Essay
Neruda and metaphorical frames
Mohammad Mahfuzul Islam analyses the poetry in a movie
Pablo Neruda, poet of human love and equality, wears the garb of a pedagogue, possessing command over figurative compositions during his exile on the island of Capri in Italy in Michael Radford's Il Postino: The Postman (1994). Gabriel Gonzalez Videla's oppressive rule compels the master of allegory to take refuge in a villa owned by Italian historian Edwin Cerio in Capri, fictionalized by Antonio Skarmeta in his 'Ardent Patience.' The film revolves around a postman who is assigned with the onus of delivering billets-doux of the passionately overwhelmed discoverers (mostly female) of metaphorical pronouncements to the intractable activist involved in coping with the human condition. His repeated interactions with the maestro take impersonal courses until one day the delivery man chances upon the biggest metaphor of his life in a literal damsel. The punctuated breaths of the lovelorn punctuate the new-found terrain of emotional exuberance before the commander of amorous poetics. Neruda, the pseudonymous composer, despite initial hesitation embarks on a journey of winning Troy for the beloved of his self-assured apprentice. He is at the helm, weaving strings of cloaked expressions for the sake of his disciples' amorous entanglements. The resemblance of smiles to the wings of the butterfly is brought forth as an initial demonstration of emotion in the postman's life. The first composition penned by the maestro of decorated phrases moves to possessing the girl of love gradually. The postman is internalizing the rudiments of poetry as a linguistic outlaw, although the composed geometry put to use by him always are the expert manifestations of unflinching poetry. In fact, the political commitment (communist slant) of Pablo Neruda turns him into a poetician. He thus joins the exclusive club of Gorky, Akhmatova and Lorca, all noted poeticians. The postman is a learner of a different order, learning the ropes of using extant embellishment rather than being the author of new metaphors. It is worth noting that metaphors are always given life and definite shape in terms of at least two literal expressions. Interestingly, metaphors can never come into existence metaphorically. The game of allegorical resemblance continues until the emotional grey areas are obliterated by the trained soldier of love. The contingent equation of triggered-off love could end up in smoke in the absence of language appropriate for an emotional state of being. Since linguistic appropriateness connecting the dots of passionate feelings is an important episode for the desperate lover, the safety net of poetic adornment is summoned for reaching a foolproof conclusion. The lyceum of metaphors spearheaded by Neruda brings success for the lovelorn subject. His encounter with the poetician in exile fattens the chances of efficacy for his love-soaked foray into the throbbing arena of excitement. Neruda salvages the solicitor of untapped love stored in utmost care in the alleys of his rib cage. The postman's unfiltered use of Neruda's poetic verses articulates trust reposed in the intrinsic magic of the masked impression. The lack of mastery over the art of composition makes him an uncritical apologist of the produced texts. Although one-dimensional reciprocity is prevalent, the postman restores the equilibrium by repaying the maestro with the recorded metaphors of natural sounds of the island. The repayment has another plane of implementation in that his life ends as he attends a communist congregation, where he was to have given a rendition of self-composed poetic frame. Both Neruda and the inhabitants of the island (most of them fishermen) share a striking similarity in that while he is evicted from his country of origin, the fishermen on the other side are displaced from their share of equitable value of labour. It is the innocuous metaphor of poetry that fails to capture the dismal plight of the exploited souls, but the trenchant ones do provide the tool of remonstrating against the scheme of exploitation. Again, the faith of all in the innocuous metaphors can ensure a just world for everyone, where the caustic ones are turned gratuitous. Neruda, because of his expressive skills in conjoining pairs of allegorical formations, enjoys prominence over the naïve and simple postman. Although he himself points to the delimited scope of his poetic performance the elevated status of figurative compositions is commonplace. The reason could be that thoughtfully chosen words clad in embellished attire seem to elude our cognition more than the process of mundane actions shorn of imposed decoration. So, struggling with the purport of those released words we come to appreciate the partially deciphered statements. Moreover, in an imaginative pursuit like poetry the confines of fettered relationships are transcended with comparative ease rather than the actual materialization. Despite that, recalcitrant words, which do trigger off the initial spark along with planned activism, can topple an exploitative Leviathan. The pedagogy that Neruda takes up is to equip the learner with spontaneous ingenuity of designing poetical frames, not to hark back to the original script of didactic perseverance. Although we find the presence of the general orientation of metaphors in the postman unbeknownst to him, he nevertheless puts his faith in the power of the recognized composer. While watching the film one comprehends gradually that the individual metaphor of the poet eclipses the communal ones of anonymous composers of folklore and folk songs. It is worth noting that communal poetics was given due attention in a field of study called ethno-poetics, with the conceptual repertoire of Jerome Rothenberg and Dennis Tedlock, along with that of others, where a community's poetic expressions were arguably to be preserved in the orbit of total performance. Despite that, the individual accomplishments of a poet like Pablo Neruda and his pedagogical pursuit of a poetician cannot be downplayed. Getting back to the film, it can be said that the whole enterprise of making poetry work and ushering in change for the toiling millions is both explicit and implicit in the involved sphere of the poet. Mohammad Mahfuzul Islam is an anthropologist and poet.
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