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Translating Pablo Neruda's “Galope muerto”

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 December 2020

John Felstiner
John Felstiner*
Affiliation:
Stanford University, Stanford, California
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Abstract

Pablo Neruda’s first noteworthy lyric was written in 1925, at a time of unrest not only in himself but in Chilean society as well. “Galope muerto” strains the mimetic capacity of poetry. Similes without a referent and present participles without a limiting verb leave the reader reaching for some hidden source, some inner principle of experience. A new verse translation can instigate and inform the close reading of “Galope muerto,” showing what Neruda was after: an image of dynamic form, to catch things consumed yet brimming with energy, contained yet astir with life. He moves from the “dead gallop” of his title toward indigenous American calabashes resting on the earth and yet swelling with life. Twenty years later, in his major poem, Alturas de Macchu Picchu, Neruda reanimated the Andean site, drawing on the image of suspended energy that he first explored in writing “Galope muerto.”

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 93 , Issue 2 , March 1978 , pp. 185 - 195
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1978

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References

Notes

1 My translation. The Spanish text of Neruda's “Galope muerto” reprinted in this essay is from his Obras complétas, 3rd ed. (Buenos Aires: Losada, 1968) (hereafter cited as OC), i, 173–74, and differs from the 1930 text in minor points of punctuation and in st. 4, l. 4, which originally read “dominios” vice “caminos.” Mary Lowenthal Felstiner contributed an acute, thorough, constructive critique of this article.

2 Amado Alonso, Poesía y estilo de Pablo Neruda, 3rd ed. (Buenos Aires: Sudamericana, 1966), p. 197.

3 Pablo Neruda, Residencia en la tierra 1925–1935 (Madrid: Cruz y Raya, 1935). The English versions are Residence on Earth, trans. Donald D. Walsh (Norfolk, Conn.: New Directions, 1973), p. 3, and Residence on Earth and Other Poems, trans. Angel Flores (Norfolk, Conn.: New Directions, 1946), p. 9. The poem has never, to my knowledge, been anthologized in English, and seldom in Spanish. Cortázar's comment is from “Lettre ouverte,” printed as a preface to Pablo Neruda, Résidence sur la terre, trans. Guy Suarès (Paris: Gallimard, 1972), p. 12. Studies of Residencia en la tierra may be found in Alonso; E. Rodríguez Monegal, El viajero inmóvil: Introducción a Pablo Neruda (Buenos Aires: Losada, 1966); Jaime Concha, Neruda 1904–1936 (Santiago: Universitaria, 1972), and “Interpretación de Residencia en la tierra” Mapocho, July 1963, pp. 5–39; Alfredo Lozada, El monismo agónico de Pablo Neruda (Mexico City: B. Costa-Amic, 1971); Jean Franco, An Introduction to Spanish-American Literature (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1969), pp. 282–86; Review, Vol. 74 (Spring 1974); Gordon Brotherston, Latin American Poetry (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1975), pp. 104–21.

4 Revisla Nacional de Cultura, No. 57 (July–Aug. 1946), pp. 77–85, and No. 58 (Sept.–Oct. 1946), pp. 103–12. The poem was written in August and September 1945 and published eventually as Pt. ii of Pablo Neruda's Canto general (Mexico City: [Talleres Gráficos de la Nación], 1950).

5 From a letter of 17 Feb. 1933, in Margarita Aguirre, Las vidas de Pablo Neruda (Santiago: Zig-Zag, 1967), p. 218. Claridad, No. 132 (July 1925). I am relying on Aguirre, p. 13, for this date.

6 March 1930, pp. 332–33. See Rafael Alberti, “De mon amitié avec Pablo Neruda,” Europe, No. 419–20 (March–April 1964), pp. 71–72.

7 Charles K. Colhoun, Criterion, Oct. 1930, p. 203.

8 Letter of 2 July 1930, in Monegal, p. 72.

9 Alfredo Cardona Peña, Pablo Neruda y otros ensayos (Mexico City: Andrea, 1955), p. 28.

10 For biographical material, the best sources are Concha's, Monegal's, and Aguirre's books, along with Hernán Loyola, Ser y morir en Pablo Neruda (Santiago: Santiago, 1967), Raúl Silva Castro, Pablo Neruda (Santiago: Universitaria, 1964), and Pablo Neruda, Confieso que he vivido: Memorias (Buenos Aires: Losada, 1974).

11 Hernán Loyola, “Pablo Neruda: Itinerario de una poesía,” Antología esencial (Buenos Aires: Losada, 1971), p. 11.

12 Veinte poemas was published in June 1924 (Santiago: Nascimento) and Crepuscuiario in 1923 (Santiago: Claridad). The comment on Neruda's state of mind appears in Rubén Azócar' “Testimonio,” Aurora (July–Dec. 1964), p. 215.

13 See Frank Bonilla and Myron Glazer, Student Politics in Chile (New York: Basic Books, 1970), pp. 8–59; Julio César Jobet, Luis Emilio Recabarren (Santiago: Prensa latinoamericana, 1955), pp. 68–70, 141–43; Federico G. Gil, The Political System of Chile (Boston: Houghton, 1966), pp. 51–61.

14 See Brotherston, p. 4; Jorge Carrera Andrade, Reflections on Spanish-American Poetry (Albany: State Univ. of New York Press, 1973), pp. 49–50; Guillermo de Torre, Historia de las literaturas de vanguardia (Madrid: Guadarrama, 1965).

15 “Algunas reflexiones improvisadas sobre mis trabajos,” OC, ii, 1119.

16 The two quotations are from Neruda, Confieso, p. 388, and OC, ii, 1119. Tentativo del hombre infinito (Santiago: Nascimento, 1925 [released 1926]).

17 César Vallejo, Trilce (Lima, 1922). Neruda knew the 2nd ed. (Madrid: Iberoamericana, 1931), with a preface by José Bergamín, which mentions Neruda. See Jean Franco, César Vallejo: The Dialectics of Poetry and Silence (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1976), pp. 138–39.

18 César Vallejo, “Apuntes para un estudio,” Obras complétas (Lima: Mosca Azul, 1973), ii, 161.

19 Libro de las preguntas (Buenos Aires: Losada, 1974), p. 85.

20 Rita Guibert, Seven Voices, trans. Frances Partridge (1972; rpt. New York: Vintage-Knopf, 1973), pp. 35–36.

21 Alonso, pp. 132–33, 200. Cf. Leo Spitzer, “La enumeratión caótica en la poesía moderna,” in Lingüística e historia literaria, 2nd ed. (Madrid: Gredos, 1961), pp. 247–300. Within this essay, first published separately in 1945 (Buenos Aires: Facultad de Filosofía y Letras) but not included in the English edition of the book, Spitzer discusses the ancient stylistic procedure of enumeration in reference to Neruda's Residencia en la tierra, calling Neruda's vision of things disarticulated and pessimistic. But he appears to have used only Alonso's book as his source.

22 “Viaje al corazón de Quevedo,” Viajes (Santiago: Nascimento, 1955), p. 34. In 1935 Neruda edited some Quevedo sonnets: “Quevedo (Cartas y sonetos de la muerte),” Cruz y Raya, Dec. 1935. As early as 1929 he remembers “returning” to Quevedo (Confieso, p. 133).

23 The term has a long critical and intellectual history. I have in mind Coleridge's use of it: “On Poesy or Art” (1818), in Miscellanies, ed. T. Ashe (London, 1885), pp. 42–49.

24 “Neruda entre nosotros,” Plural, March 1974, p. 39.

25 “Presentación de Pablo Neruda,” in Obras completas, 14th ed. (Madrid: Aguilar, 1968), pp. 147–48.

26 “Discurso pronunciado en el Congreso de la Paz en Mexico,” in Pablo Neruda, Poesía política (Santiago: Austral, 1953), ii, 213–25; rpt. as “Our Duty toward Life,” trans. Joseph M. Bernstein, in Pablo Neruda, Let the Rail Splitter Awake and Other Poems (New York: Masses and Mainstream, 1950), pp. 9–18.

27 See R. B. Cunninghame Graham, The Horses of the Conquest (London: Heinemann, 1930), pp. 22–23, and Miguel León-Portilla, Pre-Columbian Literatures of Mexico (Norman: Univ. of Oklahoma Press, 1969), p. 149.

28 “Las versiones homéricas,” in Discusión (Buenos Aires: Emecé, 1957), p. 105: “Ningún problema tan consustancial con las letras y con su modesto misterio como el que propone una traducción.”