As we looked quite carefully at Poema 1 in Neruda’s collection in class a couple days ago, I can’t help but look at the poem in a different light. At first glance, we realize basic themes of the poem: love, passion, etc., but as we began to pick and choose words from each line, and then again from each stanza, I started to think we may have been missing the bigger picture.
Neruda starts off by classifying the female in his poem as “a woman”. He is referring to all women in general and not just one specific woman. As we read one, we see he changes his view and the woman is classified as “my woman”. What is the change?
“Pero cae la hora de la venganza, y te amo” … translates to, “it came time for me to stop hurting you (to have vengeance on someone), and I began to love you. He begins to change his view on the woman and starts to describe her more sexually.
In blunt terms, I think this poem does not represent love well at all. I think it represents hate. To me, the woman in the poem is possibly being attacked, or raped. Neruda points out the parts of her body in detail: white legs, white thighs, etc., “Para sobrevivirme te forje” shows the woman is acting defensive, she may be faking her love back to the man so he doesn’t kill her in his rage. Neruda describes her body in more detail, in this part revealing not only her legs and thighs but her chest and her pubic area. “Ah tu voz lenta y triste!” The woman is sad, she is being violated. L
“Mi sed” can represent the thirst he has to be with her. We represent we are thirsty or hungry for something when we crave something. In this case, Neruda craves the woman he speaks of. The last two lines wrap up my theory … “donde la sed eternal sigue, y la fatigue sigue, y el dolor infinito” – he has had his way with her and he is no longer “thirsty”. He is fatigued from raping her and the infinite pain remains. Here, he can be describing the pain the woman is feeling – what she has gone through, it will never stop hurting.
Maybe I’m completely out of my element but it’s nice to look at a poem in a darker sense then sometimes it is portrayed to be.
While it is true that the poem is pretty dark and the relation with the woman that it exposes is not so sweet, I never really thought it could be talking about rape or true violence. Granted, it is not a very positive vision of woman, but here the poem makes me think about a conflicting relationship and the will to control the other merely in a spiritual way, not so much as rape... Then again, what is nice is that there is no definitive exegesis and we can read it with a lot of different interpretations!
ReplyDeleteSí, es muy interestante la idea que propones sobre el símbolo de la mujer. Me pregunta de estos significados también. Sobre una línea que mencionas, sin embargo – creo que “cae la hora de venganza” quiere decir que “now the hour of vengeance falls” – que esta hora llega en vez de acabarse como dices. Esta venganza puede ser una situación constituyendo de la mujer reciprocando la misma perspectiva superficial, o una falta de amor hacia el hombre…. y cuando aparece esta situación inversa, el hombre se da cuenta de que él la “ama” (o cree que él la ama). Por supuesto, estoy de acuerdo con la calidad “oscura” de sus poemas, y yo la encuentro muy enigmático también.
ReplyDelete(ps - hoy, mi sitio no parece funcionar, entonces aparezco como "veryverte", pero de veras, soy "sbb1990", Sam, - lo siento)