1971: Pablo Neruda

Parral, Chile 1904-1973 Santiago, Chile.

“I, a poet who writes in Spanish, learned more from Walt Whitman than from Cervantes”

                                                                                                                       -Neruda, 1972.

When I was in high school, I read a lot of Walt Whitman; I even quoted “Song of Myself” in the yearbook.  I was fascinated with the way that he celebrated nature and the beauty of self in an epic literary style.   After reading Neruda’s poetry this weekend, I am not surprised to learn that the Chilean poet was one of Whitman’s biggest fans (he kept a framed portrait of the American on his table).

Neruda was 20 when he published Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair, the book of poetry that would secure his literary fame.  Freshly out of high school (where he had come to know Gabriel Mistral, a teacher who encouraged his writing), Neruda was an avid reader, and evidently deeply inspired by Whitman.    Take a look at the following parts of four poems:

From Neruda’s Ah Vastness of Pines

Ah vastness of pines, murmur of waves breaking,

slow play of lights, solitary bell…

From Whitman’s Ah Poverties

AH poverties, wincings, and sulky retreats!
Ah you foes that in conflict have overcome me!

From Neruda’s Body of a Woman:

Body of a woman, white hills, white thighs,
when you surrender, you stretch out like the world.
My body, savage and pleasant, undermines you
and makes a son leap in the bottom of the earth.
Body of skin, of moss, of firm and thirsty milk!
And the cups of your breasts! And your eyes full of absence!
And the roses of your mound! And your voice slow and sad!

From Whitman’s I Sing the Body Electric

Hair, bosom, hips, bend of legs, negligent falling hands all
diffused, mine too diffused,
Ebb stung by the flow and flow stung by the ebb, love-flesh swelling
and deliciously aching,
Limitless limpid jets of love hot and enormous, quivering jelly of
love, white-blow and delirious nice,
Bridegroom night of love working surely and softly into the prostrate dawn,
Undulating into the willing and yielding day,
Lost in the cleave of the clasping and sweet-flesh'd day.

They’re pretty similar, eh?  Whitman is famous for his parenthetical insertions (like ah!), and it looks as though Neruda is mimicking him here.   Another thing that links Neruda to Whitman is their enumerative styles (the cataloging of chaotic, random details).   They both use the sensory and the natural to express their curiosity about the experience of life.

Unlike Gabriela Mistral, Neruda’s work seems more improvised and impulsive.  There are no Greek Goddesses found in his poetry, he instead describes earthy Chilean woman, the beauty of nature, and the glory in the ordinary.  Walt would’ve been proud.