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Pablo Neruda's Song of the Americas: Canto General
Pablo Neruda's Song of the Americas: Canto General
NOVEMBER 27, 2020
The Chilean poet and diplomat Pablo Neruda won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1971 "for a poetry that with the action of an elemental force brings alive a continent's destiny and dreams." Already known as a poet when he was just 13 years old, Neruda wrote in a variety of styles, including surrealist poems, historical epics, overtly political manifestos, a prose autobiography, and passionate love poems. [see sidebar for a sampling of his poetry]
The Chilean poet and diplomat Pablo Neruda won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1971 "for a poetry that with the action of an elemental force brings alive a continent's destiny and dreams." Already known as a poet when he was just 13 years old, Neruda wrote in a variety of styles, including surrealist poems, historical epics, overtly political manifestos, a prose autobiography, and passionate love poems. [see sidebar for a sampling of his poetry]
Neruda is often considered the national poet of Chile, and his works have been popular and influential worldwide. Colombian novelist Gabriel García Márquez once called him "the greatest poet of the 20th century in any language". [1]
Neruda is often considered the national poet of Chile, and his works have been popular and influential worldwide. Colombian novelist Gabriel García Márquez once called him "the greatest poet of the 20th century in any language". [1]
Pablo Neruda was serving as the Chilean consul in Madrid when the Spanish Civil War broke out. His experiences during the war and its aftermath moved him away from privately focused work in the direction of politics and our obligations to others. The events of the war, particularly the execution of his friend, the Spanish poet and playwright Federico García Lorca, by forces loyal to the dictator Francisco Franco [sidebar], radicalized Neruda and he became a lifelong communist. In the 1960's he was an outspoken critic of the United States - both for its actions towards Cuba and the Vietnam War. He spent his last years as President Salvador Allende's Ambassador to France before returning home to Chile because of deteriorating health.
The military coup led by General Augusto Pinochet that overthrew the elected President Salvador Allende, a Socialist, saw Neruda's hopes for Chile destroyed. Shortly thereafter, during a search of the house and grounds at Isla Negra by Chilean armed forces at which Neruda was reportedly present, the poet famously remarked: "Look around – there's only one thing of danger for you here – poetry." [1] Pablo Neruda died in 1973 - just 12 days after Pinochet's coup.
Canto General
Canto General
Perhaps no work better expresses “a continent's destiny and dreams” than his epic Canto General. Pablo Neruda began the work in 1938. Published in 1950, the 231 poems present an encyclopedic history of the Americas from a Latin American perspective. The fifteen cantos take us from the days when South America had no human inhabitants (“Algunas Bestias” - Some Beasts) to the mid-20th century when Neruda was in exile because of his political beliefs (“Yo Soy” - I am).
The Greek composer Mikis Theodorakis wrote an oratorio for two voices, mixed choir and orchestra based on poems from Canto General. Several selections from the live recording of August 1975 and from later performances along with brief translated passages from those cantos are below.
Algunas bestias (Some Beasts)
It was the twilight of the iguana:
From a rainbowing battlement,
a tongue like a javelin
lunging in verdure;
an ant heap treading the jungle,
monastic on musical feet;
the guanaco, oxygen-fine
in the high places swarthy with distances
cobbling his feet into gold;
the llama of scrupulous eye
that widens his gaze on the dews
of a delicate world....
It was the night of the alligator...
Los Libertadores (The Liberators)
...they were
invisible flowers—
sometimes, buried flowers,
other times they illuminated
its petals, like planets.
And in the branches mankind harvested
the hard corollas,
passed them from hand to hand
like magnolias or pomegranates,
and suddenly, they opened the earth,
grew up to the stars.
This is the tree of the emancipated.
The earth tree, the cloud tree,
the bread tree, the arrow tree,
the fist tree, the fire tree.
The stormy water of our nocturnal
epoch floods it,
but its mast balances
the arena of its might.
Voy a Vivir (I am going to live)
I am not going to die. I'm leaving now
on this day full of volcanoes
towards the crowd, into life
Here I leave these things fixed
today with gunmen walking around
with "Western culture" in their arms
with the hands that kill in Spain
and the gallows that oscillate in Athens
and the dishonor that governs Chile
and stop counting.
Here I stay
with words and peoples and paths
who wait for me again, and who hit
with hands full of stars at my door.
References: [1] Wikipedia
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