Pablo Neruda, words of love

"I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where. I love you straightforwardly, without complexities or pride; so I love you because I know no other way". Pablo Neruda.

This blog is a space for all that's related to languages, culture, art, technology, modern life, globalization and many other subjects that, in the end, end up being just different manners in which human beings express themselves and create new ways of living, dreaming, sharing and communicating.

Let's make the most out of this space to also share details about the life and work of different artists, writers, poets, journalists, photographers and other interesting characters from all over the world. Their lives and what they have expressed through their works have so many cultural and historical details and visions to teach us. It's worth reading a few paragraphs about them to, at least, remember any special quote that can make us better.

Today, the turn is for the famous Chilean poet, Pablo Neruda, whose real name was Neftalí Reyes Basoalto, and who was Doctor Honoris Causa of the Oxford University, and was awarded with the Lenin Peace Prize, as well as with the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1971 for his work, which was described by the Nobel Foundation with the following words: "for a poetry that with the action of an elemental force brings alive a continent's destiny and dreams".

Pablo Neruda is considered one of the greatest and most influential poets of the 20th Century. He was also politically active and always supported the government of the socialist Chilean president, Salvador Allende. He knew the Colombian writer, Gabriel García Márquez, who used to say Neruda was "the greatest poet of the 20th century in any language".

His seashore house in Isla Negra, in Chile, where he and his third wife are buried, is now a museum that hundreds of persons visit every year to feel a little bit of the magic of this great man's life, to see details of a place where he used to spend his time, to observe the objects that he used to collect and, maybe, to discover some of the spaces that used to inspire him…

It's not easy to choose just one of Neruda's poems to share with you in this short post. Still, you cannot write about Pablo Neruda without reading some of his words. Here it is:

Love

By Pablo Neruda

What's wrong with you, with us,
what's happening to us?
Ah our love is a harsh cord
that binds us wounding us
and if we want
to leave our wound,
to separate,
it makes a new knot for us and condemns us
to drain our blood and burn together.

What's wrong with you? I look at you
and I find nothing in you but two eyes
like all eyes, a mouth
lost among a thousand mouths that I have kissed, more beautiful,
a body just like those that have slipped
beneath my body without leaving any memory.

And how empty you went through the world
like a wheat-colored jar
without air, without sound, without substance!
I vainly sought in you
depth for my arms
that dig, without cease, beneath the earth:
beneath your skin, beneath your eyes,
nothing,
beneath your double breast scarcely
raised
a current of crystalline order
that does not know why it flows singing.
Why, why, why,
my love, why?

Breathtaking…There's so much to say about a man like Pablo Neruda; maybe the best way to discover his greatness is reading his poems and immersing oneself into that magical world of words and significances that he created to express his vision of the world. Luckily, his work has been translated to many languages and is there to teach and enrich the lives of millions of people from all around the world.

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