La ciudad como metáfora de opresión y esperanza en Canto General de Pablo Neruda: un estudio analítico del simbolismo urbano | ||
| Alsun Beni-Suef International Journal of Linguistics Translation and Literature | ||
| Volume 5, Issue 2, December 2025, Pages 144-161 PDF (440.17 K) | ||
| Document Type: Original Article | ||
| DOI: 10.21608/abjltl.2025.381300.1103 | ||
| Author | ||
| Omnia Ahmed Mahmoud Salem* | ||
| Spanish Department, Faculty of Language and Translation, Pharos University of Alexandria, Egypt | ||
| Abstract | ||
| Pablo Neruda creates a broad poetic map of Latin America in Canto General, where the metropolis is depicted as a place of oppression as well as a furnace of resistance. Urban areas like Lima, Santiago, or Cuzco are living palimpsests that preserve layers of colonial cruelty, indigenous tenacity, and contemporary political conflict, according to Neruda. With their architecture attesting to centuries of exploitation, cities in Canto General frequently seem scarred by the past of imperial invasion. Neruda, however, is unwilling to let these areas deteriorate or become hopeless. Rather, he gives them a sense of historical memory and prophetic potential, arguing that the city may still be a place of revolutionary hope and collective awakening even in the face of oppression. Neruda frequently alternates between ruin and vibrancy in his depictions of urban life. The working class coexists with ruins and cathedrals in poems like "La arena traicionada" and "Alturas de Machu Picchu," whose labor secretly maintains the city's splendor. According to Neruda, the city is a living creature that is influenced by both those who construct it and those who oppose it. Through his lyrical vision, the city becomes a symbol that is simultaneously a laboratory of the future and a cemetery of the past. Neruda pushes his readers to view the city as a place where history is disputed and collective identity is constantly recreated. | ||
| Keywords | ||
| Poetry; Neruda; The city; Symbolic urban area | ||
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