The poetic universe of Pablo Neruda

Continued from last week

To my mind, the next important stage in the forward movement of Neruda’s poetry is indicated by his volume of poetry Canto General. It is an epic poem that poetically charts the growth of Latin America. It poetically recreates the American content from its beginnings to modern times.

It is more than that; it is a call to the Americas to mach forward to fashion a socialist society with justice for all. This vision animates the poem and .in some ways, it can be said that Neruda was inspired by a 16th century Spanish epic that deals with Chilean poetic history.

In Canto General the poet identifies with the ordinary people, the voiceless, workers; at the same time he identifies with Chilean history; he sees history as a vital force that can productively galvanise a nation.

Human beings cannot avoid entering history. The central topos of the poem is oppression. This oppression, according to Neruda, was first brought to Latin America by the Spaniards, and later the multinational corporations and their allies exercised a stranglehold on the people. The oppression discernible in the American continent, he maintains is attributable to the machinations of capitalism. He argues that through the power of Marxist thinking the scourge of capitalism has to be erased,

The Canto General glows with powerful poetic passages that carry an undeniable charge of lyrical intensity. At the same time, there are also passages that are dogmatic, therefore reductive and which, to my mind, barely rise above sloganeering. Neruda is deeply concerned about the plight of the dispossessed, the marginalised and stresses the need tor them to unite under a single banner, acquire an agency, and fashion a more just and equitable society.

These sentiments are expressed, for the most part, through emotionally alive metaphoric language. The poem represents a clash between the forces of good and evil – foreign invaders, multinational capitalists and their allies representing the forces of evil and farmers, workers, native Indians, people denied a history emblematise the forces of good. As he points out prior to the arrival of the Spaniards, Chile was a free land.

Before the wig and cassock
Were the arterial rivers
Were the mountains in whose torn waves
The condor and the snow seemed frozen.

He steadfastly entertains the hope that the people have the power and tactical energy to overthrow the forces of oppression.

Today you’ll emerge from the coal and the dew.
Today you’ll come to shake the doors
With bruised hands, with bits
Of surviving soul, with clusters
Of expressions that death did not extinguish,
With intractable tools
Hidden beneath your tatters.

It is indeed these ‘intractable tools’ that stirred the resisting impulse of the poet.

Pablo Neruda was a great admirer of the eminent American poet Walt Whitman who sang about selfhood, freedom and nationhood. He deploys some of Whitman’s signature traits to further his cause for social justice in the Americas. What is interesting about the book is that he combines his desire for social and political change and human justice with the power of love poetry.

Much of the imagery is amorous in nature. There are two dominant voices that guide the poetic discourse – that of the poet-historian and poet-singer. These, in the hands of a lesser writer, could have ended up as contradictory voices. In the case of Neruda, though, they emerge as complementary voices echoing each other’s innermost concerns. Harold Bloom, who has written so perceptively on English and American poetry, says that, ‘Pablo Neruda is by general consent the most universal of these poets who can be regarded as Whitman’s truest heir. The poet of canto general is a worthier rival than any other descendant of Leaves of Grass. And Neruda, speaking of Whitman, once claimed that, ‘He had tremendous eyes to see everything – he taught us to see things. He was our poet.’ Neruda was, no doubt, inspired by Whitman, but at the same time there were significant differences between these two larger-than-life poets.

The Canto General marks an important nodal point in the forward trajectory of Neruda as a poet. It is regarded as one of the great epic poem composed in modern times. Neruda’s desire to empower the speechless, invisible, disposed and bring about social justice is clearly evident in many of the poems that go to form this epic. In producing his poetic discourse, the ordinary men and women and their plight concerned him deeply.

I do not write so that other books
can imprison me,
Nor for the avid apprentice of lilies,
I write for humble people that ask for
Water and moon, elements of
immutable order
Schools, bread, wine guitars and tools.
I write for the people though they
May not be able to read my poetry
with their rural eyes.

To be continued