“Wheels that have traveled long dusty distances with their mineral and vegetable cargo, bags from coal bins, barrels and baskets, handles and handles for the carpenter's toolbox. From them arise man's contacts with the earth, like a text for all restless lyricists... In them we see the confused impurity of the human condition... Poetry is as impure as the clothes we wear, or our bodies. .. the deep penetration of things in the transports of love, consumed poetry dirtied by the pigeon's claw, marked by ice and marked by teeth, delicately bitten by our drops of sweat and by our custom... Melancholy, old impure and sappyness uncorrupted, fruits of a fabulous species lost in memory... surely this is the poet's concern, essential and absolute. (Neruda) Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an original essay Pablo Neruda outlines his poetic doctrine in Impure Poetry, as an implicit reactionary statement against accusations of banality and morbidity. In it, he justifies his work as that of a contemporary poet, emphasizing relevance and purpose. Indeed, unlike the stereotype of the hermetic poet, Neruda was a politically aware artist, who refused to settle for detached aestheticism and introversion. He considered traditional poetic notions such as escapism in the twentieth century, a time fraught with conflict and disparity; when every institution of faith was crumbling, leading to a general atmosphere of confusion and uncertainty, further aggravated by capitalist, chauvinistic and industrial tendencies. As Ajanta Dutt explains, “poetry must be discovered through the perception of what appears dark and destroyed, and appears from the hidden recesses of human consciousness” (xxxvi). Therefore, in the modern scenario, Neruda found it necessary to portray these imperfections, as demonstrated by the peculiar juxtapositions in his images, regarding which, Dutt believes that Neruda "deliberately juxtaposes the crude with the beautiful to shock a reader into complacency" (xxxv). For example, in Ars Poetica: “Between shadow and space, maidens and garrisons, burdened by a strange heart, by funereal dreams,” or “a stench of clothes scattered on the ground and a desire for flowers” ​​(Dutt 7), which reflects the contradiction between the harshness of reality and the desire to overcome it. In this same poem, Neruda uses a subtle but powerful image that conveys the idea of ​​impure poetry: "a bell clicked a little" (Dutt 7), that is, the poetic voice broken by difficulty, releasing distorted tones of suffering and truth .Neruda stated that contemporary poetry should be colloquial and current instead of adhering to distant ideals; it must be rooted in the reality from which it arises. As he stated in Ordinance of Wine, “I speak to the things that exist. Heaven forbid that I make up things while I sing” (Dutt 80). Therefore, he warranted poetry, which transcends personal boundaries to reflect on the universal from an individual perspective. The poet must try to heal the world he lives in and, therefore, can no longer afford to immerse himself in fantasies. He must feel an obligation to share his visions with his readers, as articulated in the Ars Poetica: “the morning voices fiery with sacrifice now ask me this prophecy I have” (Dutt 7). The poet must try to eliminate universal anguish through the power of association and educate through his verse, so that readers can make a tangible effort to bring about the much-needed change. Because “the verse falls on the soul like dew on the pasture” (Dutt 6). Although this line is quoted out of context by Tonight, I can Write. .. , embodies Neruda's idea of ​​poetry and his motivations. Such altruism identified Neruda with visionaries such as Tagore, Brecht, and Dario Fo, and this concern continued to grow with his age, as reflected in his corpus and his inclusion in the Communist Party in 1939. “Arise and be reborn with me, my brother, give me your hand from the depths of your scattered pains” (Dutt 30)“Show me: your blood and your furrow; Tell me; here I was scourged because a gem was dull or because the earth did not give its tithe of grain or stone in time” (Dutt 46) Neruda's Marxist sentiment is more than evident in these lines of the Canto General. He understood his role as the voice of an oppressed people, “give me all the pain of everyone, / I will transform it / into hope” (Dutt 66). He felt genuine empathy towards the tormented masses and implored them to unite and overcome their misery: this was Neruda's constant effort, his message of hope for the proletariat. Because as he symbolically points out in the Hymn to Autumn, their strength lies in numbers: “It is difficult to cut down all the leaves from all the trees in all the countries” (Dutt 65) Furthermore, in the verses: “proletariat of petals and bullets, / only alive, sleepy, resonant” (Dutt 8), the same hope is found in explicit poetic candour. The future belongs to the proletariat, which must realize its latent potential – the glorious legacy it has behind it – and face the horrors of the present. In these lines, Neruda expresses his typical communist optimism. Growing up in postcolonial Chile, Neruda witnessed the implicit dichotomies and contradictions of the Latin American environment and strove to represent them in his work. For example, in Discoverers of Chile: “Shadows of thorns, shadow of thistle and wax, / the Spaniard meeting his dry figure, / observing the dark strategies of the land” (Dutt 9). In this sterile imagery, Neruda captures the complexity of perceptions between the two civilizations. The natives, through the shadow motif, are seen as simple and uncivilized in contrast to the Spanish "discoverers". Furthermore, “every silence lies in its long line” (Dutt 9); silence remains a constant motif in Neruda's poetry; here it denotes the devastated appearance of colonized Chile. Thus, Enrico Mario Santi describes Neruda as “fiercely anti-intellectual, a political militant. . . the embodiment of the Latin American poet” (70). A sentiment shared by the Swedish Academy by awarding Neruda the Nobel Prize in 1971 and recognizing him as "the poet of violated human dignity", who "brings to life the destiny and dreams of a continent" (Santi 70). In this regard, a parallel can be drawn with the growth of “magical realism” in Latin American literature, since its supporters were also guided by a socio-political consciousness, and the genre allowed them to express their discontent with the circumstances in the form of fantastic fiction. The Spanish Civil War played a significant role in the formulation of Neruda's activism, as he strove to express his resentment against the horrors of fascism in his adopted country. Susnigdha Dey explains: “In such a situation, poetry cannot remain an example of beautiful letters. It can no longer remain so pure” (Chilean Poetry 29). Because art reflects life, and therefore the conscious artist could no longer lose himself in art for art's sake, when everything around him was being destroyed. Because of such sinister concerns, Jon M. Tolman highlights a distinctive feature of Neruda's poetry regarding his conception of time: “each passing moment emerges in a silent, slowly accumulating menace, filling its environment, oppressive in its weight. Time grows like a parasitic plant, devouring life. In this way, the symbol of time serves as a bridge between the related themes of death andsolitude” (Dey, Pablo Neruda 40). Here we see the effect that Neruda wished to create: to portray rampant despair as a mundane everyday reality. Once again, one might recall similar themes inherent in 'magical realism', as elaborated by Gabriel García Márquez in his Nobel Prize acceptance speech. Neruda on residence on earth: “These poems should not be read by the youth of our country. They are poems imbued with pessimism and terrible anxiety. They don't help you live; they help to die" (Dey, Pablo Neruda 41). These lines betray the young poet's hesitation and uncertainty; Neruda was understandably, at least initially, skeptical about the ramifications of his work. He had an immense but uncertain concern for his countrymen, who were still “learning to build and to read” (Dey, Pablo Neruda 46). However, his beliefs had matured by the time he wrote Third Residence (1947), where he “made the promise to unite the path of the lone wolf with that of man” (Dey, Pablo Neruda 42). Subsequently, he fought for a political purpose that went beyond pure aesthetics (Agosin 89), and after the General Song, he finally completed the difficult transition from obscurity to clarity for the sake of his readers (Dey, Pablo Neruda 46-47) . As Dutt explains, “His aim is to strip his writings of any distorted or complex factors that might impede the reader's understanding. His tone is optimistic and positive” (xxxix). The General Song reflects Neruda's concern for the individual, it speaks of “'invisible men', so that the poem becomes the collective chronicle of a people. Neruda, like Walt Whitman, is a minstrel who transmits and transforms the history of his continent” (Agosin 92). In the words of the poet himself: “Poetry is like bread, and must be shared by all” (Dutt 65). Therefore, the poet must spread his ideals so that they can be emulated, such as that stated in How Spain Was: “As deep within me / grows the lost flower of your villages” (Dutt 8). In the essay, Pure and Impure Poetry, Robert Penn Warren traces the dogma of pure poetry through various sources ranging from Sidney to Poe. However, he states, “Poetry wants to be pure, but poems do not” (229). In realizing this individuality of a literary work and its relation to the circumstances of creation, Warren further quotes George Santayana to justify the intrusion of 'impure' aspects into a poem: “Philosophy, when a poet is not mindless , inevitably enters his poetry, since it entered his life. . . . Poetry is an attenuation, a reworking, an echo of raw experience; it is itself a theoretical view of things from a safe distance” (249-50). Next, Warren presents his vision of poetry: “good poetry must, in some way, engage resistances; it must carry with it something of the context of its own creation. . . good poetry involves the participation of the reader; it must, as Coleridge says, transform the reader into 'an active creative being'” (251). These ideas correspond to those of Neruda and, indeed, one might be tempted to say that Neruda took them one step further thanks to his passionate dedication. Works consulted Agosin, Marjorie. General Song: The Word and Song of America. Neruda, Walcott and Atwood: Poets of the Americas. Ed. Ajanta Dutt. Delhi: Worldview-Book Land, 2010. 87-95. Print.Ajanta Dutt, ed. Neruda, Walcott and Atwood: Poets of the Americas. Delhi: Worldview-Book Land, 2010. Print. All quotes are taken from this edition. Bowers, Maggie Ann. Magical(al)realism. London: Routledge-Taylor, 2007. Print.Dey, Susnigdha. Chilean poetry: from the epic to the mundane. Neruda, Walcott and Atwood: Poets of the Americas. Ed. Ajanta Dutt. Delhi: Worldview-Book Land, 2010. 24-31. Print.Pablo Neruda: The poet. Neruda,. 2011.