The Sea and the Bells (Kagean Book) by Pablo Neruda (PDF)

Description

The sound of ships’ bells, sea waves, and migratory birds fuel Neruda’s longing to retreat from life’s noisy busyness. Stripped to essentials, these poems are some of the last Neruda ever wrote, as he pulled “one dream out of another.” Includes the final lovesong to his wife, written in the past tense: “It was beautiful to live / When you lived!” Bilingual with introduction.”Deeply personal, expansive, and universal… majestic and understated beauty.”—Publishers Weekly

User’s Reviews

Editorial Reviews: About the Author Pablo Neruda (1904-1973) held diplomatic posts in Asian and European countries. After joining the Communist Party, Neruda was elected to the Chilean Senate but was forced to live in exile in Mexico for several years. Eventually he established a permanent home on Isla Negra. In 1970 he was appointed as Chile’s ambassador to France; in 1971 he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature. William O’Daly is one of the most celebrated translators of the poetry of Pablo Neruda. He lives in California.

Reviews from Amazon users which were colected at the time this book was published on the website:

⭐This is a wonderful collection of poems for the student, the middlebrow lover of poetry, or the academic. One of Neruda’s last collections before his passing, it is also one of his most profoundly personal and deeply intimate. Wonderfully approachable, each poem is presented in Neruda’s original Spanish and in translated form.

⭐At the time of his death, there were 8 manuscripts still on Chilean Poet and Nobel Prize winner Pablo Neruda’s desk, this being one of them. Neruda was well aware of his limited time, and these this volume is a valedictory informed by that awareness and those aspects of his life at Isla Negra that afforded the most personal reflection. The volume appears close to completion; some titles are absent but most poems indeed are titled and fully realized. They are quiet–each generally well short of a page–and highly meditative in tone. His translator William O’ Daly is a fine poet in his own right, and has kept close to the original wording and sense. If you can’t read the Spanish the O’ Daly versions are excellent renderings.Copper Canyon Press is a high quality poetry house, really an American institution and this volume holds to their high production values.The book bears reading and re-reading. Neruda is one of the greatest poets of the past century and this is a fine introduction to the vast corpus of his work.

⭐Neruda’s last and unfinished collection still contains a number of poems that are as wonderful as any her has written. These poems are both very person, such as the last poem he wrote to his beloved, Matilde (“Finale”), but also touch the universal if not the mythic (“Returning”).Many of these poems feel unfinished, not just because they have no titles, but they lack that final quality of workmanship Neruda gives to his collections as they are published. Read this collection regardless. Neruda unfinished is superior to so many poets writing today and the collection as a whole rewards us as we experience the haunting sea and silent bell.

⭐I love reading! I decided to buy this book because the author is a Latin famous writer, and I’m a Spanish native speaker but I love reading in English too. When I started to read the book, I was totally impressed with the great job made it by the interpreter: The poems in Spanish translated to English are amazing. I totally recommend this purchase to readers that are interested or know both languages.

⭐The Sea and The Bells is the best poetry collection I’ve ever read. Uncompleted at the time of Neruda’s death, only 1/3 of the poems in this collection were titled. However, the wisdom and eloquence with which Neruda worked in the last year of his life is without peer in the canon of 20th century poetry. His “Finale” written on his deathbed to his wife, Matilde, is devastating.Neruda’s balance of humor, power, spirituality, compassion and love is so clear in a few of these poems, you may find these poems like little prayers on which you can meditate. For example:If each day fallsinside each night,there exists a wellwhere clarity is imprisoned.We need to sit on the rimof the well of darknessand fish for fallen lightwith patience.Maybe it’s just me, but this kind of poetry reads like the wise words of a Buddhist monk high in the mountains of Nepal, man. This collection is the deaf, dope jam.The only criticism I have is with the translation. William O’Daly makes several unusually bland decisions in translating from the original Spanish. For example, Neruda literally writes in We Are Waiting “o para asesinarnos de inmediato” where the verb “assassinate” is pretty darn clear. The phrase literally translates “or to immediately assassinate us.” Given the political tension Neruda was writing under having won the Nobel Prize and having returned to Chile, it is reasonably clear why he used the word “assassinate.” O’Daly’s translation reads: “or to instantly murder us” opting for the bland general word “murder” rather than the clear, stronger word “assassinate.” O’Daly makes similarly odd decisions throughout the text. Fortunately, the original Spanish appears alongside O’Daly’s translation so you can read what Neruda actually wrote.Beyond the translation, this is the best poetry collection I have ever read. I highly recommend it to anyone who appreciates language being used at its absolute finest. The Sea and The Bells raises the bar for all of us. Read it, and enjoy!Stacey

⭐I have to disagree entirely with the reviewer below. If he is pining for the wild exuberances characteristics of earlier stages in Neruda’s writings, he should not look for it here: for all their wordplay, these last books of Neruda’s (the handful he worked on simultaneously during the last year of his life) are about preparing for death. I’ve noticed here and there some nuance which seemed not to have caught the translator’s eye, but otherwise he has made a remarkably rewarding transation of the ruminative, supple-then-lurching tone of PN’s Spanish. “The Sea and the Bells” is a crockpot of mystery, a book to read and learn slowly over years.

⭐Pablo Neruda is one of my favorite poets of all time, however, William O’ Daly does not do Neruda justice. His translation is flat and unevocative, and unable to invoke those true emotions that Neruda is famous for. I would recommend checking out translations by W.S. Merwin if you want the full ecstatic experience that Neruda usually so eloquently conveys.

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