Prose: Pablo Neruda : Poet of Love, Poet of Beauty

Pablo Neruda was born on July 12, 1904, in Parale, Chile. His full name is Neftalí Ricardo Reyes Basoalto. There is no reader or literary-community who has not heard his name. He is one of the most influential poets of the twentieth century– Basically a poet of love, a poet of beauty. He is also a veteran diplomat. He is also skilled as a politician. So he can be called a bold-personality. He has worked as a diplomat in many countries in Asia, Europe and South America. He has visited Kolkata and Delhi in India three times. He has been able to create a new tone and dimension by applying the diverse experience of travel and the culture of different countries in poetry. While in India, he met Rabindranath Tagore, poet Shakti Chattopadhyay, Subhash Basu, Nehru and many others.

At the age of thirteen, Pablo Neruda started writing for a daily called ‘La Manana’. His first poem was published in this magazine. In 1920, Pablo Neruda began writing for the literary magazine ‘Selva Astral’. His first book of poetry was ‘Twilight’. The second book of poetry is Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair’. It has been (and is being) translated into many languages around the world. Needless to say, this is his most widely read, popular and translated book of poetry so far. Many writers call it his masterpiece work. The utterence of love poems in this book is bold, clear and direct. Another book of poetry about love is ‘100 Sonnets of Love (1959)’. It is also a widely read book of poetry. The creation of varied imagery in the rhetorical application of these poems has acted as a catalyst to make the poet very popular all over the world. Love, frustration, nature, politics and daily-life-experience are the subjects of his poems. In fact, he has been able to create a new style.

Diplomatic life is an important chapter in Pablo Neruda. This life has helped him to multiply his skills and abilities. Many countries and their cultures have been able to understand deeply the diversity. Evidence of all this is found in his poems. In the poem, he brings up the contradiction, the hard struggle of life. As a result, there is a movement of another voice in the poem. Variety has also come in the application of rhetoric. His poems speak in a clear-tone, in a confident-tone. The poet fell in love with three beauties(women) from India, Sri Lanka and Thailand during his diplomatic career. Variety is seen in his influence / application in poetry. While in Burma (now Myanmar) as a diplomat, he fell in love with a beauty named Josie Bliss. The lover has neglected him. Wrote to forget— ‘But the hour of vengeance falls, and I love you./Body of skin, of moss, of eager and firm milk./Oh the goblets of the breast! Oh the eyes of absence!/Oh the roses of the pubis! Oh your voice, slow and sad!’ Coming to Sri Lanka from Burma, he fell in love with a Sinhalese girl with a unique figure. Writes about him— ‘I love you as certain dark things are to be loved,/in secret, between the shadow and the soul’.

Love is a mysterious thing. It gives a different look to one person. It cannot always make everyone happy or unhappy. The same goes for Pablo Neruda. This dichotomous or conflicting situation has also made the poet unhappy. This two-way feature is found in his poems. He has written many poems about these. In Neruda’s poetry, the variety of love , can be identified. The nature of love in metaphors and ornaments. ‘I Do Not Love You Except Because I love you’, or ‘My heart moves from cold to fire’, or ‘… love exists in two manners, either a person loves or does not love…’ . Another shape of love of Neruda—‘Is that I do not see you but love you blindly’, or ‘Sometimes when a person is deeply in love with another they would do crazy things in order to maintain that love …’. I can’t resist the urge to quote some of the poet’s poems about love and affection–

(1) ‘Love dragged its tail of pain,/its train of static thorns behind it,/… love like a huge wave/carried us, crashed us against the boulder’: (LXI, `100 Sonnets of Love’)

(2) ‘O Southern Cross, O clover of fragrant phosphorous:/it entered your body today with four holy kisses’: (LXXXVI, `100 Sonnets of Love’)

(3) ‘Ay, Love is a journey through waters and stars,/through suffocating air, sharp tempests of grain/:Love is a war of lightning,/and two bodies ruined by a single sweetness’:(Carnal Apple, Woman Filled, Burning Moon)

(4) ‘…of the sweet and hard love which binds us/… like a kiss which falls/from our invincible heights/

to show the fire and the tenderness/of a true love. (And because Love battles)

(5) ‘until those twins were lifted into balance/on the scale: the mind and love, like two wings./—So this transparency was built’. (Luminous mind, bright devil)

(6) I vainly sought in you/depth for my arms/that dig, without cease, beneath the earth:/beneath your skin, beneath your eyes…/that does not know why it flows singing./Why, why, why,my love, why? (Love)

(7) Love dragged its tail of pain,/its train of static thorns behind it,/…love like a huge wave/carried us, crashed us against the boulder,/it milled us to a single flour’: (LXI, `100 Sonnets of Love’)

(8) ‘until those twins were lifted into balance/on the scale: the mind and love, like two wings./—So this transparency was built’: (Luminous mind, bright devil)

Roses are very beautiful. But if you want to smell roses, you have to have the mentality to endure the pain of thorns. Many people want to get love easily. Poet Neruda, also, said that this path is not smooth. There is excellence in love by enduring hardships.  There is great feeling about love. Love makes a lover crazy or blind. ‘I love you directly without problems or pride:/I love you like this because I don’t know any other way to love,/except in this form in which I am not nor are you/…so close that your eyes close with my dreams…’ Neruda’s attitude  to love is mysterious . The poet and veteran diplomat passed away on September 23, 1983 in Santiago, the capital of Chile. In 1971, during the liberation-war of Bangladesh, he was awarded the highest prize, the Nobel Prize. Pablo Neruda has universally been acknowledged as one of the greatest poet in the world. He appears to be a poet of deep-loving thoughts. He expresses experience in his verses.

With natural words and ornaments Neruda has created extraordinary imagery, simillies/metaphors. He has given a classical shape to the poem with sex-scented poems, natural, surreal / magical realities, political and worldly general-elements. He has combined rhetoric descriptions of love with concrete visual images in order to explain her feelings. The abstract descriptions illustrate the power of these feelings, beauty etc. These specific images prove this love to be not only vast but also real– giving us somethings we can relate to beauties. The love poem Pablo Neruda has been able to create the best poet of his era. Octavio Paz says Neruda is ‘the greatest poet of his generation’. In this regard, some people consider to be the most read-poet of love after the philosopher of love John Donne. The diversity of observation and expression of love has also made him unique. The life of a diplomat, wanderer and loneliness are expressed in poetry in a combination of multifaceted experiences.