Images of America in the poetry of Walt Whitman and Pablo Neruda: ontological and typological similarities and national originality

The article attempts to analyse the ontological and typological similarities in Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass (1855–1892) and Pablo Neruda’s Canto General (1950). The relevance of the study is due to the importance of Pablo Neruda and Walt Whitman in world literature and in the literatures of the two Americas. Moreover, the ontological and typological similarities of their poetics remain insufficiently explored. It is concluded that spatial categories play a major role in the artistic consciousness of the poets: being in search of the ontological foundations of their forming nations, they create typologically similar yet nationally distinctive images of America. The typological convergences are seen in the poets’ search for a cultural and civilizational archetype of an ideal society, a New World. Although the poets’ image of the New World is presented as an ontological substance, which is suprahistorical and mythological, it is inseparable from America (from the USA in Walt Whitman’s poetry, from Latin America and Chile in Pablo Neruda’s poetry). The national originality of the loci amoeni created by the poets, seeking to affirm the uniqueness of their cultures, is reflected in the different spatial models they use: Walt Whitman constructs an open spatial model of a horizontal world-cosmos based on urgia, whereas Pablo Neruda builds an interspatial model of a vertical world-chaos grounded in gonia. Furthermore, the poets differ in their attitudes to the European conquest of the American continent: while Walt Whitman, as a North American poet, praises the discovery of America, Pablo Neruda, as a Latin American writer, regards it as an act of violencia.