The word - Pablo Neruda

Neftali Ricardo Reyes Basoalto, whose pen name is Pablo Neruda was chile’s most beloved poet and diplomat. With the publication of his most renowned literary work, ‘Twenty love poems and a song of Despair’ he won considerable fame. His political life was as absorbing as his creative life. So, apart from getting the international peace prize in 1950, he won Nobel Prize for literature in 1971. ‘Memoirs’ is his life story as well as a fine narration of Latin American history. It is his self-explanation as a poet and as a politician. ‘The Word’ is an excerpt from ‘Memoirs’. It is rendered in italics and so stands out like a poem. It is a great tribute to poetry with images and surrealistic expressions.

          Neruda says that with words you can say anything you want. It is actually the words that ring, roar and descend. He bows to them and loves them. He clings to them, runs them down, bites into them and melts them down. Sometimes words come to him unexpectedly and sometimes he waits for them greedily. At some other times he goes behind them until they fall. He loves vowel as they glitter like coloured stones and leap like silver fish in the words. They are like foam, thread, metal and dew. He wants to fit all beautiful words in his poems. So, he runs after   certain words. He catches them mid-flight as they fly past. He traps them, cleans them and peals them. Here he imagines words to be materials from which one can prepare delicious dishes. The words seem to be crystalline to Neruda. They are vibrant, ivory, vegetables, oily and like fruits, algae and agates (healing stones). They are like olives too. So, he stirs them, shakes them and drinks them. He lets them hang like stalactites, shine like silvers of polished wood in his poem.

          If a word is shifted from its place in a sentence, the meaning will change. Words have shadow, transparency, weighty features. They gather everything from their rolling down the river of time and wandering from country to country. Actually ‘Spanish’, the official language of Chile, a fine one, was inherited from the fierce conquistadors, the Spanish conquerors. They came to Chile with a voracious appetite hunting for potatoes, sausages, black tobacco and gold. They swallowed up everything including religion, pyramids, tribes and idolatries. But words fell from their boots, from their beards and from their horseshoes. These luminous words continue to glitter in the language of Chile. Though Chileans seem to be the losers here, really they are the winners. When the conquistadors carried off the riches, they left the Chileans, the rich and golden language. They left them the words precious thing-their language, their words. 

Thus, this passage which is no doubt a poem is a tribute to Neruda's uncontrollable passion for poetry. As 'The word' has a fine rhythm, it is very melodious. Its visual images, excellent similies and metaphors and paradoxes add beauty to this poem.

        

-----Thulasidharan