In his long life as a poet, Pablo Neruda succeeded in becoming what many poets have aspired to but never achieved: a public voice, a voice not just for the people of his country but for his entire continent. Widely translated, he probably reached more readers than any poet in history; justly so, for, as he often said, his "poet's obligation" was to become a voice for all those who had no voice, an aspiration that stemmed from his long-time commitment to the communist faith. Born in 1904 in the rainy south of Chile, he enjoyed from an early age the luck of attention. One of his first books, Twenty Love Poems, became a bible for lovers in the Spanish language, and confirmed him in his poet's vocation. At the same time he pursued a lifelong career as a diplomat, serving in a series of consular posts in the Far East and Europe. In 1971, while serving as Chilean ambassador to France, he was awarded the Nobel Prize for literature. In a famous essay, "On Impure Poetry," Neruda calls for "a poetry as impure as old clothes, as a body with its foodstains and its shame, with wrinkles, observations, dreams, wakefulness, prophesies, declarations of love and hate, stupidities, shocks, idylls, political beliefs, negations, doubts, affirmations, and taxes."
Did you know you can trade in your old books for an Amazon.co.uk Gift Card to spend on the things you want? Visit the Books Trade-In Store for more details. Special Offer until June 30, 2013: Receive an additional £5 promotional Gift Certificate, when you trade-in at least £10 worth of books. Learn more. |
Book Description
Product details
Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images?
|
Sell a Digital Version of This Book in the Kindle Store
If you are a publisher or author and hold the digital rights to a book, you can sell a digital version of it in our Kindle Store.
Learn more
What Other Items Do Customers Buy After Viewing This Item?
Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
4 of 4 people found the following review helpful
Amazon Verified Purchase
This is a surprisingly poorly-produced edition. The bilingual layout has the Spanish text nicely laid out on the left pages, and the English on the right, but the gutter chosen for the English is wrong so that the text is practically in the spine and the book has to be forced right open for comfortable reading. The paper is also poor. Nothing can spoil the poems themselves, of course.
18 of 20 people found the following review helpful
Amazon Verified Purchase
A girlfriend handed me this book while she went upstairs to change for our date. She came down ready 20 minutes later but we never actually left the house, as we spent the evening reading Neruda's poems to each other. Neruda writes with such imagination, conjouring delicate and emotive images that sometimes require several readings to appreciate. Delightful, intelligent and more, it has been very sympathetically translated, though some of his rhyming works lose their rhyme in translation.
17 of 21 people found the following review helpful
By A Customer
This book is filled with some of the best works of Pablo Neruda. Reading it brought back memories of people I know and have met. The poem Escribir, Por ejemplo:'la noche...., this poem was the first given to me by a very good spanish friend.
I love this volume, as sparse as it is because it is bilingual. No, don't speak Spanish. A smattering but enough to read out loud, although poorly. So with the English translation it is easy to follow and Mr Neruda was an orator and spoke with his verse to communicate to the heart of people. It covers 1924 up to 1967 and looks as if it has cherry picked a lot of the well known poems and missed some such as "Body of Woman" and "Lazybones". But it does have "Tonight I can Write the Saddest Lines" from Twenty love poems and a poem of despair and the visceral "The Word" from Plenos Poderes. A credible job in editing and the translations do not jar.It is accessible poetry and this book is a good place to start for those who like words to enter your blood and make your heart sing and cry.
Listmania!
|
|
Look for similar items by category
Feedback
- Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images?
- I am the Author, and I want to comment on my book.
- I am the Publisher, and I want to comment on this book.
