Reading Against the Grain of Pablo Neruda’s Love Poetry:
A Feminist Perspective
In Veinte poemas de amor y una canción desesperada (1924), Los versos del capitán (1952), and Cien sonetos de amor (1959), Pablo Neruda has created some of the most celebrated love poetry in the Spanish language. Keith Ellis calls Veinte poemas, with its more than two million copies in print, “tal vez el libro de poesía más popular del mundo” (11), and René de Costa states that the influence of these poems “on subsequent love poetry in Spanish has been extraordinary” (35). The popularity of Neruda’s love poetry has led critics to speculate about the impact the texts have had on generations of readers but, to date, the issue has emerged only as a question mark left dangling at the end of much praise. Critics, like the millions of readers who have been drawn to these poems, generally tend to read them in a positive light, viewing them as a natural and beautiful expression of male / female love relationships. In a sense, the three thematically-linked works have become, over the years, a sort of manual on the workings of modern, romantic love and have come to be regarded, by many, as a standard against which real-life relationships can be judged.[1] Specifically, Neruda is lauded for the adept way in which he captures the intensity of emotion between the lovers: critics unfailingly speak of love in these poems as a shared experience, one which impacts on the male and female with equal force, and constitutes in equal measure the essence of their being. Neruda’s idealized treatment of woman as earth goddess or icon of desire has also received considerable praise, and has won him a reputation as a poet who is sensitive to the workings of the female mind, heart, and body. Antonio González Montes, for example, observes that in Neruda’s work, “el amor es una experiencia fundamental, profunda y total, compromete y envuelve de modo absoluto y absorbente a los seres que lo comparten” (25). He further notes that “el poeta se dirige en tono dialógico y apasionado a ella para enaltecer las diversas facetas y virtudes de su condición femenina excepcional y construye así una imagen casi sublime y notablemente idealizada de la mujer que comparte su amor” (25). Guillermo Araya speaks of “la mujer homenajeada” (179), and points out that she occupies a priviledged space in the text because she is the object of the male speaker’s unrelenting, adoring gaze (151). Belén Lagos goes one step further, attributing power to the female and relegating the male to a position of “cierta sutil impotencia” (187); the male becomes, in her opinion, “una figura frágil, añorante, acosada por la presencia infinita de la mujer” when confronted with the idealized woman of his dreams (187).
While a case could be made for any of these arguments, it is important to note that such views of Neruda’s love poetry are almost always fraught with contradiction and reflect (despite the actual sex of the critic) a distinctly male bias. That is to say, critics have tended to view love from the position of the male speaker in the texts rather than from the position of the female beloved. In this way, they promote and disseminate the same one-sided, masculine perspective that is found in the poems themselves, while the female perspective has, with rare exception, been systematically ignored.[2] Much has been written about Neruda’s “neo-romantic” vision of male / female love relationships, but surprisingly little attention has been given to the sexual dialectics which lie beneath the surface of these poems. Only by reading against the grain, as feminist critics have urged us to do, can the familiar be seen in terms of a new and different pattern. By entering well-known and well-loved texts from new critical directions, we gain what Adrienne Rich has called “re-vision,” the ability to see “with fresh eyes” aspects of that work which previously may have escaped our attention. There is no doubt that Neruda is a gifted poet; whether he is guilty of sexism as a writer is not a point I wish to debate here. But, I do take issue with the critical readings of Neruda which have drawn attention to the repression, subjugation, and silencing of women in his poetry only to dismiss these factors as natural conditions which are in and of themselves praiseworthy. Sexism does not reside so much in the actual images as in the reading of those images: why is the passive, silenced woman seen in a position of power when her very existence depends on her male lover? Why is she viewed as man’s equal when she is portrayed in the texts as his subordinate? Why do critics speak about a dialogue between the lovers when the woman’s part is never voiced? In the guise of honoring womanhood and its uniqueness, these readings of Neruda’s love poetry conceal textual contradictions that are symptomatic of the way women are repressed in patriarchal culture.
It is true that the male speaker in the poems glorifies his female beloved, for example, but what if this is merely a clever strategy that enables him to avoid dealing with her as his equal? His tendency to endow woman with larger-than-life qualities and present her as a mythic figure associated with cosmic imagery is offset by his frequent treatment of her as a fragmented body part, designed for man’s pleasure, and by his insistence that his love for her is the only solid core to her being. Neruda, consciously or not, subordinates the female to the role of man’s creation in his poems. Man is the speaker, the creator of meaning, while woman is the silent, passive listener. Only by becoming an object of love does the woman come into being. Without her male lover, she is “vacía, sin substancia” (“El amor,” LVDC). This portrayal of woman in the texts is sharply juxtaposed with that of the male speaker, who does not depend on the physical presence or the love of the female for his existence. At times, the woman’s absence is even considered preferable, since it allows the male to recreate her in the text, and thus provides him with a heightened level of inspiration. Without her love, he may feel lost, but his identity is never in crisis; he says, without hesitation, “todos saben quién soy” (“El daño,” LVDC). She, on the other hand, remains an eternal enigma, for she has no voice with which to answer the speaker’s anguished question, “quién eres tú, quién eres?” (VP 17).
Even those critics who have most enthusiastically praised Neruda’s treatment of women have acknowledged the problems inherent in his approach, although they are reluctant to call them real problems. In some cases, the tone of Neruda’s virile male speaker is (perhaps unconsciously) picked up and mimicked by the critic, to the extent that Araya finds himself writing about the female beloved in the texts as “esa magnífica materialidad de carne” (152), and expressing delight in “su cuerpo de admirables ‘muslos blancos’ . . .” (151). González Montes refers to “la contemplación gozosa de la totalidad y de cada una de las partes de la figura femenina: los hombros, los pechos, la cintura, el cabello, la piel, etc. . .” (28). Araya notes that in Veinte poemas, “la amada es esencialmente carne” (165), and adds, “siendo ella objeto pasivo del amor, no manifiesta su identidad ni dentro del libro ni fuera de él” (168). He also notes, “Ella no tiene voz propia en este poemario. No se expresa con sus propias palabras ni desde su propio centro. La amada existe sólo en la medida que el yo le permite manifestarse. Más que un sujeto que actúa y ama, la amada es un objeto al que se dirige la capacidad amatoria del yo” (168). Despite these astute observations, however, Araya continues to view the image of woman that emerges from the text as a positive one, for he believes that she is “sometida a la ley natural” (182) which conditions her to accept the male speaker as a superior being (159). Apparently unaware of the sexist implications of these statements, he goes on to say, “No es difícil entonces que la muchacha y la mujer que leen este libro se identifiquen con la imagen femenina que brota de él” (187). Because these poems play on and against the culturally accepted norm of romantic love, both male and female readers tend to approach them wearing blinders. The situation described by Neruda’s male speaker in the three collections of poems does not seem abnormal or out of place in Latin American society. In fact, it seems extraordinarily “real,” and “natural,” as if it were not a literary construct at all but, rather, a reflection of real-life experiences. Readers who turn to these poems to learn “what love is supposed to be like,” “what men are like,” and “what women are like,” ultimately receive a skewed message, told from the traditional dominant male position. But, because the bias of that message is concealed by a veneer of realism, it is not immediately apparent to those who approach the text carrying with them all of the trappings of a patriarchal culture. The texts reflect the notion of sexual difference as set out by that culture, and validate the existing discursive structures which have confined woman to what might best be called “an epistemological ghetto.”[3]
The structure of Neruda’s love poetry lends itself to this end since, in most cases, it takes the form of a whispered (one-sided) dialogue between lovers or a tortured soliloquy, which the reader only casually happens to overhear. The reader, like the spectator in a movie theatre, becomes a secret witness to a highly charged emotional scene played out by others who are seemingly unaware of his or her presence. Fascinated by this situation, the reader is engrossed by what is said (the enunciation itself) rather than the way the enunciation is constructed or the position from which it is uttered (the act of enunciation). The mode of production is supressed, thereby granting the text more power and authority by presenting it as reality rather than artifice. As E. Diedre Pribram has observed with reference to film, “The function of a text is to position the spectator to receive certain favoured—and restricted—meaning which the text ‘manages’ for the viewing subject in keeping with dominant ideology. In this model the spectator is not an active part of the production of textual meaning but the passive side of a unidirectional relationship in which the text disperses meanings while the spectator-subject receives them” (5). A similar situ-ation occurs in Neruda’s poems, for the reader’s gaze is controlled by the “yo” who generates the discourse, much as the movie spectator’s view is controlled by the seemingly invisible camera eye. Both situations place the reader / spectator in a limiting framework, without appearing to do so, by entrusting a fictional character with the omnipotent and coercive gaze which, in actuality, belongs to the machinery of enunciation.[4] In Neruda’s poems, the male speaker is seen as the voice of authority; his view is rarely, if ever, questioned, since it is presented as the only view possible. Because he duplicates dominate cultural values in his text, his voice has the ring of truth to it. But, as E. Ann Kaplan has noted, this “dominating male gaze, carrying with it social, political, and economic as well as sexual power, relegates women to absence, silence, and marginality . . .” (5). In this light, Neruda’s text can be seen as both container and disseminater of ideology, for it promotes the long-standing notion of male superiority and female passivity as natural facts when, in reality, they are merely culturally determined conditions.
Mary Ann Doane has shown how, in mainstream cinema, “the woman is deprived of a gaze, deprived of subjectivity and repeatedly transformed into the object of a masculine scopophiliac desire” (2). She notes, specifically, that “the privileged object of the scopophiliac drive is the female body” (14). In what has become a landmark study in feminist film criticism, Laura Mulvey examines the implications of this situation and concludes:
[The female figure] connotes something that the look continually circles around but disavows: her lack of a penis, implying a threat of castration and hence unpleasure. . . . [T]he meaning of woman is sexual difference, the absence of the penis as visually ascertainable, the material evidence on which is based the castration complex essential for the organization of entrance to the symbolic order and the law of the father. Thus the woman as icon, displayed for the gaze and enjoyment of men, the active controllers of the look, always threatens to evoke the anxiety it originally signified. (13)
One way of dealing with the castration threat evoked by the woman is to turn her into an object of fetish, substituting her body, a part of her body, her beauty, or her smile for the missing phallus. In this way, woman represents not herself but, by a process of displacement, the male who gazes at her. Kaplan explains: “through fetishizing the female form, man attempts to deny its difference” (5). This tendency to fetishize woman is abundantly clear in Neruda’s love poems; in some cases, the entire poetic text is devoted to the visual impact her body has on the male speaker. Are the poems really about her, then? Or, are they attempts on the part of the masculine “yo” to come to terms with his own being?
The first poem of the Veinte poemas collection, which sets the tone for the whole work, is addressed not to the woman but to her body: “Cuerpo de mujer.” This body, however feminine in aspect, belongs to him, for the woman is his possession: “Cuerpo de mujer mía.” The speaker outlines those parts of her associated with his erotic pleasure (muslos, piel, pecho, ojos, pubis, voz) and addresses her as a silent, passive recipient of his male desire, “en tu actitud de entrega.” Poems 8 and 9 echo this same image of woman as a passive sex partner, when the speaker gives her the order, “Cierra tus ojos profundos . . . / desnuda tu cuerpo” and tells her, “tu paralelo cuerpo se sujeta en mis brazos.” In Poem 13, he describes the woman’s body as the earth, referring to “el atlas blanco de tu cuerpo.” However, the woman’s body acquires meaning (as an atlas) only when the male speaker marks important points on it with his kisses. The speaker occasionally declares his love for the “tú” of the poems but, more often, he speaks of his love for “tu cuerpo”: “Amé desde hace tiempo tu cuerpo de nácar soleado” (14), “amo tu cuerpo alegre” (19). He loves her “senos perfumados” (14), her “voz suelta” (19), her “grandes ojos fijos” (20). He tells her, “tu color y forma son como yo los quiero” (16); she is his “mujer de labios dulces” (16), his “niña morena y ágil” (19). In the “Canción desesperada” which closes the collection, the speaker sums up his feelings for the woman, calling her “carne, carne mía.”
Neruda’s tendency to portray the woman as an object of fetish does not disappear in his more mature love poetry. En Los versos del capitán, published 28 years after the Veinte poemas, we find entire poems dedicated to fragmented parts of the beloved’s body: “Tus pies,” “Tus manos,” “Tu risa.” In each of these poems, the body part acquires importance because it evokes pleasure in the male; therefore, the emphasis is on his perception of the woman’s feet, hands, and smile rather than on the woman herself. The male speaker in this collection, like his counterpart in Veinte poemas, perceives the female body as something which exists only for his gratification: “Todo tu cuerpo tiene copa o dulzura destinada a mí” (“El alfarero”), “tu eres la copa / que esperaba los dones de mi vida” (“La noche en la isla”). Because he is attracted by different types of women, but wants only this one as his own, she becomes all women to him: “morena y clara mía / alta y pequeña mía / ancha y delgada mía / mi fea, mi hermosura”; her purpose in life is to give him pleasure and comfort; she is “hecha para mis brazos / hecha para mis besos / hecha para mi alma” (“El inconstante”). “En ti la tierra” first portrays the woman as “diminuta y desnuda,” and the male speaker notes, “parece que en una mano mía cabes.” But, just as he is at the point of folding his hand around her miniature form to carry it to his mouth to devour her, he glimpses parts of her body that evoke an erotic response in him (pies, boca, labios, hombros, pechos, cintura, ojos). The action then stops, and the speaker watches in fascination as his desire for the woman causes her to assume larger-than-life proportions and, finally, become the earth itself. In “Bella,” the speaker enumerates the parts of the woman’s body which are most beautiful to him: “La sonrisa en tu rostro,” “finas manos y delgados pies,” “tu cabeza,” “tus ojos,” “tus senos,” “tu cintura,” “tus caderas,” “el aroma de tu cuerpo,” “tu voz, tu piel, tus uñas.” These parts make up a whole which belongs to him:
todo eso es mío, bella,
todo eso es mío, mía,
cuando andas o reposas,
cuando cantas o duermes,
cuando sufres o sueñas,
siempre,
eres mía, mi bella,
siempre
Although the speaker is generally fascinated by the body of his beloved, at times it holds no special interest for him. On these occasions, her body becomes an empty symbol, signifying nothing, because it cannot contain his desire:
. . . Yo te miro
y no hallo nada en ti sino dos ojos
como todos los ojos, una boca
perdida entre mil bocas que besé, más hermosas,
un cuerpo igual a los que resbalaron
bajo mi cuerpo sin dejar memoria. (“El amor”)
In the Cien sonetos de amor, the speaker once again takes up the female body as fetish. He calls the woman’s body “mi territorio de besos y volcanes,” and speaks of “tus pies creados para mí” (V). He finds the source of life and sustenance “en tus caderas” (V), “en tu abrazo” (VIII); he expresses hunger for “tu boca,” ”tu voz,” “tu pelo,” “tus pies,” “tu risa,” “tus manos,” “tus uñas”; he says, “quiero comer tu piel como una intacta almendra” (XI). The image of the woman’s body as food for the lover is repeated numerous times in the Cien sonetos: she is a “manzana carnal” (XII), “pan que devoro” (XIII), “el pan de cada día” (LXXVII); her figure takes the form of “cereal viajero” (XXVI). Fragmented parts of her body have the same function: “pan tu frente, pan tus piernas, pan tu boca,” but it is only his love for her which transforms her from raw wheat into bread, “pan amado por el fuego,” “mi amor era el carbón” (XIII); “en tu corazón el tiempo echó su harina, / mi amor contruyó un horno . . .” (LXXVII). Soneto XIV is devoted entirely to a description of the beloved’s hair, while Soneto XXVII is dedicated to her nude body: “Desnuda eres tan simple como una de tus manos,” “Desnuda eres pequeña como una de tus uñas.” Her laugh is the central image of Soneto LI, while Soneto LII is devoted to her voice (which, ironically, is never heard in the text). In Soneto XV, the speaker defines his beloved in the same terms used by the adolescent lover in Veinte poemas: “eres cuerpo.” But, again, the significance of the woman’s body depends on the male speaker’s perception of her: she is alternately “mi fea” and “mi bella” depending on his mood (Soneto XX). Despite the speaker’s overwhelming love for the woman, she continues to signify “otherness” for him, and is vaguely threatening; he says, “Soy un hombre dispuesto a amar a sus semejantes. / No sé quién eres” (LXXVII). His identity is fixed: “fui, soy, seré” (LXXVII), but she remains the eternal question mark, just as she was for the male speaker in Veinte poemas.
Mulvey has observed that “Woman . . . stands in patriarchal culture as signifier for the male other, bound by a symbolic order in which man can live out his phantasies and obsessions through linguistic command by imposing them on the silent image of woman still tied to her place as bearer of meaning, not maker of meaning” (7). Kaplan adds, “the threat that [woman’s] sexuality poses emerges in projecting . . . hostility onto the female image. . . . Man at once desires her and fears her power over him. . . . [H]er sexuality intervenes destructively in his life” (6). In Neruda’s love poetry, woman alternates between various roles, all of which involve male fantasy: she is at times a beneficent, nurturing earth mother to his lost-little-boy persona; at other times, she is a dangerously alluring seductress who threatens to rob him of his soul; at times she is an immobilized icon, a frozen image of beauty or sensuality; at other times, she is the busy little housewife, preparing food, washing clothes, darning her lover’s socks. What allows her to occupy all of these positions with equal ease is her silence, her lack of a voice. She becomes whatever her lover imagines her to be at that moment. If she is unique in any way, it is only because she is his special creation: “a nadie te pareces desde que yo te amo” (poema 14, VP). He refers to the time before she met him as the time “cuando aún no existías” (“La noche en la isla,” LVDC). As his beloved, she may be a queen, but he is the one who places the crown on her head and allows it to remain there; he tells her, “te corono, pequeña monarca de mis huesos” (XXXI, CS), “Yo te he nombrado reina” but he warns her, “Nadie ve tu corona de cristal,” “sólo tú y yo” (“La reina,” LVDC). Without him, she is barren, lifeless, and ineffective. It is his “cuerpo de labriego salvaje” which digs into her, fertilizes her, and “hace saltar el hijo” (1, VP). He will make her blossom and bear fruit, “Quiero hacer contigo / lo que la primavera hace con los cerezos” (14, VP). He will give her direction and power, as “una flecha en mi arco, . . . una piedra en mi honda” (1, VP). He will give her a voice as “aquella guitarra / que toqué en las tinieblas y sonó como el mar desmedido” (XXII, CS). The woman is, he believes, a reflection of his soul; he explains, “emerges de las cosas, llena del alma mía / . . . te pareces a mi alma” (15, VP); “juntos somos completos como un solo río” (“El alfarero,” LVDC); “frente al mundo somos una sola vida” (XXIII, CS), “Somos un solo espacio oscuro” (LXXXIV, CS). She is also his prisoner, “en la red de mi música estás presa / y mis redes . . . son anchas como el cielo” (16, VP); his slave, “Tienes que obedecerme / . . . soy tu dueño” (“La pregunta,” LVDC); and his chosen: “yo te escogí entre todas las mujeres” (“La prodiga,” LVDC), “Eres del pobre Sur, de donde viene mi alma / . . . Por eso te escogí, compañera” (XXIX, CS), “de todos los dones de mi patria / solo escogí tu corazón salvaje” (XLVI, CS). She cannot escape her fate: “Aquí te amo y en vano te oculta el horizonte” (18, VP); for, as he tells her, her freedom can only be achieved through him: “para tu libertad bastan mis alas” (12, VP).
But, her silence is a double-edged sword, for if it allows him to control her by imposing his fantasy on her, it also allows her to distance herself from him and to remain the “other,” despite his attempts to erase difference between them. The male speaker is obsessed with his woman’s silence and aloofness. He refers to her “ojos de ausencia” and her “voz lenta y triste” which speaks to him only of silence (1, VP). Similar images pervade the Veinte poemas; the lover tells the beloved, “siento viajar tus ojos” (6), “los ojos se te hubieran volado” (15); he refers to “tus ojos de luto,” veiled eyes, which are his inspiration (16), and “tus ojos oceánicos,” “tus ojos ausentes,” where he finds nothing but “tinieblas” (7). Puzzled by her mystery, he says “alguna vez corrió una sombra extraña por tus ojos” (14), and he accuses her, “Amo lo que no tengo. Estás tú tan distante” (18). He speaks of “tu voz misteriosa” (3), “tu voz lenta” (5), “tu voz suelta” (19), but, on each occasion, her voice says nothing to him. She is “muda” (2), “silenciosa” (8); he is alternately plagued and enchanted by “tu silencio” (3), “el silencio tuyo” (15). Although he tells her, “Me gustas cuando callas porque estás como ausente” (15), it is clear that the woman’s silence also threatens him. He calls her, “hembra distante y mía” (7), attempting to bridge the gap between them by reminding her that she belongs to him. He reproaches her, “siempre, siempre te alejas en las tardes” and asks her, “dónde estabas? diciendo qué palabras?” (l0). She is a “pregunta de humo” (11), “como una nube” (16), a being without substance. He tells her, “tú estás más lejos que nadie,” “tu presencia es ajena, extraña a mí como una cosa” (17), “nada hacia ti me acerca / todo de ti me aleja” (19). In Poem 4, the male speaker tries to break through the female’s silence by making it jointly owned; it becomes “nuestro silencio enamorado,” although it is obvious that only she is truly silent (since he is speaking the words). He says, in Poem 5, that his words belong to her: “Más que mías son tuyas” but, once again, it is clear that the words are spoken by him, and therefore are his, not hers. He begs her, “déjame que te hable . . . con tu silencio,” but her silence is beyond his reach: “tu silencio es de estrella, tan lejano y sencillo” (15). The male speaker of Los versos del capitán does not fare any better in his attempt to break through female silence; he notes, “A veces te hundes, caes / en tu agujero de silencio,” and his question, “Amor mío, qué encuentras / en tu pozo cerrado?” goes unanswered (“El pozo”).
Because the male speaker is unable to penetrate her “otherness,” he feels he must penetrate her body with force, to reassert his control over her, and to ward off the threat her sexuality poses for him. Nowhere is this more evident than in the section entitled “Deseo” in Los versos del capitán. Emir Rodríguez Monegal has praised this section, specifically the poem “El tigre,” as being representative of “el deseo de todos los hombres.” If this is indeed so, it is a frightening thought, for the poems deal overtly with rape and contain numerous images of violence directed against the female figure. “El tigre” casts the male speaker in the lead role and portrays him as a wild animal, lying in wait for his female victim: “Soy el tigre. / Te acecho entre las hojas.” He spies on the female as she arrives at the edge of the river and disrobes; then, when she is most defenseless, he springs into action:
Desnuda te sumerges.
Espero.
Entonces en un salto
de fuego, sangre, dientes,
de un zarpazo derribo
tu pecho, tus caderas.
Bebo tu sangre, rompo
tus miembros uno a uno.
Sated after his feast, the tiger / male speaker settles down to guard what is left of the woman (“tus huesos, tu ceniza”) and gloats over what his “amor asesino” has accomplished. “El condor” similarly casts the male speaker in a powerful, savage role and shows him attacking his female victim: “caminas / y de pronto en un ruedo / de viento, pluma, garras, / te asalto y te levanto / en un ciclón silbante / de huracanado frío.” This time, however, the woman does not die, but she must grow feathers and learn to fly, she must become his “hembra condor” so that she can be of help to her mate. “El insecto” is somewhat more subtle, but the principal image of the poem is still an uninvited invasion of the woman’s body. Here, the male speaker takes the form of a crawling insect who works his way along the woman’s hips, legs, and feet, seeing entry to “un cráter, una rosa / de fuego humedecido!,” “tu contorno de vasija quemante!”
Another strategy used by the male speaker to deal with woman’s “otherness” is to cast her in the role of comrade, thus attempting to remove her from the sexual sphere and thereby erase difference. The section entitled “Las vidas” in Los versos del capitán presents a more socially and politically committed male speaker, but his attitude toward the female beloved has changed only in superficial ways. Although he addresses her as “camarada,” she continues to be his “querida,” his “mujercita.” She is not his equal in the political struggle, but merely a campfollower who looks after the needs of her man. He is still the one in charge, the one who gives orders, “Bésame de nuevo, querida. / Limpia ese fusil, camarada” (“El amor del soldado”). He tells her, “Te veo / lavando mis pañuelos, / colgando en la ventana / mis calcetines rotos” (“No sólo el fuego”). His treatment of the beloved in “Pequeña América” is similar to the earth godess image of woman found in the Veinte poemas: “así a lo largo de tu cuerpo, / pequeña América adorada, / las tierras y los pueblos / interrumpen mis besos. . .”. The final poem of the collection, “La carta en el camino,” restates the male speaker’s basic premise that woman’s only contribution to social and political change is to stay at home and wait for her man to return. He tells her, “Adorada, me voy a mis combates,” “regreso / a luchar a mi tierra,” “llevo / mis manos llenas de tu ser desnudo,” “No he salido de ti cuando me alejo,” “Dulce mía, adorada, / vendrás conmigo a luchar cuerpo a cuerpo / porque en mi corazón viven tus besos,” “Tu amor. . . me ayuda: / es una flor cerrada / que cada vez me llene con su aroma. . .”. Her task is simple: “limpia, levanta, / defiende / nuestro amor, alma mía. / Yo te lo dejo como si dejara / un puñado de tierra con semillas.” When he has won the battle and conquered his enemies, it will be safe for the woman to join him; until then, he tells her, “Adiós, amor, te espero.” The ancient theme of soldier-going-to-war, woman-waiting-at-home functions as a reminder to the woman that her role is passive, she is without power, and she is dependent on her man. She participates only vicariously in the political struggle and, as the thrill of war replaces the thrill of sex for the male, she no longer has any real hold on him, except on a romantic, nostalgic level. In this way, she ceases to represent a threat and can be cast in a new role, as the guardian of domestic tranquility.
Neruda’s female figures are equally at home in the kitchen as they are in the bedroom; the male speaker of the Cien sonetos refers to his beloved as the “reina de apio.” He tells her, “me gusta ver brillar tu imperio diminuto, / las armas de la cera, del vino, del aceite, del ajo, de la tierra por tus manos abierta . . .” (XXXVI). He catches her at work in her house: “subes, cantas, corres, caminas, bajas, plantas, coses, cocinas . . .” (XXXVII), “regando rosas enmarandas” (XXXIX). The image of woman as the nurturing mother allows the male to live out another fantasy, that he is a helpless child who depends on her for his very life: “no te vayas por un minuto, bienamada, / porque en ese minuto te habrás ido tan lejos / que yo cruzaré toda la tierra preguntando / si volverás o si me dejarás muriendo” (XLV); “Matilde, dónde estás? . . . / Me hizo falta la luz de tu energía / y miré el vacío que es sin ti una casa, / no quedan sino trágicas ventanas” (LXV). But, once again, the male speaker remains at the center of the poem: the woman’s absence is a problem only for him, because he needs her to reflect his own image back to him, like a child in Lacan’s mirror stage. His position is not, in essence, different from that of the adolescent lover in the Veinte poemas who cast his woman in the role of earth mother and saw, through her, a way of merging with the cosmos. Although the male speaker may portray himself as helpless and insignificant when confronted with the greatness of woman, it is clear that the woman has no real power over him, and that he is still firmly in control. This attitude is evident in “La infinita,” where he begins the poem by reminding his beloved of his power and abilities:
Ves estas manos? Han medido
la tierra, han separado
los minerales y los cereales,
han hecho la paz y la guerra,
han derribado las distancias
de todos los mares y ríos. . . .
Nevertheless, he claims, when his hands reach out to hold her, “no alcanzan a abarcarte.” It is not her size or her importance which defy his grasp; she is “pequeña, / grano de trigo, alondra.” It is his perception of her which makes her great: “Para mí eres tesoro más cargado / de inmensidad que el mar y sus racimos / y eres blanca y azul y extensa como / la tierra en la vendimia” (emphasis mine). Her power and magnitude, then, are merely illusions on his part, which can disappear as quickly as they came into being. Without him, she is nothing: “Si me apartas tu vida / morirás / aunque vivas. / Seguirás muerta o sombra / andando sin mí por la tierra” (“El desvío”). The woman has no right to distance herself from her man, he asserts, for his love has absorbed her and made her a part of him; he reminds her, “Ya eres mía” (LXXXI), and encourages her to surrender her identity to him: “Reposa con tu sueño en mi sueño / . . . junto a mí eres pura como el ámbar dormido” (LXXXI); “cierra tus sueños, entra con tu cielo en mis ojos, / extiéndete en mi sangre como en un ancho río” (LXXXII). This is a verbalization of the child’s most elemental wish, to have nothing stand in the way of his desire, and to be at one with his mother. By returning to the Imaginary Order where sexual difference does not exist, the female poses no threat for the male because she has not yet been perceived as the “other.”
As John Felstiner observes, it is difficult to attack “the sexism intrinsic to Neruda’s view of man and woman,” because he is “a writer who produced so much genuinely compelling verse; a writer whose long career spoke for so many in Latin America, and whose death seemed to follow inevitably on the tragic seizure of Chile’s government in September 1973” (91). Without a doubt, Neruda is one of the most highly acclaimed of Latin America’s poets, and one of the most beloved. To a large extent, his life is an open book; it is widely known that his love poems were inspired by real women in his life, and readers have long been encouraged by Neruda himself to find autobiographical elements in his work. To criticize his literary treatment of women in light of his immense popularity, the positive critical reaction to his work, and the myth that has grown up around the figure of the man who produced these poems verges on blasphemy. If Neruda (and his critics) are guilty of sexism, one might ask, why have millions of readers, male and female alike, been drawn to his texts? It is relatively easy to understand why male readers might with to identify with the ideal alter-ego provided by the virile, attractive, powerful male speaker. But what kind of image is offered to the female reader? Neruda’s women possess the qualitites we have been taught to covet: they are beautiful, sensual, desirable, and eminently agreeable. At the same time, however, they are passive, defenseless, devoid of meaning, and totally subordinate to their male lover. Despite the cosmic trappings that envelop them, they are still recognizable as ordinary women who look after their man and take care of his needs. In short, they strike us as being “real,” rather than the carefully chosen literary constructs they are. They want what all women have been conditioned to want in the way of self-fulfillment: romantic love. They may have no identity, no voice, no sense of purpose, but, in exchange, they are promised the reward of man’s eternal devotion if they agree to play their role properly:
si cada día,
cada hora
sientes que a mí estás destinada
con dulzura implacable.
Si cada día sube
una flor a tus labios a buscarme,
ay amor mío, ay mía,
en mí todo ese fuego se repite,
en mí nada se apaga ni se olvida,
mi amor se nutre de tu amor, amada,
y mientras vivas estará en tus brazos
sin salir de los míos. (“Si tú me olvidas”)
The message to female readers is clear: woman bears the responsibility of attracting, nurturing, and keeping man’s love alive. He is not obliged to love her and, as he often reminds her, he can fare better without her than she can without him. Without love, he is still a man, but she, without love, is nothing. This is what Molly Haskell has called “the big lie perpetrated on Western society,” “the idea of woman’s inferiority, a lie so deeply ingrained in our social behavior that merely to recognize it is to risk unraveling the entire fabric of civilization” (1). Haskell acknowledges that it is not only men who prefer women in acquiescent roles; even today, there are many women who, “wishing women’s lib would go away like a bad dream, secretly enjoy [men] ‘putting them in their place’” (32). Neruda’s women are familiar images, women “as they should be.” His men are “real men.” Together, they function to reassure us that everything is as it has always been, and that all is well with the world. But, is it? Are men and women destined to repeat, generation after generation, the same patterns? Are they eternally locked in their gender-specific roles? A first step in breaking out of these restricting bonds is to learn to question the familiar, and to ask if other patterns are not possible, even preferable, to the ones we have before us. It is said that beauty is in the eye of the beholder; if this is true, then, we must learn to view beauty in different ways, so that we do not see it in the subjugation of women, nor in the silencing of the female voice, as Neruda’s readers have done in the past.
Works Cited
Aguirre, Margarita. Genio y figura de Pablo Neruda. Buenos Aires: Edit. Universitaria de Buenos Aires, 1964.
Agosín, Marjorie. Pablo Neruda. Boston: Twayne, 1986.
Alazraki, Jaime. Poética y poesía de Pablo Neruda. NY: Las Americas, 1965.
Alonso, Amado. Poesía y estilo de Pablo Neruda. Buenos Aires: Sudamericana, 1968.
Araya, Guillermo. “Veinte poemas de amor y una canción desesperada.” Bulletin Hispanique 84.1-2 (1982): 145-88.
Cortazar, Julio. “Neruda entre nosotros.” Plural (March 1974): 38-41.
de Costa, René. The Poetry of Pablo Neruda. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1979.
Doane, Mary Ann. The Desire to Desire: The Woman’s Film of the 1940s. Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1982.
___, Patricia Mellencamp, and Linda Williams, eds. Re-vision. Essays in Feminist Film Criticism. Frederick, MD: University Publications of America, 1984.
Durán, Manuel. “Pablo Neruda y la tradición romántica y simbolista.” Cuadernos Americanos 230 (1980): 187-99.
Felstiner, John. “A Feminist Reading of Neruda.” Parnassus: Poetry in Review 3.2 (1974): 90-112.
Ellis, Keith. “Explorando el amor: la búsqueda infructuosa de Veinte poemas de amor y una canción desesperada.” Revista de Crítica Literaria Latinoamericana 11.21-22 (1985): 11-19.
González Montes, Antonio. “Los versos del capitán de Neruda: la dialéctica del amor.” Revista de Crítica Literaria 21-22 (1985): 21-45.
Haskell, Molly. From Reverence to Rape: The Treatment of Women in the Movies. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1973.
Kaplan, E. Ann. Women and Film: Both Sides of the Camera. New York: Methuen, 1983.
Lagos, Belén. “Temor y destrucción en la erótica de Neruda.” Revista de la Universidad de Costa Rica 41 (1975): 187-92.
Mulvey, Laura. “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema.” Screen 16.3 (1975): 6-18.
Neruda, Pablo. Obras completas. 2 Vols. Buenos Aires: Losada, 1957.
Pérez, Arturo. “La soledad en la poesía neorromántica y surrealista de Pablo Nerudo.” Hispanófila 70 (1980): 17-27.
Pimentel, Aurora. “La poesía amatoria de Pablo Neruda.” Plural 11.5 (1981): 61-68.
Pribram, E. Deidre, ed. Female Spectators Looking at Film and Television. London: Verso, 1988.
Rich, Adrienne. “When We Dead Awaken: Writing as Re-Vision.” On Lies, Secrets and Silence. New York: W.W. Norton, 1979.
Rodríguez Monegal, Emir. El viajero inmóvil: Introducción a Pablo Neruda. Buenos Aires: Losada, 1966.
Silverman, Kaja. The Subject of Semiotics. New York and Oxford: Oxford UP, 1983.
[1]Julio Cortázar writes about the impact Neruda’s love poetry had on his generation in “Neruda entre nosotros”: “Jóvenes pumas ansiosos de morder en lo más hondo de una vida profunda y secreta, de espaldas a nuestras tierras, a nuestras voces, traidores inocentes y apasionados, cerrándose en cónclaves de café y de pensiones bohemias: entonces entró Eva hablando español desde un librito de bolsillo nacido en Chile, Veinte poemas de amor y una canción desesperada. Muy pocos conocían a Pablo Neruda, a ese poeta que bruscamente nos devolvía lo nuestro, nos arrancaba a la vaga teoría de las amadas y las musas europeas para echarnos en los brazos a una mujer inmediata y tangible, para enseñarnos que un amor de poeta latinoamericano podía darse y escribirse hic et nunc, con las simples palabras del día, con los olores de nuestras calles, con la simplicidad del que descubre la belleza sin el asentimiento de los grandes heliotropos y la divina proporción.
[2]Others who have treated Neruda’s love poetry from the male perspective include: Aguirre, Alazraki, Alonso, Durán, Pérez, and Pimentel. While I do not disparage the work of these or other critics of Neruda’s poetry, I feel that they have contributed to the notion that the texts are “natural” reflections of male / female relationships and that the position of the woman in the texts is an enviable one. To my knowledge, the only critics to date who have acknowledged that the absence of a feminine perspective in Neruda’s poetry is problematic are John Felstiner and Marjorie Agosín. To them, this essay is indebted.
[3]This term is used by Mary Ann Doane, Patricia Mellencamp, and Linda Williams, in the introduction to their edited volume, of Josette Feral’s essay, “The Powers of Difference” (in The Future of Difference, ed. Hester Eisenstein and Alice Jardine [Boston: G. K. Hall, 1980]).
[4]For more on this process, known in film criticism as “suture,” see Silverman, chapter 5.