“The Sea” by Pablo Neruda

Lincoln City, Oregon (March 20, 2014) | Jeni

I’m at a point in my language learning where I’m trying to read a tiny bit of literature in Spanish, finding something that sticks and going back and forth between languages. Good poetry works well for this because I find it very captivating and I like the lyricism and symbolic nature of it. Of course, Pablo Neruda is one of the best poets, and a favorite of mine, so his poetry seems like the perfect place to start reading in another language. Today I thought I’d just place the Spanish and English versions of this side by side and reflect on it and try to pick up some new words.

This is a poem about something that I love, “The Sea” (El Mar), where Neruda explores its mystery and magnetism.

The Sea

El Mar

I need the sea because it teaches me.
I don’t know if I learn music or awareness,
if it’s a single wave or its vast existence,
or only its harsh voice or its shining
suggestion of fishes and ships.
The fact is that until I fall asleep,
in some magnetic way I move in
the university of the waves.

It’s not simply the shells crunched
as if some shivering planet
were giving signs of its gradual death;
no, I reconstruct the day out of a fragment,
the stalactite from the sliver of salt,
and the great god out of a spoonful.

What it taught me before, I keep. It’s air
ceaseless wind, water and sand.

It seems a small thing for a young person,
to have come here to live with his own fire;
nevertheless, the pulse that rose
and fell in its abyss,
the crackling of the blue cold,
the gradual wearing away of the star,
the soft unfolding of the wave
squandering snow with its foam,
the quiet power out there, sure
as a stone shrine in the depths,
replaced my world in which were growing
stubborn sorrow, gathering oblivion,
and my life changed suddenly:
as I became part of its pure movement.

Necesito del mar porque me enseña:
no sé si aprendo música o conciencia:
no sé si es ola sola o ser profundo
o sólo ronca voz o deslumbrante
suposición de peces y navios.
El hecho es que hasta cuando estoy dormido
de algún modo magnético circulo
en la universidad del oleaje.

No son sólo las conchas trituradas
como si algún planeta tembloroso
participara paulatina muerte,
no, del fragmento reconstruyo el día,
de una racha de sal la estalactita
y de una cucharada el dios inmenso.

Lo que antes me enseñó lo guardo! Es aire,
incesante viento, agua y arena.

Parece poco para el hombre joven
que aquí llegó a vivir con sus incendios,
y sin embargo el pulso que subía
y bajaba a su abismo,
el frío del azul que crepitaba,
el desmoronamiento de la estrella,
el tierno desplegarse de la ola
despilfarrando nieve con la espuma,
el poder quieto, allí, determinado
como un trono de piedra en lo profundo,
substituyó el recinto en que crecían
tristeza terca, amontonando olvido,
y cambió bruscamente mi existencia:
di mi adhesión al puro movimiento.

Original Spanish from Universidad de Chile and translation from The Dewdrop.