Canto General

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The Canto General (German title: The great song ; literally: 'Allgemeine Gesang') is an extensive cycle of poems by the Chilean poet Pablo Neruda about the struggle of Latin America against colonialism . Neruda began working on the Canto General in 1938 . Most of the poems were written in 1948/49, when Neruda was living underground because of the reunions of the González Videla government . The completed work was published in Mexico in 1950 , where Neruda lived in exile from 1949 to 1952.

The poem cycle consists of 15 sections, 231 poems , comprises more than 15,000 lines and claims to be a history or encyclopedia of the entire Hispanic American subcontinent. He describes the creation of Latin America, the flora and fauna, the appearance of humans, the conquest by the conquistadors , the subsequent liberation struggles and the hope for independence. In many Latin American countries, veneration for this work is only matched by that for the Bible .

The German translation of Canto General comes from the GDR poet Erich Arendt and was first published by Volk und Welt in 1953 . It was issued several times in West Germany in the following years.

structure

  1. La Lámpara en la Tierra (The lamp on earth)
  2. Alturas de Macchu Picchu (The Heights of Macchu Picchu)
  3. Los Conquistadores (The Conquistadors)
  4. Los Libertadores (The Liberators)
  5. La Arena Traicionada (The Betrayed Battleground)
  6. América, No Invoco Tu Nombre en Vano (America, I'm not calling your name in vain)
  7. Canto General de Chile (Chile's great song)
  8. La Tierra se Llama Juan (The earth is called Juan)
  9. Que Despierte el Leñador (Lumberjack, Wake Up !)
  10. El Fugitivo (The Refugee)
  11. Las Flores de Punitaqui (The Flowers of Punitaqui)
  12. Los Ríos del Canto (The rivers of song)
  13. Coral de Año Nuevo para la Patria en Tinieblas (New Year's Choir for the Fatherland in the Dark)
  14. El Gran Océano (The Great Ocean)
  15. Yo Soy (I am)

Edits

  • A poetic-musical adaptation of Canto General was developed in 1970 by the Chilean group Aparcoa together with Pablo Neruda. It was premiered on December 5, 1970 at the Teatro Municipal in Santiago and subsequently recorded on LP in several countries , including a. 1974 in the GDR together with Gisela May as a reciter . The version by Aparcoa contains partly folkloric melodies, partly the band's own melodies as well as settings by the Chilean composer and pianist Sergio Ortega and Gustavo Becerra .
  • From 1970 to 1981, parts of the cycle of poems by the Greek composer Mikis Theodorakis were processed into the oratorio Canto General for two solo voices, mixed choir and orchestra.
  • In 1982 the Chilean rock band Los Jaivas recorded the album Alturas de Machu Picchu on texts from the Canto General section of the same name , including the title Sube a Nacer Conmigo Hermano , a nearly complete setting of Canto XII from this section.

literature

  • Pablo Neruda: The Great Song: Poems. German by Erich Arendt. dtv, Munich 1993, ISBN 3-423-11816-4

Web links