Chilean Love Poetry Online

Love is one of the universal languages. One of the Chilean poets who wrote poems about love was Pablo Neruda. Not only do Chilean bloggers have Neruda's romantic prose in their digital DNA, but so do bloggers around the world. Here is a selection of Pablo Neruda’s poetry that has spread throughout the net.

Dantecalva (ES) explains in her post “Poetry with Conscience” what the poems can produce:

Ni en mis peores momentos de apatía mis fieles libros me abandonaron. La poesía siempre ha sido una compañía de todas las etapas en el transcurso de mi vida. La he sabido poner en el lugar pretendido, es decir, mi palabra o cualquier texto.

¿A cuántas personas en este mundo nos ha movido un sentimiento una frase bien hilada? ¿Cuándo se escuece el alma con solo leer algo conmovedor? ¿O cuándo dejamos nuestras emociones en la pluma de otros?

Not even in my worst moments of apathy do my faithful books abandon me. Poetry has always been a companion throughout each chapter of my life. I have learned to put it in the proper place, that is, in my words or any text.

How many people in this world have been moved to emotion by a perfectly threaded phrase? When our soul is touched by just what we read? Or when we leave our emotions in the pens of others?

She continues with a selection of Neruda's poems that she likes the most. Damian (ES) posts the poem “I love you” along with more poems in Spanish from other authors. He declares in his blog “I don’t mind if you loved me…. In my dreams I have you.”

Sabrás que no te amo,
y que te amo,
puesto que de dos modos es la vida,
la palabra es un ala del silencio,
el fuego tiene una mitad de frío.

Yo te amo para comenzar a amarte,
para recomenzar el infinito
y para no dejar de amarte nunca:
por eso no te amo todavía.

You'll know that I dont love you,
and that I love you,
just as of the two ways of life,
the word is a wing of silence,
the fire has its portion of cold.

I love you to begin loving you,
To restart infinity,
And not to never stop loving you:
That why I don’t love you yet

Te amo y no te amo,
como si tuviera,
en mis manos las llaves de la dicha,
y un incierto destino desdichado.

Mi amor tiene dos vidas para amarte.
Por eso te amo,
cuando no te amo
y por eso te amo,
cuando te amo.

I love you and I don’t love you,
as if I had,
in my hands the keys of happiness,
And a uncertain destiny without fortune.

My love has two life’s to love you
That why I love you,
When I don’t love you,
And that’s why I love you
When I love you.

The spanish blog, elperiodistadigital (ES) post the poem ”Poema 20” from Nerudas book “Veinte poemas de amor y una canción desesperada” (“Twenty poems of love and one desperate song”). Here is a fragment:

Puedo escribir los versos más tristes esta noche.

Escribir, por ejemplo: “La noche está estrellada,
y tiritan, azules, los astros, a lo lejos”.
El viento de la noche gira en el cielo y canta.

Puedo escribir los versos más tristes esta noche.
Yo la quise, y a veces ella también me quiso.

I can write the saddest verses tonight.

Write, for example: “The night is starry,
and shivering, blue, and the astros, far away”.
The wind of the night spins in the sky and sing.

I can write the saddest verses this night.
I loved her and sometimes she loved me two.

En las noches como ésta la tuve entre mis brazos.
La besé tantas veces bajo el cielo infinito.

Ella me quiso, a veces yo también la quería.
Cómo no haber amado sus grandes ojos fijos.

On nights like this I had her between my arms.
I kissed her so many times beneath the infinite sky.

She love me, and sometimes I loved her too.
How could I not have loved her big frozen eyes.

On this site (ES), there is a complete list of the most famous poems of Pablo Neruda, as well as MP3 files of the poet reading his own poems.

7 comments

  • Pablo Neruda is a great writer, like any Madison Ave. copywriter. His poetry is fine, finished product. Waxed and polished, ready to sell.

    Which is fine, there’s nothing wrong with that. But why does he get all the attention, while dozens of much more soulful Chilean poets are left in the dust with no chance of posterity outside of Chile?

    Gabriela Mistral, Nobel Prize winner 1945 who Neruda can thank for noticing him. Nicanor Parra, Chilean anti-poetry, older brother of Violetta Parra who sang “Gracias a la Vida” which was later sung by Joan Baez, Roberta Flack, Mercedes Sosa. In 1967 Violetta shot herself in the head, in poverty. Her songs were played all throughout Europe while nobody recognized her in Chile. But her name has hardly survived the years. Today, Mauricio Redolés, tortured and exiled to England during Pinochet’s rule, who now lives and performs in Santiago, having published various books. The list goes on. In other words:

    Chile is SO much more interesting than Pablo Neruda.

    But why is Global Voices perpetuating the image that all Chile ever produced was Neruda. I thought this site was about blogs uncovering the real-deal, what people are really saying.

    Well, okay. Maybe that’s all people ARE saying. (Like Trujillo’s quoting Neruda as he’s about to jump on a 14-year-old girl in Mario Vargas Llosa’s ‘Feast of the Goat’). But it might be worth enlightening the conversation a little with more interesting artists. Neruda, imho, is really cliché.

  • I agree with you that Chile have a lot more than , about that there are some post regarding new artist and also the more traditional.

    http://www.globalvoicesonline.org/2007/03/23/small-taste-of-chilean-writers-and-poetry-part-i/

  • I’m humbled. And based on my loud mouth probably obliged to contribute an article on Chilean poets to Global Voices now. Can I do that? Could it be part III?

  • I love Neruda. He’s one of those truly great poets that always gets through to everyone who reads his words.

    http://www.redpoppy.net/pablo_neruda.php

  • Neruda is magical…no doubt about that.

  • Dahlia J. Gamez

    Yesterday I met Neruda, of Neruda in Mr. Jamar’s Lit II class and I finally have found true LOVE in poetry. I’m facinated, elited, words can not express the PASSION I have found in the great poet’s work. Blessings!

  • Dahlia J. Gamez

    I met Neruda,of him, in my Literature II class for the first time and I fell in Love with his poetry. Words can not express the PASSION.

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