World's End

by Pablo Neruda, William O'Daly (Translator)

“World’s End, like much Neruda, contains bewildering multitudes. Some poems incite, others console, as the poet—maestro of his own response and impresario of ours—Looks inward and out."—Los Angeles Times


“We are faced with the unavoidable task of critical communication within a world which is empty and is not less full of injustices, punishments and sufferings because it is empty.”—from Pablo Neruda’s Nobel Prize address

"This is the first complete English language translation of the late work by Neruda, the greatest of Latin American poets, translated by O'Daly, a specialist in Neruda's late and posthumous work....Highly recommended for poetry and Latin American collections."
—Library Journal

"William O. Daly's translation of Pablo Neruda's book-length poem, Fin de mundo, is a veritable poet's companion and guide to the twentieth century. This is Pablo Neruda at his best and most honest....Neruda's poems are a quiet but potent celebration of the resilience of the human spirit."—Sacramento Book Review

In this book-length poem, completely translated for the first time into English and presented in a bilingual format, Nobel Laureate Pablo Neruda composes a “valediction to the Sixties” and confronts a grim disillusionment growing inside him. Terrifying, beautiful, vast, and energized, Neruda’s work speaks of oppression and warfare, his own guilt, and the ubiquitous fear that came to haunt the century that promised to end all wars.

World’s End also marks the final book in Copper Canyon’s dynamic nine-book series of Neruda’s late and posthumous work. These best-selling books have become perennial favorites of poetry readers, librarians, and teachers. Through this series, translator William O’Daly has been recognized as one of the world’s most insightful caretakers of Neruda’s poetry, and Publishers Weekly praised his efforts as “awe-inspiring.”

My truest vocation
was to become a mill:
singing in the water, I studied
the motives of transparency
and learned from the abundant wheat
the identity that repeats itself.

Pablo Neruda is one of the world’s beloved poets. He served as a Chilean diplomat and won the Nobel Prize in 1971.

William O’Daly has dedicated thirty years to translating the late and posthumous work of Pablo Neruda. He lives in California.

Genres: Poetry, Fiction

303 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1972

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

[Mohammad Hrabal]

وقتی بمب فرو افتاد
- انسان، حشرات، ماهیان سوخته-
با خود گفتیم تا با پاره‌پلاسمان دل از این دیار برکنیم
سیاره‌ای و نژادی دیگر اختیار کنیم
ای کاش اسب بودیم، اسبان معصوم
می‌خواستیم از اینجا بگذریم،
دور از اینجا، دور دور. ص 14 کتاب
***
به یاد می‌آورم که در شهری
چشم به راه خزان خفته بودم،
زیر برف یافتندم
چندان یخ بسته از آن سپیدی
که هنوز هم تندیسی هستم
بی‌راستا و بی‌جنب و جوششی.
بهترین فرجامم این بود
که آسیابی شوم،
پس، در دل آب، آوازخوان
دلیل زلالی را دریافتم،
از گندم فراوان فرا گرفتم
هویتی را که مکرر می‌شود. ص 17 کتاب
***
او را که از برای کشتن رنج
رنج می‌برد، درمانی نیست. ص 24 کتاب
***
از نو به همان مایه‌ی بی‌جان باز می‌گردم
چونان سردار سپاه فراموشی
که همواره شکست خویش را می‌جوید:
نه تنها در آغوش جنگ
در بند، در مکافات
یا در استپ‌های تبعید
مردگان مردند،
بلکه ما،
ما هم هنوز زنده‌ایم
پیداست که ما را نیز کشته‌اند. ص 25 کتاب
***
آری با ما گفتند:
زنهار که در تالارهای جلا داده
یا در گل و در برف، یا در باران
نلغزید.
گفتیم: بسیار خوب.
رفتیم و در برف نلغزیدیم
اما بشنوید چه پیش آمد:
چیزی زیر پای خود حس کردیم
که می‌سرید و می‌سرانید.
خون قرن حاضر بود. ص 34 کتاب
***
آه، زندگی را در دروغی گذراندیم
که نان هر روزه‌ی ما بود.
آقایان قرن بیست و یکم
خوب است آنچه را که ما ندانستیم
شما بدانید.
باشد که دوست را از دشمن بازشناسید
چون ما نشناختیم،
و باشد که قدرت دروغین را
که به روزگار ما خوراکمان بود
دیگر کسی نخورد. ص 36 کتاب
***
و شاعر چه سان برداشت‌های خود را
می‌پروراند.
من هر روز با کاغذ زلال
در برابر نور بازی کرده‌ام.
من صیادم،
صیاد شعرهای ناب و نمناکی
که در رگانم هماره جست می‌زنند. ص 49 کتاب
***
این سرزمین را ساکنی نیست
مگر ناهمواری‌ها
که زیر نور چراغ‌های سرگیجه‌زا
پدیدار می‌شوند:
شب خارهاست
شب گیاهان زره پوشیده چون تمساحان،
همه دشنه در دست.
دندانه‌ی سیم‌های خاردار
گرد گرد مرغزاران،
و کاکتوس‌های سخت قامت
چون ستون خارها از هر سو به دیده می‌آید،
شبی خشک است و
در ظلمات پر از ستارگان غبارآلود
آشیانه‌ی سیاه سحرگاه
که پیوسته
افق‌های زردش را می‌پروراند. ص 70 کتاب
***
من دود جنگل را می‌شناسم
و به خاکستر سبز کوهستان‌های
خوشبو دست ساییده‌ام،
و زیر دود شهر سمج
و زیر نانوایی‌هاش زیسته‌ام.
اما دود ویرانی را
بعدها در اسپانیای دردهایم
شناختم.
هنوز هم از این خاطره بیزارم،
چرا که هیچ دودی تلخ‌تر از
دود بیهوده‌ی جنگ نیست.
اینک سیاره‌ای از دود
در انتظار همه‌ی انسان‌هاست.
ما مردگان زیر زباله‌ها
نخواهیم توانست دهان به درودی بگشاییم،
کلمات به آخر خواهند رسید،
زبان‌ها سوخته می‌شوند
و بهار رادیواکتیو
بر سر گل‌ها گرده‌ی زهر خواهد افشاند
تا آنکه حتی میوه‌ی مرده و نان گندیده هم
پاره پاره شود. ص 109 کتاب
***
در جمع ماهی‌گیران گفتم:
ای برادران، می‌خواهم بدانم
آیا همه چون من به خود عاشقند.
گفتند: حقیقت این است
که ماهی می‌گیریم
و تو خود را،
باز می‌گردی تا دگرباره خویش را صید کنی
و باز خود را به دریا درافکنی. ص 129 کتاب
***
در توفان‌های لینارس
تنها با درختان و بوی بید خیس
زمان باران
هنوز هم جاری است.
نخست آسمانی است میانی،
پس آنگاه افقی گشاده و نمناک
که دامن می‌گسترد و از هم می‌درد
تا طبیعت را جلا بخشد.
نزدیک‌تر می‌روم، شوربخت
بی‌زمین و آسمان، تا دوردست،
میان لبان غول‌آسای
تنهایی آسمان
و بی‌اعتنایی زمین.
آه ای باران عتیق، ببار و برهانم
از این دلشوره‌ی پا در جای!. ص 131 کتاب
***
در کمرگاه شب،
از پی ستاره‌آگین شدن
خود را سیاه دیدم، سیاه و تهی. ص132 کتاب
***
وقتی به درون می‌آیید
به من درود مگویید
اما ناسزایی هم روا مدارید:
من استادی کوچکم
به زمین درس نور می‌دهم. ص140 کتاب
***
در اندیشه‌ی ران تاک‌وارش،
دل مرجانی‌اش،
و ناخن‌های خوراکی‌اش
استعاره‌ام را پی افکندم.
من آنم که در اوج قدرت باد
پا در گریز نهاد
و از اندوه وارهید،
تا آنکه تنهایی
به سیب‌ها نگریستن
دست سرهنگان را فشردن
و درک نخل‌ها را
به من آموخت. ص147 کتاب
***
چونان دانه‌ای از یاد رفته
نیمه مدفون ماندم
و بی‌آنکه روزهای خوب را
از خاطر زدوده باشم
در تاریکی به داوری نشستم.
اینک که استخوان‌هایم
به این خلوت‌ها می‌پیوندند
با سحر آفتاب توفانزای
چندین هزار بار زاده می‌شوم،
سر در سبزه فرو می‌برم
و ریشه‌هایم به آسمان می‌رسند. ص 151 کتاب
***
میهن در کتاب‌ها
رنگ نارنج و برف داشت
و از گیسوانش
آبشاری از گیلاس فرو می‌ریخت.
ازین رو دیدنش
در میان پوست سیب‌زمینی
و اثاثیه‌ی از هم گسسته
بر صندلی شکسته‌ای نشسته،
درد‌آور است.
بر دروازه‌های شکسته‌ی بندر
مویه‌ای غم‌افزا به گوش می‌رسد،
مویه‌ای از یدک‌کشی محتضر.
شب، چون سیاه بقچه‌ای ژنده پاره‌ها
بر زانوان میهن، فرو می‌افتد. ص 152 کتاب

[Rowan]

It’s incredibly difficult to imagine that there is anything new to say about Pablo Neruda. But Neruda, probably the most prolific poet of the twentieth century, provides endless opportunities for his readers, scholars and critics to re-evaluate his oeuvre. World’s End (Copper Canyon, 2009) is a treasure-trove of intimate insight, available in its entirety in English for the first time in William O’Daly’s careful and precise translation. In this expansive book-length poem Neruda oscillates between moments of vulnerable reflection on his own life and work (including his controversial early support of Stalin for which he denounces his naivety), bitter condemnation of the violence of the twentieth century, and a prophetic poetic voice.

Keep reading my review at: http://www.rochester.edu/College/tran...

[Sadra]

«در دل ستارگان آینده،
آب‌دیده از رنج‌ها،
کوفته از آمدوشدها،
در سیاره‌ای تلخ‌تر از پیش
شادمانی را بازخواهیم یافت»

[Jessica]

"The doors of the century close
on the same ones still left unburied
and again they will call in vain
and we will leave without hearing,
pondering the greater tree,
in the places of our joy."

[Jack Cienfuegos]

Libro de poesía muchas veces cargado de pesimismo y que en casi su totalidad, habla de lo deprimido y lo malo que esta el mundo y quienes lo manejan. Creo que si me preguntan si lo puedo relacionar con alguna obra, sería con un libro de Sábato llamado Antes del Fin, ya que compacta también una idea bastante pesimista acerca de nuestros días.
Pero más allá de la temática, hay versos y poemas que rescato y que valen la pena leer una y otra vez, como por ejemplo: Retrato de una mujer, El Culto, La Tierra, etc; son poemas que tocan el tema de la naturaleza y el trato que tenemos con ella.
Para finalizar, para quien desee navegar por un mar Nerudiano le recomiendo ponerse las antiparras u sumergirse cerrando los ojos, en cambio, para quien no, bienaventurado también es, ya que no es para nada un libro imprescindible.

[David]

After a Neruda poem graced the last wedding I officiated, I thought to myself, hey, it's been a few years since I read Neruda. So I snagged this collection from the library.

I did like it. Some of it. And the inclusion of Neruda's Spanish side by side with the translation was both helpful and necessary.

Much of this varied collection are Neruda's political poems, and...er...politics just isn't quite the same grist for poetry as love or nature. It just doesn't work quite the same way, and as prodigious and magical as his gifts as a poet might be, 20th century South American communism just doesn't quite sing.

It just doesn't, which is made all the more evident when we get something off theme mixed in. Still totally worth the read, and fascinating.

A three point four.

[Will Plunkett]

I had read various single Neruda poems over the years as a student and as a teacher. But I had never read a collection, and this book-length one (with the Spanish words on the facing page, like a Shakespeare play with the footnotes nearby) was an excellent first choice. Of course, the past mirrors the present, so many of the images seem so similar to today's corruption and failure, and purity and success, and death and life. I also learned some different words in translation that one typically wouldn't find in a traveler's guide or Spanish-to-English dictionary!

[Simone]

Sometime last week I realized I had misread one of the Book Riot Read Harder challenge tasks. I thought it said, "Read a book of poetry on a theme other than love," and I realized it said, "Read a book of poetry in translation on a theme other than love." Luckily, the library had a copy of this Neruda book ready for me.

[Laura]

"and I yanked my feet from the earth
so they would not become roots,
but instead a feast of motion."

This collection of poems that seems to contract and expand like breathing- looking at moments of time and centuries, individuals and the globe, with politics and nature.

[Joshua Aaron Ozer]

Enjoyed particularly a poem or section entitled unity.

[Bruce]

Would that I could come to Neruda with the same depth of insight that Erica Mena clearly has, but I just found too many of the works in this volume to be straight prose at best, unreadably banal at worst. I mean, how do you deal with poems like 'Falling,' p. 61, "with the same gray hat, playing the same guitar;" 'Why, Sir?'s "Where are those people now?... Lincoln and Whitman, what became of them?" at p. 73; or 'The Earth' at p. 153, with its "testicles of fungus" rubbing up against the "fingers of an adolescent puma" and the "feet of an abominable pachyderm"?

"Earth, I kiss you, and say goodbye," p. 301, is a nice line (it even seems to flow well from the previous Song, which brings to my mind the lyrical Ray Bradbury of The Martian Chronicles, but how is it a poem in and unto itself? Where is the compression and layering of thought in the single sentence, "Tierra, te beso, y me despido?"

I have enjoyed Neruda's writing in the settings of Peter Lieberson ('My love, if I die and you don't,' not included in this anthology) and Osvaldo Golijov ('Chorale of the Reef,' off Oceana, a poem not included here either), and it was on that basis that I picked up this book. Well, that and the fact that I was half-expecting to find in Neruda another Federico Garcia-Lorca, whose lyricism and acerbicism I adore (with thanks to Dmitri Shostakovich, George Crumb, and Golijov for introducing me to him). But no. Instead, I found poems like 'Sex' (p. 203):

Maybe the pistils opened
in the year of our years
and sex broke the windows,
the ministries and the doors,
and we saw the breasts appear
in the starry shyness
of the postcards
until on stage
women lost their leaves
and an immense wave of nakedness
broke over the cathedrals.

and 'Bomb' (p. 207):

They are not content with the earth.

They need to murder the ocean.

With a few drops of hell...
so that they whip up the tempest
in a cup of poison
and serve mankind the soup
of fire of sea and of death.

I don't mind blank verse (although for a language as insistently rhythmic and easy to rhyme as Spanish it seems a bit of a waste), but I read a poem like 'Metamorphosis' ("Waking up, I found myself more disheveled than ever, without precedent, forgotten in a normal week, like a suitcase on a train that rolled nowhere, with no conductor or passengers" at p. 105, scansion removed), and all I hear is a straightforward journal entry. Contemplative, sure, possibly even interesting and dramatically compelling ("Where am I going? Where are we going? With whom could we consult?"), but ultimately fragmentary and devoid (to me) of mystery, rapture, depth, or resonance. Assuming his work has lent itself well to musical adaptation not because of its shallowness (as Sondheim would have it), but because of its wealth of color and inspiration, perhaps I need some interpretive intermediary like Golijov or Lieberson to connect with this particular poet.

Someone more familiar with Neruda please help me. What am I missing here?

[Tiffany]

This collection didn't end me like his love poetry. Some of the pieces are thought provoking, some incomprehensible (I am so far removed from this time), and some just nice. If you start here, I think you'll be inclined to read more of Neruda, but if you come here after reading his love poems, you may feel a bit let down.

[David]

This is a brilliant, inspiring and timeless book of poetry which I urge everyone to read.

Written between 1968 and 1970, Neruda reflects quite grimly on the state of the world and there was a lot of bad things going on - the Vietnam War, the student uprisings during the sixties and of course, political turmoil in his own native Chile. This is made even more poignant knowing that he would be dead in 1973. Yet,even though he deals with so much death in the century (his two most recurring words are "la muerte" (death) and "el siglo"(century), hope runs throughout the book.

Divided into twelve books (a prologue and eleven books), he begins with a poem to open "La puerta" (the door) and completes the ring cycle with a simple "Adios". Two books in from either end are homage to poetry - Artes Poetica and Escritores. Artes Poeticas begins several poems on nature such as trees, bees and other wild life which all have a lighter tone and fun to read. Escritores is a tribute to the writers of his day, most notably Mario Vargas Llosa who Neruda calls "la nueva voz" (the new voice), who would much later also win the Nobel Prize in Literature, as Neruda won as well. Garcia Marquez gets an entire poem while Neruda pays tribute to Mexican writers and visual artists in the poem Algunos (Some). Neruda spent many years living in Mexico, but above all, as he put it several times, he was a traveler of the world.

What I found resonate personally was his words on war, violence and crime that has saturated his century that he lived in. Sadly some forty years after his death, things are just as bleak (and maybe worse). Neruda won the Nobel prize in literature because he saw the goodness in humanity, often when humanity never looked so bad. A good poet sees the world, paints the world into words and makes one stop and think. I stopped to ponder the world often throughout my reading. I am sure Neruda would not like what the world has become but I, like him, hopes and sees the goodness in the world.

Kudos to William O'Daly for his masterful translation and Copper Canyon Press for a beautiful book.

[W.B.]

This was Neruda's response to 1968 (written out of that year's universal sea change). He conceived of this as a single poem, but since it's composed of many, mostly shorter poems, it could be easy to miss that fact. Or maybe that's more a subjective feeling in Neruda's mind ("This is a single poem") than a fact, since the book generally strikes one as "stand-alone" poems. It's not, after all, anything like the Odyssey or The Epic of Gilgamesh. It's not your typical epic, but the poems do have an epic quality. There's temporal sweep in this collection. Neruda was older when this was published, and the sense of history and the complicity of historical entities (like churches and governments) in shaping "new history" is something the poet foregrounds throughout these poems. But the poems don't, I'm happy to report, get heavy-handed as a result. Or they very rarely do. Neruda's legerete of touch and surrealist sense of play keep everything afloat. The images are memorable and the poems are often affecting. The poet's sense of humor is still intact, just a little darker here. The translations by William O'Daly are pleasing, forthright ones. I don't know how I missed this book for so long.

[Lia Jacobson]

When I had begun to read this book, I only read poets with rhyme and meter - which pretty much rules out any translations. I had brought this book along with me to Europe as a possible impulse read, because I would be spending three days in Spain while I was there. I remember not even opening a page until I was in other countries after spending two days in Barcelona.
The first time I read a poem, a poem drawn at random, I was enthralled. Immediately. I know many people are not poetry-people, or at least poets, but I was decidedly both at this moment when I read that poem. I was always a tyro, very inexperienced poet... But Pablo Neruda was utterly the most brilliant poet I have ever read. Worthy of being read by the entire world. Please, do not disappoint him. Read it.

[Jackson Cyril]

If any twentieth-century poet deserves the title Dante bestowed upon Aristotle, "il maestro di color che sanno "-- the master of them that know--, then it is Neruda. This is his pessimistic remembrance of the twentieth century. Worth reading for the great flights of poetic genius, but also for the stinging criticism of Mao, Stalin and other dictators-- from a communist no less!

[Das]

William O'Daly has done a marvelous job translating this extensive work by Neruda. He truly understands the lyrical and musical quality of Neruda's voice. End of the World has never been translated and is a book length poem that dates back to Neruda's last few years of life. Prolific and startling.

[Doc]

If there is anything new to say about Neruda's work, I won't be the one to say it. World's End is expansive; what little I understood of it was fantastic, but quite a bit of it was indigestible. I may try it again later. I'm sure I'll find it more enjoyable in the future.

[May]

A sad but beautiful book of poetry. It looks over the century at the death and destruction that was "accomplished," contrasting it with moments of hope brought on by nature or relationships.

[melanie]

One of the greatest poets that ever lived!

[Paloma Rodrigues]

Tô morta depois de ler esse livro.. Simplesmente incrível!
Neruda ♡

[Julie]

My copy looks like a pastel porcupine from all my tabs noting my favorite phrases and poems. This collection felt particularly timely and profound in light of our current political climate.

[Georgia]

Reread. I love you neruda