Pablo Neruda and His Politics

Poetry and Politics: Pablo Neruda
In her article “Colored by Passion,” Becker (2010) describes the poetic career of Pablo Neruda and how his work gradually intersected with politics. Neruda was always a poet first, as Becker (2010) indicates, but the nature of his poetry—its focus on passion and love—eventually led him to sympathize with the Communist Party and become a member of the Party. However, Neruda’s style often focused on a kind of mystical eroticism, in which love-making between a man and a woman was like communing with the universe and being one with nature. This poetic sense helped to lead him to a political affiliation that also communicated a kind of universal oneness in which all people were part of one big family, as Neruda saw it.
In “The Great Ocean,” Neruda’s style can be seen clearly. He describes his love and himself when they are entwined about one another as being like “two plants / that grew together, roots entwined.” His take on relationships reflects his take on the world—from his viewpoint, there is a harmony between all beings that is made obvious only when love is the foundation of all things. For that reason, Neruda viewed Communism as the political expression of this foundation of love and harmony. There was no self or me or I in the political ideology of Communism: everything that one possessed was given up for the common good—for the whole—for the collective. Neruda viewed this ideology romantically, even though he himself lived a rather bourgeois existence, what with his three homes and fine collection of art works (Becker, 2010). In other words, Neruda propagated the ideals of the political ethos of Communism, but he himself did not necessarily identify directly with the proletariat. He was quite well off and fortunate enough to excel on his own. Nonetheless, he identified universally with all peoples and in his mind his spirit conformed with the ideals of Communism.
Thus, he stated in his Memoirs upon becoming a member of the Communist Party: “I felt Chilean, Peruvian, American. On those difficult heights, among those glorious, scattered ruins, I had found the principles of faith I needed to continue my poetry” (Becker, 2010). The principles of faith for him were not religious principles, so to speak, but rather idealistic, political principles that could inspire his mysticism and move him to create further poetry based on his sense of being part of a sacred oneness with all humankind. His poetry, he felt, had always transcended borders and nationalities: he had never been specifically writing only for Chileans or only as a Chilean. He was like a sailor who knew no one single home (and, literally, he had three, it must be remembered). Indeed, his final home was designed to resemble a ship so that he could always have this mentality about him—this sense that he was a voyager, sailing and meeting amidst the waves of revolution the passionate aims and ideals that men put into political practice.
Neruda used poetry to portray his love of passion and how it moved him towards a universal embrace not just of humanity but of all the natural world. His poetry served to strengthen his vision and embolden his followers to work for the ideals of the Party and celebrate the unity that they pursued under the banner of the Communist Party and its principles. As Becker (2010) notes, this affiliation inspired Neruda to continue writing—it gave principle to his passion, which otherwise might have extinguished itself much sooner and been left with nothing. The Party became Neruda’s reason for continuing the passion—a passion that went beyond mere human intercourse and transcended upwards towards the Transcendental.
References
Becker, E. (2010). Colored by passion. Retrieved from
http://pitjournal.unc.edu/article/colored-passion-political-poetical-intersect-life-and-work-pablo-neruda