Neruda again
Nature, culture, market...
"In the morning, the miracle of this newly washed nature was overwhelming. I joined the fisherman very early. Equipped with long floats, the boats looked like sea spiders. The men pulled out fish of vivid colors, fish like birds from the teeming forset, some with the deep blue phosphorescence of intense living velvet, others shaped like prickly balloons that shriveled up into sorry little sacs of thorns.
With horror I watched the massacre of those jewels of the sea. The fish were sold in segments to the poor. The machetes hacked to piece the God-sent sustenance from the deep, turning it into blood-drenched merchandise." p.89
A communist writer's critique of capitalism?
The role of the poet...
"The poet who is not a realist is dead. And the poet who is only a realist is also dead. The poet who is only irrational will only be understood by himself and his beloved, and this is very sad. The poet who is all reason will even be understood by jackasses, and this is also terribly sad. THere are no hard and fast rules, there are no ingredients prescribed by God or the Devil, but these two very important gentlemen wage a steady battle in the realm of peotry, and in this battle first one wins and then the other, but poetry iteslf cannot be defeated.
It's obvious that the poet's occupation is abused to some extent. So many new men and women poets keep cropping up that soon we'll all look like poets, and readers will disappear. We'll have to go looking for readers on expeditions that will cross the desert sands on camels or circle the sky on spaceships." p.266
Do you think he might have appreciated "If On A Winter's Night a Traveler"?
"In the morning, the miracle of this newly washed nature was overwhelming. I joined the fisherman very early. Equipped with long floats, the boats looked like sea spiders. The men pulled out fish of vivid colors, fish like birds from the teeming forset, some with the deep blue phosphorescence of intense living velvet, others shaped like prickly balloons that shriveled up into sorry little sacs of thorns.
With horror I watched the massacre of those jewels of the sea. The fish were sold in segments to the poor. The machetes hacked to piece the God-sent sustenance from the deep, turning it into blood-drenched merchandise." p.89
A communist writer's critique of capitalism?
The role of the poet...
"The poet who is not a realist is dead. And the poet who is only a realist is also dead. The poet who is only irrational will only be understood by himself and his beloved, and this is very sad. The poet who is all reason will even be understood by jackasses, and this is also terribly sad. THere are no hard and fast rules, there are no ingredients prescribed by God or the Devil, but these two very important gentlemen wage a steady battle in the realm of peotry, and in this battle first one wins and then the other, but poetry iteslf cannot be defeated.
It's obvious that the poet's occupation is abused to some extent. So many new men and women poets keep cropping up that soon we'll all look like poets, and readers will disappear. We'll have to go looking for readers on expeditions that will cross the desert sands on camels or circle the sky on spaceships." p.266
Do you think he might have appreciated "If On A Winter's Night a Traveler"?