1 - The 1920s: from Crepusculario to Veinte poemas de amor y una canción desesperada

Summary

Crepusculario, 1923

Neruda published his first book of poems in 1923, at his own expense (selling, for example, his father's gold watch, a parting present) in order to afford the 180-paged, but not paginated, Crepusculario. The second edition appeared in 1926, with a third in 1937, confirming its popularity. The earliest poem in this anthology of his early work, divided into five sections, dates from 1919 when he was 15 years old. Already at this early age, a critic, Raúl Silva Castro, had predicted the arrival of a talented poet. Another of Chile's prominent critics, Alone, who helped Neruda with money to pay for the first edition, also praised the book for its ‘magic of true poetry’. So, as a poet, Neruda was born with this collection. It sounds a modern note from its title for that word ‘crepusculario’ does not exist in Spanish. It is made up of ‘crepúsculo’ [twilight] and, perhaps, ‘poemario’ [collection of poems]. There is an oblique homage to the Argentine modernista Leopoldo Lugones (1874–1938), whose outrageous collection, mocking the Romantics’ allusions to ‘moon’, was titled Lunario sentimental, 1909, and whose earlier, equally ironic book was Crepúsculos del jardín, 1905; combining ‘crepúsculo / lunario’, we get, ‘crepusculario’. In a letter to Héctor Eandi, Neruda praised Lugones as ‘so denigrated, he seems to me in truth rich with gifts, his poetry nearly always poetic, that is, legitimate, although anachronic and baroque’. However, the most direct transposition of ‘crepúsculo’ derives from Baudelaire's prose poem ‘Le Crépuscule du soir’ [Evening twilight], where he intones the area Neruda explores: ‘O nuit! O rafraîchissants ténèbres! Vous êtes pour moi le signal d’une fête intérieure, vous êtes la delivrance d’une angoisse’ [Oh night! Oh refreshing darkness! You are for me the sign of an inner feast, you are deliverance from anguish]. Following this therapeutic twilight, no wonder the poem for the young Neruda becomes a space of nocturnal relief. He would have read Baudelaire's poem translated in Díez-Canedo's 1913 anthology. As was his usual way of reading, Neruda identified directly with Baudelaire. There's also a resonance with Victor Hugo's Les Chants du crépuscule [Twilight Songs], 1835.