![]() Don’t steal! But DO feel free to share, with attribution and link. Translation copyright © 2013, Elisabeth Withaness. Read Neruda’s original “Agua Sexual” here, in Spanish. Listen to me read Neruda’s “Agua Sexual” in Spanish: With both halves of my soul I look at the world.Īnd although I close my eyes and cover my heart entirely, With half my soul at sea and half my soul on land, So wrote Chilean poet Pablo Neruda in 1924 at the start of a long and. I listen, tossed between breaths and sobs. I undertook the greatest departure from myself: creation, wanting to illuminate words. I see beds, I see corridors where a virgin screams,Īnd also their origins, and also memoriesĪnd yellow legs coming together like pegs. I see blood, daggers and women’s stockings, I see the vast summer, and a rasping breath as it leaves the barn, It is only a whispered breath, moister than a cry, Knocking on the axis of symmetry, hitting on the seams of the soul,īreaking abandoned things, drenching what is dark. In thick raindrops of marmalade and blood, (And, by the way, “Agua Sexual” did all three.) JSTOR and the Poetry Foundation are collaborating to digitize, preserve, and extend access to Poetry. ![]() How do I pick which, among hundreds upon hundreds of fantastic poems, to translate? Hmm… It seems to come to this: The poem either, 1) lifts me off my feet and twirls me about, 2) chokes me up, or 3) makes me so horny I could fuck a tree. There are wonderful translations out there (Stephen Mitchell is a favorite), but invariably I find myself quibbling over some turn of phrase that’s not quite right, or some nuance that surely it helps to have come up in Chile to catch.īut mostly I like translating Neruda because it allows me to sink into his world and his words, and, what a world that is! Of late, I have been spending more and more time reading and wanting to translate his poems into English, which is now my main language. He has the kindest, sparkliest eyes, and we play a game which only allows us to speak in metaphor. Although Neruda died in 1973, when I was just a wee girl, still, I like to think that Neruda and I drank of the same water, breathed the same air. In my dreams we walk down Temuco streets together: I am 8 and he is old and always we are walking. He won the Nobel Prize in 1971 and died in his native Chile in 1973.I share my hometown (Temuco, Chile) with beloved Chilean poet, Pablo Neruda. Pablo Neruda is one of the world's most beloved and bestselling poets. ![]() Matilde, with the kisses your mouth taught me I touch your feet in the shade, your hands in the light,Īnd on the flight your peregrine eyes guide me The acclaimed translator Forrest Gander beautifully renders the eros and heartache, deep wonder, and complex wordplay of the original Spanish, which is presented here alongside full-color reproductions of the poems in their original composition. A prolific, inspirational poet, he wrote many different kinds of poems. Written on any paper imaginable-napkins, playbills, receipts-and found scattered throughout the Neruda Estate, these poems offer heartache, Chilean pride, and hope found in the changing of the seasons and the chirping of crickets. Pablo Neruda (1904-73) was the greatest Latin American poet of the 20th century. Then Come Back presents Pablo Neruda's mature imagination and writing: signature love poems, odes, anecdotal narratives, and poems of the political imagination. It is presumed the poem was written with Matilde in mind, perhaps while she was in his presence. Neruda is renowned for an oeuvre that casts away despair, celebrates living and arises from the belief that there is no insurmountable solitude. This poem was written while Pablo Neruda was in exile from Chile, during which time he was also having an affair with Matilde Urrutia, the woman who would become his third wife. This stunning collection gathers never-before-seen poems, discovered within the Pablo Neruda Foundation's archives in Chile. ![]() "They are vintage Pablo Neruda, literally and figuratively. ![]() "This brief visit with Neruda ends all too soon, yet reminds one why his work still matters." - Washington Post "This is Neruda at his finest, his eloquence and passion skillfully arranged in an accessible yet profound package." - Publishers Weekly ![]()
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