Pablo Neruda's use of imagery and nature in his poetry

Pablo Neruda

The poet Pablo Neruda was a favorite poet for many and his works continue to be popular today. Neruda is best known for two things: his original use of imagery and his use of nature in his poems. It is these two qualities, combined with his themes, that make his poems original and significant. By his original use of imagery, his poems are both startling and effective and by his incorporation of nature theme's he offers poems that clearly communicate with all people. These issues will now be investigated in more detail, in an attempt to determine what makes Neruda such a successful and popular poet. This will begin with a consideration of the themes of his work. While it is true that the themes are not what Neruda is recognized for, it is still important to have an understanding of them, since ultimately, his success as a poet is determined by how well he communicates those themes. This will be followed by a look at imagery and then a look at how Neruda uses nature in his poems. This information will then be combined to consider what makes make Neruda such a popular poet. Neruda's popularity will be shown to be due to his focus on writing for the poeple. His goal was to communicate the human experience and his use of imagery and nature are both aspects that helped him achieve this goal.

Themes

Before looking at the imagery and the use of nature in Neruda's poetry, it is important to consider the themes of his work. While his imagery and his use of nature were the aspects that made his poems distinctive, they are only effective in relation to how they contribute to the theme. A poem with brilliant imagery but no underlying theme or message, does little to communicate with its audience. Therefore, it is important to briefly introduce the themes of his work, so his use of imagery and nature can be related to it.

Neruda was a prolific writer and his poems span many years of his life. Throughout his changing life, his poems change to reflect new situations his various states of mind. As one article reports, "Neruda's body of poetry is so rich and varied that it defies classification or easy summary" (Duran). Neruda's poetry varies from love poetry, to political poetry, to surrealist poetry, to dark poetry.

Neruda's love poetry was one of his most popular forms including the book Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair, his first successful poetry book. Other poems express a darkness and a depression. Again, others have a political motivation and others are more based on humanity as a whole and on recognizing the smaller details of life.

While these topics are wide-ranging, Neruda is well-known for his poems in each of the categories. Also in each of the categories, Neruda uses imagery and nature to good effect.

Use of Imagery

Neruda is perhaps best-known for his original use of imagery. Relating his imagery to his love poems as published in Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair, the verse is described as, "Vigorous, poignant, and direct, yet subtle and very original in its imagery and metaphors. The poems express young, passionate, unhappy love perhaps better than any book of poetry in the long Romantic tradition" (Duran). This is a major statement to make considering the popularity of the theme of love in poetry.

Love is a very common theme in poetry, and as such, is one that requires originality for love poems to stand out. It is Neruda's use of imagery that achieves this, the imagery original, strong and effective. Reading these love poems, the reader cannot help but be struck by the poem, and this is one of the major reasons for Neruda's popularity. In short, his poems are not easily forgotten.

A good example of a striking poem is sonnet XVII, published in the book One Hundred Love Sonnets. This poem deal with an unprofessed love, another common theme in poetry. What makes this poem effective is the way Neruda uses unusual dark imagery to express his point. The theme of the poem is unexpressed love, and Neruda begins the poem with imagery consistent with normal love sonnets. The major difference is that Neruda uses this standard imagery as a negative, as shown in the opening line, "I don't love you as if you were the salt-rose, topaz." Neruda then adds his darker imagery saying that rather than love you as most portray romantic love, "I love you as certain dark things are loved." Neruda continues the reference to roses and plants, again turning them into a negative, "I love you as the plant that doesn't bloom." This is effective because Neruda is effectively comparing his dark love with more acceptable romantic love. Romantic love is often related to flowers and roses. Neruda, by keeping this same focus but using negative images associated with flowers and roses, effectively captures the darkness of his love, as well as creating a startling image for the reader.

Sonnet 55, also in One Hundred Love Sonnets, is another example of dark and effective imagery. This poem is also not a typical love sonnet proclaiming love, but instead one that captures the feeling that love will end. Neruda writes, "Thorns, shattered glass, sickness, crying: all day / they attack the honied contentment." Thorns is another reference to roses, the usual symbol of love. By using this image, Neruda shows that love was never perfect, it was always known that it would end. Neruda continues with the lines, "Sorrow rises and falls, comes near with its deep spoons, / and no one can live without this endless motion." Again this is expressing how helpless people are to the realities of love. This is both an effective image and a dark one, the reader imagining the two people sleeping, while they are helpless to the sorrow that is approaching them, "Trouble seeps through, into the sleepers' peace." final example of unusual imagery is in Sonnet 79, also published in One Hundred Love Sonnets. The sonnet includes the lines, "And the two / together in their sleep will defeat the darkness / like a double drum in the forest, pounding / against the thick wall of wet leaves." This is a strong image, the pounding double drum in the forest, representing the heart beats of the two sleepers. The reader imagines these two sleepers in a dark forest, attempting to beat the forest. The 'thick wall of wet leaves' and the 'darkness' both show how difficult and disturbing a task it is. This is an effective metaphor for the psychological battle of the sleepers Neruda is referring to. This is effective in taking an emotional struggle and giving it physical substance so the reader can relate to it.

Neruda is also well-known for taking common objects in life and building metaphors around them. One of the books this is especially seen in is Residence on Earth, the book of poetry that established Neruda as a respected poet and the book that clearly shows his unique style. Neruda describes his approach to writing poetry in "Toward an Impure Poetry," an essay presented in the opening to Five Decades: A Selection. In this essay Neruda says (xxiii):

It is good, at certain hours of the day and night, to look closely at the world of objects at rest... From them flow the contacts of man with the earth, like a text for all troubled lyricists. The used surfaces of things, the wear that the hands give things, the air, tragic at times, pathetic at others, of such things -- all lend a curious attractiveness to the reality of the world that should not be underprized."

This description describes the basis for Neruda's unique use of imagery. He was not focused on creating complex images, but instead on getting down to the basics and presenting the real substance of life in new ways.

One example from Residence on Earth is a poem titled "Ritual of my Legs." Neruda describes his legs as if they are not part of him but some foreign things he cannot control, "

They climb from my knees, compact and cylindrical, / tight with the turbulent stuff of my life: / brutish and lubberly, like the arms of a goddess, / like trees monstrously clad in the guise of the human." This is a disturbing image and effectively conveys how alienated Neruda feels. The entire poem, describing a relationship with his legs, is a metaphor for how he feels about society. Just like his legs, society is a part of him and he cannot escape it, and just like his legs, he feels alien to it. This poem shows Neruda's double use of metaphor. Firstly, the entire poem is a metaphor and secondly, his metaphors within the poem are equally disturbing. The line, "Like trees monstrously clad in the guise of the human," is highly disturbing and expressive, effectively communicating the feelings Neruda is expressing and doing so in a way that ensures the reader is impacted by the image.

Another example from Residence on Earth is the poem "Walking Around." In this poem, Neruda effectively uses simple images that people can relate to. Neruda refers to washing hanging on the line as, "Slowly dribbling a slovenly tear." The effectiveness lies in the fact that readers can relate to this image, every reader has seen washing hanging on the line. This creates a clear image for the reader. At the same time, the new meaning given to the image, in this case by giving the washing emotions in describing it as crying, creates a unique image.

This effect has been likened to the surrealist style, where simple things get given different meanings, making them stand out to the audience. Duran and Safir (39) note that Residence on Earth, "Played a paramount role in sensitizing Latin American and Spanish readers to the values of surrealist styles in literature." The surrealist style is described as involving, "The free association of random images brought together in surprising juxtaposition (Baldick 217). This effectively describes Neruda's styles, except that Neruda's style has the added quality of using everyday objects as the basis for images. As Anderson (13) describes, Neruda takes everyday objects, "Out of what would be their routine or normal apprehension." This is a major component of what makes Neruda unique and also a major component of what makes him popular, all people can relate to these images, meaning that the average reader can read and gain meaning from his poems.

Poet for the People

The use of imagery and the use of nature in Neruda's poems have now been investigated. The next step is to consider why these uses make Neruda such a popular poet. Firstly, it is important to briefly consider what is meant by the term popular. In this context, popularity is used to express how the general public accept Neruda's poems. While Neruda may also be a fine poet and accepted by literary critics, this acceptance is not the same as popularity. Many poets are accepted by critics and the literature community without gaining popularity with the general public. In short, the focus here is on why the general public like Neruda.

The reason in short, is that Neruda is focused on writing for the general public. Neruda does not appear to be writing for critics, but instead directly focused on communicating with a wider audience. His use of nature and of imagery are both central to his popularity, but these aspects can both be seen as products of the focus of Neruda.

To express Neruda's approach and attitude as a poet, it is best to quote Neruda himself, who expressed his ideas on this topic effectively in his Nobel lecture, have often maintained that the best poet is he who prepares our daily bread: the nearest baker who does not imagine himself to be a god. He does his majestic and unpretentious work of kneading the dough, consigning it to the oven, baking it in golden colours and handing us our daily bread as a duty of fellowship. And, if the poet succeeds in achieving this simple consciousness, this too will be transformed into an element in an immense activity, in a simple or complicated structure which constitutes the building of a community, the changing of the conditions which surround mankind, the handing over of mankind's products: bread, truth, wine, dreams. If the poet joins this never-completed struggle to extend to the hands of each and all his part of his undertaking, his effort and his tenderness to the daily work of all people, then the poet must take part, the poet will take part, in the sweat, in the bread, in the wine, in the whole dream of humanity."

This speech conveys that Neruda was less concerned with his own self-worth and more concerned with creating something meaningful for the people. It is this focus on the people that led Neruda to incorporate both his focus on nature and his use of imagery.

Both the focus on nature and the use of imagery, allow Neruda to effectively make his points to all individuals. Nature is something everyone can relate to, as are the everyday objects Neruda incorporated into his work. This allows Neruda to use clear and effective imagery. When Neruda describes a violet in a vase wilting and compares it to a broom that never ages, the reader has a clear picture of these images. They are not the more usual complex images of poetry, yet it is their simplicity that makes them so effective. They are also not the most attractive images, but what is more important, is that they are real images. The reader can see the scene and associate themselves with them and in this way, understand fully the points that Neruda is trying to make. When Neruda describes feeling like his legs are alien to him, the reader can look down at their own legs and get a sense of how Neruda is feeling. The reader is easily able to relate to the images and this is what makes the imagery so effective, that the reader can fully understand it and so understand what Neruda is trying to communicate. Since Neruda is focused less on creating poetry and more on creating meaning, this is an appropriate technique and an effective one.

Another reason that Neruda's poems are so popular is that the imagery is unique enough to intrigue the reader, though without being too intellectual to be understood, and that it also makes the poems entertaining. The poem titled "Ritual of my Legs" is a good example of this. While the subject of the poem is a serious one, Neruda manages to make the poem entertaining also. The reader cannot help but think about what it is like to have legs that feel alien to you. While the poem is not comical, it has a hint of a surreal humor to it. This encourages the reader to enjoy reading the poem, as well as to understand its meaning.

This is also a good example of how Neruda creates intriguing images that ensure the reader keeps reading. The washing that is describes as crying in "Walking Around" is another example. The same applies to the metaphor, "Like a double drum in the forest, pounding / against the thick wall of wet leaves," seen in Sonnet 79 of One Hundred Love Sonnets. These metaphors are unique and striking to the reader. This ensures the poem is not glossed over, but that the reader is forced to pay attention. For example, if Neruda had of described the washing as being 'like leaves blowing in the wind' the image is not near as unusual and the reader is more likely to read past it without feeling the impact of the image. The same applies if the two people sleeping were described as having two beating hearts, 'like the hands of a clock ticking out of time.' Without the link to the forest image, this simile is not near as effective, since a dark forest creates a certain definite image.

The same applies to the unusual nature images Neruda uses. Nature images have a certain understanding attached to them, such as the rose and flowers representing love. Neruda uses this effectively by turning the images around and giving them new meaning. This ensures the reader is impacted by the image. Neruda's description of his love being like "the plant that doesn't bloom" is unique enough to stand out. If Neruda used the plant as a less unique image and said 'I love you like the plant that blooms in morning light,' the simile is much less effective and much less impacting on the reader.

Overall then, Neruda effectively uses both imagery and nature to make his poems distinctive and unique. At the same time, it is Neruda's focus on reaching out to people that leads to him using these techniques. By focusing on everyday objects and nature in his poems, he offers images that all people can relate to. By using these images in unusual ways he ensures that his poems have impact on the reader. It is the combination of these characteristics that makes Neruda a popular poet.