Neruda begins all of Canto General with “Amor America (1400),” in the opening section titled A Lamp of Earth. The significance of the year 1400 is that it marks a time before the arrival of Christopher Columbus or any other European explorers, “before the wig and the dress coat” (l. 1). This poem is Neruda’s first punch thrown in the ring, boxing against the gloved fist of colonial imperialism. The reader is invited to celebrate the original people of America, who lived in organic harmony with the land that created them.
Once “Man was dust,” the speaker intones, naming tribes native to the soil: “he was Carib jug, Chibcha stone, / imperial cup of Araucanian silica” (ll. 9–10). Even if the poem wants to stay with these “tender and bloody” people (l. 11), time pushes us onward. Soon an implied narrative struggle shapes the literal page: the text of line 14 is abbreviated, and when the partially broken stanza picks up on line 15, a battle seems to have been waged in the gap of text. The cool, mercantile reason of explorers has defeated the hot-blooded passions of native inhabitants—their land exploited, their races diluted—and “No one could / remember them afterward: the wind / forgot them, the language of water / was buried, the keys were lost / or flooded with silence” (ll. 15–19).
So far, the speaker has been unspecific, as if it were the voice of historical record. Now the poet introduces himself, and boldly assures that “Life was not lost, pastoral brothers… I am here to tell the story” (ll. 20, 24). Neruda describes the search for his heritage across extremes of climate, “from the peace of the buffalo / to the pummeled sands” (ll. 25–26); in tracing his lineage to a “copper” father, a “nuptial plant” mother, the poet claims kin to the original, organic people of America.
Because silence has been equated to death, the poet’s ability to unearth their language becomes a power of metaphysical resurrection. His ultimate promise is a toast to “my land without name… your aroma climbed my roots up to the glass / raised to my lips, up to the slenderest / word as yet unborn in my mouth” (ll. 43–47). Neruda often associates his origins with the potent motif of raíces (“roots”), which both nourish and bind. Just as someone drinking a fine wine can taste the influence of lavender that was planted in vineyard soil, so Neruda tastes America in every word he may come to speak.
Although the Canto General does not satisfy the formal constraints of a narrative epic, the collection is epic in terms of its scale—in length as well as geographical and chronological scope—and its dedication to the themes of war and homeland. Every epic opens with an invocation to the muse, and Neruda had no dearer muses than the ghosts of his native people. “Amor America” serves as a summoning of long-dead spirits. The poet relights their lamp of earth (l. 23), once extinguished by the crush of invaders, and holds the lamp high so as to illuminate the path to a story waiting to be told.
Categories: British Literature, Chilean Literature, Latin American Literature, Literature
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