Ivan Mažuranić (1814–1890) and Pablo Neruda (1904–1973) lived a century apart, on opposite sides of the world—one on the shores of the Adriatic, the other on the Pacific. Yet both turned to the sea as a central image in their poetry, and both sought to give voice to the heroism of their peoples. Mažuranić, Croatia’s national poet, wrote the epic The Death of Smail-aga Čengić, a work that became a cornerstone of Croatian national identity. Neruda, Chile’s Nobel laureate, wrote Canto General, an epic of the Americas that celebrated the struggles of ordinary people against oppression. This study offers a comparative reading of these two poets, exploring their shared themes—the sea as a symbol of freedom and solitude, the hero as a figure of resistance, and the poet as a voice of the people. It examines how Mažuranić drew on Croatian oral tradition to create an epic of national awakening, and how Neruda transformed the epic form to speak for the dispossessed. The comparison reveals two distinct visions of heroism: Mažuranić’s epic hero, who stands alone against the oppressor, and Neruda’s collective hero, the people who rise up together. Yet both poets found in the sea a metaphor for the vastness of human longing, and both believed that poetry could be a force for justice and freedom. Through close reading of key works—Mažuranić’s The Death of Smail-aga Čengić and Neruda’s Canto General—this study illuminates the different ways these poets understood the sea, the hero, and the poet’s role in society. It concludes that the dialogue between them enriches our understanding of both, and offers a model for cross-cultural poetic encounter that spans continents and centuries.
Bo Xia (Sun,) studied this question.