[SteveWal]

Originally posted by robert mezey:
Forgive me for dissenting from this love-fest,
but except for the early dark Residencia
poems (which Neruda later repudiated as being
all wrong in their darkness, grief, and hopeless-
ness, too bourgeois in their concern for individual
personal feeling, and completely lacking the certainty
and optimism of a faithful Marxist, who is merely one
of the People, who are happy in their revolution) he
has seemed to me mostly a windy rhetorical propagand-
istic self-admiring romantic Commie. I don't use the
word Commie lightly. The truth is (and the bland
evasion of it is what made Il Postinosentimental
and dishonest) that Neruda was an utter and unrepentant Stalinist who passed up no opportunity to praise the nobility and freedom of Mother USSR and to sneer at
the evil and heartless imperialists up north. And to condemn their materialism and greed while himself
living in big beautifully furnished houses and availing
himself of large quantities of the best food and wine.

And nearly all of Kipling is an apologia for English imperialism, written in a thumping militaristic drumbeat of a metre. He was, of course, basically racist (all natives are basically children), sentimental (see If), certainly an apologist for the slaughter of the first world war, thought poor people deserved to be poor and black people were made to be servants.

So there. I can caricature writers just like you.

Personally, I think Neruda is a much more interesting writer than Kipling was ever capable of being. At least he was interested in the world outside his own country's borders and didn't apologise for Western Coca-Cola imperialism. And what's wrong with being an optimist? I like Neruda's Odes to things like the humble tomato.

------------------
Steve Waling