Transcript PABLO NERUDA (1904 1973) Selected Poems “Love is so short, Forgetting is so long.”

PABLO
NERUDA
(1904 1973)
Selected Poems
“Love is so short, Forgetting is so long.”
His Life -
-Born in Parrel, Chile on July 12th 1904
-His full name is Ricardo Eliecer Neftalí Reyes Basoalto
- Started submitting poems to newspaper at age 13
- Became a published poet at 19 – 20
Love Poems and a Song of Despair
Life continued..
-1927 he was given honorary consulship by the Chilean government after graduating
from The University of Chile which allowed him to travel the world
- in 1937 he joined the Republican movements in France and Spain
-In 1945 he was elected senator of the Communist Party in Chile
-In 1949 he was forced to go into hiding
-In 1970 almost runs for President
-1971 wins Nobel Prize for Literature
-1973 Dies of prostate cancer
FORM
The Shape
Of
the poem –
ClosedFORM
Restricted line l e n g t h, meter, rhyme and line groupings
kinds of closed form
tercet, blank
verse
ballad
triplet
sonnet
People USE closed Form to
SHAPE and Polish MEANING
FORM
O
PEN
F
ORM
Open-form poetry – the open form eliminates the restrictions of the
closed form. Each open-form poem is thus unique and unpredictable
because it avoids traditional patters of organization to produce order.
Poetry of this time was once termed free verse to signify its liberation
from regular metrics and embrace of spoken rhythms. But open-form
poetry is not therefore disorganized or chaotic. Open-form poets have
instead sought new ways to arrange words and lines, new ways to
express thoughts and feelings, and new ways to order poetic experience.
Tonight I can write the saddest lines.
Write, for example, ‘The night is starry
And the stars are blue and shiver in the distance
The night wind revolves in the sky and sings.
Tonight I can write the saddest lines.
I loved her, and sometimes she loved me too.
Through nights like this one I held her in my arms.
I kissed her again and again under the endless sky.
She loved me, sometimes I loved her too.
How could one not have loved her great still eyes.
Tonight I can write the saddest lines.
To think that I do not have her. To feel that I have lost her .
Tonight I Can Write
To hear the immense night, still more immense without her.
And the verse falls to the soul like dew to the pasture.
What does it matter that my love could not keep her.
The night is starry and she is not with me.
This is all. In the distance someone is singing. In the distance.
My soul is not satisfied that it has lost her.
My sight tries to find her as though to bring her closer.
My heart looks for her, and she is not with me.
The same night whitening the same trees.
We, of that time, are no longer the same.
I no longer love her, that’s certain, but how I loved her.
My voice tried to find the wind to touch her hearing.
Another’s. She will be another’s. As she was before my kisses.
Her voice, her bright body. Her infinite eyes.
I no longer love her, that’s certain, but maybe I love her.
Love is so short, forgetting is so long.
Because through nights like this one I held her in my arms
My soul is not satisfied that it has lost her.
Though this be the last pain that she makes me suffer
And these the last verses that I write for her.
Not Alone the Albatross
Not with the spring are you awaited,
Not in the thirst of the corolla,
Not in the honey-house woven
Fiber by fiber from vines and clusters,
But in the storm, the streaming
Torrential dome over the reefs,
In the flaw rent by the dawn,
And even more, over the green pikes
Of defiance, in the ruinous
Solitude of the marine mesa.
Salt-betrothed, tempestuous doves,
You turned your back on every tainted wind
From land to face the wetted sea
And in the wild transparency submerged
Your celestial geometry of flight.
Each one sacred, and not alone the one
like a cyclonic drop, off the branch
Of the storm; not alone the one who nests
On the slopes of turmoil, but
Also the sea-gull of shaped snow,
The form of the guanay through the spray,
Silvered pack of platinum.
When the pelican fell like a tightened knot,
Plummeting its volume down,
And when prophecy swooped
On the extended wings of the albatross
And when the wind of the petrel plunged
Over eternity in movement,
Beyond the ancient cormorants,
My heart flowed into their cup.
TRANSLATING
POETRY
OH EARTH, WAIT FOR ME
Return me, oh sun,
Turn me oh sun
towards my native destiny,
rain from the ancient forest,
return to me the fragrance and the swords
that fall from the sky,
the solitary peace of field and rock,
the moisture at the margins of the river,
the scent of the larch,
the wind, alive like a heart
beating among the remote flock
of the great araucaria.
to my wild destiny,
Earth, return to me your pure gifts
the towers of silence that rose
from the solemnity of their roots:
I want to return to being what I have not been,
learn to return from such depths
that amongst all the things of nature
I could live or not live: no matter
to be one more stone, the dark stone,
the pure stone that is carried by the river.
rain of the ancient wood.
Bring me back its aroma, and the swords
that fall from the sky,
the solitary peace of pasture and rock,
the damp at the river-margins, the smell of the larch tree, the
wind alive like a heart beating in the crowded restlessness of the
towering araucaria. Earth, give me back your pure gifts, the towers
of silence which rose from the solemnity of their roots. I want to
go back to being what I have not been, and so learn to go back
from such deeps that amongst all natural things I could live or not
live, it does not matter to be one stone more, that dark stone, the
pure stone which the river bears away.
WORKS CITED
-http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]/2001-month02/msg00128.html
-www.amazon.com
-www.inkas.com
-www.wikipedia.com
Turn, Nathaniel; Selected Pomes by Pablo Neruda; Paperback:
Publisher: Mariner Books; Bilingual
edition (September 10, 1990) ISBN:
0395544181