Translating Neruda: Femininity and Sensuality ... - Triceratops Home

Mueller 12
The description of waves and shores similarly suggests an aspect of impermanence in the
relationship, with the coming-and-going rhythm of the tides and the waves themselves. If
this woman described here is so similar to the ocean, the speaker’s inability to hold on to
her is therefore justified and understandable. Just as it is impossible to hold a wave, it is
impossible to hold another person just by loving them. The speaker loves this woman so
much that his soul shines like stars (lines 11-12), but this love alone is not enough to
stave off the night of loneliness.
The final stanza is the poem’s most explicit sexual metaphor: “Galopa la noche en
su yegua sombría / desparramando espigas azules sobre el campo.” The two phrases
together portray the penetration and insemination phases of sexual intimacy, and increase
the overall erotic sense of the poem as a whole, a sense that, as we will see more clearly
later on, does not necessarily come through in translation. The act of penetration is
represented by the metaphor of night riding a horse, an explicit parallel to the typical
male and female roles during sexual intercourse. The second line could be interpreted in
a purely agricultural context by reading “desparramar” as meaning “to scatter.” But the
word can also mean “to spill” a liquid, and when read thus, the implication of semen is
obvious, as the liquid seed from the previously described sexual act which then fosters
new growth. The fact that this poem culminates in an abstracted, nature-centric
description of a human sexual act exemplifies the way in which Neruda uses nature to
define and explore the relationship between the speaker and the woman in this poem.
In Residencia en la tierra, a collection written in three parts from 1925 to 1945
and published between 1933 and 1947, Neruda’s writing makes a marked shift to a
greater focus on the physical world in and of itself, rather than just as a way of describing