Ode to Wine-Neruda \"Ode to Wine\" Pablo

Ode to Wine-Neruda

"Ode to Wine"

Pablo Neruda was a Chilean poet whose influential works helped to garner him a Nobel Prize for Literature in 1971. Pablo Neruda's "Ode to Wine," from Full Woman, Fleshy Apple, Hot Moon, uses allusions, imagery, and the theme of love and admiration to compare his love of wine, and the pleasure he derives from it, to the sensuality and sexuality of a woman.

Neruda structures "Ode to Wine" from a free verse approach; like traditional odes, Neruda praises an object, in this case wine, and draws inspiration from the wine's essence as well as the wine's container, to explain how wine makes him feel. Furthermore, Neruda is able to use wine to express his love of women, or a specific, albeit unnamed, woman. It may be argued that "Ode to Wine" follows a modified ode structure that helps to introduce the object of his affection, explains the correlation between wine and the woman he loves, and explain in what ways the woman supersedes the qualities he admires in the wine.

Moreover, it can be argued that Neruda is able to fulfill the "three modalities of awakened doing" described in A New Earth by Eckhart Tolle. Neruda fulfills the first mode of acceptance by recognizing not only the pleasure that wine evokes, but also the pitfalls and the "mortal memories" that it brings up. The second modality, enjoyment, is expressed through Neruda's love of wine and the unnamed woman and the pleasure that is derived from both. The third modality, enthusiasm, is fulfilled through the bringing together of wine and the woman and the mutual love that Neruda has for both.

The poem has an overall tone of admiration, both of wine and of women. In "Ode to Wine," Neruda is able to exalt the power that wine has ranging from its ability to bring people together in which Neruda tells wine that "you must be shared" to its ability to "feed on mortal memories" (line 19, 21-22). Not only does Neruda exalt wine's ability to influence people, but he also highlights the polar attributes that the wine has. Wine is not a single-note beverage, but rather a multi-faceted drink.

Neruda is able to demonstrate the distinction between wine's many features through highly descriptive imagery. Neruda's ode to wine does not discriminate between red and white varieties, but rather encompasses both; Neruda compares the varieties by comparing them to celestial characteristics. Neruda describes white wine as "Day-colored wine…with topaz blood…starry child of earth…smooth/as a golden sword," whereas red wine is described as "night-colored wine,/with purple feet…soft/as lascivious velvet" (lines 1-4, 6-11). Despite the differences in the varieties, Neruda contends that wine, in general, "stirs the spring" and is powerful enough to cause "walls [to] crumble…and rocky cliffs, chasms close" (lines 37, 39-41).

In the second stanza, Neruda shifts his focus from wine and the power that it holds to how it invokes the qualities of sensuous woman. Unlike the first stanza that utilizes the natural world to create a backdrop for comparison, the second stanza also takes the goblet into consideration. The comparisons and allusions that Neruda makes in the second stanza are reminiscent of Robert Herrick's poems and Shakespeare's sonnets. In the second stanza, Neruda is able to find similarities between a woman's figure and a wine goblet and continues to compare different physical characteristics of a woman to the components of wine. Neruda states, "your breast is the grape cluster,/your nipples are the grapes/the gleam of spirits lights your hair/and your navel is a chaste seal/stamped on the vessel of your belly" (lines 52-56). Also, Neruda places equal importance on the container -- in this case the body -- as well as what is inside -- the essence of a person. Neruda writes that the love that he receives from this woman, or women, is "an inexhaustible/cascade of wine,/light that illuminates [his] senses,/the earthly splendor of life" (lines 57-60). This comparison further reinforces the praise that he has for wine and how he feels that it has changed his life. Neruda contends that the woman embodies the qualities that he most appreciates in wine and the she is the "light that illuminates [his] senses,/the earthly splendor of life" (lines 59-60).

The last stanza of the ode brings together what Neruda appreciates in both wine and women, and draws attention to how wine is able to bring him and his companion together. While Neruda finds joy in wine, he declares that the woman is "more than love,/the fiery kiss,/the heat of fire/more than the wine of life" (lines 61-64). While wine has the ability to bring people and experiences together, Neruda implies that an individual will remain isolated (spiritually) until he (or she) finds someone that is willing to take in and appreciate another person. Neruda declares "you are the community of man/translucency,/chorus of discipline,/abundance of flowers;" through this description Neruda not only points out the woman's ability to accompany a man, but also draws attention to the qualities that could potentially make her another's ideal. Neruda concludes the stanza by encouraging that others experience wine as he does. He asks that others "[d]rink it/and remember in every/drop of gold,/in every topaz glass,/in every purple ladle/that autumn labored/to fill the vessel with wine;" in other words, Neruda asks that wine should not be enjoyed just for what it is, but also for what it symbolizes and what it took to make it (lines 74-80).