Making the Ordinary Extraordinary: Pablo Neruda’s Odes
When Pablo Neruda published his first of three collections of odes—the
Odas elementales (Elementary Odes)—in 1954, he was probably unaware that his Russian hero, Pushkin, had written 130 years earlier that odes were the lowest form of poem because they lacked a “plan” and because mere “rapture” excluded the kind of “tranquility” which, Pushkin said, was “an indispensable condition” of the highest beauty.”
Fortunately, Neruda
does achieve rapture, tranquility, and immense beauty in many of the
Odes. Nevertheless, his aim was to speak to the ordinary people in the street about ordinary things using the language of the street. He praises simple objects like onions and tomatoes. I cannot agree with René de Costa’s view that Neruda designed the ode “as a didactic artifice.” Neruda’s odes are neither didactic nor artificial. Many seem genuinely full of his awe at the beauty around him. His enthusiasm is irresistible. We enjoy the world anew through his eyes: yes, a simple artichoke can be seen as a soldier, wrapped in armor and ready for battle; an onion is “more beautiful than a bird / with blinding feathers.” Other odes are overtly political, condemning North American military aggression in Korea or US appropriation of much of the Chilean copper industry. Yet, in his superb study of the