  pogadaeva-ev-vestnik-2025-4.pdf |
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- Macchu Picchu as a symbol of Latin American borderlands in Pablo Neruda’s «Alturas de Macchu Picchu»
- Pogadaeva E.V. Macchu Picchu as a symbol of Latin American borderlands in Pablo Neruda’s “Alturas de Macchu Picchu”. Vestnik of Kostroma State University, 2025, vol. 31, no. 4, pp. 157–164. (In Russ.) https://doi.org/10.34216/1998-0817-2025-31-4-157-164
- DOI: https://doi.org/10.34216/1998-0817-2025-31-4-157-164
- УДК: 821(7/8).09”20”
- EDN: WXNRCM
- Publish date: 2025-09-03
- Annotation: The article offers a close reading of Pablo Neruda’s poem “The Heights of Macchu Picchu” (“Alturas de Macchu Picchu”), in which the poet’s understanding of the concept of Americanness is clearly expressed. Despite a large number of studies dedicated to the literary analysis of the poem, the ontological and axiological foundations of Americanness remain insufficiently explored. In the research, the poem’s lyrical subject, form and structure, major images and motifs are examined in the frames of ontology. It is concluded that the image of the ruins of Macchu Picchu becomes a symbol of the Latin American cultural and civilisational borderlands, where the archaic meets the modern and the sacred intersects with the profane. Regarding Neruda’s image of human, it is represented as both specific and universal. It is embodied in the figure of Juan, at once a Latin American and a human being: in his personal story, one can trace the features of the world history. Moreover, the man in the poem is in search of his national identity and sees his roots in the long-gone indigenous civilisation, in the “collective individual” with whom he seeks to unite. According to Neruda, only a demiurge poet, a prophetic poet is capable, through creation, of merging the opposites – the individual and the collective, the real and the desired, the finite and the infinite.
- Keywords: Pablo Neruda, “The Heights of Macchu Picchu”, “Alturas de Macchu Picchu”, Americanness, ontology, borderlands, tellurism.
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