Epics of the Americas E-Book

William Allegrezza

• Herausgeber: Publicacions de la Universitat de València
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Serie: Biblioteca Javier Coy d'Estudis Nord-Americans
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2018

Seitenzahl: 372

Beschreibung

Whitman wanted to bolster the American democratic spirit by creating a democratic literature through his Leaves of Grass, he also wanted to create something epic, so he crafted a new form, the lyric-epic. Pablo Neruda wrote Canto general as a foundational text for communism in Latin America. In both books, these poets want to politicize the reader, Whitman for democracy and Neruda for communism, both of which have become foundational poets for their countries over time.

Leseprobe

EPICS OF THE AMERICAS

WHITMAN’S LEAVES OF GRASS AND NERUDA’S CANTO GENERAL

Biblioteca Javier Coy d’estudis nord-americans

http://www.uv.es/bibjcoyhttp://bibliotecajaviercoy.com

DirectoraCarme Manuel

Epics of the Americas: Whitman’s Leaves of Grass and Neruda’s Canto general William Allegrezza

1ª edición de 2017

Reservados todos los derechos

Prohibida su reproducción total o parcial

ISBN: 978-84-9134-202-1

Imagen de la portada: Sophia de Vera Höltz

Diseño de la cubierta: Celso Hernández de la Figuera

Publicacions de la Universitat de València

http://puv.uv.es

[email protected]

Table of Contents

The Lyric-Epic Tradition and Literary Sourcebooks

Whitman, the Local “Loco Foco”

Camaraderie and the Union: Whitman’s Manly Love

Whitman and History’s Cyclical, Linear Stasis

Whitman and Poetics

Neruda’s Latin American Politics

Camaraderie, Unity, and Communism in Canto General

History and Redemption: Neruda in Creation

Neruda and Poetics

Conclusion

Bibliography

Brief Introductory Note

From a distance of fourteen years from orginally writing this book, I look back and think to rework sections of it, but I suspect that would lead me to rewrite it as a new project, so I am leaving it as it is. That said, the main argument holds fast. Walt Whitman wanted to bolster the American democratic sprit by creating a democratic literature through his Leaves of Grass, and he wanted to create something epic, so he crafted a new form, the lyric-epic, to write his foundational democratic poetic text. Pablo Neruda felt that a people must have the mindset and culture of a political ideology for it to take root, so he wrote Canto general as a foundational text for communism in Latin America. Whitman was already an influence for him, so he took Whitman’s idea for a lyric-epic and reformulated it for his own use. In both books, these poets want to politicize the reader, Whitman for democracy and Neruda for communism, and both poets have become over time foundational poets for their countries.

The Lyric-Epic Tradition and Literary Sourcebooks

America is therefore the land of the future, where, in the ages that lie before us, the burden of the world’s history shall reveal itself.

G. W. F. Hegel (193)

In the 1840s Walt Whitman wanted to write a poem with a national scope to distinguish American literature from all others. In his notebooks he states, “American literature must become distinct from all others. American writers must become national, idiomatic, free from the genteel laws—America herself appears in the spirit and the form of her poems” (237). During this period he believed that American literature relied too heavily on European literature, a sentiment that was common at the time; moreover, Whitman thought that democracy in the United States was still an experiment and that without a democratic culture to foster its democratic institutions, it would fail. The United States must have a religion, rituals, ceremonies, traditions, and histories that foster democratic thought. For Whitman, since the poet “shapes aggregates and individuals” (957), he turned to the idea of a grand poetic work to function as a sourcebook for democratic culture. With that in mind, he took up the epic genre from tradition, but he refigured it with the lyric so that it would start a branch of American literature that was separate from past literature and wrote Leaves of Grass.

Almost one hundred years later, Pablo Neruda discussed a similar need to create a poetic tradition in Latin America. As he states, “There have been many writers who felt primary duties towards the geography and citizenry of Latin America, to unite it, to discover it, to build it, that was my purpose” (quoted in Santí’s “Canto General” 258). Neruda considered the Americas in need of a foundational work, for such a work would help Latin Americans realize the long standing dream of Latin America as a whole. Following Whitman, he believed that poetry can help create the political culture necessary for political institutions; moreover, he also thought that Latin Americans needed their own myths, rituals, and language use separate from that of Europe. To fulfill this need Neruda turned to the epic to write Canto general, yet he felt that the tradition must be refigured from that of its European antecedents. Like many poets of the Americas, he believed that Whitman’s work was a native foundation from which he could write. Thus, using the form and style of Whitman’s Leaves of Grass, Neruda wrote his Canto general, a work which Latin American critics jokingly refer to as the Latin American bible. In the years since it was written, Canto general has become a foundational work for Latin American poetry as Leaves of Grass is for American poetry.1

This study attempts to understand Whitman’s writing of Leaves of Grass as a foundational lyric-epic for the political culture of the United States and how he inspired Neruda’s similar task for Latin America in Canto general.2 The study examines the following: Whitman’s politics and how they helped form the political framework of Leaves of Grass; his attempt to create a spirit of camaraderie to tie citizens together; his use of history both to emphasize the natural progression of democracy and the continuation of democracy once solidified; and lastly, his use of poetics in an attempt to create a reader who could read in a democratic fashion. The study’s second half concerns similar topics in Neruda’s Canto general, considering them as an inheritance of Whitman by a poet of equal worth. It explores Neruda’s politics and why he wanted to write a political sourcebook; his use of camaraderie/fraternity to tie readers together for communist regimes; his rewriting of history as redemption and as the progression of communism; and lastly, his endeavor to teach readers to read as communists.

The study argues that like Dante to Virgil, Neruda and Whitman crafted works that can be understood as peaks and foundations for their literary traditions. It examines how Neruda was influenced on how literature can affect politics through Whitman’s attempt to do just that in Leaves of Grass. Since his historical situation was much different than Whitman’s, he transformed and discarded parts of Whitman’s democratic vision so that it is suitable for communist readers. While Whitman was concerned with creating democratic readers by creating a democratic culture with Leaves of Grass, Neruda was interested in creating communist readers through Canto general. Ultimately, this study explores the two works separately but with the understanding that Whitman’s original creation of the lyric-epic influenced Neruda to produce a similar but equal work, and that whether or not Whitman succeeded in creating an epic, that his lyric-epic and the way in which he wrote it is the paradigm for later poetic epic attempts in the Americas. Moreover, exploring both works within the framework of being lyric-epics that are intended as political sourcebooks sheds light on the significance of both works in their respective traditions.

Epics of the Americas

Both Whitman and Neruda turned to the epic as a genre because the epic concerns events important to the community. It finds, as Bakhtin states, its roots in a national tradition (17), and as Georg Lukács suggests, gives form to the totality of life (46). This task of forming the totality of a community’s life requires an exploration of history to create or to record a myth that will help encompass the past and lead towards a future. Walter Benjamin alludes to this exploration of history by stating, “ One may … raise the question of whether historiography does not constitute the common ground of all forms of epic” (Illuminations 95). In addition, theorists have often thought of the epic as the genre for influencing a reader’s perspective. For example, Sir Philip Sidney states that the heroic or epic poem is the highest type of poetry because the lofty images it contains inflame “the mind with desire to be worthy, and inform with counsel how to be worthy” (119). Torquato Tasso echoes this claim by stating that epic poetry is “an imitation of a noble action, great and perfect, narrated in the loftiest verse, with the purpose of moving the mind to wonder” (28). When Whitman and Neruda searched for a form through which to write a national work that would influence, that would create a myth of a certain political allegiance (democratic for Whitman, communist for Neruda), they turned to the epic as the genre of nation building, of myth creating. Besides, as Earl Fitz remarks, the epic is well-suited to discussing the conquest and colonization of the Americas (48), as the frequency of attempts by writers in both Anglo and Latin America would suggest. Before turning to Whitman’s and Neruda’s reasons for attempting epics, looking at other epic attempts in the Americas can clarify the problems and issues they encountered and why, instead of writing traditional epics, Whitman and Neruda wrote lyric-epics.

An epic tradition in Latin America traces to Alonso de Ercilla’s La araucana (The Arucanadid), which describes Chile’s conquest. Pablo Neruda often stated that Latin America was created by poets, and it is Ercilla to whom he credits this creation. True to the spirit of later Latin American epic writers, Ercilla in La araucana expresses dismay at his fellow countrymen’s greed during the conquest. The poem concerns events in progress and is told by a poet who is the main character; moreover, there is no single hero but rather a number of heroes. Yet Ercilla’s work does not fulfill the function of an epic of the Americas as imagined by later poets, partially due to its regional approach and partially due to its scope, but it does provide a paradigm for later poets, some of whom invoke Ercilla’s name since he provides a paternal figure for a Latin American tradition—he provides an image of a poet who can be called Latin American instead of European. Even so, other attempts at Latin American epic were not made until much later by writers like Andrés Bello, José de Alencar, Gonçalves Dias, Ruben Dario, and Jose Santos Chocano.

As with Ercilla, when Andrés Bello took up the task, he chose the epic for its foundational qualities. Seeing the Americas as a land yet without culture, Andrés Bello worked in the early part of the nineteenth century to address this problem. His solution lay in creating an epic work, which he tried and failed to do. In his epic attempt “Alocucíon” (“Address”), he calls on the spirit of poetry to leave the tired continent of Europe for the fresh, teeming landscape of the New World:

Divina Poesía,

tú de la soledad habitadora,

a consultar tus cantos enseñada

con el silencio de la selva umbía,

tú a quien la verde gruta fue morada,

y el eco de lose monted compañía;

tiempo es que dejes ya la culta Europa,

que tu native rustiquez desama,

y dirijas el vuelo adonde te abre

el mundo de Colón su grande escena. (1-10)

Divine Poetry,

you who dwell in solitude

and wrap your songs

in the silence of the shaded forest;

you who lived in the green grotto,

the mountain echoes your company.

Time it is to abandon Europe,

no lover of your native rusticity,

and turn your fancy to the great setting

unveiled by the new world.3

His desire is unlike later Latin American writers in that he invites the goddess of poetry to come to the New World. For Bello, the spirit of poetry is rustic as the Americas are rustic, and he intends to readjust this rustic nature of the Americas through poetry, yet it is also this same rustic sense that allows poetry a home in the New World. Bello doesn’t ask for a new tradition of poetry in the Americas, a poetry grounded in the people, as later writers demand. He asks for the inspiration for an American Virgil, for a poet who can sing the founding of a new empire of the American republics. While Bello’s poem has often been taken as a claim of Latin American intellectual independence, it is, as Antonio Cussen argues, highly classical, not only in its epic invocation but also in its desire to provide a new extension of Western culture (100). The poem is an attempt to lift the poetry of the Americas to the level of European poetry; thus, it is an attempt to show that the Americas can start a poetic tradition worthy of the future, and yet the poem relies heavily on the past. Moreover, this reliance on the past is what differentiates attempts at the epic in Latin America and the United States. In general, Latin American writers feel the sense of having a textual past in a way that Anglo American writers do not. As stated earlier, Neruda claimed that Latin America was created by writers, a claim that does not resonate in Anglo America. In Anglo America the idea of immanence is more prevalent than textuality—this idea finds expression in the works of most of the Transcendentalists. Important early Anglo American writers stress their own experience in the present without referencing to the authority of past texts. In other words, their presence in the now is more authoritative than past texts. Henry David Thoreau expresses this sentiment often in Walden. In contrast, Bello believes that Americas are without culture, but he believes that American texts, once written, can take place in the constellation of European texts.

Latin American Modernists attempted American epics, yet no work came close to achieving the task until Pablo Neruda’s Canto general, and when Neruda attempts the epic, he is aware of Latin American examples, but he uses Whitman’s work as a working model. It suffices to say here that Latin American poets felt a need for an Pan-American culture just as much as did thinkers like Simón Bolivar and José Enrique Rodó.4 Poets like Rubén Darío imagined themselves as more than just citizens of one country, even if the political reality lagged behind the cultural reality. In attempting the epic, Latin American writers were searching for a myth that would tie together Latin America, much in the way that the states are tied together in the United States. In other words, through language Latin American poets were attempting to forge a link throughout Latin America that their politics did not provide.

While the poetic tradition of the American epic is continuous in Latin America, the tradition is more pronounced in the United States.5 In 1807 Joel Barlow made the first attempt in his Columbiad, a work that traces the visions granted to Columbus of the Americas. The poem, like later poetic attempts, is highly self-conscious. Right from the beginning Barlow evokes its relation to European epics:

I sing the Mariner who first unfurl’d

An eastern banner o’er the western world

And taught mankind where future empires lay (1, 1-3)

His beginning, “I sing,” emulates the traditional openings of poets like Homer and Virgil. He first introduces the hero, and then advances on a tale of the progress of freedom in the Americas. Along the way he uses traditional epic devices, such as a focus on superhuman activities, catalogues, and epic couplets. Barlow tried to create an American epic to provide direction to American poetry and culture; however, his conception of the epic is similar to that of Bello; he relies heavily on European epics. Like Bello he assumes that the United States needs a native Virgil, not, as later poets claim, a new paradigm. That the Columbiad fails in creating an American epic was as critically accepted in its period as it is now. The traditional epic is not suited to the New World, as Bello’s and Barlow’s failed attempts show. Yet, Barlow’s Columbiad is important primarily in that it commenced the project in Anglo America for an American epic.

In the years after Barlow, many theorists explored the idea of what the American poet needed to possess. In his influential essay “The Poet”(1844), Ralph Waldo Emerson outlined his ideas on the need for an American poet:

I look in vain for the poet whom I describe. We do not, with sufficient plainness, or sufficient profoundness, address ourselves to life, nor dare we chant our own times and social circumstance. If we filled the day with bravery, we should not shrink from celebrating it … We have yet had no genius in America, with tyrannous eye, which knew the value of our incomparable materials, and saw, in the barbarism and materialism of the times, another carnival of the same gods whose picture he so much admires in Homer. (179)

For Emerson the potential for great poets already existed in the United States, but up to that point American poets had not focused on the actual experience of Americans, barbarous though it might seem at first. To create a new American tradition, the American poet must mold the raw materials of the United States with a spirit like that of Homer, with the epic spirit. Many thinkers had similar ideas as Emerson. For example, a few years earlier in 1835, Alexis de Tocqueville discusses the qualities that he envisions for the future of American poetry—he is in accordance with Emerson in stating “there are no American poets” (485). Tocqueville states, “Democracy shuts the past to poetry but opens the future … None of the single, nearly equal, roughly similar citizens of a democracy will do as a subject for poetry, but the nation itself calls for poetic treatment” (485). Tocqueville posits the need for a work, an epic, concerning the nation and an epic that treats the problem of the lacking personality of American citizens; moreover, Tocqueville’s words can easily function as a preface for Whitman’s attempt at an American epic in Leaves of Grass.6

Whitman’s Leaves of Grass is considered by many critics, such as Roy Harvey Pearce, James Miller, and Jeffrey Walker, as the foundation of the epic in the United States.7 Ezra Pound in 1909 declared of Whitman, “He is America” (“What I Feel” 59). Later versions of the American epic relate to Whitman’s work—they are all Whitmanesque in their desires and deviations. Pearce stresses this quality by stating that all American poets go to Whitman before starting the epic (101). This is especially true within the last hundred years among poets like Ezra Pound in Cantos, Hart Crane in The Bridge, William Carlos Williams in Paterson, Charles Olson in The Maximus Poems, and John Berryman in Dream Songs. These works, as Pearce notes, share the fact that the poet is the hero and that the poet is struggling to create something of himself or herself (134). These poems maintain Pound’s dictum, “An epic is a poem including history” (Literary 86); they all concern the present and through the present point towards the future or the potential the future holds. These poets, like those of Latin America, felt a need to create a national work, a work that ties the pieces of a sprawling country into one whole with a shared mythology and a shared history, which suggests that poets in the Americas do not view the epic in the same manner as Bakhtin in Dialogic Imagination. Bakhtin argues that the epic concerns a national past, but one that is distant from the contemporary world so that the poet has no access to it (13). This distance allows for valorizing tradition and the past, as he says, “all really good things … occur only in the past” (15).8 While Bakhtin believes that the epic stresses this point, he disagrees with its value. For the classical epic, Bakhtin’s comments apply, but not for American epics, in which poets write about history but contemporary history. They do not valorize the tradition; rather, they view their tasks as explorations in historiography; they are creating new stories to populate the landscape along with the people.

Whitman’s and Neruda’s Lyric-Epics

Whitman and Neruda faced many of the problems of other American poets, such as pulling away from European paradigms, fashioning convincing New World epic heroes, and presenting the community through the individual, but still both desired to write an epic. For Whitman that desire formed in the 1840s, and he spent the remainder of his life working on it. Numerous critics, most emphatically Harold Bloom, note Whitman’s reading of Emerson during the 1840s, despite Whitman’s claims later in life not to have been reading Emerson, and suggest that Whitman takes his ideas on the American epic poet from Emerson, yet Whitman’s reasons for writing an American epic are complex (3). Like Emerson he declares his desire to capture the place and time, to proclaim an unique social and political identity for the United States. Closely tied to this idea, Whitman expresses the desire to provide witness to American events. Since epics provide foundational texts, Whitman desires a poem with a national scope to distinguish American literature. Whitman believes that contemporary American literature relies on European literature. To address this concern, Whitman wants a literature specifically American. He believes in democracy, and it is his democratic ideals that foster his belief in the need for an American poetry. George Kateb suggests that this belief inspires Whitman to be one of the best thinkers on democracy ever (240). Kateb’s evaluation of the importance of Whitman’s democratic ideas is clearly debatable, but Kateb does note the connection between democracy and the American poet. For Whitman, America needs new poetry to match its new political system. In other words, Whitman considered the democratic laws of the United States an experiment. To succeed he suggests that the United States must have a democratic culture to foster democratic institutions. America must have a religion, rituals, ceremonies, traditions, and histories that foster democratic thought. Through fostering such a culture, Whitman believes that the United States will be able to produce great works of art and great people. In Democratic Vistas, Whitman states this desire:

Our fundamental want to-day in the United States, with closest, amplest reference to present conditions, and to the future, is of a class, and the clear idea of a class, of native authors, literatures, far different, far higher in grade, than any yet know, sacerdotal, modern, fit to cope with our occasions, lands, permeating the whole mass of American mentality, taste, belief, breathing into it a new breath of life, giving it decision, affecting politics far more than the popular superficial suffrage, with results inside and underneath the elections of Presidents, or Congresses—radiating, begetting appropriate teachers, schools, manners, and, as its grandest result, accomplishing … a religious and moral character beneath the political and productive and intellectual bases of the States. (956)

To create this class of writers is Whitman’s fundamental desire in Leaves of Grass. He believes in the efficacy of literature in performing this task; the poet, for Whitman, “shapes aggregates and individuals” (957). For these reasons Whitman created Leaves of Grass as the American lyric-epic, and in it he introduces ideals that he sets forth as essential for democratic culture: union, camaraderie/fraternity, freedom, individuality, and progress. In the 1876 preface to Leaves of Grass, Whitman calls the work “a radical utterance” (1035) born out of democracy. He imagined that his utterance would reshape American life.

Pablo Neruda intimately knew Whitman’s ideas for creating an American epic, and in Canto general, he expresses many of the same ideas. While writing Canto general, Neruda told Maurice Halperin that he was working on a poem which “will attempt to reveal the deep process of historic transformation through which Chile has passed. I want to counter-balance the effect of the great poetry of the classics, such as Ercilla and Pedro de Oña” (168). Neruda also said of Canto general:

After my visit to Macchu Picchu, I conceived the idea of singing the American man … My continuous experience and contacts with social struggles were sinking into me and with them began to germinate the idea of writing an epic poem to express the reality of our America. (quoted in Valenzuela 85)

Like Whitman, Neruda had past epic poets in mind while writing Canto general, but he wants to create a poetic tradition in Latin America. He also desires to act as a poet of witness—the function of witness is much more pronounced in Neruda’s work than in Whitman’s. Of Canto general he states, “There have been many writers who felt primary duties toward the geography and citizenry of Latin America. To unite our continent, to discover it, to build it, that was my purpose” (quoted in Santí’s “Canto General” 258). As with Whitman, Neruda writes Canto general in order to produce a foundational work for his society. Also, as with Whitman, Neruda believes in the persuasive function of poetry in creating a political culture necessary for a political institution. In Neruda’s case, however, poetry comes before the establishment of the political reversal. A democracy was already in place for Whitman. Canto general is as much a founding text of Latin America as it is a call for communism in the continent. Whereas Whitman rewrites history in Leaves of Grass to support the progress of democracy in the West, Neruda rewrites history to show the inevitable progress of communism. For Neruda, his epic poem must help create the cultural and political environment through which the despots of Latin America will be deposed in favor of communism.

Whitman knew the traditional epic would not function to found a new American tradition; it was too laden with European precedents, but he wanted to draw upon traditional epic characteristics. To do this, he tempered the epic with the lyric. Considering his focus on the individual as central to democracy, his use of the lyric as the carrier of choice is not a surprise. Traditionally the lyric has been associated with the lyric “I,” an aspect that Whitman uses to display the paradigm democratic individual in poems like Song of Myself. Often, critics mention that the lyric has the capabilities through focusing on a specific “I” at a specific moment to freeze that moment. In other words, by seeing how one person confronts a specific situation, we can see a connection to how we as humans would experience a situation; thus, the specific moment of the poem becomes timeless. Hank Lazer elaborates on this idea by stating that “the lyrical depends upon breaking, temporarily, the relationship of the part to the whole, of heightening the importance of the moment, of giving the moment an engaging shape” (36). Since Whitman believes that a poet should illuminate the present, he uses the lyric to provide an individual reaction to contemporary experience. This focus on the individual as an unit instead of as a hero in a story, as usually occurs in a traditional epic, stresses the importance of the individual’s role in American society, or rather the importance that Whitman would like to see the individual have. The focus on the individual also allows Whitman to present more than one version of the “I.” He can include the “I” in a heroic position and not worry about a consistent portrayal. The “I” of Whitman in Leaves of Grass can shift, and that shifting stresses the diversity of the individual in American society. Moreover, traditionally the lyric is thought of, as John Stuart Mill states, as an “utterance that is overheard” (12). T.S. Eliot describes this quality of the lyric as “the voice of the poet talking to himself – or to nobody” (96). Since Whitman wants his work to instill a democratic way of thinking in the reader, using a form with such immediacy can help connect him to the reader on a personal level, to create the effect at times of speaking directly to the reader or of him being overheard thinking to himself. In addition, the lyric is often described as related to song, as brief, as oral in nature, and as intensely personal. Whitman draws on each of these attributes in an attempt to craft a specifically American epic.

But the lyric own its own is not capable of the task of nation building, as one of its functions that has received much attention since Theordor Adorno’s article “On Lyric Poetry and Society” shows. For Adorno, the poet in writing the lyric creates something that is wholly individual. Adorno and critics following him like Hugh Grady and Michael Heller suggest that this process of creating something individual distinguishes the “I” as distinct from the collective. Adorno states, “The ‘I’ whose voice is heard in the lyric is an ‘I’ that defines and express itself as something opposed to the collective” (41). This aspect of the lyric causes some obvious problems for Whitman, for the lyric alone fosters a separation from the collective, but Whitman is attempting in his work to show how the individual works in the Union and still remains an individual. Writing a traditional epic alone would not allow Whitman to avoid such a problem encountered with the lyric, and it was out of this situation that the lyric-epic was born.

In the lyric-epic, the lyric and epic elements are combined, and Leaves of Grass, following James Miller’s terminology, is a lyric-epic (147). The text is a patchwork of lyrics that is pieced together to create an epic. Whitman essentially takes the episodic nature of the traditional epic and splits it into many numerous pieces with a sparse narrative connecting thread. Since he did not write any articles or major entries on this topic, it is not clear whether or not he theorized this form before writing or that in collecting the pieces for the first edition that he discovered the form in arranging the pieces. What is clear is that the form became important; Whitman revised Leaves of Grass many times to create the proper form. In the first editions of Leaves of Grass, a specific narrative line for the epic did not exist; the work is primarily focused on presenting the democratic American individual as a paradigm for the reader. As Leaves of Grass grew through new editions, Whitman introduced a narrative thread to the work, providing both introductory and concluding poems.9 In the later editions, the work breaks down into sections that follow a basic narrative, even if several critics disagree as to where the splits are to be made.10 Essentially, the work starts with introductory poems, moves to poems of a new American identity, explores the love of comrades, shifts to a section on the Civil War, moves to exploring spirituality, and then finishes with parting songs. In the last edition, there were also annexes written from the perspective of old age. One benefit of the lyric nature of Whitman’s lyric-epic is that it allows for growth; lyrics could be added, deleted, or shifted fairly easily without destroying the nature of the narrative. Plus, the patchwork of individual pieces together makes up a whole that resembles the numerous individuals that form together to create the Union. At its most basic, the lyric-epic suits the worldview that Whitman tries to espouse. On a more complicated level, Whitman takes elements from both the lyric and epic traditions of the Old World and attempts to structure them into a new American form. He believes that the old forms contain in part the political hierarchies of Europe, so by creating a new American style, he wants to infuse the new form with a democratic sensibility.

Whitman’s innovations opened the field for poets in the North and South America. He provided a stepping off point that many poets, like Williams, Dario, and Berryman, attempted to follow, but in many ways Neruda is the poetic inheritor who writes a work with the most similar vision to that of Leaves of Grass, which is not to say that Neruda took Whitman’s lyric-epic and simply copied it; rather, like Dante looking back to Virgil as a mentor, he takes the lyric-epic form that Whitman developed and infuses it with a Latin American worldview, more specifically with his communist mindset. Neruda states that Whitman was the first American poetic voice, and many poets and critics, such as Luiz Valenzuela, state that Neruda was the first poetic voice of Latin America.

Before turning to Neruda’s version of the lyric-epic, it is necessary to mention that there was a lyric tradition in Anglo and Latin America when Whitman and Neruda wrote. Compared to a poet like William Cullen Bryant, Whitman’s work is definitely innovative. Neruda’s work was formally similar to poets writing in Latin America during his time. More than Whitman, he drew on the traditions of the lyric in his writing. If anything was specifically innovative about his work among his contemporaries, it was his focus on politics. Yet, the lyric alone is not a nation building piece—it lacks a central force important to Whitman’s and Neruda’s goals, so while a discussion of the history of epic in the Americas helps explain their desires to write an epic, a similar discussion of the history of the lyric in the Americas would not serve our present purpose. The lyric alone could not achieve what these two poets were aiming for, nor could the epic by itself.

The actual form of Neruda’s lyric-epic follows Whitman’s in Leaves of Grass somewhat loosely. In Canto general the work consists of numerous lyrics tied together by an overarching yet fragmented narrative. Unlike Whitman, Neruda brings a timeline into the narrative. In general the work begins with a new genesis in Latin America and moves to the present day. More specifically, the work begins with Latin American genesis; moves to Neruda’s claim to be able to sing for Latin Americans; then shifts to present the Europeans that terrorized Latin Americans and the liberators of Latin America; then it moves to discuss those who betrayed Latin American freedom; then, after criticizing the betrayers, shifts to present images of Chile and the people of Latin America, then calls for the people of Latin America to take power for themselves; then portrays Neruda’s own fugitive experience; then shifts to hopes for Latin America and songs of the ocean; and lastly finishes with parting songs. This structure is more complicated than Whitman’s; however, the basic narrative push in Canto general is the history of communism’s growth under tyranny and through liberty in Latin America. That said, because of Neruda’s political focus, he does not, as Whitman does, use the lyric to treat primarily the poetic “I.” In a certain sense, Neruda tries to remove the poetic ego from the lyric-epic. In other words, Whitman’s work centers around introducing the reader to a paradigm American “I.” Whitman’s version of the American individual, as many Americans, is often seen as overly insular, as only concerned with itself.11 Neruda attempts through interpreting Whitman to present a more citizen-oriented style. Many of the lyrics in Canto general are written from the perspective of other people, of dead workers, of poor people, of departed poets. Neruda attempts to shift the focus away from how the individual stays an individual within the Union to showing how the individual works with a union that is created by individuals. Since Neruda believes that Whitman is a poet of the people, Neruda takes Whitman’s lyric-epic and tries to create a lyric-epic that is still focused on the people but from a communist perspective, which is not to suggest that the individual is not important to Neruda’s work. Like Whitman in Song of Myself, Neruda makes his claim to be a worthwhile poet of the Americas in an individual experience in Alturas de Macchu Picchu (The Heights of Macchu Picchu). In these sections of Leaves of Grass and Canto general, Whitman and Neruda start with a lyric moment as a foundational for their democratic and communist political systems respectively. As the works progress, Whitman focuses on an individual’s freedom, and Neruda focuses on an individual’s responsibility towards others.

Besides sharing similar theoretical concerns for writing an American lyric-epic, Whitman and Neruda draw upon several common epic and lyric strategies. First, they attempt to provide what Northrop Frye labels the “encyclopedic” form of the epic (56). They include catalogues which act to chronicle the variety of their periods. Next, they attempt to create foundational myths for their societies. This attempt includes forming new languages, politics, and religious forms for their country members.12 Even more, they both draw upon biblical tones or the high style of epic. Considering that both works were intended as foundational for their societies, the biblical tones act to mimic the Bible as well as to create new bibles for their cultures. Like Virgil who expresses the inevitability of Rome, both poets express the inevitability of their perfect societies. Though they differ as to the content of those societies, they share several ideas in common, such as the importance of the people and the need for the people to have independent cultural traditions. Also, both writers engage a main character, who in both cases is the poetic “I,” whose experiences form the structural basis of the works. Concerning the traditional lyric strategies, both poets at times create poems that appear to let the reader in on a personal revelation. In addition, many of the poems rely on the lyric quality of breaking the temporal, of heightening the importance of the moment.13 Whitman uses this quality for stressing the individual, while Neruda uses this temporal rift to show the relationship between the part and the whole. The poets both use the lyric “I” to explore themes that are personally important, but which appear important to the community.

Beyond these traditional characteristics, Leaves of Grass and Canto general share many other characteristics. First, each writer uses a shifting “I” to explore his main themes. In Leaves of Grass, there are several versions of the poetic “I”—the “I,” the “me myself,” the “me;” furthermore, Whitman confronts the reader with the impossibility of designating an identity for his poetic “I.” Neruda, on the other hand, uses the “I” to shift personas. The “I” shifts from Neruda the poet to numerous figures speaking about their experiences and ideals. Several reasons emerge for the poetic “I” in both poems. The poetic “I” acts as a democratic figure. For Whitman, the poetic “I” offers the only serious option for a poem which is intended to strengthen the democratic spirit. For Neruda, the “I” also acts symbolically in the position of pure democracy. In his case the “I” shifts in creating the perception of a pure democratic process, i.e. communism, that is composed of myriad individual actions. In other words, for Neruda there can be no single hero but instead heroes, since a single hero would be representative of an aristocratic/capitalistic legacy. Second, both writers engage in a progressive rewriting of history. Third, both writers engage in the mythification of Native Americans. Whitman mentions Native Americans, but he does not engage in their specific problems. Neruda discusses the Araucanians as a major component of Chilean history; however, his portrayal of the necessary destruction of native tribes has been the center of much critical lambasting of his knowledge of them. Fourth, both writers stress the primacy of fraternity or comradeship. Whitman considers fraternity to be essential to democracy. Neruda considers comradeship as a basis for communism. Fifth, as mentioned above, both writers share a belief in the education of the individual with a new language. Their works attempt to create this new language for their people. Whitman conceives of Leaves of Grass as a “language experiment;” he intends to create a new expression of language to match the experiment of democracy in the United States. Neruda attempts to create a new language to function as a means of expression for people to pass beyond capitalism. Sixth, both writers use nature images to express the people, and they both believe that each person can be a poet. Many other similarities between the writers exist, such as content similarities, including a stress on erotic love, the body, the physical, and anti-intellectualism,14 and textual similarities, including alliteration, parallel constructions, and enumeration.

Before discussing the works in detail, some explanation of why a Chilean poet, thousands of miles from the United States, chose a poet writing nearly a hundred years before him as a maestro and why comparing the two works sheds light on both is necessary.

Neruda’s Whitman

Many critics, such as Gordon Brotherson and Roberto González Echevarría, note a similarity between Whitman and Neruda, and James Nolan has written a book comparing them. Biographically, Walt Whitman’s effect on Latin America has been widely documented in studies by writers ranging from Fernando Alegría to Octavio Paz. In “The Accidental Tourist: Walt Whitman in Latin America,” Enrico Mario Santí documents Whitman’s effect on writers like Neruda, Paz, and Borges. Santí argues that Whitman is a cult figure in Latin America—this cult status descends from José Martí’s writings on Whitman after having seen him present one of his famous Lincoln lectures (159). The relation between Neruda and Whitman has also been widely discussed.15

At the age of fifteen, Neruda first read Whitman’s works. At eighteen he wrote a review of a translation of Whitman’s poetry. Late in life Neruda discusses Whitman in an article entitled “Vengo a renegociar mi deuda con Walt Whitman” (“We live in a Whitmanesque Age”):16

Por mi parte, yo, que tengo ahora cerca de 70 años, descubrí a Walt Whitman cuando tenía sólo 15, y lo consideré mi más grande acreedor. Estoy ante vostros, sintiendo que le guardo para simpre la m’as grande y maravillosa deuda que me ha ayudado a existir … Soy un poeta de habla hispana que Walt Whitman me ha enseñado más que el Cervantes … La queja del bardo sobre la poderosa influencia de Europa de la cual la literatura de su época continuó obteniendo su sustento. En verdad él, Walt Whitman, fue el protagonista de una verdader personalidad geográfica: el primber hombre de la historia en hablar con auténtica voz continental, en sustentar un auténtico nombre americano. (748)

As for myself, now a man of almost seventy, I was barely fifteen when I discovered Walt Whitman, my primary creditor. I stand here among you today still owing this marvelous debt that has helped me to live … I, a poet who writes in Spanish, learned more from Walt Whitman than from Cervantes … The bard complained of the all-powerful European influence that continued to dominate the literature of his time. In fact, it was he, Walt Whitman, in the persona of a specific geography, who for the first time in history brought honor to an American name.17

This quotation shows Neruda’s close feelings for Whitman, but more than his close feelings, the quotation displays that Neruda thinks of Whitman as a poet of America. In his memoir he discusses Whitman as a “positive hero” (294), and he wrote many poems in which Whitman figures, including “Ode to Walt Whitman:”

Yo no recuerdo

a qué edad,

ni dónde,

si en el gran Sur mojado

o en la costa

temible, bajo el breve

grito de las gaviotas,

toqué una mano y era

la mano de Walt Whitman:

pisé la tierra

con los pies desnudos,

anduve sobre el pasto,

sobre el firme rocío

de Walt Whitman. (1-14)

I do not remember

at what age

nor where; in the great damp South

or on the fearsome

coast, beneath the brief

cry of the seagulls,

I touched a hand and it was

the hand of Walt Whitman.

I trod the ground

with bare feet,

I walked on the grass,

on the firm dew

of Walt Whitman.

A few lines later Neruda states, “tú / me enseñaste / a ser americano” (31-33) (“You / taught me / how to be an American”). In Canto general, Neruda calls on Whitman as he would a classical muse:

¡Dame tu voz y el peso de tu pecho enterrado

Walt Whitman, y las graves

raíces de tu rostro

para cantar estas reconstrucciones! (“Yo también más allá de tus tierras” 63-66)

Give me your voice and the weight of your buried breast

Walt Whitman, and the solemn

roots of your face

to sing these reconstructions!18

At several moments in his life, Neruda translated poems from Leaves of Grass, and it is well-known that Neruda always kept at least one portrait of Whitman on his writing desk. In his memoir he tells a story of the picture. One day a gardener saw the picture and asked if the man was his grandfather. Neruda answered yes (Johnson’s “Neruda’s Impressions” 98). In many ways Whitman was Neruda’s poetic grandfather since Neruda picks up themes, styles, and structures from Whitman.

Besides Whitman’s poetry, the mythic image of Whitman, partially based on his life and partially based on Martí’s presentation of him, that pervaded Latin America influenced Neruda. For example, Whitman was from a working-class family and was active in politics. He worked as an editor for several newspapers, most with a democratic party slant. He was a delegate in Buffalo for the Free Soil Party, campaigned for Martin Van Buren, and worked for the Department of the Interior and the Attorney General’s office. Due to his own working-class background and political life, Neruda felt personal ties with Whitman, although Neruda was more influential as a politician. From his student days, he was active in leftist politics in Santiago. Later he held positions as consul in Ceylon, Java, Singapore, and Spain; moreover, he was the consul general of Mexico, the ambassador to France, a Chilean senator, and, for a brief period, a candidate for the Chilean presidency. He was an active member of the Communist Party of Chile, and this affiliation was the cause of his exile during the period that he was writing Canto general