Neruda, p.58
Neruda, page 58
“a document of an excessive”: Neruda, Pablo. “Advertencia del autor,” El hondero entusiasta (Santiago: Empresa Letras, 1933). Available in OC, 1:159.
“realized yesterday that it is time”: Letter dated April 24, 1929, OC, 5:944.
“I have been writing”: Entry marked October 24, part of a letter started on October 5, 1929, OC, 5:946–947.
“From the very first reading”: Alberti, Rafael. La arboleda perdida (Madrid: Alianza, 1998), 324.
“absolutely extraordinary poet”: Carpentier, Alejo. “Presencia de Pablo Neruda,” Pablo Neruda, ed. Emir Rodríguez Monegal and Enrico Mario Santí (Madrid: Taurus, 1980), 57.
whose poetry amazed him: Carpentier, “Presencia de Pablo Neruda,” 58.
Alberti sent a cable: Vasquez, Carmen. “Alejo Carpentier en Paris (1928–1939),” in Escritores de América Latina en París: Sesión: “Vida y obra de escritores latinoamericanos en París,” Conferencia inaugura I, ed. Milagros Palma and Michèle Ramond (Paris: Indigo & Côté-femmes, 2006), 109.
He hoped all of their enthusiasm: De Costa, Poetry of Pablo Neruda, 8.
a torrential body of work: Handal, Nathalie. “Paradise in Zurita: An Interview with Raúl Zurita,” Prairie Schooner, n.d., http://prairieschooner.unl.edu/excerpt/paradise-zurita-interview-raul-zurita.
“Epitaph to Neruda”: De Rokha, Pablo. “Epitafío a Neruda,” La Opinión, May 22, 1933. Full article in Zerán, Faride. La guerrilla literaria: Pablo de Rokha, Vicente Huidobro, Pablo Neruda (Santiago: Ediciones Bat, 1992), 175–178.
“We Together”: “Juntos nosotros,” Residence on Earth I. Translated by Jessica Powell.
“a monochord deep moan”: Teitelboim, Neruda: La biografía, 168. Teitelboim would later become a close comrade of Neruda’s and write a biography of him. He had just moved to Santiago before the reading. This was the first time he had ever seen Neruda in person.
readers embraced this: Schopf, “Recepción y contexto,” 84.
Alone’s main point was: Alone (Hernán Díaz Arrieta). “Residencia en la tierra, de Pablo Neruda,” La Nación, November 24, 1935.
“Buenos Aires, isn’t that”: Letter dated April 24, 1929, OC, 5:942.
A short but intense romance began: Gligo, Agata. María Luisa: Sobre la vida de María Luisa Bombal, 2nd ed. (Santiago: Editorial Andrés Bello, 1985), 61–62.
“Pablo adored her”: The friend was Porfirio Ramírez, who was in love with Loreto (Gligo, María Luisa, 52).
“the only woman with whom”: Gligo, María Luisa, 54.
her intelligence, culture: Ibid., 53.
fallen in love with her: Vial, Sara. Neruda vuelve a Valparaíso (Valparaíso, Chile: Ediciones Universitaria de Valparaíso, 2004), 245; Teitelboim, Neruda: La biografía, 174.
the two had an affair: Reyes, Bernardo. Enigma de Malva Marina: La hija de Pablo Neruda (Santiago: RIL Editores, 2007), 85–86.
“You will be responsible”: Varas, José Miguel. “Margarita Aguirre,” Anaquel Austral, January 22, 2005, http://virginia-vidal.com/cgi-bin/revista/exec/view.cgi/1/17.
However, when the conversation: Olivares Briones, Edmundo. Pablo Neruda: Los caminos del mundo (Santiago: LOM Ediciones, 2001), 21.
recently been released in Buenos Aires: A celebrated and important pirated edition (from publishers Tor)—reprinted in 1934, 1938, and 1940—that catapulted Twenty Love Poems to international fame, as Loyola notes in OC, 1:1147.
“Neruda’s four major books”: Olivares, ed., Itinerario de una amistad, 165.
during the first month or so: Dates from Loyola in OC, 1:1184.
The Irishman’s influence: This and the following paragraph draw from Wilson, Companion to Pablo Neruda, 145, and Loyola, Hernán. “Lorca y Neruda en Buenos Aires (1933–1934),” A Contracorriente 8, no. 3 (Spring 2011): 1–22. Available at https://acontracorriente.chass.ncsu.edu/index.php/acontracorriente/article/view/9/32.
“Walking Around”: Residence on Earth II. Translated by Forrest Gander in Neruda, The Essential Neruda.
She wrote most of it: Gligo, María Luisa, 69.
“bee of fire”: Ibid., 75.
“We adored each other”: Vial, Neruda vuelve a Valparaíso, 246.
“What would Maruca do”: Gligo, María Luisa, 69.
“Neruda’s Javanese wife”: More precisely, María Flora compared Maruca to a gendarme. Yáñez, María Flora. Historia de mi vida: Fragmentos (Santiago: Nascimento, 1980), 210.
María Flora wrote that: Yáñez, Historia de mi vida, 210.
“fatal beauty”: Gonzalez, Ray. “Alfonsina Storni: Selected Poems,” The Bloomsbury Review, no. 8 (July/August 1988), 31.
Bombal knew about them: Vial, Neruda vuelve a Valparaíso.
One night at the trendy restaurant: De Miguel, María Esther. Norah Lange: Una biografía (Buenos Aires: Planeta, 1991), 158.
“always had good luck”: Vial, Neruda vuelve a Valparaíso, 246.
He became the talk of the town: Gibson, Ian. Federico García Lorca: A Life (New York: Pantheon Books, 1989), 365.
Neruda considered him to be: Teitelboim, Neruda: La biografía, 174.
“Stop! Stop!”: Stainton, Leslie. Lorca: A Dream of Life (New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1999), 336.
“reinvigorated the eternal”: OC, 4:390–391.
“leaping poetry”: Bly, Robert. Leaping Poetry: An Idea with Poems and Translations (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2008), 40–42.
“an effervescent child”: From a speech delivered during the dedication of a new monument to Lorca in São Paulo, Brazil, 1968, “Un monumento a Federico,” OC, 5:150–152.
In his memoirs, Neruda narrates: CHV, 521.
“There has been an accident”: Gibson, Federico García Lorca, 370.
“Neruda had begun to suspect”: Neruda, Confieso que he vivido (2017), 143.
“almost always fledgling poets”: Ibid., 143–144.
“We were happy and carefree”: Vial, Neruda vuelve a Valparaíso, 247.
Lorca revered him: Backstory about Darío in Gibson, Federico García Lorca, 370.
They continued alternating: De Costa, Poetry of Pablo Neruda, 73.
“transcendent poetry slam”: Harrison, introduction to Neruda, Residence on Earth, xi.
“Where in Buenos Aires is”: Full text of the discourse is in OC, 4:369–371. With her permission, I take from Leslie Stainton’s translation the “lexical fiesta” line, from her book Lorca, 336.
Bombal couldn’t help: Gligo, María Luisa, 75.
“María Luisa, I don’t want”: Vial, Neruda vuelve a Valparaíso, 247.
CHAPTER ELEVEN: SPAIN IN THE HEART
“For me, Spain is a great wound”: Quoted in Gálvez Barraza, Julio. Neruda y España (Santiago: RIL, 2003), 15.
“I don’t feel any distress”: Letter dated February 17, 1933, OC, 5:966–976.
“of dreams, of the leaves”: “Explico algunas cosas” [“I Explain Some Things”], Third Residence.
a cheery group photograph: Picture in Aguirre, Margarita, ed. Pablo Neruda, Héctor Eandi: Correspondencia durante Residencia en la tierra (Buenos Aires: Editorial Sudamericana, 1980). Insight on Maruca’s line of vision in Olivares Briones, Pablo Neruda: Los caminos de Oriente, 89.
a letter from his old roommate: The author Luis Enrique Délano discovered this information from Lago’s article “La dura muerte” in El Siglo, October 14, 1968. Quoted in Plath, Oreste, ed. Alberto Rojas Jiménez se paseaba por el alba (Santiago: Dirección de Bibliotecas, Archivos y Museos, 1994), 246.
“an angel full of wine”: Letter dated September 19, 1934, APNF, and OC, 5:1030.
“I didn’t know how to pray”: APNF, and OC, 5:1031.
“It’s a funeral, solemn hymn”: APNF, and OC, 5:1031.
“Beyond blood and bones”: “Alberto Rojas Jiménez viene volando,” Residence on Earth II.
“What Spain Was Like”: “Como era España,” Third Residence.
they started with working-class Catalans: Herr, Richard. An Historical Essay on Modern Spain (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1974), 130.
there already was widespread: Ibid.
“state of war”: Vincent, Mary. Spain, 1833–2002: People and State (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), 99.
“narrow social construction”: Ibid., 103.
Lorca and other poets met: Stainton, Lorca, 358.
“He’s pale, a pallor”: Morla Lynch, En España con Federico García Lorca, 392.
“a truly extraordinary”: Triunfo, November 13, 1971.
he read with power: Stainton, Lorca, 119.
an “institution” in Madrid: From Salinas, Pedro. “Federico García Lorca” (unpublished manuscript), in his papers at Houghton Library, Harvard University. Also quoted in Stainton, Lorca, 375.
“Of all the human beings”: Buñuel, Luis. My Last Sigh: The Autobiography of Luis Buñuel, trans. Abigail Israel (New York: Knopf, 1984), 158.
“When I die, / bury me with my guitar”: Lorca, Federico García. “Memento,” Poema del cante jondo [Poem of the Deep Song] (Madrid : Ediciones Ulises, 1931). Most of the poem was written by 1921.
“a brilliant fraternity of talents”: Cardona Peña, Pablo Neruda y otros ensayos, 31; and Cardona Peña, “Pablo Neruda: Breve historia,” 274.
“You are a poet”: Edwards, Jorge. Adiós, poeta . . . (Barcelona: Tusquets, 2000), 81.
“You are about to hear”: Lorca, Federico García. “Presentación de Pablo Neruda,” Madrid, December 6, 1934. Quoted in Quezada, Jaime, ed. Neruda–García Lorca (Santiago: Fundación Pablo Neruda, 1998); and Neruda, Pablo. Selección, comp. Arturo Aldunate Phillips (Santiago: Nascimento, 1943), 305–306.
“this amazing Chilean poet”: As recounted by Vicente Aleixandre in his piece “Con Pablo Neruda,” Prosas recobradas, ed. Alejandro Duque Amusco (Barcelona: Plaza & Janés, 1987), 24.
“put his arm around”: Sáez, Fernando. La Hormiga: Biografía de Delia del Carril, mujer de Pablo Neruda (Santiago: Catalonia, 2004), 89.
Eight days before she turned: Ibid., 25–26.
A political commitment: Ibid., 79.
“an erotic, tragic love”: As put by Dalí in a January 30, 1986, letter to the Madrid newspaper El País. Quoted in Dalí, Salvador, and Federico García Lorca. Querido Salvador, Querido Lorquito: Epistolario 1925–1936, ed. Víctor Fernández and Rafael Santos Torroella (Barcelona: Elba, 2013), 157.
“crazy, affectionate, and good”: Diary entry dated March 24, 1936, in Morla Lynch, En España con Federico García Lorca, 519.
Neruda, often with his beret: Ibid.
Chinchón anis: Sáez, La Hormiga, 93.
“To go to bed at night”: Hemingway, Ernest. Death in the Afternoon (New York: Scribner’s, 1960), 48.
It was a fresh: Macías, El Madrid de Pablo Neruda, 55–61.
Lorca liked to compose: Gibson, Federico García Lorca, 396.
“golden, ashen”: CHV, 542.
fueled by Neruda’s powerful punch: I’m grateful to Leslie Stainton for permission to adopt some of her language from her researched description in Lorca, 359.
“inauguration” of a public monument: Ibid.
whose friendship had deepened: Gibson, Federico García Lorca, 403.
CHAPTER TWELVE: BIRTH AND DESTRUCTION
“Ode with a Lament”: “Oda con un lamento,” Residence on Earth II. Translated by Forrest Gander in Neruda, The Essential Neruda.
“My daughter, or at least”: APNF, and OC, 5:1029–1031.
“Pablo was leaning over”: Aleixandre, “Con Pablo Neruda,” 27–28.
“Melancholy in the Families”: “Melancolía en las familias,” Residence on Earth II. Translated by Jessica Powell.
“Lines on the Birth of Malva Marina Neruda”: Lorca, Federico García. Undated poem first published in the Madrid newspaper ABC, July 12, 1984. Among other sources, quoted in: Reyes, Enigma de Malva Marina, 111, collected in Lorca, Federico García, Poesía completa, ed. Miguel García Posada (New York: Vintage Español, 2012), 581–582.
“I adore Delia”: Letter to Adelina, Delia’s sister. Quoted in Sáez, La Hormiga, 98.
That January, Neruda wrote: OC, 5:971–972.
One day at the National Library: Teitelboim, Volodia. Huidobro: La marcha infinita (Santiago: Ediciones BAT, 1993), 184. Also see Loyola, Hernán. “Volodia y Pablo: El comienzo de una larga amistad,” Nerudiana, no. 5 (August 2008): 4.
people directly attributed the charge: De Costa, René. “Sobre Huidobro y Neruda,” Revista iberoamericana 45, nos. 106–107 (1979): 379.
He was already known for: Ibid.
“Pablo Neruda: Poeta a la moda”: The article appeared in La Opinión, November 11, 1932, available at Archivo Chile, http://www.archivochile.com/Ideas_Autores/rokhap/o/rokhaobra0014.pdf.
“To be a plagiarist”: De Rokha, Pablo. “Esquema del plagiario,” La Opinión, December 6, 1934. Available in Zerán, La guerrilla literaria, 179.
several of Neruda’s friends claimed: Teitelboim, Neruda: La biografía, 205.
“The publication of this plagiarism”: Huidobro, Vicente. “Carta a Tomas Lago” and “El otro,” Vital (January 1935): 3–4, available via the Chilean National Library at http://www.memoriachilena.cl/archivos2/pdfs/MC0002197.pdf.
“Chile has sent to Spain”: Among other sources, quoted in Quezada, ed., Neruda–García Lorca, 157.
“All men are small”: Morla Lynch, En España con Federico García Lorca, 519.
“I Am Here”: “Aquí estoy,” OC, 4:374.
“great bad poet”: Juan Ramón Jiménez originally wrote this in an article entitled “A Great Bad Poet” in the Paris magazine Cuadernos, May–June 1958. Among other sources, quoted in Schidlowsky, Las furias y las penas (2008), 1:986.
Neruda and his friends started: Prank calling noted in author interview with Michael Predmore, 2001. The Spanish critic Ricardo Gullón infers insults may have even been made; see Peñuelas, Marcelino C. “Review: Conversaciones con Ramón I. Sender,” Hispanic Review 54, no. 3 (1971): 334–337.
“the finest presentation”: CHV, 527.
these journals helped set: De la Nuez, Sebastián. “La poesía de la revista Caballo Verde, de Neruda,” Anales de literatura hispanoamericana 7 (1978): 205–257, https://revistas.ucm.es/index.php/ALHI/issue/view/ALHI787811.
“On Impure Poetry”: OC, 5:381.
“Statute of Wine”: “Estatuto del vino,” Residence on Earth II. De Costa points this example out in Poetry of Neruda, 81. This translation is his.
He had started to read Whitman: Neruda, Pablo. “Walt Whitman según torres rioseco,” Claridad, May 5, 1923.
Lorca had begun to idolize: Stainton, Lorca, 239.
a poem that dramatizes how: Hass, Robert. Introduction to Whitman, Walt. Song of Myself, and Other Poems (Berkeley, CA: Counterpoint, 2010), 5.
In The Western Canon: Bloom, Harold. The Western Canon: The Books and School of the Ages (New York: Harcourt Brace, 1994), 478.
Neruda told a Continental Cultural Congress: Santiago, May 26, 1953, OC, 4:891.
“I should demand”: from Whitman, Walt. Democratic Vistas, available in The Project Gutenberg EBook of Complete Prose Works by Walt Whitman, https://www.gutenberg.org/files/8813/8813-h/8813-h.htm#link2H_4_0005.
“It’s for an action”: “Comienzo por invocar a Walt Whitman,” Incitación al Nixonicidio y alabanza de la revolución chilena.
“You can be sure”: Les Mois, November 1935. Quoted in Aldunate Phillips, Arturo. El nuevo arte poético y Pablo Neruda (Santiago: Nascimento, 1936), 28.
She wrote a rave review: The article, entitled “Recado sobre Pablo Neruda,” is quoted in Schopf, Neruda comentado, 179–184.
“magnificent and extraordinary”: Morla Lynch, En España con Federico García Lorca, 362.
“I still don’t know whether”: Written before and after October 2, 1935, quoted in Vargas Saavedra, Luis. “Hispanismo y antihispanismo en Gabriela Mistral,” Mapocho 22 (Winter 1970): 5–7, available via the Chilean National Library at http://www.memoriachilena.cl/602/w3-article-76656.html.
“from the menace of fascism and war”: Aaron, Daniel. Writers on the Left: Episodes in American Literary Communism (New York: Columbia University Press, 1992), 305.
The diverse audience: Lottman, Herbert R. The Left Bank: Writers, Artists, and Politics from the Popular Front to the Cold War (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998), 83–99.
“in the extratextural reality”: Loyola, El joven Neruda, 440–456.
Neruda felt dejected: Ibid., 455–456.
“lives with him, his wife”: Diary entry dated June 19, 1935, in Morla Lynch, En España con Federico García Lorca, 485.
Lorca swept in and out: Diary entry dated November 3, 1931, ibid., 147.
Morla Lynch remembered how one: Ibid.
Lorca, so vibrant at this time: Maurer, Christopher. “Poetry,” in A Companion to Federico García Lorca, ed. Federico Bonaddio (Woodbridge, Suffolk, UK: Tamesis, 2007), 34.
They decided to feast: Délano, Luis Enrique. Sobre todo Madrid (Santiago: Universitaria, 1970), 88.
As Lorca explained: Lorca, Federico García. Deep Song and Other Prose, ed. and trans. Christopher Maurer (New York: New Directions, 1980), 124.
they spent New Year’s: Sáez, Fernando. Todo debe ser demasiado: Biografía de Delia Del Carril: La Hormiga. Santiago: Editorial Sudaméricana, 1997.
With their jacket collars up high: Délano, Sobre todo Madrid, 88.
“red hordes of communism”: Bullón de Mendoza, Alfonso. José Calvo Sotelo (Barcelona: Ariel, 2004), 558–561.
“Red Flag”: Thomas, Hugh. The Spanish Civil War (London: Eyre & Spottiswoode, 1961), 92.
In March, members of the Fascist: Stainton, Lorca, 427, including, with permission, borrowing the word “ostentatiously.”
Lorca was petrified: Gibson, Federico García Lorca, 442.
Delia insisted that the Fascists: Sáez, La Hormiga, 107.
“What’s going to happen?”: Stainton, Lorca, 437–438.
When Langston Hughes arrived: Hughes, Langston, and Arnold Rampersad. I Wonder as I Wander: An Autobiographical Journey, 2nd ed. (New York: Hill and Wang, 1995), 333.
The alliance members dressed: Sáez, La Hormiga, 108.
“chilly nights when we”: Hughes and Rampersad, I Wonder as I Wander, 334.
