The love aesthetics of Neruda

I assume 'love' is the only word which made Pablo Neruda (1904-1973) one of the greatest poets of his age. However, Octavio Paz considered Neruda 'the greatest poet of his generation.' By the same token, I would like to say, after John Donne I have found Neruda the most celebrated love poet of world literature. The way I first got introduced to the poetry of Neruda demands telling a tale. Let me go back to the third year of my varsity life. That year I was enjoying the holiday of 16 December. On the afternoon of that day, a man in his late fifties came to our flat.

My elder brother introduced me to the stranger. Just after a brief introduction, he was asking me about my choice-list of love poets. Without much thinking I just uttered three names: John Donne, Shakti Chattopadhyay and Shahid Qadri. 'Didn't you try Pablo Neruda', he asked? I replied, no. Then he recited the following lines (though he uttered the lines in Bengali, I have mentioned here the English translated stanza of those lines):

At this point, let me go through different aspects of Neruda's love poetry. To realize his love poems one does not need any deep analysis, explanation, interpretation or observation. As soon as one comes across the poems he/she easily perceives what Neruda wants to convey through his poetry. The way Neruda celebrates love is enthralling in different ways. His loneliness, bohemian lifestyle and unhappy love affair drove him to pen plenty of love poems. Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair is still one of his most widely read books. Perhaps this collection of poetry captures Neruda's passion of youth and unhappy love more poignantly than any other collection by him. The verse in Twenty Love Poems is vigorous, poignant, and direct, yet subtle and very original in its imagery and metaphors.

Neruda lovers might know that before his first marriage, Neruda while working as a Chilean diplomat in Burma fell in love with a Burmese woman named Josie Bliss. But the affair did not last long due to Bliss' possessive nature. She totally failed to understand the pure love and poet's mind in Neruda. Nevertheless, Neruda was so much engrossed in her love that it was almost impossible for him to stay away from her even for a moment. Though Bliss met Neruda's demands of body and mind adequately, her jealous, ferocious love created mental agony for him. In a word, her violent nature shattered the tender love Neruda had for her. To forget Bliss, Neruda went from Rangoon to Singhal. Even so, forgetting Bliss was impossible for him. The following lines carry the token of his devastated but unforgotten love:

Don't go far off, not even for a day, because-
because-I don't know how to say it: a day is long
and I will be waiting for you, as in an empty station
when the trains are parked off somewhere else, asleep.

Again, after Bliss's death due to the Great War he deeply felt her absence and lamented the irreparable loss. Being gravely shocked he composed two poems entitled Loves: Josie Bliss 1 and 2, a tribute to his pure love. The poem gives us the intensity of Neruda's love for Bliss and how she had a special place in his thoughts among all the women he loved. The following lines encapsulate how her mind was shadowed with grief when he abandoned her due to her suspicious and sadistic nature:

She would add up/ my absent years/ wrinkle by wrinkle, as they probably gathered/ on her face from the grief I gave her; / because she was waiting for me on the other side of the world. /I never came, but in the empty cups, / in the dead dining room, / maybe my silence wasted away, / my faraway footsteps, / and maybe until death she saw me…

Allow me to dwell on another love affair of Neruda. This time Neruda was gravely involved in the physical love of a Singhalese girl who had had a bouncing figure. In fact, the physical intimacy between the two reached its highest point. Neruda solely surrendered himself to this physically fertile girl. Neruda's subconscious mind made a holistic image of this girl. He compared the girl with a thousand year old sculpture. The lines stated below partly reflect this image.

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!
Being taken aback at the physical beauty of the Singhalese girl, Neruda says in one of his poems:
I love you as certain dark things are to be loved,
in secret, between the shadow and the soul.

The above discussion is intended to show that apart from his two wives Neruda developed two love affairs with two girls from South Asia. He invariably appreciated and welcomed the company of women. He never hesitated to provide a detailed description of those affairs because he always regarded those spontaneous love forces as life forces.

A poet never denies, avoids and tempers the truth; he/she always plays the role of an advocate of truth. Neruda never denied the truth that the love derived from his heart for Bliss and the Singhalese girl was much stronger as well as passionate than the love aroused for his two wives. Some critics often try to criticize Neruda's love poems from moral viewpoint. But Neruda never wanted to present poetry before readers in a very polished way; rather he wholeheartedly tried to insert real happenings into his poetry. Neruda believed that the basis of morality should be truth, not to avoid or disregard the truth. The veracity of life made Neruda's canvas of love poetry more colorful.

While visiting India, Neruda met Shakti Chattopadhyay. Neruda always deserves a place in readers' minds. The renowned critic, Professor Safiuddin Ahmad, once said that nobody knows how many lovers of the universe, for the first time, offered their love to their beloved through quoting some lines from Neruda. I assume this 'how many' will be unanswered for ages.

I want
To do with you what spring does with the cherry trees.   --Pablo Neruda

The writer, Assistant Professor, Department of English and Modern Languages, Central Women's University, Dhaka. He can be reached at [email protected]