Rose Detachee Et Autres

By Pablo Neruda

"This is pure Neruda at his prime, which is to say incomparable."-- Choice " The Separate Rose represents Pablo Neruda at the peak of his art, and William O'Daly has done an important service by... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 2070316335
• ISBN13: 9782070316335
• Release Date: May 2004
• Publisher: Gallimard Education
• Length: 389 Pages

Customer Reviews

Neruda's Final Pilgrimage

Neruda's early poem, RAPA NUI, (part of CANTO GENERAL) was topographically inaccurate (he had the Moai facing outwards rather than overlooking the settlements) and his Whitmanic expansiveness was pumped-up some. However, late in life, he visited the island and in LA ROSA SEPARADA, he grounds his feelings in the specificity of the place itself, and an authenticity emerges so that the empathic passion is earned. Having visited Rapa Nui myself and published a chapbook, THE MANA OF THE MOAI (Spanner, UK, 2004), Neruda's poem sequence/collage brought back powerful memories of that extraordinary island and its people. Unlike Robert Frost's nasty jingle (first published in TLS in 1947) about a place he had no true knowledge of, and unlike Paul Theroux's even nastier and compassionless chapter about his touristic experience there in his condescending and even racist book HAPPY ISLES OF OCEANIA, Neruda is moved by the strangeness of the place. "Let the great sea protect you" he writes,"from our barren brutality" and, upon leaving, he felt he was abandoning "the limpid clarity of mythology" and returning to his "indecisions, of winter and summer" yet desiring that his "roots adhere" to the mystery, space, and solitude of Te Pitou ou Te Henua, "the navel of the world" - Rapa Nui, "Big Oar" in the Polynesian language, truly a rose apart. Great poetry.

A Pinnacle Work of Art

Pablo Neruda (1904-1973) remains one of the most respected and unique of the Latin American poets. His poetry is celebrated even more today than when he was publishing it and winning the Nobel Prize. The gentle man from Chile, beset with scandal regarding his political stance during his life, remains one of the world's favorite voices. In 1971, two years before his death from cancer, Neruda traveled to Easter Island, that mysterious jetty of earth rising from the ocean keeping its secrets of past civilizations sealed away from contemporary knowledge of the origin of the massive stone figurative sculptures, and there he wrote this long poem as a conversation between Man and Nature. The result is a profound respect for time and the ancients and a disdain for the corrupting man who tries to uncover secrets best remaining occult. 'The transient, the smug traveler, returns/ to his wheels ready to roll, to his jet planes,/ and the deep silence ends, he must leave/ behind the transparent solitude/ of thin air, of water, of pastureland rugged and pure,/ to escape, to escape, to flee the salt and peril,/ that lonely circle in the water/ where the hollow eyes of the sea,/ the vertebrae, the eyelids of the black statues/ chewed at the frightened bourgeois from the cities'... But a small excerpt from this meaningful poem can only hint at the beauty of Neruda's accomplishment. This is a book that should be in the minds of millions, if we are somehow to survive the ravages of destructing time. Highly recommended. Grady Harp, November 06

A powerful vision of Rapanui

"The Separate Rose" is Pablo Neruda's poetic tribute to Rapanui (also known as Easter Island), one of the most remote islands of the Pacific. Although many of the poems in this volume could stand on their own, this book is a truly unified work which should be read in its entirety.William O'Daly has translated Neruda's Spanish into a simple but sensuous English free verse. In this bilingual edition, Neruda's poems stand side-by-side with O'Daly's excellent tranlations, making the book especially useful to English-speaking students of Spanish (or Spanish-speaking students of English). O'Daly's excellent introduction discusses the history and culture of Rapanui, and also discusses the background of Neruda's poetic interpretation of the island.Neruda's poetry in "The Separate Rose" skillfully captures the complexity of the world of Rapanui. The poet's generous vision takes in both the motley tourists and the monumental stone sculptures that have made the island famous. In some of the book's most powerful poems, Neruda reflects on Lord Wind, the ancient deity said to have reigned over Rapanui.And as always, Neruda demonstrates his command of poetic language. Whether describing airplanes as "enormous aluminum geese" (p. 15), reflecting on his own heritage as "apprentice to volcanoes" (p. 19), or addressing Rapanui as "cry / of the mourning petrel, tooth of the sea" (p. 51), Neruda always uses the tools of language in thought-provoking ways."The Separate Rose" is more than just an important part of a great poet's canon of writings; it is a moving reflection on a unique and timeless land.