“The Word”
(English Translation)
By: Pablo Neruda
The word was born
in the blood,
it grew in the dark body, pulsing,
and took flight with the lips and mouth.
Farther away and nearer,
still, still it came
from dead fathers and from wandering races,
from territories that had become stone,
that had tired of their poor tribes,
because when grief set out on the road
the people went and arrived
and united new land and water
to sow their word once again.
And that’s why the inheritance is this:
this is the air that connects us
with the buried man and with the dawn
of new beings that haven’t yet arisen.
Still the atmosphere trembles
with the first word
produced
with panic and groaning.
It emerged
from the darkness
and even now there is no thunder
that thunders with the iron sound
of that word,
the first
word uttered:
perhaps it was just a whisper, a raindrop,
but its cascade still falls and falls.
Later on, meaning fills the word.
It stayed pregnant and was filled with lives,
everything was births and sounds:
affirmation, clarity, strength,
negation, destruction, death:
the name took on all the powers
and combined existence with essence
in its electric beauty.
Human word, syllable, flank
of long light and hard silver,
hereditary goblet that receives
the communications of the blood:
it is here that silence was formed by
the whole of the human word
and not to speak is to die among beings:
language extends out to the hair,
the mouth speaks without moving the lips:
suddenly the eyes are words.
I take the word and move
through it, as if it were
only a human form,
its lines delight me and I sail
in each resonance of language:
I utter and I am
and across the boundary of words,
without speaking, I approach silence.
I drink to the word, raising
a word or crystalline cup,
in it I drink
the wine of language
or unfathomable water
maternal source of all words,
and cup and water and wine
give rise to my song
because the name is origin
and green life: it is blood,
the blood that expresses its substance,
and thus its unrolling is prepared:
words give crystal,
blood to the blood,
and give life to life.
Introduction
Poetry has always been my favorite unit in English. I tend to have a very flowery style of writing in general and find it so beautiful when metaphors are used to describe a real-life, relatable feeling. It is for this reason that I decided to study Pablo Neruda as my poet. I have always heard about how beautiful and complex his poetry was but never took the time to read much of his poetry. I thought that this would be the perfect time to dive into the rich stories of love and nature that lay in Neruda’s over 300 poems. When it came to choosing a volume of his work, I chose a giant book of his famous odes and a book that held a selected collection of sonnets and free verse. While his odes were undoubtedly exquisite, I was turned more in the way of his sonnets and free verse poems. The two poems that clearly stuck out to me were “Sonnet XVII” and “The Word”. In the end, I decided the choose “The Word” because it had a lot more depth and had a lot more to analyze. It took me a couple of reads to wrap my mind around the true meaning of this poem. The way Neruda describes the origin and power of the word is immensely beautiful. He broke up the poem into stanzas based on the different emotions and importance of the first sound elicited by humans. This poem is not only beautiful to hear but is also very insightful on our society and how language and communication is something we take for granted but is something we cannot live without.
AP Style Response
The story told through this poem is the story of the origin of language. It is the story of the first “word” ever uttered by man– the sound that first escaped from one’s vocal cords causing a ripple effect that forged the art of communication. It is the idea that without this interconnectedness, humans as a species would cease to exist. Through “The Word”, Pablo Neruda took a step back to marvel the essence of human nature. He used this poem to argue about the beauty, passion, and importance of words– something he believed to be commonly taken for granted.
Much like most of Neruda’s poetry, this poem is free verse without a consistent meter or cadence. The first impression we get from this poem is the title, “The Word”. At first glance, it sounds like this poem is going to be about the power of words. This poem traces the progression of language. It started off as the sounds we elicited– an innate part of us. Then, these sounds were used to form the many different languages formed by different tribes and cultures around the world. But none of these languages would have been formed if it wasn’t for the first word ever uttered– nothing more than a sound that escaped from a person’s lips that had a ripple effect, leading to the creation of the languages we have today. This poem touches on the formation and importance of words and communication to not just the human race, but animals in general.
Neruda broke this poem up into stanzas based on the different emotions and purposes of The Word. The first stanza is, “The word was born in the blood, it grew in the dark body, pulsing, and took flight with the lips and mouth.” This phrase personifies The Word by giving it human characteristics, like the fact that it is born and grows. However, it also means that language and communication are innate parts of humans that everyone is born with, growing inside us until we ourselves are born. It is then let loose the minute we enter Earth’s atmosphere as a cry, letting everyone know we are alive. The use of the words “dark body” and “pulsing” makes the first part of the poem feel deep and passionate. The next stanza of the poem starts off with “Farther away and nearer, still, still it came.” Reading this sentence is like looking through a zoom lense, zooming out then in on the past. It gives a reminiscent tone that makes you think back to a time of development that lead to today’s society. The third stanza starts off with the phrase, “Still the atmosphere trembles with the first word produced with panic and groaning.” This phrase segways from reminiscent and dreamy to heavy and omnipresent. The use of “atmosphere” gives the connotation that it is all around us and shows the importance the first word gave our world. The last stanza starts off with the phrase, “I drink to the word, raising a word or crystalline cup.” This phrase starts off the last stanza and gives a sense of glory and accomplishment. Neruda’s shifts in tone from stanza to stanza shows the many different facets of The Word and how it is there, encompassing every moment and feeling in our lives.
This poem is filled with different metaphors and emotions that help convey Neruda’s thoughts on The Word. The next stanza starts off with the phrase, “Later on, meaning fills the word. It stayed pregnant and was filled with lives.” This phrase is difficult to literally interpret, but metaphorically it is referring to how words make us alive and make life possible. It shows how The Word refers to the first sound and how all other words were born from that– words such as “affirmation, clarity, strength” and “negation, destruction, and death”– are so powerful and have a lot of influence on people’s lives. The following phrase is a part of the fifth stanza: “Language extends out to the hair, the mouth speaks without moving the lips: suddenly the eyes are words.” This phrase shows that as humans evolved, language became an essential part of us– it became second nature. Neruda shows this through the imagery of words literally blending in with our physical features. These examples show Neruda’s masterful use of metaphors and how they add to the meaning of The Word and its blossom into language and communication.
After reading and analyzing Neruda’s poem, the title, “The Word”, seems to hold more meaning. It is now clear that The Word refers to the first word, or rather the first sound ever elicited, heard by nothing but Mother Nature herself. The poem then goes on to talk about how so much meaning has been put behind these sounds which are now languages that make our society possible. It essentially refers to the start of mankind, and the connection between existence and essence. Throughout this poem, Neruda wants the readers to ponder the existence of language, communication, and words in general. It holds such a big part in our everyday lives and yet it is something that we don’t generally stop to think about. Neruda is trying to get his audience to realize just how amazing it is to be able to speak and communicate, and how essential it is to species across the globe. Without it, we would not be able to survive.
Biographical and Background Information
Pablo Neruda was born in Parral, Chile on July 12, 1904 as Ricardo Eliecer Neftalí Reyes Basoalto and died on September 23, 1973. While he was no doubt an amazing poet, his affiliation with the Communist Party and support of Stalin, Batista, and Castro has left his work controversial. His death is still being sporadically investigated as there are allegations as to whether or not he was poisoned.
Neruda came from a humble household. His father was a railroad worker and his mother was a teacher who died shortly after his birth. He started his writing journey at the young age of 13 and assumed the pen name Pablo Neruda after the Czech poet Jan Neruda. Some of Neruda’s most famous early works are Crepusculario (Book of Twilight) and Veinte poemas de amor y una canción desesperada (Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair).
There was a Latin American tradition of honoring poets with diplomatic posts and so in 1927, Neruda began his diplomatic journey. In 1936, Neruda wrote about the atrocities of the Spanish Civil War including one particularly gory yet devastating poem about the execution of his friend. He wrote an anthology called España en el corazón (Spain in Our Hearts).
In 1945, Neruda joined the Communist Party of Chile which was taken under siege three years later, forcing him and his family to flee the country. During the next 30 years, he won the International Peace Prize in 1950, the Lenin Peace Prize and the Stalin Peace Prize in 1953, and the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1971. However he eventually did make it back to his hometown where he died in 1973 officially due to prostate cancer.
As a child, Neruda was always different from the kids at his school. Most of his inspiration came from the Chilean Forest, which he attributes to his first inspiration for poetry. He even wrote, “On the frontier of my country’s Wild West, I first opened my eyes to life, land, poetry, and the rain” (Memoirs 6). Often, little Neruda would also travel on the train with his father. On these trips, he collected various insects and animals, including “snake mothers” which were considered the “titan of insects” in Chile. This was how he became obsessed with nature and pulled inspiration from it to write his odes. As Neruda became older, the differences between his views on life versus other kids became increasingly obvious. Neruda explained portions of his childhood when he wrote, “While I was busy examining the marvelous acorn, green and polished, with its gray, wrinkled hood, or while I was still trying clumsily to make one of those pipes they would eventually grab away from me, a downpour of acorns would pelt my head” (Memoirs 12). This shows how while the other kids were busy using these acorns as weapons to protect their manhood, Neruda takes the time to admire and appreciate the artwork that is the acorn– some of nature’s finest work. This view on life and his unique way of thinking are what made him such a one-of-a-kind, amazing poet.
Connection to the Poet’s Larger Body of Work
Neruda wrote many different kinds of poems. He has written over 225 odes and 100 love sonnets as well as a collection of other free verse poems. While all of his poems share a similar poetic voice, there are stark differences in the style of each of these poems.
One of Neruda’s many odes is Oda a la Cebolla, or Ode to the Onion. In general, most of Neruda’s odes show his fascination towards nature– the place he draws most of his inspiration from. “Ode to the Onion” shows Neruda’s appreciation to the simplest onion and compares it to the goddess Aphrodite. It is a rather simple poem, being that the interpretation of it is just the appreciation he has for the simple, god-given things in life: nature. This is a very different poem than “The Word”– a complex story of the origin and importance of language through the personification of The Word. “Ode to the Onion” contains phrases like, “luminous flask, your beauty formed petal by petal” and “your clumsy green stem appeared and your leaves were born like swords” which shows a more playful, loving tone throughout the poem. However, “The Word” has a much deeper voice with layers of meaning behind each phrase and stanza. Some of these phrases include, “it grew in the dark body, pulsing, and took flight with the lips and mouth” and “still the atmosphere trembles with the first word produced.” These phrases show a lot more intensity and gravity in the meaning of the poem. While the “Ode to the Onion” shows a more flowery, wistful, wondrous side of Neruda, “The Word” dives into the depths of his mind and soul to give his thoughts towards one of the most innate parts of our society– something we often take for granted.
Neruda also wrote 100 love sonnets. One of my favorite of these is his “Sonnet XVII”. One key phrase in this sonnet is, “I love you as the plant that doesn’t bloom but carries the light of those flowers, hidden, within itself…”. This phrase has a very light-hearted whimsical tone that is often seen in writings about love. It is very true and from the heart along with being playful and light. Another key phrase in this poem is, “so close that your hand upon my chest is my hand, so intimate that when I fall asleep it is your eyes that close.” These are more words and feelings transcribed from Neruda’s heart. This poem carries the light, whimsical feeling of being in love along with the truth from deep within Neruda’s heart. This greatly differs from the insightful message of “The Word” as “The Word” has a tone of intensity and a greater, heavier message that sets upon the readers. For example, the phrases “it grew in the dark body, pulsing, and took flight with the lips and mouth” and “still the atmosphere trembles with the first word produced with a panic and groaning.” These phrases show the intensity of the first word and the greater effect it has had on the rest of the world. It describes something not as fleeting as love but something with the rock solid foundation that the rest of our world is built on.
“The Word”, “Ode to the Onion”, and “Sonnet XVII” each show a different part of Neruda: his wit, his heart, and his soul. All of these poems are different because they each bear a different side of Neruda, but that is also why they are very similar.
Works Cited
“Pablo Neruda – Biographical.” Nobelprize.org, 1993,
www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/literature/laureates/1971/neruda-bio.html.
Neruda, Pablo. Memoirs.
Neruda, Pablo. Full Woman, Fleshly Apple, Hot Moon.
Neruda, Pablo. Selected Odes.