A few months before his death in 1973, legendary Chilean poet Pablo Neruda, winner of a Nobel Prize for literature, completed his Book of Questions. In Book of Questions: Selections, translated by Sara Lissa Paulson and illustrated by Paloma Valdivia (Enchanted Lion Books, April 26), 70 carefully selected questions (out of the original 320) have been arranged thematically, appearing both in English translation and the original Spanish and enhanced by exquisite full-page illustrations: “Do unshed tears / wait in little lakes? // Or become invisible rivers / that rush toward sadness?” And “Why does night’s hat / fly away full of holes?” “Why do silkworms spend their lives / dressed in such rags?” Neruda’s posthumously published work—not written specifically for children—is here made accessible for the very young, although readers of all ages will enjoy engaging with it. Paulson and Valdivia spoke with us over Zoom from their respective homes in New York City and Santiago; the conversation has been edited for length and clarity.
What does the book mean to you?
Paloma Valdivia: I feel very close to Neruda: Neruda and [Chilean Nobel Laureate] Gabriela Mistral were the first poets I knew in childhood. My grandmother was from the south of Chile, [where] Neruda was from; [her] best friend was Neruda’s sister. My father was a geologist studying Budi Lake, one of the saltiest lakes in the world, [which Neruda frequented]. I learned to read with Neruda, I learned to philosophize with Neruda—his questions left space to imagine and think about the universe and the world. I had a teacher who taught us to read with this book and with Gabriela Mistral: She put music to the questions, and at first we sang them. Then we could read because we knew them from memory.
Sara Lissa Paulson: Since [the questions] are so short, in couplets, I’m excited by what Paloma shared about music, because that’s what it was: creating a melody, constructing a universe, writing a narrative from a complete opening of someone’s heart and mind. He collected these questions over his entire life; Plenos poderes was my first book of Neruda’s, and there are questions [in it] similar to Book of Questions. I feel like there’s a pathway that I can trace through the books that I love, as an educator and someone who wants children to think for themselves and be able to see—and trust what they see.
Sara, what were some of the translation challenges?
SLP: Keeping focused on the audience as children and holding on to syntax and the essence of words were important considerations, but for me, echoing the melody or rhythm in the original Spanish was truly the most difficult aspect. Finding the internal rhymes was a great challenge, and I am very proud of certain lines such as “crowds of colorful flowers.” There are so many layers; it’s like a kaleidoscope. [Editor] Claudia [Bedrick]’s advice [was that] we need to open up the conversation and pathways that he’s presented. You have to be humble—you can’t express everything because of the density of the words he uses—the most simple word has so much inside it. I felt when I was translating that it would have been ideal if we [had the] Spanish and then three English variations.
Paloma, how did you approach the art?
PV: It was an honor that Claudia invited to me to illustrate this book, but it was a very difficult journey because it took five years. It was the first time that I have needed to study and search for a lot of material to understand how to illustrate. Sara didn’t want me to illustrate the answers: I needed to find out where the questions came from. I read a lot of biographies and interviews, and I went to all Neruda’s houses, [where] I could imagine what he might have been thinking. So the illustrations are not completely from my imagination; I studied to create these images. Everything was very thought out: I went to Neruda’s house and all the furniture and the curtains had stains from green ink, because he wrote just with green ink. So I told Claudia that we should write the Spanish questions in green ink.
What was the collaborative process like?
SLP: One example comes from the question: “If all the yellow is gone / How will we make bread?” This was
my original final translation. However, in response to Claudia’s editorial focus that the questions open conversations with children (and, in this particular example, avoid climate anxiety), I came up with more variations and we decided on: “If we use up all the yellow / with what will we make bread?” This retained the musicality, which was very important to me, and lended itself more to deep conversation about zero waste and needs and wants, which we all need to think and talk about. How much do we need? What happens when you use something all up? How do we avoid that? Why should we avoid that?
PV: I received the manuscript in 2016, but it changed every day, because I reordered the questions and then I’d talk with Sara and we’d reorder again, and then I’d find a way to illustrate them, and then I’d change [something]. It was in motion for years—it took real shape in the last year. I think this book is like a chorus with three voices singing. I did hundreds of illustrations—really!—and I illustrated in layers: pencil, then ink, then color. I did a lot of sketches, I searched for a lot of references in artists who drew shells, mathematical or geometrical [designs], and then I started to create my own world but with Neruda’s words. Every one of these illustrations is a puzzle with hundreds of pieces. This is a book made of layers: different layers of thinking and writing and illustrating. I have been an illustrator for 20 years, and I have never had such a complex project as this. I found a new way to work.
What impact do you hope the book will have on its readers?
SLP: I hope that they read the book slowly and savor the sounds, because I think if you read quickly—in the English and the Spanish—you don’t feel the words as much. I love the final words in Paloma’s illustrator’s note: “There are no answers, only more questions arising from Neruda’s questions.” Allow question upon question to emerge. I hope people will be encouraged to become multilingual as well as to look at the world anew, because we lose that ability as we grow older. We lose the ability for divergent thinking that small children are so good at—looking anew at everything without judgment. I hope that it moves them to observe nature and understand our integral part in it.
PV: [I hope it’s] a quiet place for children to observe and feel this amazing world without the noise or images that they are bombarded with all the time. I hope this book will be a place to contemplate the world and to sit with adults, reading and hoping for a better world, a quiet world. I think it’s a good time to have this book because of the pandemic: We can’t go outside, but poetry and books and illustration and nature and these questions can make a beautiful inner world.
Laura Simeon is a young readers’ editor.
