BRUNO TOCANNE

 

“No me siento solo en la noche,
en la oscuridad de la tierra.
Soy pueblo, pueblo innumerable.
Tengo en mi voz la fuerza pura
para atravesar el silencio
y germinar en las tinieblas.”

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CANTO GENERAL

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CANTO GENERAL by Chilean writer PABLO NERUDA is a collection of 342 poems, published in Mexico City in 1950. This masterpiece of Latin American poetry was written largely in hiding and exile. All the passion of NERUDA for its people and its country, all its rage to live animate this epic poem to the glory of Chile. A heartrending cry of revolt against all forces and all forms of oppression, it is also a great song of solidarity for the humiliated and the exploited. In a flood of powerful images and metaphors, the poet speaks of the original America, a living force, a grandiose and motherly land, of exuberant and fertile nature, of its discriminated peoples and of their silenced cultures. Going against the grain of official history, it reminds Chileans and Latin Americans more broadly of the Indian component of the history of the continent and its peoples. Thus PABLO NERUDA sings "Arauco", a Chilean province where he spent his childhood and where a large Mapuche community lives, throughout three sections and 17 poems constituting the longest sequence devoted to an indigenous American people.

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