SQN - Sine Qua Non - Issue 1 - Journal - Page 40
animals. We learn words by imitating the gestures associated with them. As children, we
perform nursery rhymes or alphabets by repeating them aloud. In our learning of language,
the beauty of sound comes before the meanings of words. Children are happy when they hear
sounds indicating love and affection, even if they are completely meaningless.
The child is not searching for meaning. The child is searching for a feeling.
A poet is child-like in the way that he or she takes pleasure in using the right kinds
of words that indicate feelings of joy or sadness. The poet's relationship with words is
characterized by a love of the language. For him, words are everything because they allow him
to have an emotional life that defines him from within. Though words make life beautiful,
his relationship with them is anything but simple. It is a complex relationship because it is
through words that he acquires his poetic self. His poetry and his creativity are happening in
a language that is not meant for him to own but paradoxically belongs to him.
Neruda declares that it is a language he inherited from the “fierce conquistadors,” the
Spanish conquerors who came to the Americas “hunting for potatoes, sausages, beans, black
tobacco, gold, corn, fried eggs.” They were cruel men who, in their greed, destroyed the great
civilizations before them. They bear similarities to the British who invaded India, devastated
the pre-colonial world, and unintentionally introduced the English language and literature to
their colonized subjects. The Spanish conquerors were barbarians, but they gave words—the
Spanish language—to the South American people, which Neruda uses to criticize them. The
poet says, “Wherever they went, they razed the land...They carried everything off and left us
everything. . .They left us the words.”
Western-educated native Indians also used the English language to challenge British
rule of India. Likewise, Neruda uses the Spanish language to reflect on the colonization of the
Americas. His relationship with the Spanish language is ambivalent. On one hand, he loves
the language in which he is a poet. On the other hand, it is a colonial language. He opposes
colonization, but ironically, he would never be the poet he is without it. The colonization has
given him the words that make him Pablo Neruda. He is attached to the words though not
to the colonization.
In Neruda’s hands, the words have a different history. Any language is ultimately neutral.
It can come from a history of conquest, but it has nothing to do with the conquest itself,
which is not about words in the first place. The British rule of India was evil because it
destroyed an existing culture and political economy. However, the English language was not
responsible for India's colonization. Similarly, the Spanish conquerors were vicious men who
came looking for gold. This does not imply that we should blame the Spanish language for
the conquest and dehumanization of South America.
As trite as it may sound, Spanish is beautiful in the eyes of those who use it, like any
language. The beauty of the language is what Neruda celebrates. Although people would
never have a history without language, languages are not only about conquests. They are also
about human relationships and simple day-to-day feelings. They are about how people relate
to one another, their joys and pains, their struggles, and their sorrows. That's what Neruda
is doing throughout the passage. He is expressing his passion for words that allow him to
express his innermost self to the reader, a self that he is able to discover through words.
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Neruda, Memoirs, 54.
Neruda, 54.
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