Book of Twilight

by Pablo Neruda, William O'Daly (Translator)

Overview

"The greatest poet of the 20th century in any language."—Gabriel Garcia Marquez

"His enormous scope was due to the fact that he dared take on the risks of impurity, imperfection, and, yes, banality. He had to do it, in order to name a world. Our world."—New York Times

"Neruda lived a life of passionate engagement and his work was ambitious in every sense."—Los Angeles Times

When Nobel Laureate Pablo Neruda was a teenager, he pawned a family heirloom to fund the publication of his first book, Book of Twilight, which—until now—has never been published in its entirety in the United States.

Presenting the highly romantic style refined and empowered in his later books, Neruda's debut introduces a bold poet unafraid to take risks, push boundaries, and write towards an unapologetic romanticism. Everything we know about Neruda—all his gestures, hyperbole, and effusiveness—appears vividly and for the first time in these poems.

William O'Daly's superb English translations are presented with the original Spanish en face.

From "Prayer":

In this hour in which the lilacs calmly shake their leaves to cast off the impure dust,
my untouched spirit flies,
passes the orchard and the fence,
opens the door, jumps the wall and goes tangling up on its way . . .

Pablo Neruda is one of the world's most beloved and bestselling poets. He won the Nobel Prize in 1971 and died in his native Chile in 1973.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781556593987
Publisher:	Copper Canyon Press
Publication date:	10/17/2017
Pages:	180
Product dimensions:	4.30(w) x 6.60(h) x 0.60(d)

About the Author

Pablo Neruda: Pablo Neruda was born Neftalí Ricardo Reyes Basoalto in Parral, Chile, in 1904. He served as consul in Burma and held diplomatic posts in various East Asian and European countries. In 1945, a few years after he joined the Communist Party, Neruda was elected to the Chilean Senate. Shortly thereafter, when Chile's political climate took a sudden turn to the right, Neruda fled to Mexico, and lived as an exile for several years. He later established a permanent home at Isla Negra. In 1970 he was appointed as Chile's ambassador to France, and in 1971 he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature. Pablo Neruda died in 1973.

Date of Birth:

July 12, 1904

Date of Death:

September 23, 1973

Place of Birth:

Parral, Chile

Place of Death:

Santiago, Chile

Education:

University of Chile, Santiago

Read an Excerpt

STAIN ON LANDS OF COLOR Courtyard of this earth, luminous courtyard lying upon the shore of the river and the sea. Leaning over the mouth of the well from the bottom of the well I see myself burst as in a distant and blurred snapshot of sixty coppers. Poor photographer, the water photographs my loose shirt and my hair of black and snarled strands. A winged crowd of birds rises like a ladder of silk, one cloud. And, poking out from behind the simple fence, yellow head, like wonder, like the heart of the siesta in the threshing blonde as the soul of the chamomile, I sometimes see, glory of the dry countryside, the blonde head of Laura Pacheco. PRAYER Flesh aching and pounded, torrent of weeping over each night of sick straw mattress: in this hour I would want to see my chimeras cast a spell on the tip of tongue, chest and hand, so that they descend —the pure and only stars of the gardens of my love— in immaculate caravans over the souls of the whores of these cities of pain. Ill of love, sensual poverty: black bell of misery: roses of the suburban bed open to evil like a path where the pleasure and the wine pass from the glory to the hospital. In this hour in which the lilacs calmly shake their leaves to cast off the impure dust, my untouched spirit flies, passes the orchard and the fence, opens the door, jumps the wall and goes tangling up on its way the sick pain, the bitter fate and undressing the roots of the woman who fought, and fell and sinned and died under the whips of hunger. Silk alone is not what I write: may my verse be alive like memory on foreign land to shine light on the bad luck of those moving toward death like blood through the veins. Of those who go through life their aching hands broken in foreign blackberry bushes: of those who in these still hours have neither mothers nor poets for suffering. Because in this hour the brow folds and the visage weeps leaping over pains and walls: in this hour in which the lilacs calmly shake their leaves to cast off the impure dust. THE CURSED CASTLE While I walk the sidewalk goes on pounding my feet, the shine of the stars goes on shattering my eyes. A thought falls from me as falls an ear of grain from the cart that, staggering, carves lines in the brown stubble. Oh lost thoughts that no one ever gathers up, if the word is spoken, the sensation remains within: unripened sprig, may Satan find the granary that I with broken eyes neither seek nor find! That I, with eyes broken, follow a route without end… Why thoughts, why life in vain? Just as the music dies when the violin comes undone, I will not move my song if I don’t move my hands. Height of my heart in the deserted esplanade where I am crucified like pain in a line of verse. My life is a great castle without windows and without doors and so that you don’t arrive by this pathway, I twist it.

Table of Contents

Translator's Acknowledgments ix

Introduction xi

Helios

Beginning 5

This Church Does Not Have 7

Pantheos 9

Old Man, You Cried 11

New Sonnet for Helen 13

Sense of Smell 15

Ivresse 17

Morena, She Who Kisses 19

Prayer 23

The Refrain of the Turk 27

The Cursed Castle 31

Farewell, and the Sobbing

Farewell 35

The Father 41

The Blind Man with Tambourine 43

Love 45

Neighborhood Without Light 47

Bridges 51

Night Armory 53

Blond Acacias in the Fields of Loncoche 55

Cry Out 57

The Gamblers 59

The Twilights of Maruri

Evening over the Tile Roofs 63

If God Is in My Verse 65

Friend 67

Autumn Butterfly 71

Give Me the Magical Feast 75

The Wind Combs My Hair 77

Saudade 79

I Had Not Seen It 81

My Soul 83

Here I Am with My Poor Body 85

Today, Which Is My Sister's Birthday 87

Woman, You've Given Me Nothing 89

I Am Afraid 93

Window on the Road

Peasant Woman 97

Water, Asleep 99

Symphony of the Threshing 101

Southern Beach 107

Stain on Lands of Color 111

Poem in Ten Verses 113

The Town 115

Pelleas and Melisanda

Melisanda 119

The Enchantment 121

The Wondrous Conversation 123

The Head of Hair 127

The Death of Melisanda 131

Song of the Dead Lovers 135

End: [These words were created by me] 141

About the Author 145

About the Translator 147

Editorial Reviews

"The greatest poet of the 20th century in any language."—Gabriel Garcia Marquez "Neruda lived a life of passionate engagement and his work was ambitious in every sense."—Los Angeles Times Book of Twilight (hardcover) “Simply stated, this bilingual edition of the "Book Of Twilight" is unreservedly recommended, both to his legions of appreciative fans and to community and academic library poetry collections.” - Midwest Book Review “Without his poetic adventure, there would be no modern literature in Latin America. His enormous scope was due to the fact that he dared take on the risks of impurity, imperfection, and, yes, banality. He had to do it, in order to name a world. Our world.”- New York Times “There is something about Neruda—about the way he glorifies experience, about the spontaneity and directness of his passion—that sets him apart from other poets. It is hard not to be swept away by the urgency of his language…” - The New Yorker “Not since Whitman has a poet of genius embraced a whole continent, as Neruda has, or spoken so directly to non-poets among his readers.” - Selden Rodman

From the Publisher