Neruda

            To Pablo Neruda, walking around in the city is an extremely painful experience; every view that comes into his sight causes him great pain as everything in the city reminds him of the sufferings of the poor: “Walking Around” demonstrates Neruda’s turn towards public subject matter—here expressed … as a description of urban life and the sufferings of the poor” (Simon 1422). In “Walking Around,” Neruda shows his contempt for urban life: going into tailor shops and movies makes him feel “all shriveled up, impenetrable, like a felt swan / navigating on a water of origin and ash” (Neruda lns. 3-4). Neruda doesn’t mention any people in his view which shows his feeling of isolation: he feels that he is the only one who sees (or chooses not to turn a blind eye to) the correlation between capitalism and the sufferings of the poor. His rejection of the urban life which is dominated by materialistic gains is expressed clearly as he wrote: “The smell of barber shop makes me sob out loud. / I want nothing but the repose either of stones or of wool, / I want to see no more establishments, no more gardens, / nor merchandise, nor glasses, nor elevators” (Neruda 5-8).

            There is also a shift in Neruda’s attitude towards the urban life; it goes from passively moaning for to actively standing up against what he believes is wrong. At the beginning of the poem, he feels that the view of the city makes him feel despair and powerless: “It happens that I am tired of my feet and my nails / and my hair and my shadow. / It happens that I am tired of being a man” (Neruda 9-11). Then, his decision to stop being a part of what he believes is wrong is shown when he wrote that “I do not want to be the inheritor of so many misfortunes. / I do not want to continue as a root and as a tomb, / as a solitary tunnel, as a cellar full of corpses, / stiff with cold, dying pain” (Neruda 22-25). The last stanza shows his determination to end the sufferings of the poor: “I stride along with calm, with eyes, with shoes, / with fury, with forgetfulness, / I pass, I cross offices and stores full of orthopaedic appliances, / and courtyards hung with clothes on wires, / underpants, towels and shirts which weep / slow dirty tears” (Neruda 40-45).

Works Cited

Neruda, Pablo. “Walking Around.” Trans. W. S. Merwin. 1650 to the Present. Ed. Peter Simon. 3rd ed. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2013. 1423-24. Print. Vol. 2 of The Norton Anthology of World Literature, Martin Puchner, gen. ed. 2 vols.

Simon, Peter, ed. 1650 to the Present. 3rd ed. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2013. Print. Vol. 2 of The Norton Anthology of World Literature, Martin Puchner, gen. ed. 2 vols.