Michal Špína: Geography Liberated: Pablo Nerudaʼs Canto General

The Chilean poet Pablo Neruda’s Canto General (“General Song”) is a very complex and heterogeneous work, often considered a poetic encyclopedia of Chile and (Latin) America. At the same time it’s a poet’s autobiography and political confession. This paper explores various ways of how place, space and geography enter Neruda’s constructed image of both Latin America and himself. First of all, there is the selection of places followed by the relation between places and events (both political events and those of the poet’s personal history) and relations between places and characters in particular poems. The paper will also concentrate on phenomena that may be called a “geographization of man” (e. g. in poem “San Martín”) and an “anthropomorphization of geography.” Understanding this distinctive political-poetic geography should lead to a deeper understanding of Canto General as a whole.

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