Making the Ordinary Extraordinary: Pablo Neruda's Odes - Words Without Borders
Making the Ordinary Extraordinary: Pablo Neruda’s Odes When Pablo Neruda published his first of three collections of odes—the Odas elementales (Elementary Odes)—in 1954, he was probably unaware that his Russian hero, Pushkin, had written 130 years earlier that odes were the lowest form of poem because they lacked a “plan” and because mere “rapture” excluded the kind of “tranquility” which, Pushkin said, was “an indispensable condition” of the highest beauty.” Fortunately, Neruda does achieve rapture, tranquility, and immense beauty in many of the Odes. Neverthel...