The Social and Political Transformation of Pablo

Neruda As Seen In His Poetry

Presented by Alex TitusAdvisor: Dr. Donaldo Urioste

Agenda

Purpose Bio of Pablo Neruda Personal Connection Literary Analysis

Pre-Spanish Civil War Post-Spanish Civil War Later Years

Overview and Questions

PurposeThe purpose of my capstone is to analyze and connect the poetry of Pablo Neruda to the

historical events that surrounded his life.

Chronology

1904 – Born Ricardo Eliecer Naftalí

March 1921 – Moved to Santiago

1923 – Crepusculario appeared

1924 – 20 Poems of Love and a Song of Despair published

1927 – Named consul of Rangoon

1932 – Returns to Chile from time in the Orient

1934 – Moves to Barcelona, named Consul.

1936 – Spanish Civil War initiates, Neruda starts writing poems for Spain in our Hearts

1940 – Returns to Chile

1945 – Joined the Communist Party and elected Senator for the provinces of Tarapacá and Antofagasta

1948 – Chilean Supreme Court approves the impeachment of Neruda as Senator

1950 – First publish of Canto General made in Mexico

1952 – Returns to Chile from exile

1970 – Neruda’s efforts pay off as Allende wins presidency.

1971 – Granted the Nobel Prize of Literature

September 11, 1973 – President Salvador Allende killed in the military coup d'état

September 23, 1973 – Pablo Neruda died

Personal Connection

While studying in Chile I visited all three of Neruda’s houses, and I took a Chilean poetry

class. Before leaving to Chile, my older brother gifted me a

book of Pablo Neruda’s.

Literary analysis

Pre Spanish Civil War

Crepusculario 20 love poems and a

song of despair Residence I y II

Post Spanish Civil War

Third Residence Canto General The Grapes and

the Wind

Later Years

Elemental Odes Estravagario Memorial of Isla

Negra

Crepusculario

“Barrio sin luz” / “Neighborhood Without Light”The poetry of the things goes awayor it isn’t able to condense my life?

Yesterday- watching the last twilight-I was a patch of moss among some ruins.

The cities – soot and revenges- the gray filth of the suburbs,

the office which hunches the backs,the boss of turbulent eyes.

Blood of a red sky over the hillsblood on the streets and the squares,

pain of broken hearts,pus of loathings and of tears.

…And here I am, sprouted up among the ruins,

biting only all the sorrows, as if the crying was a seed

and I the sole furrow of the earth.

“The social message is bitter and pessimistic… a bleak vision of the future. No solution is offered for injustice and misery.” (pg. 2)

-Salvatore Bizzarro

20 Poems of Love and a Song of Despair”…Pale blind diver, luckless slinger, lost discoverer, in you everything sank!

It is the hour of departure, the hard cold hour which the night fastens to all the timetables.

The rustling belt of the sea girdles the shore. Cold stars heave up, black birds migrate.

Deserted like the wharves at dawn. Only the tremulous shadow twists in my hands.

Oh farther than everything. Oh farther than everything.

It is the hour of departure. Oh abandoned one.

The female body is idolized, exotic images are compared with nature. For example, white hills for the body of a woman.

Although love is the main focus, he ends the book with despair.

Residence on Earth I (1925-31)

and II (1931-35)

• Unity• Burial in the East• Only Death

The poems from these two books were written during Neruda’s time as consul of Chile in the Orient. These times were very lonely for him, and he explains his anguish from solitude in these poems.

Residence on Earth I y II

“Unity”

There is something dense, united, seated in the depths, / repeating its number, its identical sign. / How clear is it that the stones have touched time, / in their fine substance there is a smell of age / and the water that the sea brings from salt and sleep.

“Only Death”

Death is in the folding cots: / In the slow mattresses, in the black blankets / she lives stretched out, and she suddenly blows: / she blows a dark sound that swells the sheets, / and there are beds sailing to a port / where she is waiting, dressed as an admiral.

Spanish Civil War

The war started in 1936, when Neruda was Consul of Chile in Spain.

For Pablo the war started with the death of one of his best friends, the great poet Gabriel García Lorca.

Due to the brutality he witnessed, Neruda sided with the Republic against the Fascists.

From his early stages of despair and solitude within the masses, this turning point pushes Neruda toward hope for the future by banning together and finds that misery loves company.

Third Residence

(1935-1945)• The Furies and the

Sorrows• Meeting Under New Flags• Spain in Our Hearts

• “I Explain a Few Things”• “Battle of the Jarama

River”• “Solar Ode to the Town’s

Army”

“Battle of the Jarama

River”

Between the earth and the drowned platinum of olive orchards and Spanish dead, Jarama, pure dagger, you have resisted

the wave of the cruel.

…The bitter wheat of your people was all bristling with metal and bones, formidable and germinal like the noble land that they defended

He shows us his support for the people, the small towns, and the Republic against the fascists in

Spain.

Furthermore, Neruda shows his support of a violent revolution; a commoncharacteristic of the communistic ideology.

Neruda’s Forced Exile

As Senator of two northern provinces in Chile, Neruda openly spoke and published articles in support of the copper and nitrate miners.

He called out and embarrassed the President at the time, Gabriel González Videla.

Videla sent out for his arrest, and Pablo fled into exile while finishing his book Canto General.

Neruda’s political ideologies lead him to this exile, and a propagandist tone is found in Canto General without taking away from his poetic artistry.

Canto General (1938-1949)

I. The Lamp on EarthII. Heights of Machu PicchuIII. The ConquerorsIV. The LiberatorsV. The Betrayed SandVI. America, I don’t invoke your name in vainVII. General Song of ChileVIII. The Land Called Juan

IX. Awaken the WoodcutterX. The FugitiveXI. The flowers of PunitaquiXII. Rivers of SongXIII. Coral New Year for the Homeland in DarknessXIV. The Great OceanXV. I Am

With Chile as the main inspiration, Neruda gives a clear view on how he would liketo see the South American continent. All of the previous events he witnessed up to this point influenced his ideology, and it is seen in the social and political themes.

X. The Fugitive

XIII. “American Sand, Solemn” I don’t feel alone at night, in earth’s darkness. I am the people, innumerable peoples. … Death , martyrdom, shadows, ice, suddenly cover the seed. And the town seems buried. But the corn returns to the earth … From death we are born.

Later Years• Elemental Odes• Memorial of Isla Negra

After a long road of solidarity through his adolescence,The horrific events he lived through in Spain, and his hectic life in politics, his later years brought a search of a more simple life; the poetry of Neruda also finds simpler tones.

Elemental Odes

“Ode to Socks”

Mara Mori brought me a pair of socks … Violent socks,my feet were two fish made of wool,two long sharkssea blue, shot throughby one golden thread,… my feet were honoured in this wayby these heavenly socks. …I resisted the mad impulse to put themin a golden cage and each day give thembirdseed and pieces of pink melon.…The moral of my ode is this:beauty is twice beautyand what is good is doubly goodwhen it is a matter of two socksmade of wool in winter.

Overview

Early Life Struggles Spanish Civil War Conflicts with Chile His simpler form

Nobel Prize of Literature, 1971

Questions?Thank you!