Pablo Neruda: 20 Love Songs and One Song of Despair
Taught by Rodrigo Sanchez and Ana Sanchez
Dynamic brother sister duo take on poetry, tackling one modernist at a time.
Over two sessions, this class will attempt a thorough reading of Neruda's most lyrical and most beloved body of youthful love poems. We will approach the poems with the problem of the poetic voice foremost in mind -- in other words, who is this young man in love who writes these extremely sensual yet tortured lyrics? By doing so, we will hope to gain insight into other large questions looming behind the text, for instance -- what do the poems reveal about the lover's experience of love and desire, of his body, of the bodies of others, of grief and loneliness? What is the difference between a love poem and a song of despair? Why should a cycle of love poems written by a young man in his 20s be capped off with a song of despair?
Everyone is encouraged to bring their favorite translation and interpretation of the poems to class. The style of the class will be a collaborative seminar, where everyone will be encouraged to participate actively and share their experience of the poems with all other participants. Some prior familiarity with the poems would be helpful, but not required.
