Neruda anchored these nontraditional methods of composition in basic literary devices with set meters, rhyme schemes, and internal rhyme and repetition. All his work writing alexandrines as a teenager in Temuco enabled him to form these intricate constructions, adding precision to the lyricism. They frame the poem so that when he pushes against them, the tension makes the lines spring off the page.
Neruda’s poetry ventured into the same space that would be occupied by expressionist painters, as well as the monumental muralists David Alfaro Siqueiros and Diego Rivera. The poems were figurative and realist, but dimensionally epic. Neruda had great aspirations for the book, and he succeeded in his main mission, which was to communicate to a wider audience. If traditional Chilean poetry could be compared to chamber music, Neruda’s book was a concert whose music resonated through a stadium. The publication of Twenty Love Poems was a true phenomenon.
Since the turn of the century, more and more people without a strong public education were reading poetry, and that poetry was becoming increasingly accessible. When Neruda’s book came along, it reached people of diverse social origins, especially those from the lower classes and, especially, the lower-middle class, which made up a significant sector of Chilean society. The book was devoured passionately like no other book in Chile before.
Despite the fantastic reception from the general public, Neruda psychologically couldn’t overcome the dismissal from established critics and academics, despite some very positive reviews by his peers. Alone’s failure to grasp his work hit Neruda hard; he was frustrated and impatient.* Diego Muñoz tried to reason with him one night in a bar, saying that beyond the critics, the purpose of literature lies in its ability to communicate what one feels and to empower others with language to communicate what they themselves feel. With revolutionary developments, it takes time for the old guard—the Alones and Latorres—to catch up. “Your Twenty Poems . . . they need no explanation, no guide to explain what you wanted to say because it’s clearly said.”
Forget those formal critics, Muñoz urged Neruda. But the criticism had taken its toll. Neruda became depressed again and publicly defended himself in a rather audacious, if not over-the-top, open letter printed in La Nación, the paper that had printed Alone’s negative review. Entitled “Exegesis and Solitude,” it read:
I undertook the greatest departure from myself: creation, wanting to illuminate words. Ten years of solitary labor, exactly half of my life, have caused diverse rhythms and contrary currents to succeed one another in my expression. Tying, braiding them together, without finding anything timeless, because it doesn’t exist, you have the Twenty Love Poems and a Desperate Song . . . I have suffered much in making them . . . I tried to add more and more emotion to my thinking and I’ve achieved some success: everything that’s come from me I’ve done with sincerity and good intentions.
In fact, the jabs he received from critics were few, while the consensus of popular sentiment was positive. Carlos George Nascimento’s risk had paid off. The book may, at the time, have been a succès de scandale, but it was quite a success nonetheless. And it would continue to be so: in the future, Twenty Love Poems would go on to become one of the most popular books of poetry in the world. By 1972, two million copies had been sold in Spanish alone, with far more sold in translation. Though global sales numbers are hard to pin down, expert estimates are around ten million copies.
The enormously influential Argentine author Julio Cortázar, while reminiscing about Neruda a year after his death, provided a poignant picture of the book’s overall effect. Very few knew of Neruda when Twenty Love Poems first arrived in Buenos Aires. But the book
suddenly gave us back what was ours, tore us away from vague notions of European muses and mistresses to throw us into the arms of an immediate tangible woman, and teach us that a Latin American poet’s love could happen hic et nunc [here and now] and be written that way, in the simple words of the day, with the smell of our streets, with the simplicity in which we could discover beauty without having to agree to a grand purple style and divine proportions.
That raw sexuality was key, as was the break from the traditional European tropes and the shift to a new poetic language representing a Latin America–centric voice and eroticism. The eroticism—which includes a subtle depiction of oral sex—isn’t just thrown onto the page, but rather intertwines the corporeal body and the soul. The soul is painfully, intimately present and the heart is exposed. The majority of the poems are about the tragedies of love, the pining, the despair. They aren’t stock phrases to try to capture or excite someone you desire.
Neruda’s effectiveness in combining them is in part due to the literary devices he implements so deftly. The book begins with four stanzas of alexandrines. It also starts with a series of uncomplicated, vivid metaphors and similes—another signature trait. The first lines of Poem I are:
Body of woman, white hills, white thighs,
you look like the world in your attitude of giving.
Comparing women to nature was nothing new, but Neruda does it with a new richness and intensity. Diverse transcendental landscapes or nightscapes are integral components of nearly every poem of the book.
Woman is, like
