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Showing posts from May, 2013

Las Preguntas - History (Pablo Neruda)

Article by Philip Harvey first published in Eureka Street on May the 14th, 2013 Like many great poems, life is worked out by testing both questions and answers. Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?, is itself a beautiful question, made more beautiful by the thirteen line reply that follows. A poem with all the answers is as unconvincing as a poem that has never asked any questions. We seem to find ourselves somewhere between those two extremes, which is why some poems work for us now, while others bide their time. The last poems of the Chilean Pablo Neruda are a cycle of 74 cantos called El Libro de las Preguntas , The Book of Questions . In fact, the poems consist entirely of questions, which act as much to celebrate as to query the world around us. They reveal the poet in his many moods – humourous, nostalgic, political, sentimental, metaphysical, absurd, realistic, passionate, wistful – and in just a few words reduced to the fundamentals. The unquesti

Las Preguntas – Tyrants (Pablo Neruda)

Don’t let the turkeys get you down, as the saying goes. For even the best regulated lives have to deal with difficult people and petty tyrants. Pablo Neruda himself asks, Por qué me pican las pulgas y los sargentos literarios? Why do the fleas and literary sergeants bite me? [XII] His though is a world more extensive of view than a publisher’s desk or editor’s redraft. Aquel solemne Senador que me atribuía un Castillo devoró ya con su sobrino la torta del asesinato? Has that solemn senator who dedicated a castle to me already devoured, with his nephew, the assassin’s cake? [XXVI] For this is a world on the edge, a society in 1973 where no one knows who to trust, where what you say today could be your death warrant tomorrow. Qué significa persistir en el callejón de la muerte? What does it mean to persist on the alley of death? [LXII] Adolf Hitler is not the most interesting figure in Second World War hist

Las Preguntas – Names (Pablo Neruda)

 Jan Neruda died in Prague in 1891. He was a Czech national poet who had a street named for him in Mala Strana. The Chilean poet who took Neruda’s name for a pseudonym did so to hide from his father the fact that he wrote poetry. Hay algo más tonto en la vida que llamarse Pablo Neruda? Is there anything sillier in life than to be called Pablo Neruda? [XXXII] The pen name became his public name. Even before he won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1971, the Chilean had immortalised the unSpanish name of Neruda in a way undreamt of by his great Czech inspiration. Quién da los nombres y los números al inocente innumerable? Who assigns names and numbers to the innumerable innocent? [LXIV] Nearing his own death soon after that Prize, Pablo Neruda wrote a poem filled with questions. We can hear him gazing at the world. One of his recurring concerns is names. For poets, as for most of us, names are essential meaning, but as he meets mortality Pa

Las Preguntas – Cancer (Pablo Neruda)

So now we know, the poet had prostate cancer when he died. La muerte será de no ser o de sustancias peligrosas? Will death consist of non-being or of dangerous substances? [XXXV] They chose to dig up his remains in April of this year. Qué cosa irrita a los volcanes que escupen fuego, frío y furia? What is it that upsets the volcanoes that spit fire, cold and rage? [VIII] So many with a claim on Pablo Neruda still, so many wanting the truth. Pero sabes de dónde viene la muerte, de arriba o de abajo? But do you know from where death comes, from above or from below? [XXXVII] Now we know for sure that while writing all of these Spanish words he was suffering from cancer, these words that are the lines of his final long poem. Por qué anduvimos tanto tiempo creciendo para separarnos? Why did we spend so much time growing up only to separate? [XLIV] Everyone has their own Pablo Neruda, politicians and historia

My Brother’s Book, by Maurice Sendak

 Since ‘My Brother’s Book’ came out posthumously this year, I have been reading it nearly every night. The book only takes five minutes to read. Over five, ten, fifteen minutes I find something new each time in ‘My Brother’s Book’. Because, reading is only one of the things we do with any book by Maurice Sendak. Really the main thing we do is look. We look at each page in turn, each change of line or colour or sequencing or display, in a way that cannot be done were ‘My Brother’s Book’ an e-book. Because reading a book by Maurice Sendak is a book experience. No one reads his books for the information. We don’t read his books in order to get to the end in order to read something else next. We read his books for every detail of word and picture, ready to refer back or forward to other pages. We don’t want to miss anything. We go down or, as happens in somewhat equal measure, up wherever the author goes. It is still not completely clear what this story is all about. It doesn’t