20041217-A specialist says that Neruda's work can encourage young people's love of poetry

"Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair is one of the great best sellers of poetry. Although it is not Pablo Neruda's best work, it is a very accessible and affordable book that can encourage many young people to enjoy poetry". Javier de Navascués, professor at the University of Navarra and corresponding member of the Real Academia Hispanoamericana, made these statements on the occasion of the centenary of the Chilean author.

As a tribute, the University of Navarra organized some conference in which the figure of the writer was discussed and his poems were recited.

The expert highlighted some of what he considers to be the Chilean writer's greatest merits: "He had an extraordinary verbal capacity, and poetry in Spanish cannot be conceived without some of his books. However, he criticized that the figure of Pablo Neruda "has been mythologized a lot by extra-literary aspects. He has fallen into the trap of which he spoke: to identify him as the voice of the dispossessed, to consider him a sentimental poet...".

In this sense, Javier de Navascués encouraged to "avoid clichés and go deeper into the reading and understanding of his texts. One of the risks of anniversaries lies in the fact that people outside literature become spokesmen for commonplaces, which accentuates them".

The decisive weight of Spain in his work

Likewise, he showed agreement that, sometimes, the political facet of Pablo Neruda has overshadowed the literary one. "He did not always come out well when he wrote political poetry. One example is Canto general, a work about the nature and history of America from a Marxist point of view. It has some admirable moments, but others are not so admirable, because in the attempt to make himself understood by the masses, he has vulgarized his language".

Finally, the professor from the University of Navarra recognized the importance that his time in Spain had for the Chilean's work. "At that time, it was a place with a very active cultural life, and here he met authors who influenced him enormously. From that moment on, his works began to be published in Spanish and disseminated in Spanish-speaking countries".