Los versos del capitán, 1952

This scandalous book came to fill the vacuum that we noted concerning the Canto general, that is, the absence of erotic poems addressed to a woman by the poet Neruda. What was happening biographically is clear; Neruda abandoned Delia del Carril for Matilde Urrutia, who became his third wife and then his widow, and wrote about their life together in Mi vida junto a Pablo Neruda (Memorias) [My life next to Pablo Neruda, memoirs], 1986. The first 1952 publication in Naples of 44 copies of the love songs, as Neruda stated in successive editions, was anonymous because their affair was secret. There could also be a political self-censoring as if writing love poems was not appropriate in the aftermath of the war, in the year 1950 that Neruda, Picasso and Paul Robeson won the International Peace Prize. That only Matilde knew who the real author was brings Neruda back to his earliest love poems directed at a particular reader, his current muse. It remained ‘anonymous’ until 1962 and his ‘Explicación’ [Explanation] (PN1 841). The title claims the poet as ‘captain’, a self-image that goes back to his teenage poetry and forward to all the marine imagery of his work and life (though his ‘Carta-prólogo’ [Letter-prologue], written by a pretend woman, suggests the author was a captain from the Spanish Civil War).

These love songs celebrate falling in love again, but the middle-age version and with a happy result, far from the melancholia and sexual excess of his earlier love poems. They are poems of contented lovers. Neruda called them ‘tender’ as befits his age, but also underlined that some of the poems are ‘terribles en su cólera’ [terrible in their anger] (PN1 843). The poems are very direct, avoid obvious literary echoes and complex metaphors, and continue to combine the poet's two passions, a woman and politics. They look forward to his odes and enshrine art as immediate understanding. Being read aloud is their inner nature; it is like hearing Neruda talk.

The first section is titled ‘El amor’ and taps into the poet's erotic vocabulary, by now well-known to his readers – words like ‘rosa’, ‘boca’, ‘besar’ [rose, mouth, to kiss].