About book The Captain's Verses (Los Versos Del Capitan) (English And Spanish Edition) (2004)
Love, a questionhas destroyed you.Love, Desire, Furies, – it is in these elemental emotions Pablo Neruda has cast in verse his and the life of his beloved. They met at the beginning of Time when Big Bang was taking shape in their souls and when those various elements came together, guided by violent forces, in a restive arrangement to from their bodies out which arose a desire of self-preservation in perpetual conflict with the vein of self-abnegation. In a way these poems represent the struggle of emotions - emotions that are not conflicting but complementing, but when they overstep their sphere of influence, they disturb that of others. A veritable struggle then ensues in the cosmos of heart. Imagine, what it would feel like if love took on the destructive force of fury? Or if love turned out to be no more than the nom de guerre of a transient desire? Neruda will let you find the answer for yourself. Neruda had written these poems for his wife Matilde Urrutia at a time when sublime love was feeling the first pains of domestic disquiet. He published the collection anonymously and did not take ownership for over a decade, perhaps because he considered them confessional poems. He wrote: “To reveal its source was to strip bare the intimacy of its birth.” But his close friends, seeing the success of the poems, persuaded him to let the personal become the public – and universal. This is what good art is: it is personal at heart but in its scope it is universal, so that it becomes intimately personal to whoever lays eyes on it. I have read this collection twice and on both occasions I could not detect anything that makes these poems confessional. Allusions to people and events are completely missing, if that was the fear. There is also no trace of Neruda the man distinguishable from Neruda the poet whom we do not already know from his other collections, in style and form, and in the use of language and metaphor. One may see this collection as an afterword of Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair. My suspicion is that since, unlike the rest of his poetry, these express his difficulties with love and loving, leading on to a visible conflict that may be seen as an unsuitable topic for love poetry, Neruda did not like what he was writing and hid himself. Be that as it may, amid the pleasures and bounties of boundless love expressed in a colossal voice of nature, of which I will write further down, here Neruda writes freely of the nooks of shadow darkening the path which he wants as straight as road or a sword; his imagination struggles with each wound that has the shape of your mouth, which has injured him in his slumber of love; he complains openly, You have not made me suffer / merely wait and I vainly sought you in the depths of my arms; but he’s also repentant for his own part, Shake off my word that came to wound you / and let it fly through the open window / It will return to wound me / without your guiding it. In the end he affirms, It is not only the fire that burns between us / but all of life; Then comes the final warning, when love is pushed against the wall, it resorts to masculine violence:"I shall end up by attackingthose who between my breast and your fragrancetry to interpose their dark foot."Because"Ah let them tell me howI could abolish youand let my hands without your formtear the fire from my words."This is then love at a loss, passion circumventing the trappings of stillness, vow fighting the pangs of doubt, affection scratching off the rust of weariness; this is, to use Milan Kundera’s phrase, Neruda’s attempt to understand the unbearable lightness of love. He does this in a manner which is his forte: by transforming his beloved into Nature pure and unsullied, made up of earth, water, fire and wind, mountains, rivers, seas and skies, and all that emerges from those. In short, he traverses every corner of the body of earth to sow it and cultivate it, to sow and cultivate again and again, to save it from the barrenness that threatens its primordial fecundity. Neruda, as he does elsewhere, employs a stunning and all-encompassing telluric metaphor to the soul and body of his beloved. Take a look at this:In You the EarthLittlerose,roselet,at times,tiny and naked,it seemsas though you would fitin one of my hands,as though I’ll clasp you like thisand carry you to my mouth,butsuddenlymy feet touch your feet and my mouth your lips:you have grown,your shoulders rise like two hills,your breasts wander over my breast,my arm scarcely manages to encircle the thinnew-moon line of your waist:in love you have loosened yourself like sea water:I can scarcely measure the sky’s most spacious eyesand I lean down to your mouth to kiss the earth.A beautiful, delightful poem loaded with creative eros whose most pleasing aspect is the shift of perspective that gradually expands from a 'rose, roselet’ to ‘loosened sea water’ and ‘spacious sky.’One may object to his unabashed masculinity, the latent violence of his possessive charms, the overpowering candour of his physical superiority, the machismo he infuses his confessions of love with – his manliness tightens, without a qualm, its insistent arms against the tender flesh of the lover’s body lying in surrender. His poems are written for the elemental female form, testing her patience with the flood and volcano of emotions that he pours into it. But he is not unaware of this. He understands it thus:From Absence"I have scarcely left youwhen you go in me, crystallineor trembling,or uneasy, wounded by meor overwhelmed with love, as when your eyesclose upon the gift of lifethat without cease I give you.Yet, he pays homage to the female form of his lover with a lightness of expression that dilutes his aggressive beginnings. Take a look at this one by way of example. Here, again, the perspective transform the lover from the 'little one' to 'the earth at vintage time', vast and pristine, naked and without limits. The Infinite One“Do you see these hands? They have measuredthe earth, they have separatedminerals and cereals,they have made peace and war,they have demolished the distancesof all the seas and rivers,and yet,when they move over you,little one,grain of wheat, swallow,they cannot encompass you,they are weary seekingthe twin dovesthat rest or fly in your breast,they travel the distance of your legs,they coil in the light of your waist.For me you are a treasure more ladenwith immensity than the sea and its branchesand you are white and blue and spacious likethe earth at vintage time.In that territory,from your feet to your brow,walking, walking, walking,I shall spend my life."Pablo writes, Jibran rates, but how come a star goes missing? As noted, Neruda had written these poems as anonymous specimens soon to be forgotten for good. In that some poems are doubtless written in haste. In some lines poetry is difficult to detect; in others there is repetitive enumeration of emotions and elements that smacks of poetic juvenilia. I can easily overlook it for the journey has been full of brilliant scenery, fresh metaphor and uninhibited expression of love and fidelity that ends in these words:"And so this letter endswith no sadnessmy feet are firm upon the earth,my hand writes this letter on the road,and in the midst of life I shall bealwaysbeside the friend, facing the enemy,with your name on my mouthand a kiss that neverbroke away from yours."
Undoubtedly some of the finest love poems ever written and probably Neruda’s masterpiece (my opinion)."I want you to knowone thing.You know how this is:if I lookat the crystal moon, at the red branchof the slow autumn at my window,if I touchnear the firethe impalpable ashor the wrinkled body of the log,everything carries me to you,as if everything that exists:aromas, light, metals,were little boats that sailtoward those isles of yours that wait for me.Well, now,if little by little you stop loveing meI shall stop loving you little by little.If suddenlyyou forget medo not look for me,for I shall already have forgotten you.If you think it long and mad,the wind of bannersthat passes through my life,and you decideto leave me at the shoreof the heart where I have roots,rememberthat on that day,at that hour,I shall lift my armsand my roots will set offto seek another land.Butif each day,each hour,you feel that you are destined for mewith implacable sweetness,if each day a flowerclimbs up to your lips to seek me,ah my love, ah my own,in me all that fire is repeated,in me nothing is extinguished or forgotten,my love feeds on your love, beloved,and as long as you live it will be in your armswithout leaving mine."
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When I was a young man, I picked up this volume of Neruda's poetry. I was around 20 years old (so far as I can remember), and I was trying to widen my worldview. I remember reading Neruda's poems and wanting--desperately wanting--to find something deep and meaningful in them. I dove in relentlessly, fanning through the book and pulling them out in random fashion. My mind devoured them eagerly. My mind found nothing in the poems that it responded to.Recently I have decided to revisit some books that I read when I was a young man. I picked this one up again, feeling a sense of trepidation. Would I find something in the poems this time? Would I feel the same flatness as before?I am happy to report that Neruda deserves his reputation. When I was a young man, I thought and read as a young man; I processed the poems by trying to analyze them, solely digging under the surface and into the language. My mind sought as a young mind; my mind reported nothing there. With more miles having passed under my feet, and with the strain of love and lost desire upon my heart, something in Neruda's work resonates in me. My mind still seeks, and it finds ample purchase in many of the poems, but my heart--a heart that understands the fatal tragedies of life's performances, both the true and false ones--it, this soul in me, finds a vibration in his work that sounds something in my heart as well. Perhaps it is the set of poems on love; perhaps it is the set of poems on 'The Furies'; perhaps it is the diction, the soft repetition of 'amor, amor, amor'; perhaps it is some undefinable thing that holds its meaning 'like water in a net / the surface and the temperature / of the purest wave of life'; perhaps it is the suffering, the longing, the sort of hard, virile anguish that Neruda finds in his work; perhaps it would be these things that start that vibration. Perhaps it is just sad memory in me that hears something similar in him.Whatever it is, I cannot recommend this book enough. Read it and then put it away for years. Find it again some day, as I feel sure that I will once more in years to come.
—John
یادمه سال دوم دبیرستان بودم که این اشعار رو خوندم. اون زمان جوون بودم و بی تجربه، اصلن نمیدونستم عشق چیه و همین باعث میشد این اشعار زیباتر از الان به نظر برسن.انگیزه ی من برای خوندن اشعاری از این دست شاید یه جور تمرینه برای آشنا شدن با ماهیت عشق.در این اشعار پابلو نرودا هم بعد ملی و هم بعد جهان وطنی شعرش رو به خوبی ترسیم کرده و پیوند اون با دیگر مسائل انسانی از جمله جنگ خیلی ملموس هست.برای من که شعر شاملو رو اگه اغراق نباشه خیلی خوب میشناسم، جنس شعر خیلی غریب نبود. اما نوع نگاه شاعر به جایگاه زن و مرد در شعر بود که باعث شد من این متن کوتاه رو بنویسم. جایگاه زن و البته تعریف نرودا از زن در این اشعار نسبت به سالهایی که شاعر روزهای زندگیش رو سپری میکرده خیلی نو نیست و شاید حتی میشه گفت نگاه نرودا یه نگاه نخ نما شده هست. من اینجا تنها دو نمونه ی کوتاه رو میارم:اما در انتظار من بمانشیرینی خود را برایم نگهدارمن نیز به توگل سرخی خواهم داداینها سطرهای پایانی شعری با عنوان دوری در این مجموعه هستن×××نترس،من به تو تعلق دارم،اما،نه مسافرم، نه گدا،من ارباب توام،آنکه در انتظارش بودی...اینها هم سطرهای پایانی شعری با عنوان لغزش در این مجموعه هستنبه طور کلی عاشقانه های قشنگی بود.
—Aban
Este es el libro mas hermoso que he leído en toda mi vida ♥♥♥Absolutamente maravilloso. AMÉ, AMÉ, AMÉ cada palabra.Como siempre, Pablo Neruda es magistral."He dormido contigotoda la noche mientrasla oscura tierra giracon vivos y con muertos,y al despertar de prontoen medio de la sombrami brazo rodeaba tu cintura.Ni la noche, ni el sueñopudieron separarnos.""Oh tú, la que yo amo,pequeña, grano rojode trigo,será dura la lucha,la vida será dura,pero vendrás conmigo."Eternally in love...
—Brenda
