Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair: Dual Language Edition (Penguin Classics)

The Nobel Prize–winning poetÂ's most popular work When it appeared in 1924, this work launched into the international spotlight a young and unknown poet whose writings would ignite a generation. W. S. MerwinÂ's incomparable translation faces the original Spanish text. Now in a black-spine Classics edition, this book stands as an essential collection that continues to inspire lovers and poets around the world. *Veinte poemas de amor y una canción desesperada* es una de las obras más célebres del poeta chileno Pablo Neruda. Publicado en junio de 1924, el poemario lanzó a su autor a la fama con apenas 19 años de edad, y es una de las obras literarias de mayor renombre del siglo XX en el idioma español. Audazmente metafórica y sensual, esta colección yuxtapone la pasión juvenil con la desolación del dolor. Extraídos de las conexiones más íntimas y personales del poeta, los poemas combinan el erotismo y el mundo natural con la influencia del expresionismo y el genio del poeta. El propio Neruda señaló que *Veinte poemas de amor y una canción desesperada* es el resultado consciente de sustituir la ambición poética y la gran elocuencia que trataba de abarcar los misterios del hombre y el universo por un nuevo modo. El vocabulario es en general sencillo, aunque pertenece al dominio de la lengua literaria convencional desde el romanticismo y el modernismo. ---------- *Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair* is one of Chilean poet Pablo Neruda's most celebrated works. Published in June 1924, the collection launched its author to fame at just 19 years of age and is one of the most renowned literary works of the 20th century in the Spanish language. Boldly metaphorical and sensual, this collection juxtaposes youthful passion with the desolation of grief. Drawn from the poet's most intimate and personal connections, the poems combine eroticism and the natural world with the influence of Expressionism and the poet's genius. Neruda himself noted that *Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair* is the conscious result of replacing poetic ambition and grand eloquence that sought to encompass the mysteries of man and the universe with a new mode. The vocabulary is generally simple, although it belongs to the domain of conventional literary language since Romanticism and Modernism.

The Nobel Prize—winning poet's most popular work

When it appeared in 1924, this work launched into the international spotlight a young and unknown poet whose writings would ignite a generation. W. S. Merwin's incomparable translation faces the original Spanish text. Now in a black-spine Classics edition, this book stands as an essential collection that continues to inspire lovers and poets around the world.

Publishers Weekly

This collection of poems, first published by Neruda at the age of 19 in 1924, caused something of a scandal because of its frank and intense sexuality:

``I have gone marking the atlas of your body / with crosses of fire. / My mouth went across: a spider, trying to hide. / In you, behind you, timid, driven by thirst.''

It later became one of Neruda's best-loved works, selling two million copies by the 1960s. Why? With image after arresting image, Neruda charts the oceanic movements of passion, repeatedly summoning imagery of the sea and weather:

``On all sides I see your waist of fog, / and your silence hunts down my afflicted hours; / my kisses anchor, and my moist desire nests / in you with your arms of transparent stone.''

As irresistible as the sea, love is engulfing

(``You swallowed everything, like distance. / . . . In you everything sank!''

, but also departs as mysteriously as it arrived, leaving the poet's heart a ``pit of debris, fierce cave of the shipwrecked.'' These unabashedly romantic poems, wonderfully translated by Merwin, are illustrated in this edition by the paintings of Jan Thompson Dicks with aptly Fauvist tones and iconic formality. (Dec.)

When it appeared in 1924, this work launched into the international spotlight a young and unknown poet whose writings would ignite a generation. W. S. Merwin's incomparable translation faces the original Spanish text. Now in a black-spine Classics edition with an introduction by Cristina Garcia, this book stands as an essential collection that continues to inspire lovers and poets around the world. The most popular work by Chile's Nobel Prize-winning poet, and the subject of Pablo Larran's acclaimed feature film Neruda starring Gael Garca Bernal. First published in 1924, Veinte Poemas de Amor y una Cancion Desesperada remains among Neruda's most popular work. Daringly metaphorical, these poems are based upon his own private associations. Their sensuous use of nature symbolism to celebrate love and to express grief has not been surpassed in the literature of our century. This edition offers the original Spanish text, with masterly translations by W.S. Merwin on facing pages Body of woman, white hills, white thighs, you look like a world, lying in surrender.