“Neruda is like catching a condor with a butterfly net…”

His passionate volatility has been likened to that of a volcano, his magnificence to that of a condor, the invaluable nature of his contributions to those of a rainforest. The vivacious, energetic, larger-than-life quality of Pablo Neruda’s poetry is truly unparalleled and a close critical analysis of some of his most intricately chosen words reveals some very interesting conclusions about his conflicted narrator’s underlying sentiments.

I found it interesting that Karl Ragnar Gierow’s Presentation Speech upon Pablo Neruda’s acceptance of the 1971 Nobel Prize in Literature focused largely on the notion of ideals. Ideals and the tragic human tendency to idealize the objects of our most basic human desires is a topic that pervades much of Neruda’s conflicted poetry. Poema 1, of Veinte poemas de amor y una cancion desesperada, reveals Neruda’s narrator’s tragic tendency to idealize the female human being, and more specifically her body.

The high flown language used to describe the feminine sex – not a woman specifically, but rather women in general (“cuerpo de mujer”) – quite frankly begins to sound more suited for the description of a statue of a Greek goddess than of the living female form. She is described in romanticized tones and shades of pure white which purify and almost deify her saintly body, while simultaneously being sexualized with descriptions of her sensual voice, her abundant bosom and rosy pubic region. By putting women on a pedestal and allowing his imagination to create a vision of femininity that does not coincide with reality, Neruda’s narrator reveals his fatal flaw.

An interesting experiment conducted in Tuesday’s class cut away the intoxicating, flowery language and revealed the artist’s most passionate concealed intentions. Students were charged with the task of choosing the most essential and meaningful word in each of the poem’s sixteen lines and the findings were quite surprising. A poem which appeared upon first glance to be overflowing with beautiful sentiments of love and powerful emotion was laid bare as an expression of sexual frustration and objectification of the female body.

Neruda, a literary wizard by the looks of things, managed to hide the bitterness and somewhat shallow desires behind the guise of feigned affection and intimacy until we extracted the most crucial words from Poema 1: mujer, entrega, labriego, saltar, túnel, invasión, sobrevivir, flecha, venganza, cuerpo, ausencia, triste, cuerpo, sed, sigue, and dolor.

The atmosphere which resulted from this dilution of Neruda’s words was one of aggravation, conflict, struggle, and war; one of conquests and reluctant submissions to the will of an aggressor; one of superficiality and bodily objectification; one of vengeance, sadness and pain. These words were in many ways reminiscent of a rape; sexual gratification motivated not by love but by desire or simple lust. I would very much like to apply this experiment to other poems of Neruda’s to determine whether I have missed out on any other vastly different interpretations of his layered works.

Disclaimer: I love Neruda. He is probably my favourite Latin American poet. My intention is in no way to portray him as some kind of rapist or sexual deviant. I just thoroughly enjoy analyzing his brutally honest, multi-layered poetry the fullest extent and was exceedingly intrigued by the results of our in-class experiment!!