Pablo Neruda life and work in residencia en la tierra, a "caballero solo" lives possessed by desire

• Main Author: Luis Alfonso Castro Sotelo
• Format: Article
• Language: Spanish
• Published: Universidad de Chile 2011-11-01
• Series: Revista Chilena de Literatura
• Online Access: https://revistaliteratura.uchile.cl/index.php/RCL/article/view/17153

In these pages, the poem "Caballero solo" is seen as a particularly rich discourse for textual analysis. The poem is built up around key words and concepts, an evocative structure, an attractive issue, and a thought provoking perspective, following an undoubtedly Nerudian lyric voice. The focus lies on the aesthetic and ideological elements in "Caballero solo", included in Residencia en la tierra. The poem is seen as evidence of a transformation in the Nerudian system, where the social elements coexist along with and confront the subject who writes and suffers. Emphasis is paid to the way the poem states a thesis regarding the functioning of desires, their origins and evolution, and sexuality in the social world of the poet, the subject. This world provides a possibility of returning to the primitive spaces of nature, the woods, and the monsters of fantasy. After having perceived sexuality everywhere, the poet shelters himself amongst the elements of his infancy, which can be taken as a common human landscape alluding to sex and desire.