Stones from the sky
Pablo Neruda, in a nutshell, is an unreasonable proposition: the kernel bursts the shell.
Nevertheless, one can do something to describe this kernel. What Neruda has achieved in his writing is community with existence. This sounds simple, and is perhaps our most difficult problem. He himself, in one of his New Elemental Odes, has defined it in the formula: harmony with Man and the Earth. The direction in his work, the direction which can so justly be called ideal, is indicated by the path which has brought him to this harmony. His starting point was isolation and dissonance.
From Neruda’s Nobel Presentation speech
XXVIII
The square arrives at the crystal tipping
over from its symmetry;
whoever swings open the doors of the earth
finds in the darkness, clear and complete,
the light of this lucid system
The salt cube, the triangular
fingers of quartz; the aligned water
of diamonds, the network
of sulfur, and its gothic glory;
the multiplication of rectangles
inside the kernel of amethyst;
all this I found under the earth;
buried geometry;
school of salt;
formula of fire.
-Pablo Neruda
Translated by James Nolan
on 01 Apr 2009 at 7:26 pm 1.Katia Shtefan said …
Wow! What a beautiful poem about man’s inextricable connection to nature. Even the concepts that we consider to have been invented by man, such as geometry, are here presented as man’s understanding of a pre-existing, mysterious reality.
If you really like Neruda, check out Red Poppy at http://www.redpoppy.net/pablo_neruda.php. It’s a non-profit set up to create a documentary about Neruda, publish his biography, and translate his works into English. To see our blog on Neruda’s literary activism, go to http://www.redpoppy.net/journal/Pablo_Neruda_Presente.html.