The orientalist imaginary in Pablo Neruda’s travel accounts

Abstract

This article aims to investigate the travel accounts of the Chilean writer Pablo Neruda in the early twentieth century, when he experiences his diplomatic career abroad. Our goal is analyze these texts trying to identify the (dis) continuities of a mystical, exotic and picturesque Orient, which results from an imaginary produced in the 19th century, mainly by art and literature. In order to do so, we use concepts such as imaginary, defined as a collective collection of meanings that motivates action, as well as the understanding of travel accounts as a subjective, impressionistic and often political in their nature. The analyzes point to a hybrid and non-idealized perception of Neruda in relation to the East, composed of orientalist constructions of singularbeauty as well as a negative view, possibly derived from his experience as a citizen of a country that also went through the process colonization. Therefore, the nerudian accounts break the hegemonic logic not only because they were written by a non-European traveler, but also because they subverted a colonial imaginary about the East, built in a context of violent domination.