Synopses & Reviews
The atom, a tuna, laziness, lovethe everyday elements and essences of human experience glow in the translucent language of Neruda's odes. Chilean poet Pablo Neruda (1904-1973) wrote three books of odes during his lifetime.
Odas elementales was published in 1954, followed in subsequent years by
Nuevas odas elementales and
Tercer libro de las odas. Margaret Sayers Peden's selection of odes from all three volumes, printed with the Spanish originals on facing pages, is by far the most extensive yet to appear in English. She vividly conveys the poet's vision of the realities of day-to-day life in her translations, while her brief introduction describes the genesis of the poems.
To write simply of simple things was a task the poet undertook consciously, following his experiences in the Spanish Civil War, the "social conversion" that resulted from a visit to Macchu Picchu, and the writing of his epic Canto general (California, forthcoming). The odes are arranged in brief, sinuous lines that flow down the page and connect the poet to the animal, mineral, and vegetable world, to people and objects, and to the landscape of history. "Chile," Neruda once said in reference to the work of sixteenth-century poet Alonso de Ercilla, "was invented by a poet." In accepting the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1971, he declared that "We [writers from the vast expanse of America] are called upon to fill with words the confines of a mute continent, and we become drunk with the task of telling and naming." The odes reflect what Neruda saw as both an obligation and a privilegethe naming and defining of his world.
Synopsis
"Neruda's odes, coming as they did after the lyric intensity of Residencia en la tierra and the epic sweep of Canto general, carved out a new field for him and for Latin American poetry. . . . The Odas elementales have found a sensitive, sensible translator."John Felstiner, Stanford University
About the Author
Pablo Neruda (1904-1973) was born and died in Chile, but as a member of the diplomatic corps and later as a sort of roving cultural ambassador, he lived in and visited many parts of the world. His first book of poetry was published before he was twenty, and Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair, published the following year, made him famous throughout the Spanish-speaking world. Besides the Canto and the Elemental Odes series, the major works of his vast poetic production include Residence on Earth and Estravagario. Jack Schmitt is Professor of Spanish and Portuguese at California State University, Long Beach, and translator of Raul Zurita's Anteparadise (California, 1986). Reviewing Zurita's Anteparadise, critic W. S. Merwin called Schmitt a sensitive, precise, dedicated translator (Los Angeles Times Book Review).Roberto González Echevarría is R. Seldon Rose Professor of Spanish, Professor of Comparative Literature, and Chairman of the Department of Spanish at Yale University. Margaret Sayers Peden is Professor Emerita of Spanish at the University of Missouri, Columbia. The author of Emilio Carballidoand editor of The Latin American Short Story, A Critical History, she has translated more than twenty works of fiction, drama, and poetry.