Twenty Love Poems And a Song of Despair - Softcover

Neruda, Pablo; Merwin, W.

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0140186484 ISBN 13: 9780140186482

Publisher: Penguin Classics, 1993

Synopsis

First published in 1924, "Viente Poemas de Amor y una Cancion Desperada remains among Neruda's most popular work. Daringly metaphorical, these poems are based upon his own private associations. Their sensuous use of nature symbolism to celebrate love and to express grief has not been surpassed in the literature of our century. This edition offers the original Spanish text, with masterly translations by W.S. Merwin on facing pages.

About this title

Review:

"the greatest poet of the twentieth century--in any language"

About the Author:

Neftali Ricardo Reyes, whose pseudonym was to be Pablo Neruda, was born in Parral, Chile, in 1904. He grew up in the pioneer town of Temuco, briefly encountering Gabriela Mistral, who taught there for a time. In 1920 he went to Santiago to study, and the following year published his first collection of poetry, La Cancion de la Fiesta. A second collection, Crepusculario, brought him critical recognition; and in 1924 the hugely successful Veinte Poemas de Amor y una Cancion Desesperada appeared. From 1927 to 1943, Neruda lived abroad, serving as a diplomat in Rangoon, Colombo, Batavia, Singapore, Buenos Aires, Barcelona, Madrid, Paris, and Mexico City. This is the period that saw the publication of the first two volumes of his celebrated Residencia en la Tierra. He joined the Communist Party of Chile after World War II, was prosecuted as a subversive, and began an exile that took him to Russia, Eastern Europe, and China. Already the most renowned Latin American poet of his time, he returned to Chile in 1952. He died there in 1973, having just seen the fourth edition of his Obras Completas through the press. In receiving the Nobel Prize in 1971, he had said that the poet must achieve a balance "between solitude and solidarity, between feeling and action, between the intimacy of one's self, the intimacy of mankind, and the relevation of nature."

W.S. Merwin has published many highly regarded books of poems, for which he has received a number of distinguished awards--the Pulitzer Prize, Bollingen Award, Fellowship of the Academy of American Poets and the Governor's Award for Literature of the state of Hawaii among them. He has translated widely from many languages, and his versions of classics such as The Poem of the Cid and The Song of Roland are standards.

Cristina García is the author of Dreaming in Cuban, which was nominated for a National Book Award.

About this edition

• Publisher: Penguin Classics
• Publication date: 1993
• ISBN 10: 0140186484
• ISBN 13: 9780140186482
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 72