Neruda, p.23
Neruda, page 23
Beyond blood and bones,
beyond bread, beyond wine,
beyond fire,
you come flying.
Beyond vinegar and death,
among putrefaction and violets,
with your celestial voice and your damp shoes,
you come flying.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Oh marine poppy, oh my kinsman,
oh guitar man dressed in bees,
it can’t be true how much shadow is in your hair,
you come flying.
The poem continues with this same form lyrically pounding out his pain, strophe after strophe, all twenty-four of them dramatic, ripe, and quite affecting.
* * *
The fellowship of intellectuals, political activists, and visual, literary, and performance artists within the progressive culture of the Second Spanish Republic would soon mitigate the pain from Rojas Jiménez’s untimely death. Neruda became an integral part of that circle. Spain transformed not only his politics and poetry, but his personality as well; there he truly, finally, overcame his struggle with depression. He eventually lost all traces of melancholy; even the outbreak of the war, rather than dispiriting him, energized him to action. No more desperate letters to Albertina or other past lovers; no more desolate surrealism. Never again would he write of the acute mental anguish of his first thirty years.
From the first, Neruda simply loved being in Spain:
Spain was taut and dry, a daily
drum of opaque sound,
plains and eagle’s nest, silence
of whipped inclemency.
How, until weeping, until the soul,
I love your hard earth, your poor bread,
your poor people, how until the deep site
of my being there is the lost flower of your wrinkled
villages, motionless in time,
and your mineral countrysides
extended in moon and age
and devoured by an empty god . . .
—“What Spain Was Like”
Spain’s social and political situation, however, was complicated when Neruda arrived in 1934. In 1898, Spain had lost the vestiges of its overseas empire after losing the Philippines and Cuba to the United States. Using the remaining strength of the army to save the throne, King Alfonso XIII consolidated his domestic power while renewing military activity in Spain’s last colonial battlefield, Spanish Morocco. But he faced fierce resistance on the home front too.
In 1909, in Morocco’s Rif mountains, the Spanish were vastly outnumbered by the local tribesmen in a series of battles for territory rich in iron ore. The army decided to call on thousands of Catalan reservists to serve as reinforcements in Morocco; they started with working-class Catalans. Five hundred and twenty of them had already completed their active-duty service six years earlier, never expecting to serve again. This was not the army’s wisest move; there already was widespread, pent-up anger against the government across Catalonia. Just a decade earlier, at the same time women-led bread riots were breaking out, a well-organized tax boycott started by shopkeepers and small-business men made Barcelona seem so explosive it was put under a “state of war.” In 1901, a workers’ general strike paralyzed the city; union ranks doubled by the end of the next decade.
In July 1909, the government seemed aloof to the city’s transforming political paradigm. As the grudging reservists boarded the ship, officials had the gall, it seemed, to greet them with patriotic addresses, even the national anthem, “Marcha Real.” Well-dressed ladies bestowed Sacred Heart religious medals on them. And the ship that would take them to the Rif was owned by a marquis industrialist well known for profiting from the increased activity in Africa. On the Barcelona docks that day, the Spanish state’s “narrow social construction was on display for all to see,” notes Spanish Civil War scholar Mary Vincent. A raucous proletariat crowd had assembled to protest the forced departure, cheering as the well-dressed ladies’ medals were tossed into the sea. The Catholic oligarchy was dangerously impervious to the rise of the secular masses.
Already frustrated, and now just outraged by this latest action, Barcelona’s Socialist, anarchist, and labor leaders announced a general strike in solidarity with the reservists. The city was already such a tinderbox of anger against the government that the strike quickly grew into an all-out revolt. In what became known as Barcelona’s Semana Trágica (Tragic Week), Republicans, communists, and anarchists joined in taking over the city, with crowds overturning trams and burning convents. Barcelonese soldiers refused orders to shoot at their fellow citizens; troops from all over Spain were summoned to crush the uprising. Over a hundred civilians were reportedly killed, and more than seventeen hundred were indicted in military courts for “armed rebellion.” Five were executed for “moral irresponsibility.”
In 1917, revolutionary labor strikes in Spain followed the overthrow of the czar in Russia. Again, the army saved the throne. The king managed to cling to power, but corruption and ineptitude grew, as did the military’s influence, weakening the monarchy. In 1929, the worldwide economic depression made the situation even more tenuous in the already desperate country, especially for landless rural workers. When the municipal elections of April 1931 turned decidedly anti-monarchical, the king realized the army had given up on him. He quickly left the country, heading for Rome. The Spanish Republic—with a government of, by, and for the people—was proclaimed in the streets of Madrid. “¡Viva la República!”
Formerly exiled and imprisoned Republican leaders came together in Madrid and named a new cabinet, including Socialists as ministers of justice and labor. A Catalan state and republic were created in Barcelona. In the following weeks, the cabinet decreed dozens of progressive acts, such as giving small farmers protection against mortgage foreclosures. In its first ten months, the Republic built seven thousand schools. The new government proclaimed full religious liberty. Although the majority of world governments recognized the Republic, the Vatican and the conservative Catholic administration in Chile did not, although they did retain a diplomatic presence there. In electing a new constitutional assembly, with suffrage extended to all those older than twenty-three, including women, a leftist coalition won a resounding majority of delegates. In honor of the French Revolution, the new assembly convened on Bastille Day, July 14, 1931. A fresh constitution ratified five months later declared Spain a “republic of workers of all categories.”
The idealistic, progressive spirit of the new Republic sparked an exuberant golden age within the circle of writers and intellectuals Neruda soon joined.
* * *
In May 1934, shortly after he arrived in Barcelona, Neruda visited Madrid, the heart of the social and cultural scene to which he was so drawn. Lorca and other poets met him at the train station. He came out of his car, tall, with his jacket pockets stuffed with newspapers, a perfect first impression on his new friends. They immediately went to a tavern, where they talked, read poetry, and drank vino tinto.
Carlos Morla Lynch, who met Neruda in person for the first time that day after an extended correspondence, would describe him as follows: “He’s pale, a pallor like Cinderella’s, with long, narrow eyes, like black crystal almonds, that laugh at every moment, but without happiness, passive. He has very black hair as well, badly combed, gray hands. What captivates me about him is his voice, his slow voice, monotonous, nostalgic, as if it were tired, but suggestive and full of enchantment.”
The next day, at a party in Neruda’s honor, Lorca danced wrapped in a carpet, and Neruda read from Residence, his first public recital in Spain. Among those present were Rafael Alberti and Luis Cernuda, two of the most well-respected and influential members of the Generation of ’27 and its social community, of which Neruda would soon become a central part.
Then, in the center of the room, Lorca followed. Lorca had “a truly extraordinary physical personality,” as Neruda would one day put it, and he read with power, his eyes delivering the emotional mystery of the lines as his dark and rustic accent took command of the room. By this point Lorca was, according to his peer Pedro Salinas, an “institution” in Madrid. He was “more than a person, he was a climate.” Luis Buñuel proclaimed, “Of all the human beings I’ve known, Federico was the finest. I don’t mean his plays or poetry; I mean him personally. He was his own masterpiece . . . He was like a flame.” The lines Lorca read that night were these:
When I die,
bury me with my guitar
beneath the sand.
When I die
among the orange trees
and spearmint.
When I die
bury me, if you wish,
in a weathervane.
When I die!
Neruda encountered, as he described it, “a brilliant fraternity of talents, in full knowledge of my work. And I, who had for so many years been tormented by people not understanding me, by the insults and the malicious indifference—drama of every authentic poet in our countries—I felt very happy.”
When Neruda assumed his post in Spain, Chile’s consul general, Tulio Maquieira, directed him: “You are a poet. Thus, dedicate yourself to being a poet. You don’t have to come to this consulate. Tell me no more than where I can mail you your check each month.”
This freedom easily allowed Neruda to transfer to the embassy in Madrid. Neruda and Maruca moved there on June 1, 1934. Lorca met them at the station, this time bearing flowers. Soon after, Lorca introduced Neruda at the Chilean’s first public reading in Spain, at the University of Madrid, perhaps the most admiring introduction Neruda ever received throughout his entire life:
You are about to hear an authentic poet. One of those whose senses are trained to a world that is not ours and that few people perceive. A poet closer to death than to philosophy, closer to pain than to intellect, closer to blood than to ink . . .
[This is] poetry that is not ashamed to break with tradition, that is not afraid of ridicule, and that can suddenly break out sobbing in the middle of the street . . .
I would advise you to listen closely to this great poet and to let yourself be touched by him in your own way. Poetry, like any other sport, requires a long initiation, but in true poetry there is a perfume, an accent, a luminous trace that all living beings can perceive. And hopefully it will help you to nourish that grain of insanity that we all have within us, which many people kill in order to put on the hateful monocle of bookish pedantry. It would be unwise to live without it.
* * *
One of the central members of the cultural circle in Madrid was Delia del Carril. She was a brilliant Argentine artist, communist, and political activist, and she came from aristocratic roots, an enticing combination for Neruda. Excited for his friends to know his new amigo, Lorca often talked about “this amazing Chilean poet, Pablo Neruda,” whom he met in Buenos Aires, “who’s coming to be consul in Madrid in October.” Delia had read some of Neruda’s poems from Residence that had appeared in magazines before his arrival in Spain. Still, the Chilean was a mystery to her, as she was to him.
There was a magnetic feeling between the two when they first sat side by side at the bar Cervecería Correos, one of the group’s main gathering places. As Delia described it, Neruda “put his arm around my shoulder, and that’s how we stayed.” Neither creative, nor intellectual, nor political, Maruca did not participate in Neruda’s social world at all. In her last months of pregnancy, she mostly remained at home. Meanwhile, Delia’s radiance was alluring, but Neruda fell in love with her primarily for her brilliant mind (which had not been the case with Maruca or Albertina). She would be central to Neruda’s life for years. In Spain, they were an ideal fit. Their affair began quickly and they did little to keep it a secret.
Delia was born in 1884, into a rich and high-class family. There was nothing prim about her; she was always a rebel. She would gallop her horse through the gardens at her family’s country estate. Their Buenos Aires mansion was famous for hosting some of the most celebrated intellectuals of the time. There were poetry recitals, cultural salons, art exhibitions, new dances, and long conversations about French composers. Delia and her siblings were present at the gatherings, and from there she developed an appetite for culture. She started reading French poetry as a young child.
Eight days before she turned fifteen, Delia’s father, a former chief justice of Argentina’s Supreme Court, shot himself in the family’s garden. He had been despondent over the death of his beloved mother, who had succumbed to breast cancer exactly one year before. Delia had shared a strong bond with her father; she felt he understood her impulsive character, her outbursts, her obsession to understand everything. She never talked about her father again.
In response to the tragedy, Delia’s mother took the children to Paris, dividing their lives between Europe and Buenos Aires. Delia took singing and art classes. As a debutante, she went to parties, balls, and operas. As she came of age, her gatherings with friends became increasingly intellectual in nature. Yet while she seemed to be one of the happiest and most vibrant of her circle, those who knew her well saw her searching for self-definition.
In 1921, at the age of thirty-seven, Delia ended a brief marriage to a rich poet, art critic, morphine addict, and adventurer. He had stifled her independence, and then she caught him in an affair with a famous Spanish dancer. Delia went to Argentina, where she had an intense but brief romance with the vanguard poet Oliverio Girondo. In 1929, she returned to Paris and studied painting under Fernand Léger at l’Académie Moderne. The two developed a great friendship, which was rumored to have at least sometimes been amorous. She became friends with Pablo Picasso, Rafael Alberti, and María Teresa León, as well as the French surrealist poets Louis Aragon and Paul Éluard. Here, she was introduced to Marxism and the Communist cause. It was the time of rising fascism in Europe, and in French circles, art alone wasn’t enough. A political commitment had to go along with it. This new scene and its passionate ideals of equality and justice completed Delia, filling the void in her by offering the identity she had been searching for. She joined the French Communist Party and the recently formed Association of Revolutionary Writers and Artists.
While in Paris, Rafael Alberti and María Teresa León told Delia about the excitement of the new Republic in their native Spain. They were about to return, and they invited Delia to join them. Delia instantly fell into the circle of young activist intellectuals and writers in Madrid, as Neruda later would.
The youthful goatherd poet Miguel Hernández and the great filmmaker Luis Buñuel were also members of this community. Many were friends with Picasso, even though he had moved to France. The famously eccentric surrealist painter Salvador Dalí was involved too, especially in “an erotic, tragic love” with Lorca. For these young artists and intellectuals, Spain’s emerging socialist, progressive culture was exhilarating. Along with Alberti, Delia became one of the political teachers of the group. With her fluency in Spanish, English, and French, Delia was indispensable as a translator for the international communists and other leftists arriving to join the creative ferment of the Republic. Neruda would receive much of his ideological training from her.
Delia was said to be tireless in her work, like an ant. Thus “la Hormiga” (the Ant) became her nickname; years after her passing, her friends still tenderly called her “la Hormiguita.”
Delia was fifty when she met Neruda, who was twenty years younger than her. Inés Valenzuela, who would marry Neruda’s childhood friend Diego Muñoz, and who became one of Delia’s closest friends, said la Hormiguita always looked and acted much younger than her age (Inés was thirty-six years younger than her). Carlos Morla Lynch described her in his diary as being “crazy, affectionate, and good.” She’d often talk to him about communism: “It’s coming.”
Neruda, often with his beret, and Delia, wearing her red scarves, began to meet along with other members from the group every late afternoon at Cervecería Correos. The laughing and drinking began there. Delia would talk politics; Neruda would talk about any new poetry. If other poets were among them, perhaps some fresh verses were debuted. Later the two would head to the theater, the movies, or perhaps a party, or to the bar Satán, run by a young Cuban, or to the restaurant Granja del Henar. Or they might just walk the streets of Madrid with a bottle of wine or Chinchón anis in hand, eating calamari fried in olive oil from street vendors. As Ernest Hemingway had just written in 1932, “To go to bed at night in Madrid marks you as a little queer. For a long time your friends will be a little uncomfortable about it. Nobody goes to bed in Madrid until they have killed the night. Appointments with a friend are habitually made for after midnight at the cafe.”
In Neruda’s other life, with the pregnant Maruca, the couple occupied a brick apartment that Alberti had found for them. The building was located in the famous Argüelles neighborhood, brimming with vivid activity. This wasn’t just the territory of poets and intellectuals but of the people of Spain. Humanity throbbed through open markets full of salty food. Neruda would linger longingly in the market, strolling around, inspecting the celery, spicy peppers, tomatoes, potatoes, and piles of fish fresh from the Mediterranean and the Atlantic, a staple of the Spanish diet.
Neruda mentions the “piles of fish” in a seminal poem he’d write, “I Explain Some Things,” describing the vibrancy of the Spanish Republic, as these heaps of collective abundance and substance were a bold symbol of the “essence” of life at the time.
He would buy produce, meat, fish, cheese, bread, and more and—if he didn’t head toward Cervecería Correos or a café to meet Delia and the others—would bring it all back to his new apartment. The building, part of a new block of rental apartments, was named La Casa de las Flores, because of the geraniums that flowed down five stories of garden terraces. It was a fresh, inspired, striking contrast to the traditional bourgeois architecture of Madrid, whose houses and buildings tended to be burdened with ostentatious facades and decorative molding. The building, which would one day be declared a national monument, took up a whole square block, with stores and a restaurant on the street level, and a large enclosed garden and patio, all contributing to the social functionality of the building. Perhaps best of all, their unit was situated at the ideal angle and height for the warm glow of summer light to illuminate everything inside. Lorca liked to compose poems there.
