Despite Neruda's questionable past, I actually really enjoyed his poems. As someone who is not an avid reader of poetry, I appreciated the transparency and straightforwardness of his writing, while also leaving room for metaphor and interpretation.
The first theme I noticed throughout Neruda's poetry is nature and landscape. There are constant references to the wind, the beaches, the seasons, trees/branches/plants/leaves, and water. I find this combination between everyday landscapes and love interesting because it makes the kind of romantic, ideal, love that Neruda writes about as normal and mundane as his observations in nature. Poetry can often seem really metaphorical and difficult to grasp the meaning of to me, however, Neruda's straight forward and understandable prose made reading poetry similar to reading a fictitious novel. I'd be curious to know how different the translation is to the original (it's times like these where I wish I spoke better Spanish), because I wonder how exact the translation is. Is Neruda as direct in his original compositions?
Another common theme throughout his poetry was the inclusion of the seasons. He at some point mentions each season in comparison to his love or lust. To me, this adds a really cool sense of imagery and time throughout the book and makes it appear almost chronologically. I feel as if I'm reading his experience as time changes and following along with him through his writings within a span of a year. It also establishes a certain tone or imagery to his poems that I would usually attach with certain seasons. For example in his phrasing of "I will bring you happy flowers from the mountains, bluebells, dark hazels, and rustic baskets of kisses. I want to do with you what spring does with cherry trees" (12), I picture the crisp spring air and bright new sunlight of spring in relation to his prose, as well as the feeling of leaving the darkness of winter behind to the promise of a bright summer. I know that One Hundred Years of Solitude also plays with time in a creative way, so I'm looking forward to reading that to compare. Ever since the discussion of time in Latin American literature from a couple of weeks ago, I have been noticing how it is a common thread and something that really adds a lot of depth to these stories. I love it when authors play with time because it creates such an engaging sense of movement in their writing.
I'm looking forward to discussing this book with you all further in class. Particularly because I bought the Kindle version and the translation wasn't exactly as quoted in the lecture. There wasn't an abusive connotation as heavily in my version of the poetry so I'm wondering if that was intentional or an accident. Regardless, I'm looking forward to discussing it with you all.
Question for the class: Do you attach nature with any particular emotions? Do you think it adds or takes away from the emotion in Neruda's writing?
"Neruda's straight forward and understandable prose made reading poetry similar to reading a fictitious novel"
ReplyDeleteIt's still poetry, not prose! But I get what you are saying. For the most part, Neruda avoids the "elevated" language that we may associate with poetry. His references are to things (trees, fields, the sea) with which we can all feel we are familiar.
Hi Julia,
ReplyDeleteGreat post this week.
What nature envokes within me is a feeling of serenity, of long hikes, of expansive mountain ranges and infinite forests of strong, tall cedar trees. I imagine I'm taking a stroll through a local park with my girlfriend, absorbing the songs of the myriad birds around us and appreciating the deep green foliage - berry bushes, ferns, old oaks - immediately to our left and right. I see the sun setting over the hillside, the sky transforming from a light blue to pink to dark orange and we are soon greeted by the shimmering of stars. My girlfriend and I fall asleep on a picnic blanket, comforted by the warm, gentle breeze of the summer midnight air.
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Just some thoughts HAHA! I can understand Neruda's comparison of the feminine and nature - to him both represent something which evokes completeness and bliss. What similarities/metaphors would be made had the object of love poems been men/the masculine?
All the best!
Curtis HR
Hi,
ReplyDeleteInteresting - almost every blog I've read on Neruda starts off with his use of nature and the landscape, maybe I'll give him a read despite choosing the other reading for this week.
In response to your question, I personally use a lot of allusion to nature in my own writing. I feel like it provides a way to convey emotions in a way that doesn't also describe them enough to come across in any specific way. It adds a generality to feelings, while also allowing those feelings to maintain their unique origins!
^ - Nandita
ReplyDeleteHi Julia,
ReplyDeleteI know many of us have discussed the theme of nature, and its imagery in Neruda's writing here - but I like how you've pointed out the idea of season-changes across his different poems. To be honest I didnt pick up a "chronological" sense of time as the 'scences' changed throughout - but I totally see how different 'weathers' are attributed to the emotion (wether cold, and lonely - or fresh and in love) that is being shared.
To answer your question - I think in my association to nature (in terms of emotions) there is quite a bit of solitude - I think from spending lots of time exploring on my own as a kid. As you can imagine this would fit perfectly for this book :)
Hi Julia! Thank you for your post as it was very interesting to write. I really enjoyed reading your observations on the translations, especially since that was one of our major topics of discussion in our class yesterday. I found it really interesting how there may be these little details that get lost within the translation of the poems. In regards to your question, when I see metaphors related to nature within stories or poems, I tend to either associate it with tranquility or intensity depending on the context of which it is described in. I think that these metaphors can add a new aspect to the poems. To elaborate, they allow for the intensity of the emotions to easily be felt by the reader as we can easily identify the strength of the sea or a burning fire, for example.
ReplyDelete