Neruda

             In Pablo Neruda’s time Chile underwent vast political changes, which impacted him personally, politically, and creatively. He viewed many of the political changes as detrimental to the future of Chile and “was forced to flee the country” and live in Europe for several years (Puchner 1421). His poem “Walking Around” reveals how deeply the fascist politics have permeated life in the cities and how it has changed his view on even the smallest facets of city life.

            “Walking Around” opens with the line: “It happens that I am tired of being a man” (Neruda 1). As the poet makes his way through the city streets he sees further evidence of what the fascist state has done to urban staples, such as “the tailor’s shops and the movies,” which are now “all shriveled up, impenetrable” (2, 3).

The poem was written in 1933 making Neruda 28 or 29 years of age as he recounts the images and the emotions they bring about in him. As a young man in his prime he recognized immediately that Chile, as a fascist state, does not offer him the hope and opportunity he craves. In lines 22-25 he proclaims:

                        I do not want to be the inheritor of so many misfortunes.

                        I do not want to continue as a root and as a tomb,

                        as a solitary tunnel, as a cellar full of corpses,

                        stiff with cold, dying with pain.

The lines essentially ask the audience what is the point of it all if the city has become “a solitary tunnel, as a cellar full of corpses.”

            Neruda’s view of the city as discussed in the poem reveals a shell of what the city once was and now is. The overall tone is one of despair and does not reveal even a glimmer of hope that it will become full of life again. It is no longer an urban area with a mix of different peoples interacting and thriving together but is instead a cluttered and eclectic mess of discarded items: “umbrellas all over the place, and poisons, and navels” (Neruda 39). Neruda writes that even the “underpants, towels and shirts…weep / slow dirty tears” over what fascism has done to urban life (44, 45).

Works Cited

Neruda, Pablo. “Walking Around.” Trans. W.S. Merwin. 1650 To the Present. Ed. Martin Puchner. 3^rd Shorter ed. New York: Norton, 2013. 1423-1424. Print. Vol. 2 of The Norton Anthology of World Literature. 2 vols.

Puchner, Martin. “Pablo Neruda.” 1650 To the Present. Ed. Puchner. Shorter 3^rd ed. New York: Norton, 2013. 1421-1422. Print. Vol. 2 of The Norton Anthology of World Literature. 2 vols.