Pablo Neruda’s Contribution to Marxist Aesthetics

Abstract

Pablo Neruda underwent a transformation from a love poet to a solitary and dejected one and then to a committed one during his formative years. Precisely after he had come in close contact with the key figures of the Spanish intelligentsia, he broke up with his previous interests in romance and romanticism and subsequently embraced communist ideology and politically committed poetry. He published a literary periodical called Green Horse wherein he espoused the concept of “Impure Poetry” in contrast to that of pure poetry that came to the forefront with the catchword of “art for art’s sake” in Europe in the latter half of the 19th century. In addition, his friend Federico Garcia Lorca's assassination by the reactionary forces of Spain considerably changed his political and poetic visions. Alongside this, the onset of the 1937 Spanish Civil War impelled him to respond to the cause of the Spanish masses. His endorsement of the communist ideology helped him condemn the upsurge of international fascism at that time. Through interpreting the poetry of one of his most notable books, Spain in Our Hearts, this dissertation investigates the factors that, in multiple ways, have contributed to Neruda’s emergence as a poet of the people. Furthermore, the poetry of Canto General (1950) and Odes to Common Things (1954) contribute to his development of the Marxist concepts of art, literature, and history, widely known as Marxist aesthetics as a whole. In particular, he blends the philosophy of dialectical materialism with that of historical materialism in the aforementioned books to explore and explain social and political contradictions and tensions across the continent of South America. Firstly, in Canto General (1950), the poet attempts to identify and locate the exploitation and oppression of South American peoples by imperial powers and the capitalist system, on the one hand, and present the struggles of the workers and peasants as part of a more extensive historical process in which opposing forces clash and interact to produce social change, on the other hand. Secondly, in Odes to Common Things, Neruda, on a surface level, celebrates the value of everyday objects of daily life and, on a deeper level, intends to dignify the role of the commoners, whose efforts often go unnoticed in the class systems of society and state. Besides, he uses the Marxist triad of thesis, antithesis, and synthesis to show the upswing of oppressive political and economic structures, and emergence of social revolutions to overthrow the exploiter classes, and the possibility of building a socialist society. He highlights the deliberate omission of the workers’ and liberators' contributions and sacrifices by bourgeois forces and regimes from the textbooks of history, with the aim of misleading future generations of readers and learners. Overall, this dissertation divulges the Talukder v falsification of historical facts that stand as a threat to historicity in a whole continent like South America. This thesis also illustrates how Whitman’s idea of comradery, Quevedo’s satirical poetic style, and Mayakovski’s revolutionary ideas left a myriad of influences on Neruda and his poetry, which, afterwards, founded the basis of his Marxist philosophy. On the whole, it examines Neruda’s contribution to Marxist aesthetics, broadly exposing, on the one hand, the conflicts between the bourgeois and the proletariat as reflected in his poetry and, on the other hand, the inevitability of the proletarian revolution for social and political change that he envisions. Lastly, it argues how Neruda’s world outlook in his works widens and augments the enormous panorama of Marxist ideology and aesthetics.