardens, glasses and elevators, along with clerks and nuns. With the clerks and nuns he can express scorn for both capitalism and religion elevating himself in the process. This self-conceit, or narcissism, is what I think Neruda is really expressing perhaps unintentionally.

[cacian]

I think the disgust is about the human condition - specifically being a man himself - rather than too masculine. I don't get the sense from the text that he wants to be more feminine, rather he wants to be a stone or wool - not alive.

The only thing I want is to lie still like stones or wool.

well I am not so sure . I think the fact that he is insisting on the word 'man' 'hombre' in this case rather then 'person' 'persona' in Spanish made me think that could be one of the reasons.
anyway I am not a fan of Neruda I do find him quite heavy at times it kind of puts me off. his vocabulary is rather sombre there is a lot of doom and gloom in his work I do not enjoy it. i like poetry that sustains enjoyability as a well subtlety. i do not want to feel i am walking under a dark tunnel without any hope at the end of it. i like light. :)

[cafolini]

well I am not so sure . I think the fact that he is insisting on the word 'man' 'hombre' in this case rather then 'person' 'persona' in Spanish made me think that could be one of the reasons.
anyway I am not a fan of Neruda I do find him quite heavy at times it kind of puts me off. his vocabulary is rather sombre there is a lot of doom and gloom in his work I do not enjoy it. i like poetry that sustains enjoyability as a well subtlety. i do not want to feel i am walking under a dark tunnel without any hope at the end of it. i like light. :)

One truth is for sure. You don't like Neruda because your self-called poetry can compete with his genuine one.

[cacian]

One truth is for sure. You don't like Neruda because your self-called poetry can compete with his genuine one.

LOl compete with Neruda!!! whatever made you think that cafo. no way. my humble insignificant poetry does not stand a chance compared to his work. i am in no a way comparing myself to him. that would be very wrong as you know. i do not write to compare. i write because i like it.
i merely write for fun. Neruda's tone is very serious and almost morose i find myself switching off. that is how i feel about it. it is just a taste what one likes or used to.

[Paulclem]

That line in Bly's translation makes me wonder what Neruda meant by the words:


Sólo quiero un descanso de piedras o de lana

Did Bly understand this correctly? Does "descanso de" mean a break or rest from something or is the "de" signaling a possessive, as Bly suggests, the stone's rest or the wool's rest. I don't know. Either way it doesn't make sense to me to talk about the stone's rest or a need to take a break from the stones. Because of that, Bly might have the correct translation, but I suspect Bly is adding to the poem something that is not there.

I suspect Neruda is listing things that he is too good for and these include stones, wool, goods, gardens, glasses and elevators, along with clerks and nuns. With the clerks and nuns he can express scorn for both capitalism and religion elevating himself in the process. This self-conceit, or narcissism, is what I think Neruda is really expressing perhaps unintentionally.

I know a poem can turn on a word - but in this case I'd agree with St Luke's comment about an impression of ideas. I'm still of the idea that he's writing in a medieval tradition with the gruesome imagery. He builds these impressions on his walk, but then, after the vision, he walks serenely.

I don't agree that the stone's rest makes no sense - in the context of him being human and a man, I can see it as a wish to freed from human concerns, and to be a stone or wool seems to fit that impression.

[Paulclem]

well I am not so sure . I think the fact that he is insisting on the word 'man' 'hombre' in this case rather then 'person' 'persona' in Spanish made me think that could be one of the reasons.
)

I might agree if there were lines which indicate a wish to be female, but it seems to me that he's expressing a wish to stop being a man/ human. Great poem though.

[cafolini]

I think he's simply expressing a wish to stop having to react to the idiots. But he understands the Roman Catholics and knows that in that framework the idiots are eternal and some answers must be given. And it also goes without saying that he doesn't want to play the stupid game.

[LitNetIsGreat]

[Sorry I have not yet been able to get hold of this book. I tried the library and no go. I could buy it but we've been bled dry over the last couple of months and are supposed to be saving.]

[Drkshadow03]

So in the poem "Unity" (linked in post # 18 in the thread) the poet imagines the material world to have some unifying factor, some deeper meaning at its depth, (sort of like a Platonic form) that he can almost comprehend, but whose true essence eludes him. This undefined unity encircles him, but he uses vague words to describe it: (a "something," "thing," etc.).

He notices commonalities between material objects such as wool, leather, wood, wheat, etc. All of these things share an archaic and faded nature, hence worn. They share color and tint. Perhaps all truths are merely their surface appearance. All these things with their vague commonalities and familiarities entrap him like a wall, closing him in. There is a sense that he is lost not only in the things of the material world, but also time and the season themselves swallow him. To decipher the enigmatic unities of the world, a person must isolate himself from it, but then at the end he returns back to the world described as the "distant empire of confused unities."

The poem suggests we can isolate ourselves from the world and try to make sense of it, only to fail to discover the deeper truth, or we can return to the world and just accept the confusing unities of which it consists. There is a sense that even when seeing unities, there is chaos and confusion.

[YesNo]

The original text of Residencia en la tierra is available here: http://www.literatura.us/neruda/tierra.html Using that with Google translate can help evaluate the translations.

The highlights of Neruda's life are here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pablo_Neruda In particular I noticed he lost his mother, Rosa Basoalter, two months after he was born in 1904. He wrote Residencia en la tierra between 1924 and 1932, during his twenties. He won the Nobel Prize in 1971 after Allende became the elected socialist president of Chile and died, perhaps assassinated, just after Pinochet overthrew Allende's government. His political involvement was strong enough that he could have been the president of Chile.

Regarding "Unity", this poem seems to fit in with the title of the collection. Because of the title, one expects poems about being a resident of earth and here is one where Neruda describes his presence in the world. However, the world he describes is a lifelessness surrounding him in which he works silently focused on himself. What I think is key is there are no people in the world that surrounds him. There aren't even any pets. He is alone.

Because of this lifeless description of the world, what I think he is really describing is himself. He is alone, unaware of others and brooding. This could be a normal maturation process for someone his age. It could also represent a more severe disorder.

Neruda has nothing useful or interesting to say about the world around him, this "unity", at least nothing that fits what I see around myself. One can imagine some mystical reality that Neruda is describing based on Eschleman's translation with the "wheeling", the "depths", the "mediate" and the "geometry", but I think that would be adding something to this poem that isn't there.

Regarding Clayton Eshleman's translation, there are two lines that I do not think were translated correctly.

Neruda writes:


Pienso, aislado en lo extremo de las estaciones,
central, rodeado de geografía silenciosa:

Eshleman translates this as


I mediate, isolated in the spread of seasons,
centric, encircled by a silent geometry:

Google gives the following:


I, isolated in the end of the seasons,
center, surrounded by silent geography:

Although Google misses "pienso" ("I think"), Eshleman introduces "mediate" which adds confusion and he talks about a "geometry" which might lead one to think Neruda is doing something more abstract or mystical with the world around him than I think Neruda claimed to be doing.


-----------------------

EDIT: As a correction, regarding my claim that Neruda's world is lifeless, he has one noun suggesting there is life in what surrounds him, "llanto" ("crying"), and so there must be some life form, although unspecified, that is doing the crying.

[cacian]

Interesting post YesNo and great links . I was going to ask you whether you spoke Spanish? I do. :)
about this poem what strikes me is this:
whilst it is very obvious that Neruda self expression is full of disgust and very broken if you like there is no obvious reasons to why he feels that way. The poem is very descriptive and yet there is not a clue to why.

The only clue I can think of is the one line where he says:

''Sucede que me canso de ser hombre.''
this is the only so so reason he gives to why he feels the way he feels.

then there are these very intriguing lines:

It would be great
to go through the streets with a green knife
letting out yells until I died of the cold.

green knife. not sure why the colour green?

''I don't want to go on being a root in the dark,
insecure,''

insecure? why insecure?

then

stretched out, shivering with sleep,
going on down, into the moist guts of the earth,
taking in and thinking, eating every day.[

is this a metaphor about wanting to go back into the womb? his mother womb?
just a thought.

anyway what could be the reasons why you think he wrote such a piece and why is he feeling that way?

whilst a poem is descriptive it would a good idea to try and get between the layers to why the poet wrote what he wrote. I think this is a very important part of poetry or literature if we are to fully understand it. :)

[YesNo]

Interesting post YesNo and great links . I was going to ask you whether you spoke Spanish? I do. :)

Although I spent about nine months in Mexico and studied Spanish for three of those months many decades ago, I can't really say that I speak the language very well, perhaps, enough to order a cafe con leche and read the newspaper. I mainly enjoy listening to meringue music.

Were Neruda writing in a language I knew nothing about, I would go through the same process: find the original, cut and paste it into Google Translate, compare the translation with what is offered, look at the poet's life and then see what sense the poem made. Translators should not be trusted because of what they may want to read into the poem. Google translate is just software. It won't give a finished version, but it's version should be considered as a base.



about this poem what strikes me is this:
whilst it is very obvious that Neruda self expression is full of disgust and very broken if you like there is no obvious reasons to why he feels that way. The poem is very descriptive and yet there is not a clue to why.

The only clue I can think of is the one line where he says:

''Sucede que me canso de ser hombre.''
this is the only so so reason he gives to why he feels the way he feels.

then there are these very intriguing lines:

It would be great
to go through the streets with a green knife
letting out yells until I died of the cold.

green knife. not sure why the colour green?

''I don't want to go on being a root in the dark,
insecure,''

insecure? why insecure?

then

stretched out, shivering with sleep,
going on down, into the moist guts of the earth,
taking in and thinking, eating every day.[

is this a metaphor about wanting to go back into the womb? his mother womb?
just a thought.

anyway what could be the reasons why you think he wrote such a piece and why is he feeling that way?

whilst a poem is descriptive it would a good idea to try and get between the layers to why the poet wrote what he wrote. I think this is a very important part of poetry or literature if we are to fully understand it. :)

Some of what he wrote might be metaphors for wanting to go back into the womb. I hadn't thought of that. The only reason I would say that is because his mother died two months after his birth.

Some of the other words he used, such as those about the "green knife", I figure are things that popped into his consciousness at the moment of writing. They might have an unconscious meaning for him, but they might also have been his attempt to write in a style he felt was "poetical", that is, in a style that sounded meaningful and deep, but was nothing, all on the surface.

My tentative theory is that he suffered from narcissism, and we can see the extent of his lack of empathy and loneliness from his poetry. Perhaps the original trauma was his mother's death. However, I'm not a mental health professional. I might change my mind as I read more of his poetry.

I agree with you that it is interesting to ask why a poet wrote those specific words, especially if that poet is now famous.

[Drkshadow03]

My tentative theory is that he suffered from narcissism, and we can see the extent of his lack of empathy and loneliness from his poetry. Perhaps the original trauma was his mother's death. However, I'm not a mental health professional. I might change my mind as I read more of his poetry.

I agree with you that it is interesting to ask why a poet wrote those specific words, especially if that poet is now famous.

I don't know. This is starting to get into overly biographical territory. We shouldn't be using the poetry to perform psychological diagnosis. The poems in Residence III turn very political, more specifically very Marxist. In these later poems he certainly sees himself as part of a larger order of human society.

Also, St Luke had some interesting comments about Neruda's style in Residence in this earlier thread (http://www.online-literature.com/forums/showthread.php?54513-The-Poetry-of-Pablo-Neruda&p=927123&viewfull=1#post927123).

[YesNo]

My current view of Neruda originally occurred to me based on two lines from Walking around:


Sin embargo sería delicioso
...
... dar muerte a una monja con un golpe de oreja.

Google translates this as:


Still it would be delicious
...
... kill a nun with a blow on the ear.

Those lines got me looking for a personality disorder.

I'm willing to consider Neruda in a more positive light than I am tentatively portraying him, but I would need to see evidence from the texts of the poems. I have only looked at a handful of his poems recently, so maybe there is something I'm missing. Do you have another poem to focus on to get this specific idea of killing nuns out of my mind?

[Paulclem]

I have to agree with Dark on the personality disorder - the question is why is he using that image -kill a nun with a blow on the ear - because that's all it is, a technique for an effect. It is a shocking image, and it seems to have succeeded in that with you. Why a nun and not a bloke in a pub? The nun seems to transgress more, and break more rules. It's about breaking conventions, such as the conventions of how we view life, which in his vision is a vision of death.

As for Unities, I also see that as a vision - something to do with God - is this indicated by the repeated number or symbol. Dark recognised Plato's cave in it, and that seems to make sense. The items he mentions all seem to be earthy or pre-industrial materials.

the tint of wheat, of ivory, of tears, things of leather, of wood, of wool,

The silent geometries reminded me of Blake's picture of God with the pair of compasses

http://www.google.co.uk/search?rlz=1T4TEUA_en___GB499&q=william+blake+paintings&um=1&ie=UTF-8&hl=en&tbm=isch&source=og&sa=N&tab=wi&ei=_SE2Uvb-BuPE7AaLk4CQDQ&biw=911&bih=377&sei=AiI2UtWqLcOshQeQhIDoBA#facrc=_&imgdii=_&imgrc=QdADrmU2DTorcM%3A%3BPq0K16FkMDekKM%3Bhttp%25 3A%252F%252Fcultured.com%252Fimages%252Fimage_file s%252F74%252F1924_m_isaac_newton.jpg%3Bhttp%253A%2 52F%252Fwiki.cultured.com%252Fpeople%252FWilliam_B lake%252F%3B800%3B615

I work quietly, wheeling over myself, a crow over death, a crow in mourning.

This is an interesting image and seems to present a contradiction - perhaps it represents an image of the spirit over the body in a vision.

Does the reunification that takes place hint at the mystery of it all in the face of the confusing unities?

[Drkshadow03]

You acquire the book yet Paulclem?

[YesNo]

The silent geometries reminded me of Blake's picture of God with the pair of compasses

http://www.google.co.uk/search?rlz=1T4TEUA_en___GB499&q=william+blake+paintings&um=1&ie=UTF-8&hl=en&tbm=isch&source=og&sa=N&tab=wi&ei=_SE2Uvb-BuPE7AaLk4CQDQ&biw=911&bih=377&sei=AiI2UtWqLcOshQeQhIDoBA#facrc=_&imgdii=_&imgrc=QdADrmU2DTorcM%3A%3BPq0K16FkMDekKM%3Bhttp%25 3A%252F%252Fcultured.com%252Fimages%252Fimage_file s%252F74%252F1924_m_isaac_newton.jpg%3Bhttp%253A%2 52F%252Fwiki.cultured.com%252Fpeople%252FWilliam_B lake%252F%3B800%3B615

That is exactly what I thought of when I read Clayton Eshleman's translation of Unidad that Drkshadow03 originally linked: http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/16968

However, when I look at the original, it does not say "geometría silenciosa" but "geografía silenciosa".

This is a case where I fault the translator, but the translation was effective. It got us both thinking the same thing, something more mystical and deeper than what I think Neruda intended to say.

---------------

Regarding his finding it "delicioso" to kill a nun, I understand how one could try to excuse that as an artistic attempt to shock. One could argue that he really didn't mean it, but I suspect he actually did mean it. However, I do assume his feeling of deliciousness stopped with killing Catholic nuns. It did not extend to killing Buddhist nuns, or Jewish girls, or black girls, or even a whole class of first graders, but suppose it did. Would that raise a red flag for anyone? Or would we continue to excuse it as an acceptable shock technique?

In my case, I think the lines about him wanting to kill a nun was a place where he slipped and exposed himself too much. It was where the poet-magician fumbled with his cards and exposed the underlying illusion braking the hypnotic spell. (I just finished watching Now You See Me. :) )



Does the reunification that takes place hint at the mystery of it all in the face of the confusing unities?

There are a lot of confusing ideas presented in Neruda's verse. I think many make the assumption that what Neruda is describing is something real rather than delusional. After all, he won a Nobel Prize even though it did seem politically motivated. He also has many people praising him. As a marketable commodity, he has good brand recognition.

From my view, he was delusional. His writing adds to the confusion. It does not illuminate any mystery.

[Paulclem]

You acquire the book yet Paulclem?

I've just got in and it was waiting for me on the stairs. The translator is Walsh, and it is bilingual - for the lad who doing Spanish at Uni.

[stlukesguild]

The original text of Residencia en la tierra is available here: http://www.literatura.us/neruda/tierra.html Using that with Google translate can help evaluate the translations.

Personally, I feel you are placing too much emphasis upon the literal interpretation of the poems. I have long agreed with Dante Gabriel Rossetti's concept of poetic translation:

The life blood of... translation is this: that a good poem shall not be turned into a bad one. The only true motive for putting poetry into a fresh language must be to endow a fresh nation, as far as possible, with one more possession of beauty. Poetry not being an exact science, literality of rendering is altogether secondary to this aim. I say literality, not fidelity, which is by no means the same thing.

-Dante Gabriel Rossetti- From the Preface to Early Italian Poets

Literal translations often fail because they miss out upon the poetic intention... the words may be right... but they are wrong in their capturing the layered meaning in the poem as a whole. For us, as amateurs with regard to Neruda and Spanish poetry as a whole, to second guess translators who have a far greater grasp of not only the language but the tradition of that body of literature as well as access to linguistic experts, editors, Spanish literary scholars, and the input of other poets seem presumptuous in the least... especially based upon the mechanical translations of Google. Certainly, not all translations are the same... and none can wholly recreate a work of art in another language that captures all that the original is. Yet there are many translations that are indeed brilliant works of literature in their own right. My only concern when reading Neruda in translation is whether the translations read as "one more possession of beauty".

Regarding his finding it "delicioso" to kill a nun, I understand how one could try to excuse that as an artistic attempt to shock. One could argue that he really didn't mean it, but I suspect he actually did mean it. However, I do assume his feeling of deliciousness stopped with killing Catholic nuns. It did not extend to killing Buddhist nuns, or Jewish girls, or black girls, or even a whole class of first graders, but suppose it did. Would that raise a red flag for anyone? Or would we continue to excuse it as an acceptable shock technique?

In my case, I think the lines about him wanting to kill a nun was a place where he slipped and exposed himself too much. It was where the poet-magician fumbled with his cards and exposed the underlying illusion braking the hypnotic spell.

There are a lot of confusing ideas presented in Neruda's verse. I think many make the assumption that what Neruda is describing is something real rather than delusional. After all, he won a Nobel Prize even though it did seem politically motivated. He also has many people praising him. As a marketable commodity, he has good brand recognition.

From my view, he was delusional. His writing adds to the confusion. It does not illuminate any mystery.

I think you are making far too many assumptions about Neruda based upon a single poem... or rather a few lines from a single poem. As I noted in the earlier thread (linked above) Neruda is far from being a one-dimensional poet. He can indeed be a seductive, tender, lyrical poet... (Look into Twenty Love Poems; and a Song of Despair or the later 100 Sonnets); he can be fiercely angry and political (as is revealed in Canto General), and he can be incredibly humane. His work in Residence on Earth can be among his most dense, and builds upon a unique Spanish use of metaphor dating back to the Baroque (especially Gongora) with the visionary fervor of San Juan de la Cruz, Blake, Whitman, and Garcia-Lorca... and marries these to French trends coming from Symbolism (Baudelaire, Rimbaud, Mallarme) and leading toward Surrealism.

Poems such as Baudelaire's Une Charogne and works by Rimbaud and Andre Breton are no less "shocking" than Neruda is here.

As soon as the idea of the Deluge had subsided,
a hare stopped in the clover and swaying flowerbells, and said a prayer to the rainbow, through the spider’s web.
Oh! the precious stones that began to hide,––and the flowers that already looked around.
In the dirty main street, stalls were set up and boats were hauled toward the sea, high tiered as in old prints.
Blood flowed at BlueBeard’s,––through slaughterhouses, in circuses, where the windows were blanched by God’s seal. Blood and milk flowed.
Beavers built. "Mazagrans" smoked in little bars.
In the big glass house, still dripping, children in mourning looked at marvelous pictures.
A door banged; and in the village square the little boy waved his arms, understood by weather vanes and cocks on steeples everywhere, in the bursting shower.
Madame *** installed a piano in the Alps. Mass and first communions were celebrated at the hundred thousand altars of the cathedral.
Caravans set out. And Hotel Splendid was built in the chaos of ice and the polar night...

Rimbaud, excerpted from "After the Deluge" from Illuminations, trans. Louise Varese

Like ashes, like seas peopling themselves,
in the submerged slowness, in the shapelessness,
or as one hears from the crest of the roads
the crossed bells crossing,
having that sound now sundered from the metal,
confused, ponderous, turning to dust
in the very milling of the too distant forms,
either remembered or not seen,
and the perfume of plums that rolling on the ground
rot in time, infinitely green...

Nerduda, excerpted from "Dead Gallup" from Residence on Earth, trans. by Donald D. Walsh

Taste

Of false astrologies, of customs somewhat gloomy,
poured into the interminable, and always carried to the side,
I have retained a tendency, a solitary taste.

Of conversations as worn out as old wood,
with the humility of chairs, with words occupied
in serving as slaves with secondary wills,
having that consistency of milk, of dead weeks,
of the air enchained above the cities...

Neruda, excerpted from "Taste" from Residence on Earth, trans. Donald D. Walsh

One essay I've read on Rimbaud's Illuminations, speaking specifically of "After the Deluge" spoke of the poem as non-representational. Neruda, like Rimbaud, makes extensive use of metaphor and poetic sensory images... alluding to small, taste, and touch as well as sight. Neruda (and Rimbaud) might be seen as creating something akin to Surrealist painting...

http://www.patakute.com/foto/salvadore-dali-1.jpg

or even "non representational" painting... which were both from the same period as Neruda's poems.

http://bertc.com/subfive/g145/images/klee7.jpg

http://liveforpleasure.files.wordpress.com/2012/07/kandinsky-pleasures.jpg

Walter Pater argued that all art strove to attain to the level of music... for music had achieved that perfect merger of form and content... content that could not be separated from form. In attempting to analyze and discern a literal "meaning" to much of Neruda's poetry from Residence on Earth one is attempting something akin to discerning a literal "meaning" to the paintings above... or to a Bach fugue.

This is not to say that the poems are "meaningless". The series of images that unfold as we read convey certain feelings... just as a work of music or an abstract painting. Of course I have always felt that the pleasure in the experience of reading (or listening to music, or looking at art) lies in the experience itself... and not in formulating some "meaning" after the fact.

[Nick Capozzoli]

Neruda was one of the great Latin American poets who followed in the footsteps of the Spanish Modernists such as Federico Garcia Lorca, Antonio Machado, Rafael Alberti, etc... This generation of poets were profoundly inspired by French Symbolism (think of Rimbaud's Illuminations) and Surrealism....

Yes. And in regard to this poem, the image, The only thing I want is to lie still like stones or wool, reminded me of Lorca's I want to sleep the dream of apples. I wouldn't be surprised if Neruda had that in mind when he wrote this line.

[YesNo]

Personally, I feel you are placing too much emphasis upon the literal interpretation of the poems. I have long agreed with Dante Gabriel Rossetti's concept of poetic translation:

The life blood of... translation is this: that a good poem shall not be turned into a bad one. The only true motive for putting poetry into a fresh language must be to endow a fresh nation, as far as possible, with one more possession of beauty. Poetry not being an exact science, literality of rendering is altogether secondary to this aim. I say literality, not fidelity, which is by no means the same thing.

-Dante Gabriel Rossetti- From the Preface to Early Italian Poets


Rossetti lived in the 19th century. We are in the 21st century. Today we can get a reasonable, if at times rough, translation from Google. We can even hear the text read to us, if we want. The problem with translation is the translator's biases. In Rossetti's day, he had no choice but to learn the language or find another translator. Today we can have a machine give us a idea what the author originally said.

Consider the phrase in question from Unidad that reminded both Paulclem and myself of Blake:


rodeado de geografia silenciosa

Donald Walsh and Rene de Costa translate this as


surrounded by silent geography

Eshleman's translation has


encircled by a silent geometry

The "circle" and "geometry" understandably bring up images of Blake. The question is did Neruda intend for the reader to be thinking about Blake or anything mystical? I don't think so.

Here is a comment on Unidad by Rene de Costa, The Poetry of Pablo Neruda, page 6-7:


All poetry rests on certain metaphysical assumptions. The Hispanic Modernists, for example, were anguished over the uncertainty of a meaningful afterlife. Here, Neruda breaks with this fin-de-siecle literary posture and chooses instead to languish in the absolute certainty of universal death. This in fact is the unity to which the title of the poem refers; the unspecifiable substance, the "algo denso" that engulfs all things in an inexorable movement toward death is made concrete in the text. This poem--indeed, all of the compositions of Residencia en la tierra--is devastatingly pessimistic.

De Costa may be wrong, but given that description of Unidad, I find it hard to see how Neruda would want someone to think about Blake when reading the poem.

[cafolini]

Probably one of the best posts in this thread is Stlukesguild's. But I think there is a cultural misunderstanding in all of you about Neruda. The Latin cultures speak with many exaggerations that have little to do with delusion. The Spanish are authoritarian and extremely serious. The Italians are theatrical and sarcastic. Both are prone to swear easily and say things that they wish to say without more meaning than that; a wish from someone who's pissed, thrown up in the air; a costume. The things Neruda says are easily misunderstood by other cultures. No delusions at all.

[Paulclem]

I've not read Neruda before, and I have no Spanish, and so I'm limited to the translation by Walsh. I could try Google, but I'm in no position to evaluate which is the best translation. I'm not sure it matters so much though, so long as the translator is recognised - as Walsh is.

I've downloaded a few articles on his work, but I am reluctant to read them before I glean some impressions from reading the poetry first. Having an established translator, all I can do is go with that. I don't think the odd dispute of a translated word or phrase matters so much with the poems I've read so far, and i'd like to be able to evaluate the poems from my own experience and response first. having read through the poems and gathered some impressions, then that's when I reckon it's time to look at academic articles and see what they contribute.

I'm enjoying the collection so far.

[stlukesguild]

Rossetti lived in the 19th century. We are in the 21st century.

I don't see how this is in any way relevant. The goal in translating poetry, to my thinking, remains the same: "to endow a fresh nation, as far as possible, with one more possession of beauty.". Google's translation program does not produce a work of beauty... or even of poetry. It is little more than a menu... a crib... one might just as well read the Cliff Notes.

Certainly some translations become dated, but this is simply because, as J.L. Borges pointed out, our Shakespeare is not the Shakespeare read by the Romantics nor the Shakespeare read by the Modernists. Yet the King James Bible, Fitzgerald's Omar Khayyam, Longfellow's Dante, and Rossetti's La Vita Nuova and translations of Cavalcanti remain relevant and valued because they transformed one poetic work of beauty into a new language.

Today we can get a reasonable, if at times rough, translation from Google. We can even hear the text read to us, if we want. The problem with translation is the translator's biases.

There is no way around this... but then again, as readers we all bring our own biases based upon our prior knowledge and experience (as with Borge's points on Shakespeare) as well.

In Rossetti's day, he had no choice but to learn the language or find another translator. Today we can have a machine give us a idea what the author originally said.

Rossetti translated the Italian poets such as Dante and Cavalcanti for two reasons. First, as a means of self-education. Like many poets before him, Rossetti recognized the value of forcing himself to work within the confines of the English language while attempting to retain the original poetic structure and rhyme. At the same time, he clearly saw the goal of translation as being an attempt "to endow a fresh nation, as far as possible, with one more possession of beauty." Again... the machine-made "translation" in no way offers us a clear idea of what the author said or intended. Google's translation program has no clue of metaphor, allusion to poetic predecessors, let alone rhyme or even rhythm.

Consider the phrase in question from Unidad that reminded both Paulclem and myself of Blake:

rodeado de geografia silenciosa

Donald Walsh and Rene de Costa translate this as

surrounded by silent geography

Eshleman's translation has

encircled by a silent geometry

The "circle" and "geometry" understandably bring up images of Blake. The question is did Neruda intend for the reader to be thinking about Blake or anything mystical? I don't think so.

Honestly, I' m not getting an "obvious" link to Blake as the result of a single choice of word in English... not in this instance... and I have read more than my fair share of Blake.

Here is a comment on Unidad by Rene de Costa, The Poetry of Pablo Neruda, page 6-7:

All poetry rests on certain metaphysical assumptions. The Hispanic Modernists, for example, were anguished over the uncertainty of a meaningful afterlife. Here, Neruda breaks with this fin-de-siecle literary posture and chooses instead to languish in the absolute certainty of universal death.

Spanish/Hispanic poetry and Art as a whole certainly has a great obsession with death. This is true going back to Jorge Manrique's [I]Coplas por la Muerte de su Padre or even beyond... to the poets of the Spanish Middle Ages including the troubadours as well as the Arabic and Hebrew poets of Arab Andalusia... whose achievements were coming again into light at the time of Garcia-Lorca and Neruda. You might also consider that Spanish poetry has a long tradition of the metaphysical and spiritual wed with death and sex. One need only think of Santa Teresa de Jesús, San Juan de la Cruz' Dark Night of the Soul and Spiritual Canticle, Fray Luis de León, Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz. Undoubtedly Neruda is far more the pessimist and the atheist... but he also greatly embraces the physical, tactile, sensory world in a manner ala Whitman... who he was well acquainted with.

While cafolini's comments may be oversimplifications and stereotypes... there is definitely a great deal of truth to what he has to say. Reading Neruda with an "unbiased" Google translation is not going to bring anyone closer to Neruda. Reading him with some idea of the culture and literary tradition that he was working in will likely be far more successful in bringing the reader to the "real" Neruda.

[Drkshadow03]

The poem "Dead Gallop" from Residence I:

Neruda opens with a barrage of mixed metaphors. The speaker describes his experience of drowning in a formless mass, which is compared to an "ocean swarming" and "ashes." I understand this slowness and formlessness to be the external world and how we experience it.

There is a ton of great sensory detail in this poem. We have smells, physical movement, sounds.

This idea is continued, but applied to the sensory experience of sound. The speaker hears bellstrokes as if only seconds free of the metal and left there is a permenant state. This slow formlessness and timelessness grinds apart the forms (a gesture towards Plato and the idea of absolute truth underlying experience). The poem seems to imply temporality and sensory experience itself (the immanent, the living in the moment, the experience at the moment of experience) puts the forms, the deeper of truth of reality, is out of reach.

Sensory experience is what makes the world feel alive and full of energy, but it is fleeting (the image of the plums that rot in time, but stay endlessly green). Even the enlivening experience of the sense can become humdrum and circular ("like a pulley idling on itself") when we can't see what deeper meaning is behind that sensory experience. However, in the first stanza, the poem hints warns that the fleeting nature of sensory experience and the fragmentary nature of memory prevents us from perceiving the forms (the deeper unifying truth of reality).

It's a paradoxical poem: the formless temporal nature of sensory experience prevents us from seeing a deeper truth and form, and without understanding the deeper truth, then sensory experiences have no deeper purpose and become humdrum, but at the same time to understand a deeper truth takes away from the uniqueness and momentary splendor of an immanent sensory experience. Therefore either options transforms life into a dead gallop, pointless if you can't discern the truth from experiences, but joyless if you classify and dissect experiences into truths.

More simplistically, there is a sense in the poem that the world keeps moving on around him and he can't make heads or tails of his experiences,but he feels alienated from it all.

What do you all make of the poem for those who own the collection?

[YesNo]

The lines that stand out for me are the following:


... to me who enter singing,
as if with a sword among the defenseless

In the midst of the impotent activity, effectively motionless, "like a pulley loose within itself", Neruda comes in with his words and provides some sort of imagined defense to the defenselessness he describes.

[YesNo]

I've downloaded a few articles on his work, but I am reluctant to read them before I glean some impressions from reading the poetry first. Having an established translator, all I can do is go with that. I don't think the odd dispute of a translated word or phrase matters so much with the poems I've read so far, and i'd like to be able to evaluate the poems from my own experience and response first. having read through the poems and gathered some impressions, then that's when I reckon it's time to look at academic articles and see what they contribute.


Although I've read Neruda before, I have not discussed him with anyone, so I'm glad for the opportunity. I generally don't understand what he is saying and so will go first to other sources to get a foothold.

Besides Rene de Costa's survey of his poetry, I'm also reading Adam Feinstein's biography (2004) Pablo Neruda a passion for life.

Coming from a different motivation, I have been looking at personality disorders. Because of that and seeing the lines about killing a nun in the first poem we examined, I temporarily assumed Neruda suffered from some level of narcissism because of the lack of empathy those lines expressed. After reading Feinstein, i feel more convinced of this. One might not want to introduce these biases into reading the poetry, but if one understands the author better, it can help one understand cryptic poetry.

[YesNo]

Honestly, I' m not getting an "obvious" link to Blake as the result of a single choice of word in English... not in this instance... and I have read more than my fair share of Blake.

I didn't think much of my thoughts of Blake until Paulclem mentioned that he had them as well.

Adam Feinstein (page 36) mentions Neruda's familiarity with Pythagoreanism, "the belief that man is a part of a great chain of being which evolved from the humblest rocks to the divine" and this would explain the reference to "numbers" in the poetry. He also mentioned that Neruda's stay in Rangoon did not leave him with a positive impression of Eastern religions. (page 58)

My point about Blake is that we should not project into Neruda's writing any religious or philosophical system. We should not even assume much familiarity with Christianity. It would only be a projection of our views.



Spanish/Hispanic poetry and Art as a whole certainly has a great obsession with death. This is true going back to Jorge Manrique's Coplas por la Muerte de su Padre or even beyond... to the poets of the Spanish Middle Ages including the troubadours as well as the Arabic and Hebrew poets of Arab Andalusia... whose achievements were coming again into light at the time of Garcia-Lorca and Neruda. You might also consider that Spanish poetry has a long tradition of the metaphysical and spiritual wed with death and sex. One need only think of Santa Teresa de Jesús, San Juan de la Cruz' Dark Night of the Soul and Spiritual Canticle, Fray Luis de León, Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz. Undoubtedly Neruda is far more the pessimist and the atheist... but he also greatly embraces the physical, tactile, sensory world in a manner ala Whitman... who he was well acquainted with.

I don't know what Neruda's influences were, but I doubt any of these Christian mystics influenced him. Ruben Dario would have been an influence at the time and he likely read what what was available from Spain and France. Feinstein made a list but I can't find it at the moment.

The connection between death and sex could be explained simply by narcissism without going any deeper. Neruda's massive amount of sexual experiences during the time of writing Residencia and earlier that Feinstein recounts amazed me. I didn't know it was humanly possible for someone with such limited resources to be able to support the nightlife Neruda enjoyed or the ready availability of women. The story of Josie Bliss whom he met in Rangoon was very touching in the way she faced Neruda's lack of empathy. His attempts to get two different girlfriends to marry him at the same time, I suppose because they could provide him with financial support, was comical.

[Drkshadow03]

The lines that stand out for me are the following:


... to me who enter singing,
as if with a sword among the defenseless

In the midst of the impotent activity, effectively motionless, "like a pulley loose within itself", Neruda comes in with his words and provides some sort of imagined defense to the defenselessness he describes.

I love that line too. Interestingly, you're reading the line as him coming in with his verses as a defense to impotence. I read it as the opposite. He is coming in and hacking defenseless men (i.e. those who are clueless and living their quotidian lives unaware of how pointless it all is) apart with his words ("sword") by revealing to them the "immense disorder, which is "oceanwide." That particular wording makes it sound like this immense disorder is everywhere, you can't escape from it.

[cafolini]

You chronic parricides and narcissistic projectiles should consult with Frank Sulloway regarding Freud and his phylogenetic BS.

[YesNo]

I love that line too. Interestingly, you're reading the line as him coming in with his verses as a defense to impotence. I read it as the opposite. He is coming in and hacking defenseless men (i.e. those who are clueless and living their quotidian lives unaware of how pointless it all is) apart with his words ("sword") by revealing to them the "immense disorder, which is "oceanwide." That particular wording makes it sound like this immense disorder is everywhere, you can't escape from it.

I don't know what Neruda was thinking, but I think your reading may be more accurate regarding his intention. I was looking at this first poem as setting the stage where the poet comes in as some sort of hero, but this is likely a case of my reading into the poem what is not there.

[YesNo]

You chronic parricides and narcissistic projectiles should consult with Frank Sulloway regarding Freud and his phylogenetic BS.

I don't know much about Frank Sulloway. When I'm referring to Narcissism I'm referring to one of the 10 personality disorders identified by the World Health Organization (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personality_disorder) The others are Paranoid, Schizoid, Schizotypal, Antisocial, Borderline, Histrionic, Avoidant, Dependent, and Obsessive-compulsive. They provide a framework around which to discuss an author if any of them apply. Most people don't have any of these disorders to a serious degree, or so I hope.

The lack of empathy or lack of compassion that I see in Neruda would put him in either the Antisocal or the Narcissistic category. Those with an antisocial disorder have no concern for the false self they create and don't mind getting in trouble by actually smacking the nun on the head. This doesn't fit Neruda. He just talks about such actions. The narcissistic person manipulates and deceives those in his or her influence trying to promote the false self as real.

In terms of reading poetry, if the poem makes sense and is enjoyable there is no need to be concerned about the author's personality issues, if any. Just enjoy the poetry. If the poetry does not make sense and one is faced with others saying the poetry is great, one way to make sense out of it is to read criticism of the poetry or study the life of the author. Those texts usually make more sense than the poetry. In the case of Neruda, looking at his life confirms, for me at least, that he suffered from narcissism. Knowing that, I can go back to the poetry and try to make some sense out of it.

[cafolini]

I don't know much about Frank Sulloway. When I'm referring to Narcissism I'm referring to one of the 10 personality disorders identified by the World Health Organization (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personality_disorder) The others are Paranoid, Schizoid, Schizotypal, Antisocial, Borderline, Histrionic, Avoidant, Dependent, and Obsessive-compulsive. They provide a framework around which to discuss an author if any of them apply. Most people don't have any of these disorders to a serious degree, or so I hope.

The lack of empathy or lack of compassion that I see in Neruda would put him in either the Antisocal or the Narcissistic category. Those with an antisocial disorder have no concern for the false self they create and don't mind getting in trouble by actually smacking the nun on the head. This doesn't fit Neruda. He just talks about such actions. The narcissistic person manipulates and deceives those in his or her influence trying to promote the false self as real.

In terms of reading poetry, if the poem makes sense and is enjoyable there is no need to be concerned about the author's personality issues, if any. Just enjoy the poetry. If the poetry does not make sense and one is faced with others saying the poetry is great, one way to make sense out of it is to read criticism of the poetry or study the life of the author. Those texts usually make more sense than the poetry. In the case of Neruda, looking at his life confirms, for me at least, that he suffered from narcissism. Knowing that, I can go back to the poetry and try to make some sense out of it.

The World Health Organization is a scientific organization with no loose mouth. They do not identify mental illness as a product of the mind, but rather the mind as a product of the biological makeup. Neruda is a Nobel Prize winner and the WHO has always approved of that. You picked up your argument from piggybacking on words that you associate wildly and without much careful thought. Blah-Blah and most likely of psychoanalytical BS origin. Shape up.

[YesNo]

The World Health Organization is a scientific organization with no loose mouth. They do not identify mental illness as a product of the mind, but rather the mind as a product of the biological makeup. Neruda is a Nobel Prize winner and the WHO has always approved of that. You picked up your argument from piggybacking on words that you associate wildly and without much careful thought. Blah-Blah and most likely of psychoanalytical BS origin. Shape up.

Possibly. I didn't see the connection between Neruda and narcissism until I started reading this thread. The idea is only a few weeks old for me.

That being said, reading Feinstein's biography provides more evidence for narcissism. For example, there is one incident coming from his Memories where he raped a beautiful Tamil servant in Ceylon (pages 68-69). His description of that event showed an extreme lack of empathy.

[Paulclem]

I've read Dead Gallop a few times, and it seems the effort is worth it when ideas start to form. There seem to be some contradictions starting with the title. "Seas peopling themselves" and "crossed bells crossing", but the green plums infinitely green and rotting seem again to indicate a platonic idea of the shadowy temporary and chaotic world and the eternal ideal - as Dark has already said.

There seems to be two states, and the poem seems to try to reconcile them with that central image of the pulley, which is motionless and yet wild within itself. Does this match up to the ideal and the shadowy world of the everyday? He then frames it into a question:

"But from where, through where, on what shore?" His attempt to put the question into words results in a verbal flip with the through where, perhaps he's hinting at something ineffable with "on what shore?"

With the line - "The constant, uncertain surroundings so silent"

again seems to try to put into words a sense of the duality he's seeing, followed with the image of "lilacs around a convent".
I think there must be a classical reference there, but what I thought of was Eliot's Wasteland and the Lilac girl with a kind of sexual potential which contrasts with the restraint of the convent.

I think the sexual imagery reappears with the "moist ravine", though I don't think he's overdoing it I think it's a rather muted sexual thread. I reckon that may be because it is an image of potential - which can also be found in the sea and the energy perhaps in a pulley.

He's asking another question about:

"Well now, what is it made of that upsurge of doves that exists between night and time..." how this existence, the states of movement and stillness, time and infinity Is able to work or function. He says it is made of that, fullness, wooing, heavy with drops. I think he's talking about potential - possibly energy though expressed in a poetic way.

Just some rambling thoughts.

[Paulclem]

Although I've read Neruda before, I have not discussed him with anyone, so I'm glad for the opportunity. I generally don't understand what he is saying and so will go first to other sources to get a foothold.

Besides Rene de Costa's survey of his poetry, I'm also reading Adam Feinstein's biography (2004) Pablo Neruda a passion for life.

Coming from a different motivation, I have been looking at personality disorders. Because of that and seeing the lines about killing a nun in the first poem we examined, I temporarily assumed Neruda suffered from some level of narcissism because of the lack of empathy those lines expressed. After reading Feinstein, i feel more convinced of this. One might not want to introduce these biases into reading the poetry, but if one understands the author better, it can help one understand cryptic poetry.

I don't think it is helpful to view it in this way. In Dead Gallop, I think you can perceive a thread about reality and duality expressed in the poetry, and, as I said, I think the image of killing a nun is more to do with breaking taboos.

It is, of course, up to you how you interpret the poems, and it may be useful to look on them with psychological eyes. I'm not inclined to find out too much just yet though. I reckon a poem should be coherent enough on it's own without reference to anything else, otherwise why not publish poems within autobiographies or stories. I'm sure they have been done, but Neruda is writing a collection that have to stand alone. Reading each in the light of the other poems seems to make sense as they are included in the same collection, but even that may not be necessary.

[cacian]

will there be another poem posted soon to discuss?

[Paulclem]

will there be another poem posted soon to discuss?

Have you got the collection?

[cacian]

Have you got the collection?

Hi Paulclem no I don't. I was thinking may be another author/writer?
do you have the collection yourself?

[YesNo]

I view the confusing lines of Dead Gallope, as well as similar lines in the other poems of Residencia, in two complementary ways.

On one hand these lines are like a magician telling the reader to watch something carefully so the reader doesn't pay attention to what is really doing on. Consider the following lines:


Well now, what is it made of, that upsurge of doves
that exists between night and time, like a moist ravine?

The notion that doves exist between night and time does not make sense, but the poet telling the reader to focus on it makes the reader try to project meaning onto those words, meaning that does not exist in the poem any more than doves exist between night and time.

Why would the poet want to distract the reader like that? What is really going on?

That brings up the complementary way of looking at these lines. These lines are also like a spider's web. Should the poet get the reader to project meaning onto his writing, rather than stand back and demand that the poet make sense, the reader then commits to the poetry through the interpretation. The poet-magician-spider traps the reader which is what is really going on.

Poetry that has meaning, at least on the surface, is not a trap, but a communication. The trap requires surface meaninglessness that the reader has to commit to by making an interpretation.

[Paulclem]

I view the confusing lines of Dead Gallope, as well as similar lines in the other poems of Residencia, in two complementary ways.

On one hand these lines are like a magician telling the reader to watch something carefully so the reader doesn't pay attention to what is really doing on. Consider the following lines:


Well now, what is it made of, that upsurge of doves
that exists between night and time, like a moist ravine?

The notion that doves exist between night and time does not make sense, but the poet telling the reader to focus on it makes the reader try to project meaning onto those words, meaning that does not exist in the poem any more than doves exist between night and time.

Why would the poet want to distract the reader like that? What is really going on?

That brings up the complementary way of looking at these lines. These lines are also like a spider's web. Should the poet get the reader to project meaning onto his writing, rather than stand back and demand that the poet make sense, the reader then commits to the poetry through the interpretation. The poet-magician-spider traps the reader which is what is really going on.

Poetry that has meaning, at least on the surface, is not a trap, but a communication. The trap requires surface meaninglessness that the reader has to commit to by making an interpretation.

I don't see it like that at all. You seem to be implying a kind of dishonesty in the poem. I think the doves image is an attempt to poetically describe something that exists beyond the night and time. I also think it makes thematic sense in the poem.

What is Neruda's purpose then according to your reading?

[YesNo]

I don't see it like that at all. You seem to be implying a kind of dishonesty in the poem. I think the doves image is an attempt to poetically describe something that exists beyond the night and time. I also think it makes thematic sense in the poem.

What is Neruda's purpose then according to your reading?

Neruda isn't talking about something "beyond the night and time" (which in itself doesn't make much sense), but "between night and time" as Walsh translates "entre la noche y el tiempo". Now, what does "between night and time" mean? That's easy to answer: It doesn't mean anything. Neruda is teasing the reader to get trapped in nonsense.

I think Neruda wants the reader to start projecting meaning onto meaninglessness and stop questioning that the poem may not be worth an interpretation. This commits the reader to the poem, which commits the reader to the author, because that is the only reality that is being presented. In a religious setting, this leads to guru or cult-leader worship.

As I think about it, the spider's web may not be as good of a metaphor as those lights that attract insects only to kill them. I can't think of their name.

I do think the poem is dishonest, but that would bring me back to asking questions about Neruda's character and take me away from the poem. Is Neruda compassionate? Is he empathetic? Does a compassionate person give his readers nonsense to read? Lack of empathy, if severe enough, implies a narcissistic or antisocial personality disorder. If one can establish either of those, one knows other characteristics about the person, things like, having no conscience, being willing to deceive, or being quick to express rage when that person's imagined "self" is challenged.

If this is the "self" that Buddhism rejects, I agree with Buddhism. Such a self is an illusion.

[Paulclem]

Yes - between - just a typo.

I disagree that it doesn't mean anything.I feel it's an attempt to poetically express an idea that reconciles a perception of concrete phenomena - night or lack of light, with an abstract idea like time. Whether that works depends upon the opinion of the reader, but I can see how the contradictions can be unified in a poetic image.

On that, although I said I wasn't going to read articles on Neruda, I checked a simple description of modernism and modernist poetry, and I picked out the quote

Theodor Adorno, who, in the 1940s, challenged conventional surface coherence, and appearance of harmony typical of the rationality of Enlightenment thinking.

(From Wikipedia)

I think Neruda's poetry certainly does this, and is not a simple or easy read. There is sense within it I feel though. I get this most with the image of the pulley, which reminded me of metaphysical poets' techniques of marrying ideas with items. In particular I was thinking of the compasses image in A Valediction Forbidding Mourning.

http://lardcave.net/hsc/2eng-donne-valediction-comments.html

It is a recognised metaphoric technique embedded in a modernist style. I can see the sense of this too - an identified inner silence which contrasts with the machinations contained within the world - the pulley.

I noticed similarities with Buddhist thought too, but it is not explicit enough for me to presume that it is there. I think I got the sense of it because of Neruda's attempts to understand and describe the nature of reality, and his recognition of the busy outer world with the otherness he has experienced. I don't know whether he was aware of Buddhist thought, and in a sense it doesn't matter.

I really like the style. it is challenging and open to interpretation, but contains threads of meaning which wind through the metaphors and images he scatters about. Although I picked out a couple of images and questions, I think reading the whole poem as a flow of ideas, like a painting - which St Lukes alluded to earlier- is a useful way of reading it.

[YesNo]

I disagree that it doesn't mean anything.I feel it's an attempt to poetically express an idea that reconciles a perception of concrete phenomena - night or lack of light, with an abstract idea like time. Whether that works depends upon the opinion of the reader, but I can see how the contradictions can be unified in a poetic image.

The only thing I would caution here is the use of "poetic" to excuse a lack of clarity. The danger for the reader is to read into a poem what is not there. The temptation for the poet is to make the reader think the poet knows more than the poet actually does know trapping the reading in nonsense. When that happens, the poet becomes little more than a false guru.

If Neruda were being dishonest, he would use words to tempt the targeted reader to make associations, but he would not mean what the reader expected him to mean. Neruda did this with the women in his life. He could tell two different women that he loved each of them in separate and simultaneous exchanges of letters and wanted to marry each one much the same way that one would send out a resume to two different companies seeking employment. It meant nothing more than that to him. Clearly, when Neruda used the word "love" he meant something different than what these women would expect him to mean.

Now if you were one of those women he was proposing to, and you took Neruda seriously, you would read into his words what was not there. My claim is that the reader who accepts Neruda is like one of those women who is being fooled.




It is a recognised metaphoric technique embedded in a modernist style. I can see the sense of this too - an identified inner silence which contrasts with the machinations contained within the world - the pulley.

I don't see interesting metaphors in Neruda's poetry, perhaps because I don't trust him. His metaphors are too confused to be of much use, even ignoring Neruda's life.

However, if it appears that Neruda is being dishonest in what he says, there is no point in puzzling through the metaphors. The more important thing is to make sense out of the dishonesty. At the moment, I divide Neruda's poetry into three groups depending on the people he was trying to manipulate.

(1) The early "love" poems were attempts to manipulate women to have sex with him or to get their families to provide him with financial assistance. He used the idea of his "sadness" to make himself attractive to females. These poems got his fame started.

(2) The poems from Residencia were aimed at manipulating intellectuals. He emphasized pessimism to attract himself to this group.

(3) The later political poems were aimed at manipulating the potential voters through righteousness.



I noticed similarities with Buddhist thought too, but it is not explicit enough for me to presume that it is there. I think I got the sense of it because of Neruda's attempts to understand and describe the nature of reality, and his recognition of the busy outer world with the otherness he has experienced. I don't know whether he was aware of Buddhist thought, and in a sense it doesn't matter.

I really like the style. it is challenging and open to interpretation, but contains threads of meaning which wind through the metaphors and images he scatters about. Although I picked out a couple of images and questions, I think reading the whole poem as a flow of ideas, like a painting - which St Lukes alluded to earlier- is a useful way of reading it.

Buddhism gets involved for me because of the narcissism I see in Neruda. Narcissism requires a lack of empathy, that is, a lack of compassion. The Buddha aimed at increasing compassion to avoid suffering, if I understand how you have described it correctly in other threads. Buddhism is the opposite of narcissism. The narcissist replaces compassion with a delusional self. To overcome narcissism, which I think is possible, requires that compassion increase and this delusional self decrease.

[Paulclem]

The only thing I would caution here is the use of "poetic" to excuse a lack of clarity. The danger for the reader is to read into a poem what is not there. The temptation for the poet is to make the reader think the poet knows more than the poet actually does know trapping the reading in nonsense. When that happens, the poet becomes little more than a false guru.

If Neruda were being dishonest, he would use words to tempt the targeted reader to make associations, but he would not mean what the reader expected him to mean. Neruda did this with the women in his life. He could tell two different women that he loved each of them in separate and simultaneous exchanges of letters and wanted to marry each one much the same way that one would send out a resume to two different companies seeking employment. It meant nothing more than that to him. Clearly, when Neruda used the word "love" he meant something different than what these women would expect him to mean.

Now if you were one of those women he was proposing to, and you took Neruda seriously, you would read into his words what was not there. My claim is that the reader who accepts Neruda is like one of those women who is being fooled

Neruda was clearly attempting to write in a new fashion. I can't see some elaborate idea of trapping the reader, it being in any way dangerous or setting themselves up as a false having any substance in the text. The poet has to serve the reader, has to provide something for the audience. If it was nonsense then the poet would lose the audience.

I'd be interested to know how a poet can "tempt" a reader. An image or technique either works or does not. I'm either impressed or not, and you comment about what he did with his private life - well I can't see what relevance it has to this poem at all.


I don't see interesting metaphors in Neruda's poetry, perhaps because I don't trust him. His metaphors are too confused to be of much use, even ignoring Neruda's life.

I clearly disagree with this. I wonder why you are reading him?

However, if it appears that Neruda is being dishonest in what he says, there is no point in puzzling through the metaphors. The more important thing is to make sense out of the dishonesty. At the moment, I divide Neruda's poetry into three groups depending on the people he was trying to manipulate.

(1) The early "love" poems were attempts to manipulate women to have sex with him or to get their families to provide him with financial assistance. He used the idea of his "sadness" to make himself attractive to females. These poems got his fame started.

(2) The poems from Residencia were aimed at manipulating intellectuals. He emphasized pessimism to attract himself to this group.

(3) The later political poems were aimed at manipulating the potential voters through righteousness.

I'm trying to understand the poems without an agenda which you seem to have. I'd like to talk about the poetic technique, what he's trying to get at with the images and how, and if he achieves it. He is a successful poet, and i'd like to understand how this was achieved.

Buddhism gets involved for me because of the narcissism I see in Neruda. Narcissism requires a lack of empathy, that is, a lack of compassion. The Buddha aimed at increasing compassion to avoid suffering, if I understand how you have described it correctly in other threads. Buddhism is the opposite of narcissism. The narcissist replaces compassion with a delusional self. To overcome narcissism, which I think is possible, requires that compassion increase and this delusional self decrease

Again, I don't see it in the poem we are contemplating. The fact that Eliot was an elitist was conveyed to me through my teachers at school. With my background, I baulked against such a poet. I was misled. Whether Eliot was an elitist or not, his poetry is not about that. It didn't matter that we came from polar opposite lives at opposite ends of a century - his poetry affected me. Neruda was a womaniser - was - any issues that may have caused have passed into history, if it ever was any of my business. Whether he was a narcissist or lacked empathy - it is not apparent in this poem. There's nothing in the text that says that to me. Nor - again - do I see any references that make me think about Buddhism except an effort to describe reality.

[YesNo]

Neruda was clearly attempting to write in a new fashion. I can't see some elaborate idea of trapping the reader, it being in any way dangerous or setting themselves up as a false having any substance in the text. The poet has to serve the reader, has to provide something for the audience. If it was nonsense then the poet would lose the audience.

I'd be interested to know how a poet can "tempt" a reader. An image or technique either works or does not. I'm either impressed or not, and you comment about what he did with his private life - well I can't see what relevance it has to this poem at all.


If what Neruda is writing is not nonsense, what is he saying in Dead Gallop, not what is someone else, critic or reader, projecting onto the poem?

His private life is relevant if I want to show that he is being deceptive or manipulative in his poetry. Then one has to ask if Neruda himself means anything by the poem. Since the poem is cryptic, who knows? To get a clue, one looks at his life.

What Neruda is tempting the reader to do is to project the reader's own meaning onto the poem and give Neruda credit for that meaning. This is the same thing he does with a woman he wants to marry. He tells her he loves her and expects her to project her meaning of "love" onto his words. As far as he is concerned, "love" means "being useful to him".



I clearly disagree with this. I wonder why you are reading him?

I am reading him because he won a Nobel Prize and he is popular. I would like to understand why that is the case. I am not reading him because I like his poetry and want to enjoy it more.



I'm trying to understand the poems without an agenda which you seem to have. I'd like to talk about the poetic technique, what he's trying to get at with the images and how, and if he achieves it. He is a successful poet, and i'd like to understand how this was achieved.


You have an agenda also. You want the poems to be worthy of a Nobel Prize.

I think the main poetic technique is to join incongruous ideas together in such a way as to make it look like he is trying to say something important without needing to be specific about what that is.



Again, I don't see it in the poem we are contemplating. The fact that Eliot was an elitist was conveyed to me through my teachers at school. With my background, I baulked against such a poet. I was misled. Whether Eliot was an elitist or not, his poetry is not about that. It didn't matter that we came from polar opposite lives at opposite ends of a century - his poetry affected me. Neruda was a womaniser - was - any issues that may have caused have passed into history, if it ever was any of my business. Whether he was a narcissist or lacked empathy - it is not apparent in this poem. There's nothing in the text that says that to me. Nor - again - do I see any references that make me think about Buddhism except an effort to describe reality.

A narcissist won't tell you he or she is a narcissist. You have to catch narcissists when they slip in their self performance.

Is Neruda describing reality? If so, what is that reality? What kind of reality puts doves between night and time?

I don't think Neruda is describing reality. What he is doing is providing the reader with prompts that the reader can use to project the reader's own reality onto the poem and give Neruda credit for that reality. Neruda wants this credit or admiration from the reader. That is all the poem is about.

[Drkshadow03]

Like St Luke said earlier, Neruda definitely seems to be taking a page from the French Symbolists. Here is some of snippets of Stephane Mallarme as translated by E.H. and A. M. Blackmore:

"The sunlight warms a languid bath on the sand
in your gold hair, wrestler asleep; it sears
the incense from your hostile visage, and
mingles an amorous potion with your tears." - from "Summer Sadness"

"Eyes, lakes with all my simple urge to be reborn
other than as the player whose gesture would recall
for a quill the ignoble lamp-soot, I have torn
a gaping window in the makeshift canvas wall." - from "A Punishment for the Clown."

Mallarme is known for being a particularly difficult poet to interpret and understand. YesNo is correct then in his identification of Neruda's style in so far as Neruda is imitating elements of the French Symbolist style. The French Symbolists purposefully cultivated "incongruous ideas [and metaphors]." They put into their poetry bizarre juxtapositions. and unnatural associations. This can be very off-putting to a reader who has no experience with this style or who wants more straight-forward ideas presented. I want to be completely honest since initial reactions matter; I certainly felt the first time I read through Neruda's poetry in Residence and Mallarme's that it almost felt like they put thousands of cut-up words in a hat and wrote their poems randomly by pulling those words out of a hat. However, the incongruous metaphors that define these styles can also be a very powerful poetic technique for making familiar concepts new again and revitalizing language, plus it does have a certain musicality as well as St Luke also pointed out.

Upon re-reading the poems in Residence (or at least the variety of selections included in my career-spanning collection), they slowly unveil their meanings. It seems that Neruda is not the type of poet whose meaning and feel you're going to pick up in a first reading, (it's going to feel disjointed and all over the place) but rather he is the sort of poet whose works needs to be read and re-read before you can make heads-or-tails of it. His meanings are not messages or ideas, but rather a feeling (a feeling of alienation from the sensible world, a feeling of confusion, a feeling of despair, etc.) It is impressionistic poetry. It leaves you with feelings, tones, and atmosphere, more than it does concrete ideas and truths about the world. In this sense, one could say Neruda is a purer form of poetry, depending on what one believes poetry is supposed to do. Also, since I've been reading the poems of his other collections, while he always keeps a certain amount of surreal quality to his poetry, he definitely becomes more straight-forward and simple in his later poems.

As for calling Neruda a narcissist, YesNo is still confusing the author's biography with their work (an irrelevancy even if it were true), not to mention he hasn't really made a convincing case even with the fallacious appeals to the author's biography that Neruda actually is narcissistic.

Neruda employs an assortment of metaphors in "Dead Gallop" that capture the idea of being in a state of becoming and being overfilled with emotions--too much sensual experiences of the world. All the images point in this direction.

"Like ashes, like oceans swarming"

the sound of the bell seconds out of the metal

"that spurt of doves"

"the enormous calabashes . . . stretching their poignant stems . . . urging forth, of what's full, dark with heavy drops."

Everything is enormous and swarming and large and comes as spurts. When one thinks of these images in terms of their adjectives it becomes easier to see the deeper connections and how they all seem to point to the world as overpowering and immense to the senses. Now let's turn to the doves.

The doves can be a metaphor for his own emotion bursting forth in an uncontrolled spurt (literally overflowing him) in reaction to night (the darkness of the world) and time (the moving of the days and the movement towards death). They also are flying forth in a spurt, which suggests all different directions, searching for a path, a truth to cling onto somewhere between the night (the darkness of the world) and time (the moving days and the movement towards death), the loss of deeper meaning and forms mentioned in the earlier sections of the poem. Doves are also a traditional symbol of peace, which the poem makes clear is absent for the speaker whose mind and experience of the world seems chaotic. Notice how these random images are all highly symbolic and imply a lot in very little and through their incongruous contexts. But really when read in its full context, the spurt of doves is his soul or own state of being. He is asking in highly metaphorical language loaded with various connotations, given all the previous statements of sensory experience and truth and the way his sensory experience alienates him from the world, what should he make of his own soul, these chaotic spurt of doves, in relationship to the darkness he sees (night) and the passage of time. Is his very being and soul (represented by these spurt of doves) similar to a damp ravine? Notice again, the connection to being overfilled and and overflowing with the stuff of the world implied in the image. Notice how one metaphor mixes with the other in an unusual association, but each one's deeper symbolic meaning connects to the larger whole and feeling.

[stlukesguild]

I think Neruda wants the reader to start projecting meaning onto meaninglessness and stop questioning that the poem may not be worth an interpretation.

In a religious setting, this leads to guru or cult-leader worship.

If Neruda were being dishonest, he would use words to tempt the targeted reader to make associations, but he would not mean what the reader expected him to mean. Neruda did this with the women in his life. He could tell two different women that he loved each of them in separate and simultaneous exchanges of letters and wanted to marry each one much the same way that one would send out a resume to two different companies seeking employment. It meant nothing more than that to him. Clearly, when Neruda used the word "love" he meant something different than what these women would expect him to mean.

Now if you were one of those women he was proposing to, and you took Neruda seriously, you would read into his words what was not there. My claim is that the reader who accepts Neruda is like one of those women who is being fooled.

The only thing missing here is the cliche of the "Emperor's New Clothes". Neruda's work doesn't resonate with you... you don't "get it"... and so you must suggest that as a result Neruda is no good... Neruda is dishonest... and those who do "get it"... and actually appreciate it must clearly have been fooled.

The same sort of criticism can be found directed at much of the more avant-garde works of Modernism... be it poetry, Novels, music, painting, sculpture, etc...

Rather than reading Neruda from a cant or agenda that has more to do with your concerns of the author's biography and imagined personality disorders, perhaps it would serve you better to read Neruda with an awareness of Rimbaud's Illuminations:

As soon as the idea of the Deluge had subsided,
A hare stopped in the clover and swaying flowerbells,
and said to the rainbow, through a spider's web.
Oh! the precious stones that began to hide, -
and the flowers that already looked around.
In the dirty main street, stalls were set up and boats were hauled toward the sea,
high tiered as in old prints.
Blood flowed at Blue Beard's,
-through slaughterhouses, in circuses, where the windows were blanched by God's seal.
Blood and milk flowed.
Beavers built.
"Mazagrans" smoked in the little bars.
In the big glass house, still dripping,
children mourning looked at the marvelous pictures.
A door banged; and in the village square the little boy waved his arms,
understood by weather vanes and cocks on steeples everywhere, in the bursting shower.
Madame_______ installed a piano in the Alps.
Mass and first communions were celebrated at the hundred thousand altars of the cathedral.
Caravans set out. And Hotel Splendid was built in the chaos of ice and of the polar night.
Ever after the moon heard jackals howling across the deserts of thyme,
and eclogues in wooden shoes growling in the orchard.
Then in the violet and budding forest, Eucharis told me it was spring.
Gush, pond, -Foam, roll on the bride and over the woods;
-black palls and organs, lightning and thunder, rise and roll;
-waters and sorrows rise and launch the Floods again.

From After the Deluge, Rimbaud Illuminations
trans. Louise Varèse

...Baudelaire's "prose poems", Mallarme, Valery, Apollinaire, Machado, Garcia Lorca, Cesar Vallejo, Alberti, Miguel Hernandez, etc... The poetic tradition in which Neruda worked is far more important to grasping his work than a knowledge of his personal life.

As Drkshadow03 suggested, you are confusing the author's biography with their work.

*****

Moving to poems that have struck me... I particularly admire "Nocturnal Collection":

Nocturnal Collection

I have conquered the angel of sleep, the metaphorical doom:
his procedure insisted, his dense passage arrives
wrapped in snails and locusts,
maritime, perfumed with sharp fruits.

He is the wind that shakes the months, the whistle of a train,
the passage of temperature over the bed,
an opaque sound of shadow...

a repetition of distances, a wine of confused color,
a dusty passing of bellowing cows...

I often recognize his warriors,
his rooms corroded by the air, his dimensions,
and his need for space is so violent
that he comes down to my heart to seek it:
he is the proprietor of inaccessible plateaus,
he dances with tragic and daily personages:
at night his aerial acid breaks my flesh
and within me I listen to the trembling of his instrument.

I hear the dream of old companions and beloved women...
dreams whose pulsings shatter me...

...the immense black grapes, swollen
hang down among the ruins like wineskins:
oh, Captain, in our hour of distribution
open the mute locks and wait for me:
there we must sup dressed in mourning...

excerpts from "Nocturnal Collection" from Residence on Earth
trans. Donald D. Walsh

I am especially struck by the sensuality or evocation of the sensory. Neruda was very much influenced by Whitman... and it is quite likely that in addressing "oh Captain" Neruda is intentionally summoning forth or calling to mind Whitman's great elegy for clearly this poem is itself quite elegiac. Neruda's attempt to elicit the physical recalls Whitman even more than his summoning. It also recalls Baudelaire and Rimbaud in his use of a "confusion of the senses": "perfumed with sharp fruit"... "the opaque sound of a shadow"...

I find his attempts to define the indefinable... sleep/death... intriguingly "confused"...

...wrapped in snails and locusts,
maritime, perfumed with sharp fruits.

He is the wind that shakes the months, the whistle of a train,
the passage of temperature over the bed,
an opaque sound of shadow...

a repetition of distances, a wine of confused color,
a dusty passing of bellowing cows...

I often recognize his warriors,
his rooms corroded by the air...

[YesNo]

The doves can be a metaphor for his own emotion bursting forth in an uncontrolled spurt (literally overflowing him) in reaction to night (the darkness of the world) and time (the moving of the days and the movement towards death). They also are flying forth in a spurt, which suggests all different directions, searching for a path, a truth to cling onto somewhere between the night (the darkness of the world) and time (the moving days and the movement towards death), the loss of deeper meaning and forms mentioned in the earlier sections of the poem. Doves are also a traditional symbol of peace, which the poem makes clear is absent for the speaker whose mind and experience of the world seems chaotic. Notice how these random images are all highly symbolic and imply a lot in very little and through their incongruous contexts. But really when read in its full context, the spurt of doves is his soul or own state of being. He is asking in highly metaphorical language loaded with various connotations, given all the previous statements of sensory experience and truth and the way his sensory experience alienates him from the world, what should he make of his own soul, these chaotic spurt of doves, in relationship to the darkness he sees (night) and the passage of time. Is his very being and soul (represented by these spurt of doves) similar to a damp ravine? Notice again, the connection to being overfilled and and overflowing with the stuff of the world implied in the image. Notice how one metaphor mixes with the other in an unusual association, but each one's deeper symbolic meaning connects to the larger whole and feeling.

Here are the lines we are discussing as Walsh translates them from "Dead Gallop":


Well now, what is it made of, that upsurge of doves
that exists between night and time, like a moist ravine?

What you describe makes sense if you replace the references to Neruda, the "he", with something like, "this is what I would have felt if I wrote those lines". If that is what you meant by this interpretation, then I have no objection to it. It is your interpretation. I have no reason to believe you are falsifying what you claim.

However, you keep saying this is what "he" might have been experiencing. How do you know that Neruda was experiencing anything like what you describe? You refuse to use his biography as evidence and so all you have to go on is your own consciousness and intuition to try to simulate what might have been his. Unless you can demonstrate unusual psychic powers, why should I accept that?

The problem with poetry that is vague is that it comes close to a Rorscharsh inkblot. The inkblot has no internal meaning, but it is used to get information about the subject after analyzing the interpretation the subject makes. If poetry is an inkblot experience, there is no point projecting the interpretation back to the author of the poem. It is the reader's interpretation, nothing more.

I think you want your criticism to be something more than describing what you would have thought had you been the author of those lines. You want to claim that this is likely what Neruda thought. You want to say something about the poem and not just something about yourself. I would like to be able to do that also.

This is a list of what I think was going through Neruda's mind when he wrote those two lines based not only on my own consciousness and intuition, but also on his biography and information about personality disorders.

1) He would not be thinking about his soul or the environment around him. He would have no problem with any of that. He would be quite content.

2) He would want the poem to impression intellectuals, not lovers or voters.

3) He has at his disposal an accepted poetic technique that allows for an extreme lack of clarity which he will use to his advantage.

4) He poses a question which is like a command to the reader to answer something. This establishes his dominance.

5) He uses "upsurge" which connotes a positive feeling. He uses "dove" which connotes another positive feeling. He uses "exists between" which connotes another positive feeling.

6) He is talking to intellectuals who like to think they are smart enough to understand what others don't and can sniff out potential positive sentimentality and so he adds the negative "night" and the incongruous "time" to keep them busy.

7) Then to mellow out the jump from positive to negative he adds "moist ravine".

Now he offers this to his intellectual acquaintances who know he is recognized as a poet from the Chilean consulate at whose home they are guests. Dare they say this does not make sense? Dare they challenge him? He knows they won't.

[Drkshadow03]

I am not claiming this is what Neruda thought, but rather this is what the poem says and does, which may or may not correlate with what Neruda thought, but ultimately is irrelevant anyway. My reading was of the poem itself. The "He" is just the implied fictitious consciousness (the speaker) at the heart of the poem.

It's a matter of understanding each line separately and finding commonality in the disparate. All of the images continually point to a kind of immense outside world that is overpowering and a person experiencing the world who is being overfilled with these sensations and emotions. Pretty much every line and stanza, as incongruous as some of them can be, point in this direction.

Also, if it is the equivalent of an inkblot test, can you explain on what specific interpretive points PaulClem, St Luke, and I disagree. I would imagine if you were correct in this assertion we would all have vastly different interpretations. Yet that doesn't seem to be the case.

[cafolini]

You guys better start writing some poetry of your own instead of piggybacking on the Nobel prize winner to assert your idiotic importance. Measure up.

[Paulclem]

You guys better start writing some poetry of your own instead of piggybacking on the Nobel prize winner to assert your idiotic importance. Measure up.

Haha
And you'd better start writing some threads of your own instead of piggybacking on other people's - so bugger off.

[Paulclem]

I have to agree with St Luke's and Dark about the interference of the bio. When I buy a book of poetry - or read a link - I might read a summary of the poet, but I'm buying the poetry to read as standalone pieces, not to read in tandem with a life.

I've got some thoughts about Dream Horse and then I'll come onto Nocturnal Collection.

I read this about four times and the ideas in it gradually resolved into a series of thoughts about writing poetry.I'm not saying it's anything like a modernist manifesto, but it did remind me of poems about inspiration.

In stanza 1 I think he's beginning to parody of the kinds of subject poets write about - self images, descriptions of time, biography, and overblown emotions seen in the Captain of hell torn from the heart. He seems to compound this with "establish clauses indefinitely sad"

The tailorbirds in stanza 2 seem to be a similar figure to Eliot's Pound putting maledictions to flight.

In stanza 4 he he's considering common topics for poetry - evening, the sky - gods religion - faith, fresh tombs and the night.


I think in the 4th stanza he's reminiscing over the poetry he likes - "used papers - origins" and e describes gentle catechisms as faded violets and the honey of respect wasted. He's also sceptical of the "new" brooms which are pathetically eager. He demolished some poses such as ravishing worry, love in the whistling rose and emotional extremes.

Then purpose arrives - naked shoeless and radiant - transcending churches - religion. Although he's pursued by a foul army, the barracks are stripped of soldiers - newness? -and he ends with a wish for inspiration - the lightening, and poetic progeny.

[Drkshadow03]

Moving to poems that have struck me... I particularly admire "Nocturnal Collection":

Nocturnal Collection

I have conquered the angel of sleep, the metaphorical doom:
his procedure insisted, his dense passage arrives
wrapped in snails and locusts,
maritime, perfumed with sharp fruits.

He is the wind that shakes the months, the whistle of a train,
the passage of temperature over the bed,
an opaque sound of shadow...

a repetition of distances, a wine of confused color,
a dusty passing of bellowing cows...

I often recognize his warriors,
his rooms corroded by the air, his dimensions,
and his need for space is so violent
that he comes down to my heart to seek it:
he is the proprietor of inaccessible plateaus,
he dances with tragic and daily personages:
at night his aerial acid breaks my flesh
and within me I listen to the trembling of his instrument.

I hear the dream of old companions and beloved women...
dreams whose pulsings shatter me...

...the immense black grapes, swollen
hang down among the ruins like wineskins:
oh, Captain, in our hour of distribution
open the mute locks and wait for me:
there we must sup dressed in mourning...

excerpts from "Nocturnal Collection" from Residence on Earth
trans. Donald D. Walsh

I am especially struck by the sensuality or evocation of the sensory. Neruda was very much influenced by Whitman... and it is quite likely that in addressing "oh Captain" Neruda is intentionally summoning forth or calling to mind Whitman's great elegy for clearly this poem is itself quite elegiac. Neruda's attempt to elicit the physical recalls Whitman even more than his summoning. It also recalls Baudelaire and Rimbaud in his use of a "confusion of the senses": "perfumed with sharp fruit"... "the opaque sound of a shadow"...

I find his attempts to define the indefinable... sleep/death... intriguingly "confused"...

...wrapped in snails and locusts,
maritime, perfumed with sharp fruits.

He is the wind that shakes the months, the whistle of a train,
the passage of temperature over the bed,
an opaque sound of shadow...

a repetition of distances, a wine of confused color,
a dusty passing of bellowing cows...

I often recognize his warriors,
his rooms corroded by the air...

I love the imagery and symbolism of the poem.

"...the immense black grapes, swollen
hang down among the ruins like wineskins:"

What an evocative image!

oh, Captain, in our hour of distribution
open the mute locks and wait for me:
there we must sup dressed in mourning...

Interesting that you picked up on an allusion to Whitman here.


"I often recognize his warriors,
his rooms corroded by the air, his dimensions,
and his need for space is so violent
that he comes down to my heart to seek it:"

I love how describing the air as "corroded" gives the sense that the air itself is somehow toxic and stuffy, thus fitting into the spatial motif. Death/sleep needs space so bad, so violently, that he finds it in the speaker's heart. Yet as the angel of sleep invades the personal space of the speaker, the next land suggests there are spaces the angel of sleep occupies that we cannot:

"he is the proprietor of inaccessible plateaus,
he dances with tragic and daily personages:"

I wonder if we could read "inaccessible plateaus" as standing in for dreams of other people, heaven, hell, and the unknown destination of death simultaneously.

"at night his aerial acid breaks my flesh
and within me I listen to the trembling of his instrument."

Great alliteration here (although that just might be an consequence of translation). I like how the image here of "aerial acid breaking down flesh can both describe death and dreaming. The angel of sleep's aerial acid slowly breaks down the flesh over the passage of time (aging) leading to death. Meanwhile when we dream it is like we no longer exist in our normal flesh (sleep breaks us away from the flesh). The trembling instrument is a great touch too, very evocative. If we read this as a dream, it would seem to be a nightmare!

I don't think this one is included in my collection. Thanks for sharing it.

[cafolini]

Haha
And you'd better start writing some threads of your own instead of piggybacking on other people's - so bugger off.

I already said several times that I write conclusions, strictly didactic and with a single ID. The last thing I want to do is expose myself to your stupid con-cepts and con-fusions. I get you all the time anyways, effortlessly. As a defender you are as comical as they make them.

[stlukesguild]

How do you know that Neruda was experiencing anything like what you describe? You refuse to use his biography as evidence and so all you have to go on is your own consciousness and intuition to try to simulate what might have been his. Unless you can demonstrate unusual psychic powers, why should I accept that?

Why should we accept how anyone interprets Shakespeare or Homer as we know next to nothing of the biography of either author? The notion that the artist and the art are one and the same is a rather naive Romantic-Freudian idea that has nothing whatsoever to do with the reality of art.

The problem with poetry that is vague is that it comes close to a Rorscharsh inkblot. The inkblot has no internal meaning, but it is used to get information about the subject after analyzing the interpretation the subject makes. If poetry is an inkblot experience, there is no point projecting the interpretation back to the author of the poem. It is the reader's interpretation, nothing more.

What is the "meaning" of this:

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2008/05/01/arts/23012199.JPG

or this:


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mKUzYJdQ_Mw

Neither has any clearly definable literal "meaning"... but neither are "meaningless" or without "meaning". Yes, the audience brings his or her own interpretation to the work. This is true of any work of art. I doubt that the "meaning" you glean from this...

http://s58.radikal.ru/i161/0810/d6/67665b113804.jpg

... for the simple reason that our prior knowledge and experiences are not the same.

I'm always wary of those who go on about "meaning". I'm reminded of the high-school approach to reading which attempts to break every work of literature down into characters, setting, theme, moral, etc... No work of art worthy of the time and effort can be reduced to a single simple agreed upon "meaning" like a dictionary definition. Nor is "getting" the "meaning" all that is involved in appreciating a work of art. The primary "meaning" of many of Shakespeare's sonnets can be reduced to "When I think of you, I feel blue." Getting the meaning is not the same as appreciating the poems. Life may of may not have a "meaning"... but it is not "meaningless"... and it is is the experience itself where we take pleasure... not in being able to decipher the one true "meaning"... or to decide that it is meaningless if one fails at such an attempt.

This is a list of what I think was going through Neruda's mind when he wrote those two lines based not only on my own consciousness and intuition, but also on his biography and information about personality disorders.

1) He would not be thinking about his soul or the environment around him. He would have no problem with any of that. He would be quite content.

2) He would want the poem to impression intellectuals, not lovers or voters.

3) He has at his disposal an accepted poetic technique that allows for an extreme lack of clarity which he will use to his advantage.

4) He poses a question which is like a command to the reader to answer something. This establishes his dominance.

5) He uses "upsurge" which connotes a positive feeling. He uses "dove" which connotes another positive feeling. He uses "exists between" which connotes another positive feeling.

6) He is talking to intellectuals who like to think they are smart enough to understand what others don't and can sniff out potential positive sentimentality and so he adds the negative "night" and the incongruous "time" to keep them busy.

7) Then to mellow out the jump from positive to negative he adds "moist ravine".

Now he offers this to his intellectual acquaintances who know he is recognized as a poet from the Chilean consulate at whose home they are guests. Dare they say this does not make sense? Dare they challenge him? He knows they won't.

Or... you simply don't get the work and need to justify your "failing" by making claims akin to the old analogy of the Emperor's New Clothes.

[Paulclem]

I already said several times that I write conclusions, strictly didactic and with a single ID. The last thing I want to do is expose myself to your stupid con-cepts and con-fusions. I get you all the time anyways, effortlessly. As a defender you are as comical as they make them.

:lol:

[Paulclem]

[QUOTE=stlukesguild;1239893

I'm always wary of those who go on about "meaning". I'm reminded of the high-school approach to reading which attempts to break every work of literature down into characters, setting, theme, moral, etc... No work of art worthy of the time and effort can be reduced to a single simple agreed upon "meaning" like a dictionary definition. Nor is "getting" the "meaning" all that is involved in appreciating a work of art. The primary "meaning" of many of Shakespeare's sonnets can be reduced to "When I think of you, I feel blue." Getting the meaning is not the same as appreciating the poems. Life may of may not have a "meaning"... but it is not "meaningless"... and it is is the experience itself where we take pleasure... not in being able to decipher the one true "meaning"... or to decide that it is meaningless if one fails at such an attempt.
QUOTE]

I'm not used to looking a poetry this way, but with Neruda I'm finding that I'm waiting for meaning to come through the re-reading rather than a line by line analysis. Although I have tried to understand the poems and posted in a blow by blow account - meaning doesn't come in this way. It is an interesting way of absorbing the meaning - it's like a rollercoaster where you have to go on it again to try to clarify your response.

[stlukesguild]

I'm not used to looking a poetry this way, but with Neruda I'm finding that I'm waiting for meaning to come through the re-reading rather than a line by line analysis. Although I have tried to understand the poems and posted in a blow by blow account - meaning doesn't come in this way. It is an interesting way of absorbing the meaning - it's like a rollercoaster where you have to go on it again to try to clarify your response.

I'm not saying that the poems have no "meaning"... but rather that this isn't a clear narrative or literal meaning. The Gorky painting and the Mozart chamber work certainly convey given feelings... moods... sensations. They have a definite formal structure and make allusions to their artistic predecessors or build upon the tradition in which they were conceived. I see Neruda's work in the same manner.

[YesNo]

I am not claiming this is what Neruda thought, but rather this is what the poem says and does, which may or may not correlate with what Neruda thought, but ultimately is irrelevant anyway. My reading was of the poem itself. The "He" is just the implied fictitious consciousness (the speaker) at the heart of the poem.

It's a matter of understanding each line separately and finding commonality in the disparate. All of the images continually point to a kind of immense outside world that is overpowering and a person experiencing the world who is being overfilled with these sensations and emotions. Pretty much every line and stanza, as incongruous as some of them can be, point in this direction.

Also, if it is the equivalent of an inkblot test, can you explain on what specific interpretive points PaulClem, St Luke, and I disagree. I would imagine if you were correct in this assertion we would all have vastly different interpretations. Yet that doesn't seem to be the case.

If you are not claiming this is what Neruda thought, then I have no problem with your interpretation. It is what you would have thought had you written those lines.

I don't see why PaulClem, St Luke and you would have vastly different interpretations. The inkblot idea is to hopefully make you see that a poem is not an inkblot. There was intentionality involved in its creation which you seem to be ignoring. My claim is that you are being played like voters are occasionally played in some political speeches. If that doesn't bother you, then fine. I would have thought that it would have bothered you.

[Drkshadow03]

If you are not claiming this is what Neruda thought, then I have no problem with your interpretation. It is what you would have thought had you written those lines.

I don't see why PaulClem, St Luke and you would have vastly different interpretations. The inkblot idea is to hopefully make you see that a poem is not an inkblot. There was intentionality involved in its creation which you seem to be ignoring. My claim is that you are being played like voters are occasionally played in some political speeches. If that doesn't bother you, then fine. I would have thought that it would have bothered you.

Not exactly. I'm claiming these are what the lines themselves express when one applies careful close-reading. If I didn't know anything about the author and had to judge the poem's meaning based on the following considerations: the lines and images themselves, past experience reading other poems with similar features (the French Symbolists), the meaning of symbols in larger cultural history (such as my comment on the doves), other poems in the collection and their tone, atmosphere, perspective, and listening to other people interpretations (intersubjectivity), which allows me to compare my own with theirs.

It could be that Neruda intended the poem to do what I'm claiming, but the larger point is I can't ever know for sure, so I'm left with the poem itself to judge by and what the poem actually does. Even if he were a narcissist, I can easily see a narcissist writing a poem about being overfilled with sensations from the external world since such writing would require a certain amount of self-absorption in one's own sensations. So reading the poem the way I did is perfectly reconcilable with such a biographical detail anyway. Likewise, if I read different biographical material like that on the Poetry Foundation's page, which claims his encounters with unexpected poverty and squalor is what inspired him to write the first books of Residence on Earth, suggesting a person who deeply cares about the people around him in opposition to your view of him, could also write the same exact poem about being overfilled with sensations. So we see the interpretation would be reasonable whether we had a self-absorbed narcissist or a deeply caring person, which also demonstrates a further reason why biography only takes one so far in interpreting individual poems since two very different personalities could've written the same poem for different reasons.

So certainly authors have intentions, but an author stops intending the minute they write the poem and it is published. Their intentions should then be in the work itself for the careful reader to discern.

[Paulclem]

[

I'm not saying that the poems have no "meaning"... but rather that this isn't a clear narrative or literal meaning. The Gorky painting and the Mozart chamber work certainly convey given feelings... moods... sensations. They have a definite formal structure and make allusions to their artistic predecessors or build upon the tradition in which they were conceived. I see Neruda's work in the same manner.

I get what you're saying. He needs a different approach to my usual method.

[stlukesguild]

The inkblot idea is to hopefully make you see that a poem is not an inkblot. There was intentionality involved in its creation which you seem to be ignoring.

Even if we were to grant that you had some great insider information as to what the author intended (which I highly doubt) the artist's intention is in no way relevant to the audience's interpretation... or rather it is in no way excludes alternative interpretations as a work of art.

My claim is that you are being played like voters are occasionally played in some political speeches. If that doesn't bother you, then fine. I would have thought that it would have bothered you.

In other words, you are claiming that those of use who actually appreciate Neruda's poetry and don't find your claims of his narcissistic agenda particularly useful or relevant are akin to the fools in the "Emperor's New Clothes"... seduced by some cult of hero worship. Again, this is a tired cliche repeatedly employed by those who dislike a given body of art... but find that there are many others who find the same work to be of great merit... personal likes being assumed as the same as fact ("I don't like X thus X is bad and all those who do like X are simply fooling themselves.")

I all honesty, I'm not overly seduced by the cult of personality. I'm not overly fond of James Joyce... but I recognize that enough insightful readers and subsequent writers of real merit recognize his "genius" so that I must accept that his work simply doesn't speak to me.

On the other hand, I find a good deal of Neruda's extreme Leftist/Stalinist political views repugnant... to the point that I don't really look to him as an individual worthy of great adoration... but my admiration of his poetry is based upon what I read in his work and what I have read by other poets... including a good many "Modernist" poets.

[Drkshadow03]

One of the poems that really moved me in the collection was the one entitled, "The Dawn's Debility." I like how Neruda mixes senses in the opening paragraph to describe "the day of the luckless." Smells pierce (a physical action), while the day is anthropomorphic in the way it peers out with a chill glance. I love his choice of describing the dawn as oozing. The verb is extremely evocative, taking a normally inspiring image of nature and turning it into a kind of disgusting amorphous blob. Then he ends with some metaphors to drive the home across. A "shipwreck in a void" informs us that there is nowhere he can go to escape such a gloomy day and existence since it's the speaker of the poem who is like a shipwreck in void. There is nowhere for him to go. Everything around him is tears (gloom and misery and unhappiness).

The second stanza has the shadows of objects departing from them. This emphasizes the sense of loneliness, since even an objects own shadow won't stay to keep it company, the ultimate form of isolation. This idea of isolation is emphasized in the final image of the second stanza in which every object and shape is defending itself from invasions by every other as if the world is a cruel place in which each sensation and thing constantly assails every other sensation and thing in an endless war.

He emphasizes this idea of invasion more explicitly right at the beginning of the third stanza when he "weep[s] amid invasion, among confusion." Yet he tries to have hope, keeping his ear open for some method of escape from all this desolation and misery, despite it continually circulating and seemingly never-ending. Despite this he still dreams and endures his "mortal remains."

The fourth stanza recalls the imagery of the first. Nothing in this world seems beautiful or happy, but instead it all seems gloomy, impoverished by the misery. Even light seems gloomy "like tears." He follows this up with probably the best image of the poem comparing the texture of this gloomy day to a "feeble canvas."

The final stanza suggests this sort of world and existence is shoddy, invoking more images of gloom, He thinks of the world as both a place of madness and dead.

This poem strikes a powerful sense of anguish, depicting a cold and gloomy world where all of reality is a melancholy place to occupy. Everything in this reality invades or defends itself or hides or alienates itself from everything else. Such a gloomy world has no shape or meaning, outside of its intense sensation of gloom and melancholy. This is a poem without much hope.

[Paulclem]

Apologies for no posting for a while - work and life had taken over for a while. I'm still keen on looking at the poems though.

I was looking at Joachim's Absence on Saturday, which I thought of as a modernist elegy. There's not much sentiment in there , though there's an honesty about his character expressed in the third stanza.

His use of the word "brusquely" in stanza 2{

From now, brusquely, I feel him leave

emphasises this - as if he blames Joachim for dying. This is an emotional response. It seems to me to be honest and based upon experience of death.

I was interested in his three references to water - the waters, into certain waters, into a certain ocean. He is clearly expressing different aspects of existence here, bound by water. The waters reminded me of the bible, though and may refer to his physical life. Certain waters seemed to suggest a kind of subset of that - his personal social waters - his social life and the community of dead he enters perhaps, whilst the "certain ocean" suggests that there is a larger human ocean. It is bigger and perhaps refers to his place in history. The notion that the waters are of human experience and existence is also suggested by the acid lives Neruda refers to, and the suffering that suggests.

The last stanza reminded me of a eulogy in church, except that this is unsentimental and perhaps more honest. Neruda seems to appreciate the humanness of, for example his disobedient soul.

This unsentimentality continues with Neruda's final pronouncement of his death - coldly coalescing, passion collapses and even violently sinking.

Stylistically it begins with a four line stanza, but loses resemblance to elegies as it continues. It's a great poem though.

[cafolini]

Apologies for no posting for a while - work and life had taken over for a while. I'm still keen on looking at the poems though.

I was looking at Joachim's Absence on Saturday, which I thought of as a modernist elegy. There's not much sentiment in there , though there's an honesty about his character expressed in the third stanza.

His use of the word "brusquely" in stanza 2{

From now, brusquely, I feel him leave

emphasises this - as if he blames Joachim for dying. This is an emotional response. It seems to me to be honest and based upon experience of death.

I was interested in his three references to water - the waters, into certain waters, into a certain ocean. He is clearly expressing different aspects of existence here, bound by water. The waters reminded me of the bible, though and may refer to his physical life. Certain waters seemed to suggest a kind of subset of that - his personal social waters - his social life and the community of dead he enters perhaps, whilst the "certain ocean" suggests that there is a larger human ocean. It is bigger and perhaps refers to his place in history. The notion that the waters are of human experience and existence is also suggested by the acid lives Neruda refers to, and the suffering that suggests.

The last stanza reminded me of a eulogy in church, except that this is unsentimental and perhaps more honest. Neruda seems to appreciate the humanness of, for example his disobedient soul.

This unsentimentality continues with Neruda's final pronouncement of his death - coldly coalescing, passion collapses and even violently sinking.

Stylistically it begins with a four line stanza, but loses resemblance to elegies as it continues. It's a great poem though.

Yeah! He's a great poet, though, though, though. And you are a great critic, not though, not though, not though. ROFLMAO

[Paulclem]

Yeah! He's a great poet, though, though, though. And you are a great critic, not though, not though, not though. ROFLMAO

You're so right.

:lol:

[cacian]

Paulclem are you thinking of another poem to post here for reading?

[Drkshadow03]

If by sentiment you mean tender emotion and gushing for his friend, I would agree. However, I do think there are some powerful emotions being displayed in "Joachim's Absence" towards the death of friend. The sense I get in the poem is that he can't express his grief, that he is struggling to hold it back, and feels dead inside (consider the last line in this context).

The first paragraph in particular felt full of emotions to me and had a sense that he was straining to both express them and restrain them. He describes Joachim's absence as noticing his "departure" from "afar." Instead of a funeral parlor, Neruda decides to describe it as a station, linking it with the word "departure" and the modern image of a train station. Joachim is departing (via death) to some unknown funeral station. The image of smoke both evokes smoke from a train and characterizes the feeling of death. His feelings towards Joachim's death are both smoky and hazy and death itself is smoky and hazy (we don't know what lies beyond). The solitary seawalls give an impression of isolation and loneliness in a chaotic sea (death/the world). It also is an image that connects with his actual death in the poem. In the next line, the speaker tells us that Joachim plunged to his death. In the second stanza, the poem informs us that he plunged into water, presumably then from some kind of seawall. The speaker tells us that he remembers Joachim plunging to his death, but he is tells us it is happening right now, as if he is reliving the death over and over again. The first stanza closes with the powerful image of the "days of time" closing in on Joachim and the speaker as well. In this one stanza, the poet is struggling to capture his feelings of Joachim's death and his feelings towards death in general.

In the second paragraph I wouldn't read too much into the waters as particular symbols. The repetition captures the struggle to make sense of the death, so he repeats in three different ways different images from water, which seems to be how Joachim died. The outside world has become hazy and vague, reflecting his emotional state. The waters, however, transform into a vague symbol at the end of stanza 2 when the body crashes and whips up a wave that hits him like "acid." Again, the image points towards his emotional state. His friend's death makes it so the waves of the ocean burns him.

The last stanza seems to reflect a bit on Joachim's character. We get a sense that he was a dreamer who lived up life ("measureless nights") and didn't follow the rules ("disobedient soul"). The final image offers a stark contrast to this rebellious, fun-loving nature. In death all passions are dissipated and there is nothing left but coldness, which we see reflected in the emotional tone of the poem itself.

As the introduction to my selected works writes, "The Joachim [of the poem] is Joaquin Cifuentes Sepulveda (1900-1929), a Chilean poet who died of syphilis in Buenos Aires." So this poem is based on Neruda's response to the death of a real person. This is one of those cases where some biographical context might be useful. We might then be tempted to read the plunging into the waters and ocean as a symbol of sexual exploration that leads to death. But I suspect the image of plunging into an ocean is more general than this and it is really just a symbol for the general idea of the dangers of the adventuresome spirit, which the poem hints about Joachim in the 3rd stanza.

Bringing it all together, I see this as a relatively simple poem (for Neruda) about the nature of death and the human struggle to make sense of it. It also is about the dangers of the adventuresome spirit. We see some of his familiar motifs from other poems; instead of celebrating nature as life-giving and a retreat from a modernized world like the Romantics or Wordsworth might write about, nature and the world in general is a faceless hostile force. The deeper meaning of the world is one of chaos and senseless.

[Paulclem]

If by sentiment you mean tender emotion and gushing for his friend, I would agree. However, I do think there are some powerful emotions being displayed in "Joachim's Absence" towards the death of friend. The sense I get in the poem is that he can't express his grief, that he is struggling to hold it back, and feels dead inside (consider the last line in this context).

The first paragraph in particular felt full of emotions to me and had a sense that he was straining to both express them and restrain them. He describes Joachim's absence as noticing his "departure" from "afar." Instead of a funeral parlor, Neruda decides to describe it as a station, linking it with the word "departure" and the modern image of a train station. Joachim is departing (via death) to some unknown funeral station. The image of smoke both evokes smoke from a train and characterizes the feeling of death. His feelings towards Joachim's death are both smoky and hazy and death itself is smoky and hazy (we don't know what lies beyond). The solitary seawalls give an impression of isolation and loneliness in a chaotic sea (death/the world). It also is an image that connects with his actual death in the poem. In the next line, the speaker tells us that Joachim plunged to his death. In the second stanza, the poem informs us that he plunged into water, presumably then from some kind of seawall. The speaker tells us that he remembers Joachim plunging to his death, but he is tells us it is happening right now, as if he is reliving the death over and over again. The first stanza closes with the powerful image of the "days of time" closing in on Joachim and the speaker as well. In this one stanza, the poet is struggling to capture his feelings of Joachim's death and his feelings towards death in general.

In the second paragraph I wouldn't read too much into the waters as particular symbols. The repetition captures the struggle to make sense of the death, so he repeats in three different ways different images from water, which seems to be how Joachim died. The outside world has become hazy and vague, reflecting his emotional state. The waters, however, transform into a vague symbol at the end of stanza 2 when the body crashes and whips up a wave that hits him like "acid." Again, the image points towards his emotional state. His friend's death makes it so the waves of the ocean burns him.

The last stanza seems to reflect a bit on Joachim's character. We get a sense that he was a dreamer who lived up life ("measureless nights") and didn't follow the rules ("disobedient soul"). The final image offers a stark contrast to this rebellious, fun-loving nature. In death all passions are dissipated and there is nothing left but coldness, which we see reflected in the emotional tone of the poem itself.

As the introduction to my selected works writes, "The Joachim [of the poem] is Joaquin Cifuentes Sepulveda (1900-1929), a Chilean poet who died of syphilis in Buenos Aires." So this poem is based on Neruda's response to the death of a real person. This is one of those cases where some biographical context might be useful. We might then be tempted to read the plunging into the waters and ocean as a symbol of sexual exploration that leads to death. But I suspect the image of plunging into an ocean is more general than this and it is really just a symbol for the general idea of the dangers of the adventuresome spirit, which the poem hints about Joachim in the 3rd stanza.

Bringing it all together, I see this as a relatively simple poem (for Neruda) about the nature of death and the human struggle to make sense of it. It also is about the dangers of the adventuresome spirit. We see some of his familiar motifs from other poems; instead of celebrating nature as life-giving and a retreat from a modernized world like the Romantics or Wordsworth might write about, nature and the world in general is a faceless hostile force. The deeper meaning of the world is one of chaos and senseless.

Yes, I do mean the gushing type of sentiment, but I agree hat there are powerful emotions at play. I agree with a lot of what you say, Dark, though I still think the particularities he points us to in the oceans and waters have more significance. I think it reflects in general the different circles he moved in - hence the splashes of acid on everyone. I got it that the acid burned the people within his circle - though it could also refer to how it affects Neruda.

Do you think of it as a modernist elegy? It did remind me of Milton's Lycidas - because of my particular reading probably - but contrasted with the formality of elegies with his looser approach. I think it does a similar job though - he is celebrating Joachim's qualities as you pointed out.