Presencia de Walt Whitman en la poesia de Pablo Neruda: la relacion entre Hojas de Hierba y Canto General

Abstract

The objective of this investigation is to analyze the intertextual relationship between Walt Whitman's Leaves of Grass and Pablo Neruda's Canto general. Through a comparison of psychoanalysis, semiotic theory and cognitive psychology, a literary model based on the concept of cognitive schemas is developed in order to delineate the reader-text dialogue and the dialogue between both texts (intercommunicability of texts). The author, reader, and "I", or textual poet, are deemed, as well as several negotiation tactics used by the textual poet to persuade the reader to attribute the same meaning to the text that he himself attributes to said text. The literary model is then utilized to analyze the dialogue between Leaves of Grass and Canto general. In Chapter IX of Canto general, the textual poet enunciates his call to peace to the North American proletariat, invoking not only the presence of the textual poet in Leaves of Grass but also images from the USSR, including Joseph Stalin. Although the juxtaposition of such contrary images and ideologies seems ironic, and although the textual poet threatens the very recipients of his call to peace with violence, a detailed study of the potential schemas in the text reveals a previous dialogue between the textual poets of Leaves of Grass and Canto general. In that dialogue, both textual poets negotiate the meaning of the image of Whitman appending in the work of the Chilean poet. Although the textual poet in Canto general does not adopt the eroticism in Leaves of Grass, the equality between erotic ideologies and the multinational perspective that the text proposes inspires him to adopt an egalitarian perspective and to construct his poetic space in such a way that any ideology with promises the possibility of equality and justice, and that opposes any and all socio-economic hierarchies, is capable of becoming an integral part of the structure of the poetic space. Whitman and Stalin both have a place in the poetic space of Canto general; although they represent distinct and even contrary ideologies, each seeks the peace and prosperity sought by the textual poet of Canto general.