Visualizing Neruda: Film, Photography, Prints.

The essay explores: vision and visuality in Pablo Neruda's poetry; the effects on the texts and their reception of the many visual illustrations which have been published and, briefly, the role of photographic and filmic representations of Neruda in constructing perceptions of him as a writer. The texts reveal that while privileging sight, Neruda reveals himself to have less than perfect vision; the visual images sometimes eclipse the poetry interestingly, and sometimes they make it more clear than it really is. The 'Oda al ojo', from the Nuevas odas elementales is used as a guide to Neruda's possible problem with seeing things straight; contextual, paratextual and metatextual images are referred to in order to suggest that a clearer perspective on one of Neruda's key preoccupations -- witness -- is available from an examination of text-image dynamics than it is from an examination of, or from the production of, the words on the page. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]