Eye of the Heart

by Pablo Neruda, Jorge Luis Borges, Julio Cortázar

English, Spanish (translation)

Genres: Short Stories, Fiction, Latin American, Magical Realism

576 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1973

About the author

Pablo Neruda, born Ricardo Eliécer Neftalí Reyes Basoalto in 1904 in Parral, Chile, was a poet, diplomat, and politician, widely considered one of the most influential literary figures of the 20th century. From an early age, he showed a deep passion for poetry, publishing his first works as a teenager. He adopted the pen name Pablo Neruda to avoid disapproval from his father, who discouraged his literary ambitions. His breakthrough came with Veinte poemas de amor y una canción desesperada (Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair, 1924), a collection of deeply emotional and sensual poetry that gained international recognition and remains one of his most celebrated works.
Neruda’s career took him beyond literature into diplomacy, a path that allowed him to travel extensively and engage with political movements around the world. Beginning in 1927, he served in various consular posts in Asia and later in Spain, where he witnessed the Spanish Civil War and became an outspoken advocate for the Republican cause. His experiences led him to embrace communism, a commitment that would shape much of his later poetry and political activism. His collection España en el corazón (Spain in Our Hearts, 1937) reflected his deep sorrow over the war and marked a shift toward politically engaged writing.
Returning to Chile, he was elected to the Senate in 1945 as a member of the Communist Party. However, his vocal opposition to the repressive policies of President Gabriel Gonzalez Videla led to his exile. During this period, he traveled through various countries, including Argentina, Mexico, and the Soviet Union, further cementing his status as a global literary and political figure. It was during these years that he wrote Canto General (1950), an epic work chronicling Latin American history and the struggles of its people.
Neruda’s return to Chile in 1952 marked a new phase in his life, balancing political activity with a prolific literary output. He remained a staunch supporter of socialist ideals and later developed a close relationship with Salvador Allende, who appointed him as Chile’s ambassador to France in 1970. The following year, he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature, recognized for the scope and impact of his poetry. His later years were marked by illness, and he died in 1973, just days after the military coup that overthrew Allende. His legacy endures, not only in his vast body of work but also in his influence on literature, political thought, and the cultural identity of Latin America.

Reviews

[Glenn Russell · Rating 5 out of 5]

A truly outstanding Latin American anthology featuring forty-two short stories from internationally renowned authors such as Gabriel García Márquez, G. Cabrera Infante, Carlos Fuentes, Mario Vargas Llosa, Jorge Luis Borges, Julio Cortázar, Octavio Paz, Alejo Carpentier and Pablo Neruda along with writers lesser known, for example Ricardo Güiraldes, Lino Novás Calvo and Juan Bosch.

Stories truly magical and unforgettable but, for me, none more so than two marvelous pieces I have chosen to make the focus on my review, the first by Adolfo Bioy Casares and the second by Clarice Lespector:

MIRACLES CANNOT BE RECOVERED
The narrator miscalculates and arrives at the station much too early, more than an hour prior to his scheduled train. He encounters a man he knows from his university days, Luis Greve, who has also arrived at the station much too early through a similar miscalculation. They both decide to head for a bar.

Reflecting on how their respective miscalculation resulted in a chance meeting, the narrator remarks how things fall in series and today will in all likelihood be full of pointless coincidences. “Why pointless?” Greve asks, to which the narrator explains: “Pointless in the sense they don’t prove anything.” Ah, such a statement implies a particular way of perceiving the universe and Greve questions such a perceiving. Thus we have the major theme running throughout Bioy Casares' tale.

Turns out, our narrator is none other than Adolfo Bioy Casares who relays a story about a pointless coincidence, an odd experience he had some years back. Who knows, Bioy Casares reflects, Greve might help him make literary use of his story. Or, then again, perhaps he has simply fallen into the habit of repeating his own stories.

Either way, as many of us know, such is the life of a fiction writer – always telling stories and, like an alchemist seeking to transform base metal into gold, forever on the lookout for ways of turning the raw material of past experience into literary gold.

Bioy Casares speaks of how on a voyage aboard ship he and a fellow Argentinian, an extroverted elderly lady, encountered a distinguished gentleman who they took for Somerset Maugham (the famous English author’s name was on the official passenger list) but turned out to be a retired colonel. Both Argentinians were embarrassed but next morning they look down from an upper deck: when a small group of passengers disembark from their ocean liner to board a tugboat they both spot two identical Somerset Maughams.

After listening to this story, Luis Greve admits the double spotting was an utterly pointless coincidence. He then goes on to ask if the story just recounted proves there are moments in life when anything can happen. Unsure, Bioy Casares replies: “Maybe.”

Luis Greve details his own story with enigmatic moments, moments that “cannot be recovered, since they immediately slip into the past, but that are real – moments that belong to another world, where natural laws can’t reach them.” Some years past he was traveling with a woman Bioy Casares knows, a famous beauty, Carmen Silveyra, a woman Greve loved. Carmen also loves Greve and is traveling with him on the sly since she should be back in Buenos Aries attending a fund raiser for the president.

In one hotel lobby, she and the president encounter one another. The president, a formidable woman, is accompanied by a strange little man. The president lifts her forefinger. Carmen thinks the president will point an accusing forefinger at her but instead twice touches forefinger to her own lips. The president walks on; Carmen turns to Greve and winks, letting him know how she understands the president wants her own trip with the strange little man to remain a secret. From this moment forward, oddly enough, Greve sadly recounts that his love for Carmen and Carmen's love for him faded. Now that is odd, but I suspect we all can relate to such odd moments in life.

Since the flame of love is no longer raging, after returning with Carmen to Buenos Aries, Greve heads off by himself on another trip without even so much as telling Carmen. On his return to the city, he is greeted by two men who ask him to identify a dead body – the body of Carmen Silveyra. Greve does indeed identify Carmen and is propelled to become a tourist traveling long distances over many continents.

After months of fatigue, he walks down a dingy corridor in a South African airport. “I absently noticed a scurry, as if someone were trying to hide among the others.” That someone was, in fact, Carmen Silveyra. Once Carmen detects she has been discovered, rather than speaking, she twice touches forefinger to her own lips and quickly, silently, moves on. There’s no question: Carmen is asking him to keep her secret.



THE SMALLEST WOMAN IN THE WORLD
French explorer Marcel Pretre comes across an African tribe of very small pygmies but is even more surprised when he presses deeper to uncover even smaller pygmies. “And – like a box within a box within a box – obedient, perhaps, to the necessity nature sometimes feels of outdoing herself – among the smallest pygmies in the world there was the smallest of the smallest pygmies in the world.”

How small? The smallest of the smallest was a woman under eighteen inches. Now that’s small! She lived high up in a treetop with her spouse and she was pregnant. We humans have always been fascinated imagining other humanoids much smaller than ourselves, for example Tom Thumb or in Gulliver’s Travels. And, of course, there is the recent archeological discovery of Homo floresiensis (Flores Man) on an island in Indonesia, an extinct species standing about three and a half feet tall. Hobbits, anyone?

Following the very human compulsion to name and categorize everything in sight, the French explorer names her Little Flower. But being so small has big dangers: in addition to disease and falling prey to various predators, these tiny pygmies are hunted like monkeys by a tribe of six footers with nets.

Once captured, they quickly are cooked up for dinner. Thus, their tiny lives are lived mostly in the treetops where they have very little language, being restricted to gestures and animal noises. Their only artistic expression is dancing to the drum while one of their tribe keeps an eye out for those net casting six footers. Again, being hunted for food is deep in our human memory – all those years in Africa as prehominid and early hominid provided sustenance for tigers, leopards, panthers and other predators.

Back home, a life-size color photo of Little Flower appears in the Sunday paper. Understanding how xenophobic we humans tend to be, the various reactions are predictable: “She looks like a dog.” “It gives me the creeps.” “She looks sad but her sadness is of an animal; it isn’t human sadness.”

Clarice Lispector continues with many penetrating, memorable insights into human nature and human psychology, even noting how some children would like to have Little Flower as their special toy, since, “To tell the truth, who hasn’t wanted to own a human being just for himself?”

The French explorer feels sick to his stomach when Little Flower does something unexpected: “She was laughing, warm, warm – Little Flower was enjoying life. The rare thing herself was experiencing the ineffable sensation of not having been eaten yet.” And Little Flower’s joy blossoms into love – not only the love of not being eaten but the love of finding the French explorer’s boot pretty, the strange love for a man who isn’t black, to laugh for love of a shiny ring.

For me, such love speaks to how, no matter how large or small, we are all at our core embodied, sensitive, aesthetic beings with a heart capable of loving darn near everything, a pretty article of clothing, a certain color of hair or movement of hands or hips. Clarice Lispector is more than a storyteller; she’s a magician.

[Bahar Borazjaniyan · Rating 3 out of 5]

اگر به ادبیات آمریکای لاتین و ادبیات رئالیسم جادویی علاقه دارید، این کتاب می‌تونه انتخاب خوبی باشه.
شامل ۱۲ داستان کوتاهه که به‌راحتی خونده می‌شه و خواناست. ترجمه‌ی مراد فرهادپور هم ترجمه‌ی خوبی و خوش‌خوانی بود.

[همان · Rating 4 out of 5]

گردآوری بسیار دلنشین داستان های کوتاه آمریکای لاتینی که از ابتدای خوندن من رو در یک ماجراجویی به سبک ریالیسم جادویی انداخت.

اولین داستان "در آن سوی زندگی و مرگ" بود بعد هم "حکایت تاتوانا" تا به "سومین کرانه‌ی رود" به عنوان سومین داستان کتاب می رسیم.
داستان پدری در زورق و زندگی‌ای که اینجا در ساحل می گذرد..بهترین تعلیقی که می تونست توی داستان وجود داشته باشه رو به وجود آورد و پرورش داد تا پایان..انگار که دقیقا بستر رو فراهم کرده بود تا هر کس برای خودش داستانی بنویسه.

با پیشروی کتاب «زندگی با موج »و «سوزنبان» هم در حد پنج ستاره ظاهر شدند جایی که سوزنبان به شدت تحت تاثیرم قرارداد با زاویه ای که برایم جدید بود ، با فانوس سوزنبان و با بلیطی به ت که سرنوشتش را نمی‌دانست..

در انتخاب بهترین داستان کتاب بین سومین کرانه‌ی رود و سوزنبان شک داشتم که «مرگ دیگر»بورخس بهترین داستانی را که به خاطر می آورم را پدید آورد!
قسمتی از نقد مترجم بر این داستان:
"مضمون حقیقی داستان بورخس،دوگانگی و تضاعف و در نهایت ناروشنی و تکثر بی‌پایان هویت در قلمرو زمان و مکان است. دو قهرمان دو مرگ و حتی دو تاریخ"



داستان های کتاب:
در آن سوی مرگ و زندگی _سزاروایه خو
حکایت تاتوانا_میگل آنخل آستوریاس
سومین کرانه ی رود_خوآو گویی ماریس روسا
تارسیسو_دیناسیلویرا دِ کی روس
یعقوب و دیگری_خوآن کارلوس اونتی
زندگی با موج_اوکتاویو پاز
برخورد با خائن_آگوستو روآ باستوس
سوزنبان_خوآن خوزه آریولا
در مورد سینیور دلاپیا_الیسیو دیه گو
دست سرگردآرنالد_آلفونسو ریس
مرگ دیگر_خورخه لوییس بورخس
شاه بورژوا_روبن داریو

[Michael Miley · Rating 5 out of 5]

Extraordinary collection of short stories by Latin American writers, including Borges, Cortazar, Mistral, Fuentes, Asturias, Amado, Paz, de Assis. One of my favorites, to which I return again and again. Includes de Assis The Psychiatrist, which is a wry send-up of the profession, as one by one, everyone in town winds up in the insane asylum.

[Ali E9 · Rating 4 out of 5]

سه داستان زندگی با موج، سوزن بان و سومین کرانه رود بی نظیر بود

[Joe Hunt · Rating 5 out of 5]

I love this anthology like crazy!

One of the best ever. Latin American writers--all famous.

But not just for who's who. The stories are all really sweet.

Like, you can't decide which is your favorite.

The one about the piano. The End of the Game. My Life with the Wave.

[Ellen · Rating 5 out of 5]

I received this book on my birthday in 2000. Absolutely wonderful collection of stories, it took me a long time to read but well worth it. There are 42 stories in all and the reader will find everyone of them impressive.

[Karina · Rating 3 out of 5]

Some of the stories were absolutely beautiful and thought-provoking. Others just didn't sit well with me. Overall, it was a good anthology and introduction to Latin American short stories.

[Jeff Hobbs]

Read so far:

*The psychiatrist / Machado de Assis --
The bourgeois king / Rubén Darío --
Yzur / Leopoldo Lugones --
*The alligator war / Horacio Quiroga --
The devil's twilight / Rómulo Gallegos --
The gauchos' hearth / Ricardo Guiraldes --
Why reeds are hollow / Gabriela Mistral --
Major Aranda's hand / Alfonso Reyes --
On the other side of life and death / César Vallejo --
The piano / Aníbal Monteiro Machado --
The other death / Jorge Luis Borges --
Tatuana's tale / Miguel Angel Asturias --2
One Sunday afternoon / Roberto Arlt --
Like the night / Alejo Carpentier --3
A pine-cone, a toy sheep ... / Pablo Neruda --
As I am ... as I was / Lino Novás-Calvo --
The drum dance / Arturo Uslar Pietri --
The third bank of the river / João Guimarães Rosa --3
*Jacob and the other / Juan Carlos Onetti --
The beautiful soul of Don Damian / Juan Bosch --
The tree / María-Luisa Bombal --2
Tarciso / Dinah Silveira de Queiroz --
Warma Kuyay / José María Arguedas --
*How Porciúncula the Mulatto got the corpse off his back / Jorge Amado --
*End of the game / Julio Cortázar --
*My life with the wave / Octavio Paz --
Miracles cannot be recovered / Adolfo Bioy-Casares --
Encounter with the traitor / Augusto Roa Bastos --
*Macario / Juan Rulfo --
Madness / Armonía Somers --
The switchman / Juan José Arreola --3
Concerning Señor de la Peña / Eliseo Diego --
The dogs / Abelardo Díaz Alfaro --
The smallest woman in the world / Clarice Lispector--1
*Marmosets / Clarice Lispector --
In the beginning / Humberto Costantini --
*Paseo (The walk) / Jose Donoso --
The handsomest drowned man in the world / Gabriel García Márquez --2
A nest of sparrows on the awning / Guillermo Cabrera Infante --
The two Elenas / Carlos Fuentes --1
Weight-reducing diet / Jorge Edwards --
Sunday, Sunday / Mario Vargas Llosa--

[Negar · Rating 3 out of 5]

اولین تجربه ام ار داستان کوتاه بود.
به نظرم مجموعه ی جالبی بود.بعضی از داستاناشو که مفهومشو میگرفتم خیلی دوست داتم ام بعضی ها که دیگه غرق در ریالیسم جادویی بودند و نمفهمیدم دوست نداشتم.
به طور کلی من این کتاب رو به آدمای نرمال توصیه نمکینم !اما به آدمایی که شجاعت متفاوت بودنو دارند چرا

[Andrew Demil]

chapter 3. why I wanted to study Spanish Lit in the first place.

[Joe Ekstedt · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is the book that got me started reading Latin American literature. Still my favorite collection.

[Michelle · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent collection of short stories