Isla de Pascua and the ecological crisis in the poetry of Pablo Neruda: Ruins of the insular image

Abstract

The relationship between environment and literature has been the focus in ecological criticism, also known as ecocriticism. Its contribution to literary studies stands in the visibility given to nature and the physical world in literature. In this paper I explore the significance of insular space in Pablo Neruda´s work about Easter Island. I propose the possibility of reading the island as a symbolic space in confrontation to the island as a concrete reference. This clash dismantles idealized preconceptions incarnated not only in the tourist that visits the place –Pablo Neruda in 1971– but also in literary tradition that has built an image of the island with no possible reference in our overpopulated and contaminated actual world.