Residence on Earth
Pablo Neruda
Residence on Earth
The inward, private poetry Pablo Neruda wrote before the Spanish Civil War, which Canto General leaves behind.
Read our takeCanto General
Pablo Neruda
Canto General
by Pablo Neruda
Pablo Neruda's long poem of the whole American continent, finished while the Chilean police were looking for him.
- 1950
About Pablo Neruda
The story, briefly
Spoiler-freeCanto General is Pablo Neruda's long poem about the Americas: their land, their peoples and some five hundred years of their history. He began it in 1938 as a poem about Chile alone and widened it after he saw the ruins of Macchu Picchu in Peru in 1943. He finished it in hiding in Chile and then in exile, after the government outlawed his party and ordered his arrest. The book was published in Mexico City in 1950 with endpapers by the muralists Diego Rivera and David Alfaro Siqueiros. In Chile it was printed in secret the same year. The Nobel Prize biography calls it the central part of Neruda's work.[1][2]
The story, in more detail
The book started small. In 1938 Neruda wrote the first poems of what he then called a Canto general de Chile, a general song of Chile.[1] In Mexico, where he was Chile's consul general from 1940, he kept working on it. A private edition of a few fragments came out in Mexico City in 1943: one hundred signed copies of a sixteen-page booklet.[1]
A trip home changed the plan. In late 1943 Neruda travelled back to Chile along the Pacific coast and climbed to the Inca ruins of Macchu Picchu, above Cuzco.[3] He later said that the visit made him see the whole of America from those heights, and that the idea of an American Canto General began there.[4]
In September 1945, now a senator, Neruda went to his house at Isla Negra and began the poem Alturas de Macchu Picchu, The Heights of Macchu Picchu.[1] Chile's National Library dates its completion to 15 September 1945.[4] The poem became the second section of the finished book.[1]
Then politics took over. In February 1948 the Supreme Court stripped Neruda of a senator's immunity from arrest and the courts ordered him detained. He spent the next year hiding in friends' houses and writing the book.[3] Presenting his Nobel Prize in 1971, the Swedish Academy said Canto General was partly written while he was in exile in his own country.[5]
What's inside
Fifteen sections of poems. The Fundación Pablo Neruda counts about 330 poems and some fifteen thousand lines. They cover the nature and peoples of the Americas and more than five hundred years of their history and politics.[1]
The second section is The Heights of Macchu Picchu, written after Neruda's visit to the Inca city. A later section, La arena traicionada, meaning the sand betrayed, names the dictators of Latin America. The last section, Yo soy, meaning I am, turns to Neruda's own life.[1]
Single poems inside the book began as poems for particular occasions. Neruda read one at the funeral of the Mexican composer Silvestre Revueltas in 1940. Another mourns the Spanish poet Miguel Hernández, who died in a Francoist prison in 1942.[1]
Themes and analysis
A book printed twice in 1950, once in secret
The first edition came out in Mexico City on 3 April 1950. The edition was a large-format printing of five hundred copies, and its endpapers were drawn by the Mexican muralists Diego Rivera and David Alfaro Siqueiros. The University of Chile's chronology records two Mexican editions that year, one for a sponsoring committee and one from Ediciones Océano.
At almost the same moment the Communist Party printed the book in Chile, where it could not be sold openly. The title page gave a false imprint, Imprenta Juárez, Reforma 75, Mexico City. The artist José Venturelli illustrated it and helped lay out the pages.
Chile's National Library describes how the printers avoided the police. Each stage was given to a different worker in a different place. They used ordinary shop paper so that no paper order could be traced, and old typesetting moulds that government agents could not follow. The result was five thousand copies of a 468-page book, 27 by 19 centimetres.
Paris, 1949 and 1950
Neruda left Chile before the book was finished. He crossed the Andes on horseback into Argentina in February 1949, then reached Paris in April on the passport of his friend, the Guatemalan novelist Miguel Ángel Asturias. On 25 April he walked onto the stage of the World Congress of Partisans of Peace in Paris, revealing where he had been hiding.
After finishing the book in Mexico late in 1949, Neruda came back to Europe. In June 1950 he went to Prague and then Paris, and in October he signed copies of the French translation of Canto General.
In 1954 a French edition, Le Chant général, appeared in France with illustrations by the French painter Fernand Léger.
From Chile to the whole continent
Chile's National Library describes Canto General as a kind of encyclopedic chronicle. The poem mixes literature and history to tell the story of the people of the Americas and their struggle for freedom. The inward-looking poems of Neruda's youth are left far behind.
Neruda explained the change himself. He said he came to understand that people who walked the same inherited land had something to do with the great efforts of the American peoples. Ignoring that, he said, was not only a crime but the continuation of a defeat.
The Nobel Prize biography says the same thing more briefly. In Mexico Neruda rewrote his song of Chile into an epic poem about the whole South American continent, its nature, its people and its history.
Quotes from Canto General
and drenching and flaring by turns, adolescence / like a lamp overturned in the rain.
South is a stallion, submerging, / in the gradual trees and the dew, garlanded.
Why we recommend it
The center of his work
The Nobel Prize biography calls Canto General the central part of his work, and the 1971 presentation speech singled it out.
The Heights of Macchu Picchu
The book's second section is the poem Neruda wrote after climbing to the Inca ruins in 1943. The visit changed the plan of the whole book.
A book with a story of its own
Written in hiding, carried into exile, published in Mexico with endpapers by Diego Rivera and David Alfaro Siqueiros, and printed in secret in Chile.
A Paris chapter
Neruda reached Paris in 1949, before the book was finished, and returned in 1950 to sign the French translation.
What this book explores
Bring it to book club
- Neruda first planned a poem about Chile alone. What does the book gain by covering the whole continent?
- The Heights of Macchu Picchu comes early in the book. How does it set up what follows?
- Much of the book was written by a man in hiding from the police. Can you feel that in the poems you read?
- The last section, I Am, turns to Neruda's own life. Why end an epic of a continent with an autobiography?
- The Chilean printers risked arrest to make five thousand copies. What does that tell you about how people read poetry in Chile in 1950?
Timeline
1938
Pablo Neruda writes the first poems of what he calls a Canto general de Chile.
1943
A private edition of fragments, one hundred signed copies, appears in Mexico City. In late 1943 Neruda visits Macchu Picchu.
1945
At Isla Negra Neruda writes The Heights of Macchu Picchu, finishing it on 15 September.
1947
The Heights of Macchu Picchu is published on its own in Santiago.
1948
Stripped of his immunity from arrest, Neruda goes into hiding in Chile and keeps writing the book.
1949
Neruda crosses the Andes in February, appears at the peace congress in Paris on 25 April, and finishes the book in Mexico late in the year.
1950
The Mexico City edition appears on 3 April with endpapers by Diego Rivera and David Alfaro Siqueiros. A clandestine edition of five thousand copies is printed in Chile.
1950
In October, in Paris, Neruda signs copies of the French translation.
1954
Le Chant général is published in France with illustrations by Fernand Léger.
1991
The University of California Press publishes Jack Schmitt's complete English translation.
Book editions
- Paperback
- University of California Press
- 1993
- 9780520082793
- Jack Schmitt
- Paperback
- University of California Press
- 2011
- 9780520269972
- Jack Schmitt
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Read our takeCanto General: frequently asked questions
What is Canto General about?
The Americas: their land and nature, their peoples, and more than five hundred years of their history and politics. Pablo Neruda began it as a poem about Chile and widened it to the whole continent.
When and where was Canto General published?
In Mexico City in 1950, in an edition of five hundred large copies that appeared on 3 April. The same year a secret edition of five thousand copies was printed in Chile under a false Mexican imprint.
Is The Heights of Macchu Picchu part of Canto General?
Yes. The Heights of Macchu Picchu is the book's second section. Neruda wrote it at Isla Negra in September 1945, two years after visiting the ruins, and it was also published on its own in 1947.
Why was Neruda in hiding when he wrote it?
In 1948 the Chilean government turned against the Communist Party, and Neruda, a Communist senator, attacked the president from the Senate floor. The Supreme Court stripped him of his immunity from arrest, and he hid in friends' houses for a year while he wrote.
Who illustrated Canto General?
Diego Rivera and David Alfaro Siqueiros drew the endpapers of the 1950 Mexican edition. José Venturelli illustrated the secret Chilean edition, and Fernand Léger illustrated the 1954 French edition.
Which English translation is complete?
Jack Schmitt's translation, published by the University of California Press in 1991 and still in print. Earlier English versions, by Nathaniel Tarn and Ben Belitt, translated only parts of the book.
What is the Paris connection?
Neruda reached Paris in April 1949, before the book was finished, and appeared at the World Congress of Partisans of Peace. He was in Paris again in October 1950, signing copies of the French translation.
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References
References
The sources below include the primary text, editions, scholarship, archival materials, and other records that informed this page. They document Canto General, its publication, and its place in literary history.
2↑Pablo Neruda — Biographical
Official recordNobel Prize Outreach, from Les Prix NobelUsed forThe Nobel Prize biography, on the move from a Chilean poem to a continental one.
5↑Award ceremony speech for the 1971 Nobel Prize in Literature, by Karl Ragnar Gierow of the Swedish Academy
Official recordNobel Prize Outreach, from Les Prix Nobel en 1971, 1971Used forKarl Ragnar Gierow's 1971 presentation speech, on the book written in exile in Neruda's own country.
6Pablo Neruda — Poetry (poems selected by the Nobel Library of the Swedish Academy, in Ben Belitt's translations)
WebsiteNobel Prize OutreachUsed forPoems from Canto General in Ben Belitt's translation, the source of the quotations.
7Pablo Neruda — Bibliography (works in Spanish and in English)
Official recordNobel Prize Outreach, compiled by the Swedish AcademyUsed forThe Swedish Academy's bibliography: the 1950 first edition, the 1947 Heights of Macchu Picchu, and the English translations.
8Canto General, translated by Jack Schmitt, introduction by Roberto González Echevarría
WebsiteUniversity of California Press, 2011Used forPublisher's page for Jack Schmitt's translation: ISBN, date and page count.
9Pablo Neruda — Open Library author and edition records, used to confirm that every ISBN listed resolves to the book named
ArchiveOpen LibraryUsed forOpen Library edition records, used to confirm each ISBN listed.
10Canto General
PoetryPablo Neruda, 1950Used forThe primary text represented by this page, used for descriptions of the work’s contents and for any quoted passages shown here.
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Why these sources are here
The primary text is the baseline reference for every book page. Additional references document publication history, interpretation, and historical context where that evidence is available.
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