Neruda, p.51
Neruda, page 51
* * *
On July 12, 2004, Pablo Neruda’s centennial was celebrated with a wide range of events throughout the world, most poignantly in Chile. Isla Negra’s narrow dirt roads swelled with more than seven thousand fans, who flocked to their beloved Pablo’s house and resting place. The festivities continued well past midnight, fireworks shooting out over the beach.
The Chilean government, led then by President Ricardo Lagos of the Socialist Party, had formed an official commission for the centennial two years in advance. According to Lagos, Neruda’s work is part of Chile’s foundation, its essence, “a component of our nationality, an obligatory and joyful point of reference every time we want to know who we are, where we come from, or which direction we should take in order to continue the construction of this proud residence on earth that’s called Chile.”
In one of the many quotes supplied for the government’s official book for the centennial, the Peruvian Nobel laureate Mario Vargas Llosa hit on a vital point, stressing how Neruda’s poetry “has touched so many different worlds and nourished so many varied and contradictory callings and talents.” (This broad spectrum may have been particularly salient to Vargas Llosa, who turned away from the leftism of his early years and eventually ran for president of Peru as a conservative.)
In the United States, an important event was held at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, D.C., featuring Neruda’s friends Volodia Teitelboim, Alastair Reid, and Antonio Skármeta, author of Il postino, among other writers, poets, actors, and singers. It took place in March, just three days after the terrorist attacks in Madrid that killed nearly two hundred and injured some eighteen hundred. Ariel Dorfman was a participant at the event. Even before the train bombings, he had planned to recite and talk about Neruda’s “I Explain Some Things,” about the bombing of civilians in Madrid a half century before. Dorfman just happened to be reading the poem over and over in preparation for the event when he heard about the attacks.
Dorfman saw it as a “sign in some sense.” In fact, he had originally chosen to recite that specific poem
because I felt it was a way of allowing Neruda to condemn the invasion and occupation of Iraq, the bombs falling upon the innocent, the blood of children that runs, today as yesterday, “simply like blood of children.” And I also wanted Neruda’s verses to howl against the destruction of so many other cities and lives . . .
The poem ended up being more relevant than I had planned. When I finally read it at the Kennedy Center, I understood, as did the audience, that Neruda had captured my mouth, stolen my throat, in order to whisper something far more urgent.
But while many still use Neruda’s voice and example to speak out against contemporary forms of injustice, some believe that his Stalinism disqualifies him, making him inappropriate, if not hypocritical, for such a role. An article in the National Review announced, “You would have no idea reading Dorfman’s piece [in the L.A. Times] that Neruda was such a hard-line true believer that he was awarded the International Stalin Prize and the Lenin Peace Prize.” Then the author quoted his poem on Stalin’s death: “We must learn from Stalin / His sincere intensity / His concrete clarity . . .” This was followed by a quote from a National Review contributor who had emigrated from Russia in 1991, at the age of nineteen: “Neruda was not even a sympathizer—he was an active agent. We have no idea how much blood is on his hands in Spain, and I don’t mean just fascist blood we don’t care for.”
* * *
Neruda would have turned a hundred years old on July 12, 2004. As he was celebrated across the world, my day began being interviewed by Renee Montagne on NPR’s Morning Edition. It felt like the culmination of a long journey for me, from my early forays in Chile to now launching The Essential Neruda and sharing his work with some ten million people on the airwaves, striving to help spread Neruda’s poetry, its power to evoke emotion, to perhaps foster consciousness.
That night we threw our own birthday party for Pablo at the Project Artaud theater in San Francisco. It opened with a lively poetry reading, featuring Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Robert Hass, Jack Hirschman, and Stephen Kessler. Then the musical group Quijeremá performed a riveting set of South American–infused jazz, led by Quique Cruz, who had grown up a few coastal towns away from Isla Negra and who had been tortured by the regime before being exiled. He recounted that Neruda had come to his school to read his poetry; Cruz was twelve then, and deeply moved. The composition his band played for us was the score for the documentary on Neruda we had rushed to finish that very morning.
The evening was sold out, the 350-person theater filled, and an energetic crowd filled the expansive lobby, hoping to get in too. The house crew set up extra loudspeakers so everyone could at least hear the performances. I thought of Neruda’s fabled appearance at the 92nd Street Y in New York, in 1966, the poet–rock star’s reading so packed organizers set up closed-circuit televisions for those who couldn’t get into the auditorium. Now, half a century later, a full century after his birth, in a theater in San Francisco, it was happening again, a testament to the enduring potency of Neruda’s poetry, of its continued resonance.
Lawrence Ferlinghetti took the stage. He spoke of Neruda’s legacy, of his “hundred years of beatitudes.” He read his own 1960 poem, written while on Machu Picchu, titled “Hidden Door,” which he had dedicated to Neruda. Watching the audience from behind the stage, I could sense Neruda’s presence filling that hall in all his enduring complexity: the love poet, the political poet, the experimental poet; Neruda the Communist, Neruda the womanizer, Neruda the sailor on earth. We were there that night to celebrate Neruda: not just the idealized poet, but the whole man, the multifaceted human being.
After the readings, we screened the documentary. It opened with Isabel Allende’s narration, recounting her tale of taking Neruda’s book of odes with her into exile, as Neruda appeared on-screen, wearing a poncho and gray beret, walking along the coast at Isla Negra. The foam crests behind him as he looks out, then points to the sea, that sea that was such a part of him, a dominant metaphor. “In some magnetic way,” he once wrote, “I move in the university of the waves.”
The sea, wide and vast, was like all the multitudes he contained and poured forth. Wide and vast like the plenitude of his soul as well as the plenitude of his ego. And like that sea that seemed a part of him, Neruda was so complex and yet at times so simple. With all the different aspects of Neruda, and all their contradictions, at his core he is one great body, still, in all its fullness, stretching across the world, to all its famous and hidden corners.
There, on the screen, Neruda watches the same waves that crash on Isla Negra’s rocks today. The folk singer Hugo Arévalo, who now lives in Isla Negra himself, had told me that one of the things that had brought Neruda to live there was the ability to see the line between land and sea moving constantly, never fixed. “I think that movement had a meaning in his poetry,” he said. And as I myself saw it, that motion also had a role in the nuances of his life, in the balance between self-mystification and truth, in the need to adapt to shifting realities while always keeping his edge.
That shore reflects all the changes he went through, all the battles, all the triumphs, all the tragedies—of anyone’s life, but certainly heightened in his—before coming back to the core:
Let us look for secret things
somewhere in the world,
on the blue shore of silence
or where the storm has passed,
rampaging like a train.
—“Forget About Me”
Neruda, mysterious as the sea: as much as we think we know him, as much as we could describe him that night in the reading and the film and music, as much as I try to in this book, we’ll never know everything, because he wasn’t only a figurehead, nor merely an icon; he was also, simply, a human being.
As the audience watched those waves crashing over the black rocks of Isla Negra, they heard an actor read part of Neruda’s poem “Lazybones.” Working on the movie, I had heard the poem so many times that it had begun to lose its effect on me. But as I listened to it in that packed theater, the words struck me with renewed emotion. Neruda composed the poem overlooking the waves at Isla Negra, not long after the space race had begun. The “metal objects” he refers to are the new satellites circling above in the night sky. While the possibilities they represent may catch his attention, the poet is still consumed by the beauty right here on earth:
Metal objects will still
journey among the stars,
weary men will still go up
to assault the gentle moon
and install their pharmacies.
In this season of swollen grapes
wine begins its life
between the sea and the mountains.
In Chile the cherries dance,
dusky girls sing
and the water gleams from guitars.
The sun knocks on every door
and works miracles with wheat.
The first wine is pink,
sweet as a tender child,
the second wine is robust
like the voice of a sailor
and the third wine is a topaz,
a poppy and a fiery blaze.
My house has the sea and the earth,
my woman has majestic eyes
the color of wild hazelnuts,
when night falls the sea
adorns itself in white and green
and then the moon in seafoam
dreams like a maritime bride.
I do not want any other planet.
The poem’s melody of innocent thoughts and imagery conveys that Neruda’s work doesn’t always have to be raw with politics or love; that, at the heart of it all, his poetry is about the wonder of being human. This is what keeps people coming back to Neruda, the essential poetic expression of what we are at our core, the elementary within the complex, the ordinary and the infinite, the true and the unknowable.
Author’s Note
In the first chapters a difficulty presents itself whether to use Pablo Neruda, the pen name he assumed at age sixteen, or Neftalí, from his given name, Ricardo Eliecer Neftalí Reyes Basoalto. When events jump ahead of those first sixteen years, I refer to him as Pablo Neruda. When writing about him during the time before he changed his name, I use Neftalí or some combination of his original first, middle, and last names.
All translations of the poems in this book are mine unless otherwise indicated, most often in the endnotes. I also translated most of the source material. I take responsibility for any inadequacies or errors in these translations. It should be noted that strict literal fidelity to the original, especially with the poetry, wasn’t always maintained. Modest, appropriate liberties were sometimes taken in order to best convey the true intents and richness of the original.
Megan Coxe and Jessica Powell provided invaluable help. Those passages and poems fully translated by them are cited with their names; these were graciously crafted for this book and thus are previously unpublished.
Acknowledgments
It is as if there were a Canto General that orchestrated this book’s creation and delivery into the world. I am so grateful to all those who, in one way or another, contributed their voice, from those who have been with me throughout the entire history of this project to those who spontaneously crossed my path in a market, a construction site, or a Valparaíso bar, appearing right on cue, as if Pablo had sprinkled his poetic pixie dust on this venture; an impossibility that seemed impossibly to happen over and over, and at just the right moment. Buoyed by this presence, I borrow his line and say thank you, to everyone, to you . . .
At the genesis were my parents, Gilbert and Rona Eisner, and their love, their example, their belief and support. From there, I have had the greatest fortune to have encountered what Pablo would call Lamp(s) on Earth, such kindred exceptional souls who have chosen to illuminate, accompany, and guide me on this path: numero uno, Abram Brosseit, whose brotherhood, teaching, and unwavering belief in me have made me realize literature, writing, my dreams, this book, myself. Thomas Kohnstamm’s writing compañeroismo, his concern and consideration, have been so considerable. I first met Liza Baskind in 1994, the first week I stepped foot in Latin America. She became like a sister to me as the land, that experience, imprinted itself into us. Five years later, I visited her on my first-ever trip to San Francisco. On that very first morning, she led me to another important first step: into City Lights Books. Liza’s part in that connection makes my connection between those two worlds even more special—yet nothing near as special as that cherished friendship I share with her and her husband, Brian Steele. Lucho Vasquez, from passing Abram and me copies of Kenneth Patchen and other writers in our first year at Michigan, has continued to be a teacher, an inspiration, the most solid friend. I am also very appreciative of my brother Eric Eisner, of his exceptional intelligence and truly sweet nature.
To the Meta-Metcalves, with a particular nod to Aly’s ability to artfully put words to colors, words that help paint this book. As if their friendship and motivation, their examples of how to live a life and be a human, were not enough, it was Aly who introduced me to Jessica Powell. Witnessing her creative brilliance, I asked Jessica to translate Neruda’s book venture of the infinite man, a project I had brought to City Lights. The world is richer for her talent. She has also been a major help to this book, never flinching to lend her time to help with a passage or two, a page or two, or more. The growth of our friendship through this process has been the most rewarding outcome of it all.
I am thankful for those friends whose particular knowledge nourished this book: Soledad Chavez, linguistic professor at the University of Chile; Tina Escaja, dynamic Spanish poet, visual artist, and scholar; Rodrigo Rojas, professor and poet (whom I first met, by chance, at a reading at Neruda’s Santiago house, circa 2001).
Federico Willoughby Macdonald’s generosity and guidance opened Chile up to me. My gratitude to him is profound. He invited me to live on the ranch where the idea for The Essential Neruda: Selected Poems was born. Forrest Gander, Robert Hass, Jack Hirschman, Stephen Kessler, and Stephen Mitchell’s poetry, generosity, and belief in a very young me all enabled that book to take form. Alastair Reid, a contributor as well, was a special kindred angel on this path. These friendships have continued, their wisdom and support informing this book. With them aboard, Elaine Katzenberger at City Lights took on The Essential and published it. How my life has changed because she recognized something in it. And at holy City Lights, my continued appreciation for Stacey Lewis, Robert Sharrard, Chris Carosi, and, of course, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, who has been a hero of mine since college, since I first set out on this literary camino.
Those early days at the University of Michigan were formative in so many ways. I am deeply thankful for all Michigan gave me, but here in particular I can’t express warmly enough my appreciation for its creative writing undergraduate program. With their huge hearts and gifted prose, Eileen Pollack and Alyson Hagy both saw me for who I was, recognized the writing I had to do, and helped to launch me on this path. They’ve both been alongside ever since, which means so much to me and my writing. More recently, Jeremy Chamberlin, currently the associate director of the writing program, helped give me the tools to reimagine the narration at a time I felt the whole book was stuck.
At Stanford, I am grateful to Katherine Morrison, Jim Fox, Terry Karl, and the Center for Latin American Studies; Yvone Yarbo-Bejarano and the Department of Spanish and Portuguese; and Tobias Wolff and the Creative Writing Program for grants that enabled me to do some of the initial work toward what would eventually become this book. A special shout-out to Terry, my thesis adviser, for her teaching and understanding. Stanford’s Bing Overseas Studies Program funded a crucial 2002 trip to work out of its center in Santiago. In 2015, Iván Jaksić, the Santiago center’s current director, opened its doors to me again. And his warmhearted help on early twentieth-century Chilean thought proved invaluable.
It was on that 2002 trip that the Pablo Neruda Foundation welcomed me in, leading to some wonderful, important relationships. In particular for this biography, I had the opportunity to spend days in the library and archives, where Darío Oses, a saint, afforded me so many hours, helping me research the treasures of archival documents, answering my questions, and engaging in probing conversations, all the while looking out over La Chascona’s patio and the mountains beyond. In addition, much gratitude to Carmen Morales, executive director Fernando Sáez (whose excellent biography of Delia del Carril was very helpful to me), Adriana Valenzuela with the library, and the so cariñosa Carolina Briones, among many others. And for their dedicated and gracious help in granting the permission to use much of the original material used in this biography, gracias a Carina Pons, Ana Paz, and the late Carmen Balcells at the latter’s famed agency, who represented Neruda and now the foundation.
My first tentative interaction with the foundation was in 1999, through Verónica, the student I described meeting at La Chascona in the introduction to this book. She of course has my sincere thanks for being such a kind, brilliant catalyst. One of the first people she introduced me to was Federico Schopf, poet and professor at the Universidad de Chile. Federico’s initial encouragement was foundational, and the wisdom and knowledge he shared through long discussions over bottles of vino tinto served as the initial bedrock of what came forth. Federico introduced me to Jaime Concha, a Chilean teaching at the University of California, San Diego. His writing, insights, and gentle soul have made a significant impression on me. And perhaps even more key to my journey, Jaime introduced me to his dear friend Michael Predmore, who became my mentor at Stanford, where he was a professor of Spanish. I am indebted to Michael, not only as a teacher but as an inspiration. He deserves a whole paragraph here. John Felstiner, also at Stanford, was affable and helpful. The Chilean author and scholar Marjorie Agosín was also one of the first to endorse, and then help enrich, my work.
