In 1964 Neruda had come to read his poetry at a gathering in King's College, London, and I still carried in my mind the sensual sonority - as rich and evocative as Chopin's music - that he brought to his love poems, caressing and emphasizing their lush strain of natural imagery. Neruda, a communist, was so deeply involved in Chilean politics that the presidency was within his grasp, but he relinquished his ambitions in favour of his friend, Salvador Allende. It was in Cracow, in the bare lounge of the hotel on the last day of the [1973] Copernicus meeting that news reached us of the right-wing military coup against the legitimate Chilean government ... with CIA support. Allende had died in the defence of the Presidential Palace ... Two weeks later Pablo Neruda, a Spanish-speaking poet of genius like Lorca before him, died in the aftermath of right-wing revolution.- Jane Hawking: Travelling to Infinity (1999 / 2007): 183
I think this could be taken as the standard view of the poet Pablo Neruda among most left-wing readers (such as myself) over the decades since his death. Despite his revolutionary politics, an English Hispanicist like Jane Hawking clearly felt an immediate personal affinity with him, as well as with his works. Was it the intensity of his love poetry? The impassioned delivery?
After all - like his friend Lorca, the greatest Spanish poet of the twentieth century - Neruda, the most celebrated Latin American poet of his time, also ended tragically. His death was, at the time, tentatively attributed to natural causes - albeit exacerbated by despair at the violent military coup which had brought an end to Allende's presidency. Neruda was, furthermore, known to be suffering from prostate cancer.
However, there's now convincing evidence to suggest that his death, a few hours after being admitted to hospital and a couple of weeks after the coup, may actually have been caused by a mysterious injection in the stomach administered on arrival. His exhumation in 2013 failed to provide definitive proof either way, but the circumstances remain suspicious. I guess we'll never really know, but there are strong grounds for believing that, like Lorca, he was murdered.
He was, in other words, a victim of the turmoil of his times. Or was he?
Neruda's most famous posthumous incarnation was undoubtedly in the 1994 Italian film Il Postino. This, however, was based - with significant revisions - on an earlier Chilean film by Antonio Skármeta, set in the village of Isla Negra during the last years of Neruda's life.
The humble Chilean postman of the original film - and novelisation - has become, in Il Postino, a lovelorn local on the tiny Italian island Neruda is portrayed as living on during his years of exile from his homeland between 1948 and 1952.
The political dimension of the original story has been deftly plastered over to create a fable of love and poetic inspiration calculated to offend nobody who might otherwise react adversely to Neruda's Stalinist beliefs.
To give you some idea of the differences between the blandly paternal Neruda of these movies and the real man, let's take a look at this poem from his 1958 book Estravagario:
Fábula de la sirena y los borrachos Todos estos señores estaban dentro cuando ella entró completamente desnuda ellos habían bebido y comenzaron a escupirla ella no entendía nada recién salía del río era una sirena que se había extraviado los insultos corrían sobre su carne lisa la inmundicia cubrió sus pechos de oro ella no sabía llorar por eso no lloraba no sabía vestirse por eso no se vestía la tatuaron con cigarrillos y con corchos quemados y reían hasta caer al suelo de la taberna ella no hablaba porque no sabía hablar sus ojos eran color de amor distante sus brazos construidos de topacios gemelos sus labios se cortaron en la luz del coral y de pronto salió por esa puerta apenas entró al río quedó limpia relució como una piedra blanca en la lluvia y sin mirar atrás nadó de nuevo nadó hacia nunca más hacia morir. - Pablo Neruda (1958)• All these men were there inside, when she entered, utterly naked. They had been drinking, and began to spit at her. Recently come from the river, she understood nothing. She was a mermaid who had lost her way. The taunts flowed over her glistening flesh. Obscenities drenched her golden breasts. A stranger to tears, she did not weep. A stranger to clothes, she did not dress. They pocked her with cigarette ends and with burnt corks, and rolled on the tavern floor with laughter. She did not speak, since speech was unknown to her. Her eyes were the colour of faraway love, her arms were matching topazes. Her lips moved soundlessly in coral light, and ultimately, she left by that door. scarcely had she entered the river than she was cleansed, gleaming once more like a white stone in the rain; and without a backward look, she swam once more, swam toward nothingness, swam to her dying.
- trans. Alastair Reid (1972)
•
I remember once submitting this fierce, rather disturbing poem for discussion in a little graduate study group we had going in Edinburgh in the 1980s. I was in the midst of writing a thesis on representations of Latin America in European culture at the time, and Neruda was one of the most powerful voices I'd so far encountered.
In James Thurber's immortal words: "It never occurred to me the other children would laugh. They laughed loudly and long." Or, rather, they didn't so much laugh as recoil in shock from what they saw as the blatant sexism of the poem.
So far as my friends were concerned, Neruda was simply revelling in this scene of some good ol' boys having a good ol' time with the innocent mermaid. They saw nothing of the emblematic significance of the rape of South America's paradisal ecology - the satire at the expense of local macho stereotypes ... all that was mere topdressing to them.
"It's a dirty story of a dirty man," as The Beatles put it in "Paperback Writer." Simple as that. I began to understand why irony and double meanings were so absent from the fiction and poetry of the time. The idea of saying one thing to mean another was clearly alien to them. I shut up about Neruda after that.
I still think it's a profound and remarkable poem. Edgy but ...
Mind you, maybe they were the smart ones and I was the gullible fool. When, in 1981, it was decided to name "Chile’s busiest international airport after him", this proposal was "met with outrage from human rights activists who argue that the honour is inappropriate for a man who admitted to rape in his own memoirs."
The current controversy springs from ... Neruda’s memoir [Confieso que he vivido: "I confess that I have lived"], in which he describes raping a maid in Ceylon, where he occupied a diplomatic post in 1929.
After the woman ignored his advances, Neruda says he took “a strong grip on her wrist” and led her to his bedroom. “The encounter was like that of a man and a statue. She kept her eyes wide open all the while, completely unresponsive,” he recalled. “She was right to despise me.”
Although the memoir was published more than 40 years ago, the passage has only become the subject of debate in recent years, said Vergara Sánchez.
“We have started to demystify Neruda now, because we have only recently begun to question rape culture.”
Isabel Allende, the author and women’s rights campaigner, argued that Neruda’s work still had value. “Like many young feminists in Chile I am disgusted by some aspects of Neruda’s life and personality,” she told the Guardian. “However, we cannot dismiss his writing.”
“Very few people – especially powerful or influential men – behave admirably. Unfortunately, Neruda was a flawed person, as we all are in one way or another, and Canto General is still a masterpiece,” she said.
- Charis McGowan: "Poet, hero, rapist" (The Guardian, 20/3/2018)
So, tender love poet - or self-confessed rapist? Both, it would appear.
Roberto Ampuero's fascinating detective novel Il Caso Neruda goes even deeper into the poet's turbulent emotional history. In particular, he examines Neruda's cruel abandoment of his first wife, Maruca, and their daughter Malva Marina Reyes (1934–1943), who was born with hydrocephalus.
Certainly he was a flawed person - but leaving his first wife in 1936 to take up with another woman, Argentine artist Delia del Carril, while less than admirable behaviour, is (as Isabel Allende points out) the kind of thing lurking in many people's backstories. It was the fact that Neruda made no effort to extract his ex-wife and daughter from wartorn Germany that really constitutes the indelible stain on his record.
It's far easier to admire writers who can be painted as moral paragons. They're pretty few and far between, unfortunately. The most interesting thing about Neruda, perhaps, is his lifelong struggle against such facile excuses in his intensely self-critical memoirs and poetry. Take, for example, the following poem from Residence on Earth, one of his most celebrated and multi-faceted collections:
Sucede que me canso de ser hombre. Sucede que entro en las sastrerías y en los cines marchito, impenetrable, como un cisne de fieltro Navegando en un agua de origen y ceniza. El olor de las peluquerías me hace llorar a gritos. Sólo quiero un descanso de piedras o de lana, sólo quiero no ver establecimientos ni jardines, ni mercaderías, ni anteojos, ni ascensores. Sucede que me canso de mis pies y mis uñas y mi pelo y mi sombra. Sucede que me canso de ser hombre. Sin embargo sería delicioso asustar a un notario con un lirio cortado o dar muerte a una monja con un golpe de oreja. Sería bello ir por las calles con un cuchillo verde y dando gritos hasta morir de frío No quiero seguir siendo raíz en las tinieblas, vacilante, extendido, tiritando de sueño, hacia abajo, en las tapias mojadas de la tierra, absorbiendo y pensando, comiendo cada día. No quiero para mí tantas desgracias. No quiero continuar de raíz y de tumba, de subterráneo solo, de bodega con muertos ateridos, muriéndome de pena. Por eso el día lunes arde como el petróleo cuando me ve llegar con mi cara de cárcel, y aúlla en su transcurso como una rueda herida, y da pasos de sangre caliente hacia la noche. Y me empuja a ciertos rincones, a ciertas casas húmedas, a hospitales donde los huesos salen por la ventana, a ciertas zapaterías con olor a vinagre, a calles espantosas como grietas. Hay pájaros de color de azufre y horribles intestinos colgando de las puertas de las casas que odio, hay dentaduras olvidadas en una cafetera, hay espejos que debieran haber llorado de vergüenza y espanto, hay paraguas en todas partes, y venenos, y ombligos. Yo paseo con calma, con ojos, con zapatos, con furia, con olvido, paso, cruzo oficinas y tiendas de ortopedia, y patios donde hay ropas colgadas de un alambre: calzoncillos, toallas y camisas que lloran lentas lágrimas sucias. - Pablo Neruda (1933)• It so happens I am sick of being a man. And it happens that I walk into tailorshops and movie houses dried up, waterproof, like a swan made of felt steering my way in a water of wombs and ashes. The smell of barbershops makes me break into hoarse sobs. 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. 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. Still it would be marvelous to terrify a law clerk with a cut lily, or kill a nun with a blow on the ear. It would be great to go through the streets with a green knife letting out yells until I died of the cold. I don't want to go on being a root in the dark, insecure, stretched out, shivering with sleep, going on down, into the moist guts of the earth, taking in and thinking, eating every day. I don't want so much misery. I don't want to go on as a root and a tomb, alone under the ground, a warehouse with corpses, half frozen, dying of grief. That's why Monday, when it sees me coming with my convict face, blazes up like gasoline, and it howls on its way like a wounded wheel, and leaves tracks full of warm blood leading toward the night. And it pushes me into certain corners, into some moist houses, into hospitals where the bones fly out the window, into shoeshops that smell like vinegar, and certain streets hideous as cracks in the skin. There are sulphur-colored birds, and hideous intestines hanging over the doors of houses that I hate, and there are false teeth forgotten in a coffeepot, there are mirrors that ought to have wept from shame and terror, there are umbrellas everywhere, and venoms, and umbilical cords. I stroll along serenely, with my eyes, my shoes, my rage, forgetting everything, I walk by, going through office buildings and orthopedic shops, and courtyards with washing hanging from the line: underwear, towels and shirts from which slow dirty tears are falling.
- trans. Robert Bly (1993)
•
The paradoxes, the complications, the contradictions of being human - that's what Neruda is best at expressing. Despite his reputation for declamatory, anthem-like poems - The Heights of Macchu Picchu, for instance - there's generally some self-deprecatory sting in the tail of his works.
Is that an excuse for his behaviour? Not in the least. But it could have the effect of making his work more valuable for the rest of us. It's not that he offers a way of achieving absolution for our crimes, but he does demonstrate that a great sinner - a Dostoevsky, a Marquis de Sade - may have certain insights to offer which we might otherwise miss.
That would appear to be Isabel Allende's view, at any rate.
Here, for example, is Scottish poet Robin Robertson's version of one of Neruda's Elemental Odes, where he attempts to enter into and empathise with the wholly non-human:
Oda a un gran atún en el mercado En el mercado verde, bala del profundo océano, proyectil natatorio, te vi, muerto. Todo a tu alrededor eran lechugas, espuma de la tierra, zanahorias, racimos, pero de la verdad marina, de lo desconocido, de la insondable sombra, agua profunda, abismo, sólo tú sobrevivías alquitranado, barnizado, testigo de la profunda noche. Sólo tú, bala oscura del abismo, certera, destruida sólo en un punto, siempre renaciendo, anclando en la corriente sus aladas aletas, circulando en la velocidad, en el transcurso de la sombra marina como enlutada flecha, dardo del mar, intrépida aceituna. Muerto te vi, difunto rey de mi propio océano, ímpetu verde, abeto submarino, nuez de los maremotos, allí, despojo muerto, en el mercado era sin embargo tu forma lo único dirigido entre la confusa derrota de la naturaleza: entre la verdura frágil estabas solo como una nave, armado entre legumbres, con ala y proa negras y aceitadas, como si aún tú fueras la embarcación del viento, la única y pura máquina marina: intacta navegando las aguas de la muerte. - Pablo Neruda (1954)• Here, among the market vegetables, this torpedo from the ocean depths, a missile that swam, now lying in front of me dead. Surrounded by the earth's green froth — these lettuces, bunches of carrots — only you lived through the sea's truth, survived the unknown, the unfathomable darkness, the depths of the sea, the great abyss, le grand abîme, only you: varnished black-pitched witness to that deepest night. Only you: dark bullet barreled from the depths, carrying only your one wound, but resurgent, always renewed, locked into the current, fins fletched like wings in the torrent, in the coursing of the underwater dark, like a grieving arrow, sea-javelin, a nerveless oiled harpoon. Dead in front of me, catafalqued king of my own ocean; once sappy as a sprung fir in the green turmoil, once seed to sea-quake, tidal wave, now simply dead remains; in the whole market yours was the only shape left with purpose or direction in this jumbled ruin of nature; you are a solitary man of war among these frail vegetables, your flanks and prow black and slippery as if you were still a well-oiled ship of the wind, the only true machine of the sea: unflawed, undefiled, navigating now the waters of death.
- trans. Robin Robertson (2007)
One reason I've chosen Robin Robertson's translation rather than the more familiar version by Margaret Sayers Peden is because of the detailed "Translator's Note" he supplied for its original publication in Poetry:
The classics demand to be made new, to be dusted off and polished to reveal their currency. In the same way, in this Anglocentric literary world, we must attend to modern poetry in other languages and encourage new readers — not through slavish, mechanical transcriptions into English (which Lowell described as “taxidermy”), but through English versions that are true to the tone of the original and which are also viable as poems in their own right.Well put - and very much the line I've been arguing throughout this series of posts. But to get down to the nitty-gritty:
I might as well be specific about how this operates, at least in my case. In the preparatory work for my version of Neruda's glorious “Oda a un gran atún en el mercado,” I studied the original, with a good Spanish dictionary, and produced a number of drafts, before turning to the valuable English translation by Margaret Sayers Peden. I found that we differed over interpretation, syntax, and delivery, which is interesting given the relative simplicity of the original. There is a telling moment halfway through when Neruda describes the living tuna as being “como enlutada flecha,/dardo del mar,/intrépida aceituna.” He is enjoying the chime of “aceituna” (an olive) and “atún” (tuna), but it seems unrewarding for the English to try and follow his Chilean wordplay; as Peden has it: “a mourning arrow,/dart of the sea,/olive, oily fish.” Equally, a few lines later, still describing the tuna, “ímpetu/verde, abeto/submarino” isn’t clarified by “green/assault, silver/submarine fir,” only complicated.Poets have a tendency to recreate or at least recast the poems they're trying to transmit from one language to another. Translators have a different set of priorities and responsibilities. it's pointless to argue which approach is "better". In the end, it depends on what you're looking for: a crib, a standalone poem, or something in between. No translation can really be all of those things simultaneously. Robertson continues:
In rendering this Neruda ode into English I have taken minor liberties of addition and deletion and attempted to steer a middle ground between Lowell’s rangy, risk-taking rewritings and the traditional, strictly literal approach. Effective translation is not accurate transliteration; it is a matter of losses and gains, and it requires a certain boldness (some might say irreverence) in attempting to reach the feel of the original. Nothing can replace the reading of the poem in its true language, of course, but — in my view — a loose version by a writer attentive to, and familiar with, the dynamics of poetry is always better than a straight literal verse translation that defers too dutifully to all the words in the order in which they first appeared.That would be my view, too - but I accept that that's not what a lot of readers expect of a "verse translation."
I should also say, in further defense, that the brief odic line that gives the poem such impressive length is adopted not just because I’m Scottish and we're being paid by the line, but because I’ve followed Neruda's original: its sinuous, vertical shape is surely the shape of Chile itself.I can't really see it, but I do find that a lovely notion. Robertson is clearly a man after my own heart. I sensed that already after reading his poetry collection Grimoire:
Which brings us back to Neruda - and Il Postino - and that poem from his Cien sonetos de amor so central to the theme of the film: how to use poetic metaphors to woo a young woman.
It is, at least in appearance, a pretty straightforward piece of writing, so it may seem surprising that there are so many different versions of it available.
Here are a few of them:
-
Cien sonetos de amor: XXVII
- Sonnet XXVII
- Morning (Love Sonnet XXVII)
- 'Unclothed, you are true, like one of your hands'
- Sonnet XXVII
- Sonnet 27 (from Cien Sonetos de Amor)
- Love Sonnet XXVII
- Soneto XXVII
- Pablo Neruda (1959)
Desnuda eres tan simple como una de tus manos, lisa, terrestre, mínima, redonda, transparente, tienes líneas de luna, caminos de manzana, desnuda eres delgada como el trigo desnudo. Desnuda eres azul como la noche en Cuba, tienes enredaderas y estrellas en el pelo, desnuda eres enorme y amarilla como el verano en una iglesia de oro. Desnuda eres pequeña como una de tus uñas, curva, sutil, rosada hasta que nace el día y te metes en el subterráneo del mundo como en un largo túnel de trajes y trabajos: tu claridad se apaga, se viste, se deshoja y otra vez vuelve a ser una mano desnuda.
- trans. Stephen Tapscott (1986)
Naked, you are simple as one of your hands, smooth, earthy, small, transparent, round; you have moon-lines, apple pathways: naked, you are slender as a naked grain of wheat. Naked, you are blue as a night in Cuba; You have vines and stars in your hair; naked, you are spacious and yellow as summer in a golden church. naked, you are tiny as one of your nails - curved, subtle, rosy, till the day is born and you withdraw to the underground world, as if down a long tunnel of clothing and of chores: your clear light dims, gets dressed - drops its leaves - and becomes a naked hand again.
- trans. W. S. Merwin (1995)
Naked you are simple as one of your hands; Smooth, earthy, small, transparent, round. You've moon-lines, apple pathways Naked you are slender as a naked grain of wheat. Naked you are blue as a night in Cuba; You've vines and stars in your hair. Naked you are spacious and yellow As summer in a golden church. Naked you are tiny as one of your nails; Curved, subtle, rosy, till the day is born And you withdraw to the underground world. As if down a long tunnel of clothing and of chores; Your clear light dims, gets dressed, drops its leaves, And becomes a naked hand again.
- trans. A. S. Kline (2001)
Unclothed, you are true, like one of your hands, lissome, terrestrial, slight, complete, translucent, with curves of moon, and paths of apple-wood: Unclothed you are as slender as a nude ear of corn. Undressed you are blue as Cuban nights, with tendrils and stars in your hair, undressed you are wide and amber, like summer in its chapel of gold. Naked you are tiny as one of your fingertips, shaped, subtle, reddening till light is born, and you leave for the subterranean worlds, as if down a deep tunnel of clothes and chores: your brightness quells itself, quenches itself, strips itself down turning, again, to being a naked hand.
- trans. Mark Eisner (2003)
Naked, you are as simple as one of your hands, smooth, earthen, minimal, round, transparent, you have moon lines, apple paths, naked, you are slender as naked wheat. Naked you are blue as the night in Cuba, you have vines and stars in your hair, naked you are as enormous and yellow as summer in a church of gold. Naked you are as small as one of your nails, curved, subtle, rose until day is born and you withdraw into the world's subterrane as if in a long tunnel of clothes and chores; your clarity flickers out, dresses, looses its leaves - and once more returns to being a naked hand.
- trans. Paul Weinfeld (2014)
Naked, you are simple, like one of your hands, smooth, humble, earthly, transparent, and full, with curves of the moon, and pathways of apple, naked, you are slender as a husked grain. Naked, you are blue as the nighttime in Cuba, with vines and starlight trellised in your hair, Naked, you are spacious and amber-colored, like summer inside a chapel of gold. Naked, you are tiny as one of your nails, curved and fine, rubescent as the sunrise when you withdraw again to your underground world as though through a tunnel of clothes and errands: your clear light dims, gets dressed, drops its leaves, and you turn, once again, into a naked hand.
- trans. Jack Ross (2026)
Nude you’re as simple as one of your hands earthy smooth straight translucent round you have moon-lines apple-paths nude you’re slim as stripped wheat nude you’re as blue as the night in Cuba vines and stars in your hair nude you’re yellow and vast like summer in a gold church nude you’re cute like your fingernail curved subtle rose till day breaks and you re-enter our underworld that cul-de-sac of clothes and chores your clarity fades doffs its petals gets dressed turns into a bare hand again
- trans. Google (2026)
Naked you are as simple as one of your hands, smooth, earthy, minimal, round, transparent, you have lines of moonlight, paths of apple blossom, naked you are slender as bare wheat. Naked you are blue as the night in Cuba, you have vines and stars in your hair, naked you are vast and yellow like summer in a golden church. Naked you are small as one of your fingernails, curved, subtle, pink until day breaks and you enter the underground of the world as into a long tunnel of suits and labors: your clarity fades, dresses itself, sheds its petals and once again becomes a naked hand.
So, naked or nude? Most of our translators opted for the former when searching for an equivalent for Neruda's "desnuda" - which actually looks more like the English word "denuded" than either of them. That would be more of a visual pun than a valid shift in emphasis, though, I suspect.
Here's a breakdown of the various versions of Neruda's epically "simple" first line: "Desnuda eres tan simple como una de tus manos":
Stephen Tapscott:Naked, you are simple as one of your handsW. S. Merwin:Naked you are simple as one of your handsA. S. Kline:Unclothed, you are true, like one of your handsMark Eisner:Naked, you are as simple as one of your handsPaul Weinfeld:Naked, you are simple, like one of your handsJack Ross:Nude you’re as simple as one of your handsGoogle Translate:Naked you are as simple as one of your hands
I count five "nakeds" against one "nude" - not to mention an "unclothed". A. S. Kline tries to introduce some variation into Neruda's pattern of direct repetitions by switching from "unclothed" to "undressed", and only then retreat to "naked".
W. H. Auden's "Reflections in A Forest" complains that human beings, unlike most other creatures:
Look naked in the buff, not nude.We are, indeed, strange ungainly bipeds, with weird bits sticking out everywhere, even when posed by a master portraitist or photographer. The power of Neruda's poem comes from pointing out that context is everything: that the mysterious world of sensuality we associated with nudity - as opposed to simple nakedness - is not an automatic thing, to be taken for granted, but a kind of enchantment which needs to be renewed each time lovers encounter each other.
Do our various translators convey that? Stephen Tapscott's seems competent and good to me; W. S. Merwin supplies a slight polish here and there but is otherwise content with most of the former's choices. A. S. Kline's is a bit clumsy, I think. If his goal is literalism, I don't see the logic of some of his changes to Neruda's deliberately repetitive diction.
Mark Eisner and Paul Weinfeld are both faced with the dilemma of supplying enough divergent word choices to justify a new version: hence Eisner's "subterrane" and Weinfeld's "rubescent" for (respectively) subterráneo [underground] and rosada [rosy]. Eisner's version seems also to have been used to "train" the Google translate version of the poem. It follows him closely, albeit with far less subtle word choices.
Jack Ross's eccentricity of avoiding conventional punctuation stops in his poems, which has grown more marked in him over the years, explains - though it scarcely justifies - his rather affected spacing. Otherwise, he attempts a contrast between "nude" and "bare" in his final line which is not in Neruda or any of the other versions.
It's a poem ideal for film treatment, I think: short and straightforward enough to be quoted in full, but still with subtleties below the surface. The only comparable scene I can remember is in the feuding-sisters rom-com In Her Shoes, where Cameron Diaz is asked to analyse Elizabeth Bishop's "One Art" by a kindly old resthome resident she's being paid to read to.
Bishop's poem is a (fairly) strict-form villanelle, whereas Neruda's is an unrhymed (but metrical) sonnet. In both cases, the restrictions of the form make them particularly susceptible to evocative use in a dramatic context.
Emily Wilson's 2017 translation of Homer's Odyssey - endlessly trumpeted as the first complete version in English by a woman, as if that were its only recommendation - begins with the interesting phrase: "Tell me about a complicated man."
One can understand her frustration in reporting this as "the one translation choice I have been asked about a gazillion times, as if it were the only translation choice I’ve ever had to make ..." Clearly it struck a nerve among readers, though.
Pablo Neruda, like Odysseus, was a "complicated man." Wilson questions just why Homer chose this "relatively unusual epithet, 'much-turny' (polytropos / πολύτροπο[ν])" amongst all the others used elsewhere in the poem.
He is a man of "many stratagems" (polymechanos), "much wiliness" (polymetis), "much-enduring" (polytlas), "much-smarts" (polyphron). He's also "city-sacker" (ptoliporthos) ... "resplendent/ glorious" (dios), "related to Zeus" (diogenes), "godlike" (theoeides, theoeikelos) and "son of Laertes" ...After all:
Polytropos isn't necessarily positive, at least in later uses. Plutarch applies it to the notorious turn-coat, Alcibiades ... Plato's discussion ... contrasts the "very simple and very truthful" Achilles (ἁπλούστατος καὶ ἀληθέστατος) with Odysseus as πολύτροπος.
Again, this "twisty-turny" quality is a characteristic Neruda shared with Odysseus. His very name, after all, was a pseudonym:
[Neftalí Reyes] is thought to have derived his pen name from the Czech poet Jan Neruda, though other sources say the true inspiration was Moravian violinist Wilma Neruda, whose name appears in Arthur Conan Doyle's novel A Study in Scarlet.Why precisely he should have decided to name himself after a dead Eastern European violin virtuoso is a little difficult to fathom, but proponents of the theory argue that her status as a child prodigy, plus the laudatory remarks made about her technique by the great Sherlock Holmes may have suggested it. They also claim that he didn't read Jan Neruda's work until after the choice of names had been made, which makes it less likely to have prompted it.
Arguably, the epithet anticipates the ways Odysseus will appear in many disguises, will tell numerous false autobiographies, and will succeed in code-switching, transforming himself to fit in with numerous entirely different social worlds and environments. He can be and act as many people, or nobody.Sound familiar? To quote Auden again:
In legend all were simple,Neruda remains an enigma, a slippery, ethically dubious man in both his private and his public lives. But also, at the same time, a zealot and an idealist, a passionate defender of the causes he believed to be just.
And held the straitened spot;
But we in legend not,
Are not simple.
He sticks in your throat at times, admittedly, but it's hard not to empathise with the person who wrote: "Sucede que me canso de ser hombre" [Sometimes I'm just tired of being a man] ...
"Hypocrite lecteur, — mon semblable, — mon frère !"Statue of Pablo Neruda (Valparaiso, Chile, 2019)
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Pablo Neruda [Ricardo Reyes] (1920s)Ricardo Eliécer Neftalí Reyes Basoalto
[Pablo Neruda]
(1904-1973)
Books I own are marked in bold:
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Poetry:
- Crepusculario (1921)
- Book of Twilight. Trans. William O'Daly (2018)
- Veinte poemas de amor y una canción desesperada (1924)
- Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair. [‘20 Poemas de amor y una Canción desesperada’, 1924]. Trans. W. S. Merwin. 1969. Cape Editions. London: Jonathan Cape, 1971.
- Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair (bilingual edition). Trans. William O'Daly (1976)
- Tentativa del hombre infinito (1926)
- Venture of the Infinite Man. Trans. Jessica Powell. Introduction by Mark Eisner (2017)
- El hondero entusiasta (1933)
- Residencia en la tierra (1925–1931) (1935)
- Included in: Residencia en la tierra. 1933, 1935. Ed. Hernán Loyola. Letras Hispanicas, 254. Madrid: Ediciones Cátedra, 1987.
- Included in: Residence on Earth. [‘Residencia en la tierra’: I, 1933; II, 1935; III, 1947]. Trans. Donald D. Walsh. New York: New Directions Press, 1973.
- España en el corazón. Himno a las glorias del pueblo en la guerra: (1936–1937) (1937)
- Nuevo canto de amor a Stalingrado (1943)
- Tercera residencia (1935–1945) (1947)
- Included in: Residencia en la tierra. 1933, 1935. Ed. Hernán Loyola. Letras Hispanicas, 254. Madrid: Ediciones Cátedra, 1987.
- Included in: Residence on Earth. [‘Residencia en la tierra’: I, 1933; II, 1935; III, 1947]. Trans. Donald D. Walsh. New York: New Directions Press, 1973.
- Alturas de Macchu Picchu (1948)
- The Heights of Macchu Picchu (bilingual edition). Trans. Nathaniel Tarn. Preface by Robert Pring-Mill (1966)
- Canto general (1950)
- Canto General. 1950. Biblioteca de Bolsillo. Barcelona; Editorial Seix-Barral, 1983.
- Let the Rail Splitter Awake and Other Poems. 1947. Trans. 1950. Introduction by Christopher Perriam. Illustrated by José Venturelli. London: The Journeyman Press Ltd., 1988.
- Canto General: Fiftieth Anniversary Edition. [‘Canto General’, 1950]. Trans. Jack Schmitt. Introduction by Roberto González Echevarría. Latin American Literature and culture, 7. 1991. A Centennial Book. Berkeley & Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2000.
- Los versos del capitán (1952)
- The Captain's Verses (bilingual edition). Trans. Donald D. Walsh (1972)
- Todo el amor (1953)
- Las uvas y el viento (1954)
- Grapes and the Wind. Trans. Michael Straus (2019)
- Odas elementales (1954)
- Nuevas odas elementales (1955)
- Tercer libro de las odas (1957)
- Estravagario (1958)
- Extravagaria: A Bilingual Edition. 1958. Trans. Alastair Reid. Cape Poetry Paperbacks. London: Jonathan Cape, 1972.
- Navegaciones y regresos (1959)
- Oda al Gato (1959)
- Cien sonetos de amor (1959)
- 100 Love Sonnets. [‘Cien sonetos de amor’, 1960]. Trans. Stephen Tapscott. Texas Pan American Series. 1986. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1995.
- 100 Love Sonnets (bilingual edition). Trans. with an Afterword by Gustavo Escobedo. Introduction by Rosemary Sullivan; Reflections on reading Neruda by George Elliott Clarke, Beatriz Hausner and A. F. Moritz (2004)
- Canción de gesta (1960)
- Poesías: Las piedras de Chile (1960)
- Cantos ceremoniales (1961)
- Plenos Poderes (1962)
- Fully Empowered: A Bilingual Edition. [‘Plenos poderes’, 1962]. Trans. Alastair Reid. A Condor Book. London: Souvenir Press, 1976.
- Memorial de Isla Negra. 5 vols (1964)
- Isla Negra: A Notebook. A Bilingual Edition. [‘Memorial de Isla Negra’, 1964]. Afterword by Enrico Mario Santí. Trans. Alastair Reid. 1981. A Condor Book. London: Souvenir Press, 1982.
- Diez Odas para diez grabados de Roser Bru (1965)
- Arte de pájaros (1966)
- Fulgor y muerte de Joaquín Murieta [libreto para una ópera de Sergio Ortega] (1967)
- Splendor and Death of Joaquín Murieta. [‘Fulgor y Muerte de Joaquín Murieta’, 1966]. Trans. Ben Belitt. 1972. Noonday Press. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1973.
- La Barcarola (1967)
- Las manos del día (1968)
- The Hands of the Day. Trans. William O'Daly (2008)
- Fin del mundo. Illustrated by Mario Carreño, Nemesio Antúnez, Pedro Millar, María Martner, Julio Escámez & Oswaldo Guayasamín (1969)
- Aún (1969)
- Still Another Day. Trans. William O'Daly (1984)
- Maremoto. With colour woodcuts by Carin Oldfelt Hjertonsson (1970)
- La espada encendida (1970)
- Las piedras del cielo (1970)
- Stones of the Sky. Trans. William O'Daly (1990)
- Discurso de Estocolmo (1972)
- Geografía infructuosa (1972)
- Incitación al Nixonicidio y alabanza de la revolución chilena (1973)
- El mar y las campanas (1973)
- The Sea and the Bells. Trans. William O'Daly (1988)
- La rosa separada. With engravings by Enrique Zañartu (1973)
- The Separate Rose. Trans. William O'Daly (1985)
- Jardín de invierno (1974)
- Winter Garden. Trans. James Nolan (1987)
- El corazón amarillo (1974)
- The Yellow Heart. Trans. William O'Daly (1990)
- 2000 (1974)
- El libro de las preguntas (1974)
- The Book of Questions. [‘El libro de las preguntas’, 1974]. Trans. William O'Daly. 1991. A Kage-An Book. Port Townsend, Washington: Copper Canyon Press, 2001.
- Elegía (1974)
- Defectos escogidos (1974)
- A Basic Anthology. Ed. Robert Pring-Mill (1975)
- A Basic Anthology. Ed. Robert Pring-Mill. Dolphin Books. Oxford: The Dolphin Book Co. Ltd., 1975.
- [with Tomás Lago] Anillos (1926)
- El habitante y su esperanza. Novela (1926)
- [with Miguel Ángel Asturias] Comiendo en Hungría (1969)
- Hacia la Ciudad Espléndida [Nobel Lecture] (1972)
- Hacia la Ciudad Espléndida / Toward the Splendid City: Nobel Lecture. 1972. New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1974.
- Confieso que he vivido: Memorias (1974)
- Memoirs. [‘Confieso que he vivido: Memorias’, 1974]. Trans. Hardie St. Martin. 1977. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1981.
- The Complete Memoirs: Expanded Edition. 2017. Trans. Hardie St. Martin & Adrian Nathan West. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2021.
- Para nacer he nacido. Ed. Matilde Neruda & Miguel Otero Silva (1978)
- Passions and Impressions. [‘Para nacer he nacido’, 1978]. Ed. Matilde Neruda & Miguel Otero Silva. Trans. Margaret Sayers Peden. New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, Inc., 1983.
- Selected Poems of Pablo Neruda. Ed. & trans. Ben Belitt. (1961)
- Selected Poems of Pablo Neruda. Ed. & trans. Ben Belitt. Introduction by Luis Monguió. 1961. An Evergreen Book. New York: Grove Press, Inc., 1963.
- Selected Poems: A Bilingual Edition. Trans. Nathaniel Tarn (1970)
- Selected Poems: A Bi-lingual Edition. Ed. Nathaniel Tarn. Trans. Anthony Kerrigan, W. S. Merwin, Alastair Reid, & Nathaniel Tarn. 1970. Introduction by Jean Franco. Penguin Poets. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1975.
- New Poems (1968-1970) (bilingual edition). Trans. Ben Belitt (1972)
- Selected Odes of Pablo Neruda. Trans. Margaret Sayers Peden (1990)
- Late and Posthumous Poems, 1968-1974. Trans. Ben Belitt. Introduction by Manuel Durán (1994)
- Love: Poems. Ed. Francesca Gonshaw (1995)
- Love: Poems. Ed. Francesca Gonshaw. Trans. Stephen Tapscott, W. S. Merwin, Alastair Reid, Nathaniel Tarn, Ken Krabbenhoft, and Donald D. Walsh. London: The Harvill Press, 1995.
- The Poetry of Pablo Neruda [Anthology of 600 of Neruda's poems, some with Spanish originals, drawing on the work of 36 translators]. Ed. Ilan Stavans. (2003)
- The Poetry of Pablo Neruda. Ed. Ilan Stavans. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2003.
- On the Blue Shore of Silence: Poems of the Sea. Trans. Alastair Reid. Epilogue by Antonio Skármeta (2004)
- The Essential Neruda: Selected Poems. Trans. Robert Hass, Jack Hirschman, Mark Eisner, Forrest Gander, Stephen Mitchell, Stephen Kessler, & John Felstiner. Preface by Lawrence Ferlinghetti (2004)
- Intimacies: Poems of Love. Trans. Alastair Reid (2008)
- All The Odes. Trans. Margaret Sayers Peden et al. (2013)
- Then Come Back: The Lost Neruda. Trans. Forrest Gander (2016)
- Eisner, Mark. Neruda: The Biography of a Poet. 2018. Ecco. New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 2019.
- Ampuero, Roberto. The Neruda Case. ['El caso Neruda', 2008]. Trans. Carolina De Robertis. Riverhead Books. New York & London: Penguin, 2012.
- Skármeta, Antonio. Burning Patience. 1985. Trans. Katherine Silver. 1987. A Minerva Paperback. London: Methuen / Mandarin, 1989.
Prose:
Translations:
Secondary:
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William Roberts: The Vorticists at the Restaurant de la Tour Eiffel (1961-62)Modern Poets in English
- C. P. Cavafy (1863-1933)
- Anna Akhmatova (1889-1966)
- Osip Mandelstam (1891-1938)
- Arthur Rimbaud (1854-1891)
- Guillaume Apollinaire (1880-1918)
- Rainer Maria Rilke (1875-1926)
- Paul Celan (1920-1970)
- Eugenio Montale (1896-1981)
- Salvatore Quasimodo (1901-1968)
- Federico García Lorca (1898-1936)
- Pablo Neruda (1904-1973)
- Fernando Pessoa (1888-1935)
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