Neruda, page 60
“Pablo Neruda is such a boy”: Available in Quirarte, Vicente. Pablo Neruda en el corazón de México: En el centenario de su nacimiento (Mexico, D.F.: Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, 2006), 95.
“Since you arrived in Mexico”: Available in Quirarte, Pablo Neruda en el corazón de México, 102.
On August 30, 1943: Schidlowsky, Las furias y las penas (2003), 1:498.
“to awaken the sleeping”: Falcón, Jorge. “Imagen y espíritu de Pablo Neruda,” Hora del hombre (Lima), October 1943. Quoted in Schidlowsky, Las furias y las penas, 1:510.
christen a rural school: Teitelboim, Volodia. “Himmo y regreso del poeta de América, Pablo Neruda,” El Siglo, February 28, 1943. Quoted in Aguirre, Genio y figura de Pablo Neruda, 177.
“He has wanted to mix”: Rueda Martinez, Pedro. “Pablo Neruda, viajero de la poesía,” El Siglo, September 12, 1943. Quoted in Schidlowsky, Las furias y las penas (2003), 1:505.
In the following days, Neruda gave: Ibid., 508–509.
“I thought it held the umbilicus”: Triunfo, November 13, 1971.
“The nucleus of the work”: Ibid.
“I thought about a lot of things”: Neruda, Pablo. “Algo sobre mi poesía y mi vida,” University of Chile, January 21, 1954 (the day after he gave his “Infancia y poesía” discourse, part of his “Mi poesía” conference). Available in Aurora, no. 1 (July 1954), and OC, 4:932.
He wrote the poem: Ibid.
The poem’s division into: De Costa, Poetry of Pablo Neruda, 115.
“with a series of autobiographic memories”: Neruda, “Algo sobre mi poesía y mi vida.”
And from Poem XIII: Hernán Loyola points out Poem XIII in his Ser y morir en Pablo Neruda 1918–1945 (Santiago: Editora Santiago, 1967), 222.
“I felt the sense of community”: Triunfo, November 13, 1971.
Neruda strove to tell the history: Author interview with José Corriel, construction engineer for the Santiago Metro, 2003.
He sees with their eyes: De Costa, Poetry of Pablo Neruda, 124.
“How to choose in this case?”: Edwards, Magdalena. “A Conversation with Forrest Gander and Raúl Zurita About ‘Pinholes in the Night: Essential Poems from Latin America,’” Los Angeles Review of Books, February 2, 2014, https://lareviewofbooks.org/interview/conversation-forrest-gander-raul-zurita-pinholes-night-essential-poems-latin-america.
“The problem of the future”: Pablo Neruda interview by J. M. Cohen, Network Three, BBC Third Programme, July 10, 1965.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN: SENATOR NERUDA
“The Traitor”: “El traidor,” Canto general.
“I am going to Chile”: Falcón, “Imagen y espíritu de Pablo Neruda.”
“Pablo was already fat then”: Sáez, La Hormiga, 141–142.
“to see beyond the usual”: Poirot, Pablo Neruda, 122.
“I never thought about la Hormiga”: Author interview with Inés Valenzuela, July 2003.
One night, Alberti saw Neruda: Poirot, Pablo Neruda, 112.
it enabled private entrepreneurs: Collier, Simon, and William F. Sater. A History of Chile, 1808–1994, 2nd ed. (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 143–44.
a bonanza: Loveman, Brian. Chile: The Legacy of Hispanic Capitalism, 3rd ed. (New York: Oxford University Press, 2001), 150.
Many would later criticize: Collier and Sater, History of Chile, 144.
The word pueblo: Reid, Alastair. Introduction to Fully Empowered, by Pablo Neruda (New York: New Directions, 1995), vii.
“I enter her home”: As quoted by Neruda in “Viaje al norte de Chile,” OC, 4:560.
On February 24, 1945: “Antofagasta aclama a Neruda en gran acto de proclamación. Hablaron el Senador Lafertte y el Diputado César Godoy U,” El Siglo, February 26, 1945.
“Salute to the North”: Never published in a book, the poem was printed in El Siglo, February 2, 1945. Available in OC, 4:541.
Communist Party felt victorious: “Gran triunfo obtuvieron las fuerzas democráticas,” El Siglo, March 5, 1945.
The poem’s ability to serve: Author correspondence with María Cristina Monsalve, PhD candidate in the University of Maryland Department of Spanish and Portuguese, 2017.
To raise funds, the campaign: Olivares Briones, Pablo Neruda: Los caminos de América, 386.
“This triumph over prejudice”: Aguirre, Las vidas de Pablo Neruda, 218.
“In politics, not everything”: Arráiz, Antonio. “Tres días con Pablo Neruda. Cartas de un director viajero,” El Nacional (Caracas), February 8, 1946. Quoted in Schidlowsky, Las furias y las penas (2003), 1:577.
He found the social and personal: Ibid.
“Spoken in Pacaembú (Brazil, 1945)”: “Dicho en Pacaembú (Brasil, 1945),” Canto general.
“The Corpses in the Plaza”: “Los muertos de la plaza (28 de enero 1946, Santiago de Chile),” Canto general.
Neruda once again received a cable: Cable #130, “Cables cambiados con legación en Suiza,” vol. 2348, 1945, Ministerio de Relaciones Exteriores de Chile, Archivo General Histórico. Quoted in Schidlowsky, Las furias y las penas (2003), 1:562.
Neruda responded through the Ministry: Ibid., cable #107.
That same day, August 22: Ibid., cable #170.
His exaggerated, flamboyant left-wing stance: Collier and Sater, History of Chile, 246.
“even into soup”: Teitelboim, Neruda: La biografía, 297.
“In the north the copper worker”: “El pueblo lo llama Gabriel” [“The People Call Him Gabriel”], OC, 4:594.
“I had the opportunity to compile”: OC, 4:653–654.
“We thought that it would begin”: Teitelboim, Neruda: La biografía, 302.
on August 22, 1947: Vergara, Angela. Copper Workers, International Business, and Domestic Politics in Cold War Chile (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2008), 71.
On October 6, the U.S. ambassador: Loveman, Chile: The Legacy of Hispanic Capitalism, 220.
“Are the Chilean miners”: “Communism in Chile,” New York Times, October 11, 1947.
“Nazi-style concentration camp”: Neruda, Pablo. “Carta íntima para millones de hombres,” El Nacional (Caracas), November 27, 1947. Available in OC, 4:697.
On the Senate floor on October 21: Aguirre Silva, Leonidas, ed. Discursos parlamentarios de Pablo Neruda (1945–1948) (Santiago: Editorial Antártica, 1997), 190.
“traitor. A despicable person”: Lago, Ojos y oídos, 88.
“unavoidable duty, in this tragic time”: OC, 4:681–700.
“to strip Senator Neruda”: Olivares Briones, Pablo Neruda: Los caminos de América, 543.
On December 30, he took to: Aguirre Silva, Discursos parlamentarios, 233–234.
On January 5, the court of appeals: “La corte acordó desafuero de Neruda,” La Hora, January 6, 1948.
He began his historic speech: “Yo accuso,” OC, 4:704–729.
Right after Neruda gave his speech: Lago, Ojos y oídos, 90.
“give every class of help”: Cable #2, vol. 2664, January 20, 1948, Ministerio de Relaciones Exteriores de Chile, Archivo General Histórico. Quoted in Schidlowsky, Las furias y las penas (2003), 1:644.
Neruda asked the Mexican ambassador: Schidlowsky, Las furias y las penas (2003), 1:646.
“You don’t owe me anything”: Aguirre, Las vidas de Pablo Neruda, 224.
On January 30, young members: “Simbólicamente quemaron a P. Neruda en la Plaza de Armas,” Última hora, January 31, 1948.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN: THE FLIGHT
“The Fugitive: XII”: “El fugitivo: XII,” Canto general. Translated by Jack Hirschman in Neruda, The Essential Neruda.
“Nationwide Search for Neruda”: Olivares Briones, Pablo Neruda: Los caminos de América, 608–609.
For most of 1948: Varas, José Miguel. Neruda clandestino (Santiago: Alfaguara, 2003), 41.
One of the homes where the couple stayed: Author interview with Aida Figueroa, July 2003.
It was in Aida and Sergio’s house: Ibid., 2005.
Often, when he was writing: Varas, Neruda clandestino, 23.
In the afternoons, he would gather: Author interview with Aida Figueroa, July 2003.
The living situation at Lola’s house: Varas, Neruda clandestino, 49–50.
“If they get me”: Ibid., 85.
as the chief of investigations attested: Ibid., 55–56.
“Repeat. Repeat.”: Lago, Ojos y oídos, 116.
despite the protests of Delia: Ibid., 115.
“As of the evening of Monday”: Varas, Neruda clandestino, 93.
Delia had been told: Sáez, La Hormiga, 153.
Dr. Bulnes’s wife, Lala, urged: Varas, Neruda clandestino, 125.
“Once Pablo and I”: Bizzarro, Pablo Neruda, 145.
Others, though, have said: Sáez, La Hormiga, 153.
Some believed Neruda himself: Ibid., 153.
“From this moment on”: Many of the details of Neruda’s flight to San Martín de los Andes are taken from Varas’s Neruda clandestino, as well as the author’s interview with Varas in 2003 and subsequent correspondence. Varas’s book includes the personal accounts of both Jorge Bellet and Victor Bianchi (including a facsimile of his journal, featuring hand-drawn maps). Additional information from Bellet’s account in “Cruzando la cordillera con el poeta,” Araucaria de Chile, nos. 47–48 (1990): 186–202 (accessed on memoriachilena.cl). Between Bianchi’s, Bellet’s, Neruda’s, and others’ accounts, there are often conflicting details about the adventure. As always, I have tried my best to discern the most valid and indicate when there may be doubt.
They stopped only for gas: Varas, Neruda clandestino, 145.
They took a boat across: Lago, Ojos y oídos, 128.
“they lit a bonfire”: Ibid., 127. Also available in OC, 5:978–980.
Leoné Mosalvez was fifteen years old: Testimony told to Manuel Basoalto in Varas, Neruda clandestino, 153.
“You’re a man I’ve”: Ibid., 159–160.
Neruda carried all the pages: Aguirre, Genio y figura de Pablo Neruda, 199.
Bianchi claimed that he also: Ibid., 173.
volume about the birds of Chile: Pablo Neruda interview by Sun Axelsson, SVT (Swedish TV), Paris, December 1971.
“alongside my inscrutable colleagues”: “Pablo Neruda—Nobel Lecture: Towards the Splendid City,” December 13, 1971, NobelPrize.org, http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/literature/laureates/1971/neruda-lecture.html.
“the wound set the poet’s sentimentalism”: Varas, Neruda clandestino, 191.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN: EXILE AND MATILDE
“I End Here (1949)”: “Aquí termino (1949),” Canto general.
Pablo Picasso found him: Schidlowsky, Las furias y las penas (2008), 2:780.
“to unite all the active forces”: World Peace Congress. World Peace Congress leaflet, 1949, W. E. B. Du Bois Papers (MS 312), Special Collections and University Archives, University of Massachusetts Amherst Libraries. Available at http://credo.library.umass.edu/view/full/mums312-b126-i237.
Du Bois noted the diversity: Du Bois, W. E. B. “The World Peace Congress and Colored Peoples,” 1949, W. E. B. Du Bois Papers (MS 312), Special Collections and University Archives, University of Massachusetts Amherst Libraries. Available at http://credo.library.umass.edu/view/full/mums312-b159-i430.
“due to the difficulties I had”: Sanhueza, Jorge. “Neruda 1949,” Anales de la Universidad de Chile, nos. 157–160 (January–December 1971): 198.
“Neruda was like the conscience”: Fast, Howard. “Neruda en el Congreso Mundial para La Paz,” Pro arte, June 9, 1949. Quoted in Sanhueza, “Neruda 1949.”
“a hundred people were asking him”: Ibid.
“Paul Robeson, a Negro and a Communist”: Report on the Communist “Peace” Offensive: A Campaign to Disarm and Defeat the United States, prepared by the Committee on Un-American Activities, U.S. House of Representatives, Washington, D.C., April 1, 1951. Available at https://archive.org/details/reportoncommunis00unit.
“efforts are being made”: Airgram sent from C. Burke Elbrick, counselor of U.S. embassy in Cuba, to secretary of state (Dean Acheson), August 26, 1949, from the National Archives’ General Records of the Department of State 1945–1949, file document 825.00B/8-2449, provided to author by the Textual Records Division of the National Archives in College Park, MD.
“None of those pages had”: OC, 4:764.
“If hyenas could type”: OC, 4:765.
words that brought the Eastern Bloc: Crossley, Robert. Olaf Stapledon: Speaking for the Future (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 1994), 359.
“erotic obsessions”: Quote is by Roger Garaudy, as seen in, among others, Caute, David. The Dancer Defects: The Struggle for Cultural Supremacy During the Cold War (Oxford, UK; New York: Oxford University Press, 2003), 310.
“Is that fair”: Caute, David. The Fellow-Travellers: Intellectual Friends of Communism (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1988), 315.
Neruda seemed sincere: Sanhueza, “Neruda 1949,” 204.
“In the throes of death”: OC, 4:765.
“when Fadeyev said in his Wrocław speech”: OC, 4:765.
“Walt Whitman once wrote”: Neruda, Let the Rail Splitter Awake and Other Poems (New York: Masses & Mainstream, Inc., 1950), 5.
However, as Jorge Sanhueza: Sanhueza, “Neruda 1949,” 205.
Elsewhere, within a decade: Ibid., 206.
According to Volodia Teitelboim: Teitelboim, Neruda: La biografía, 297–298.
“Let the Rail-Splitter Awake”: Neruda, Let the Rail Splitter Awake, 39.
in the end they extended their trip: Neruda, Pablo. Cartas de amor: Cartas a Matilde Urrutia (1950–1973), ed. Darío Oses (Barcelona: Seix Barral, 2010).
Neruda was aroused by Matilde: Author interview with the writer Francisco Velasco, 2008.
“Women follow in Pablo’s”: Sáez, La Hormiga, 145.
He wasn’t a great seducer: Author interview with Inés Valenzuela, July 2003.
If Delia suspected: Sáez, La Hormiga, 156.
according to an account: Sanhueza, “Neruda 1949,” 207.
guests were given: Olivares Briones, Pablo Neruda: Los caminos de América, 737–742.
“has no illusions about Neruda”: Schidlowsky, Las furias y las penas (2008), 2:809–810.
“This book is agitating me”: Olivares Briones, Pablo Neruda: Los caminos de América, 749–750.
“As he still can’t go down the stairs”: Reyes, Neruda: Retrato de familia, 152.
“Right now his bed”: Olivares Briones, Pablo Neruda: Los caminos de América, 747.
it served as a monument: Herrera, Hayden. Frida: A Biography of Frida Kahlo (1983; New York: HarperCollins, 1984), 312.
return “to the people”: Suckaer, Ingrid. “Diego Rivera: Biografía,” Museo Anahuacalli, http://www.museoanahuacalli.org.mx/diegorivera/index.html.
Rivera had influenced Neruda’s interest: Felstiner, Translating Neruda, 186. Felstiner also astutely points out the influence of José Uriel García, the historian who took Neruda to Machu Picchu, in inspiring his interest in indigenous people and history.
“I’ve been so absorbed”: Olivares Briones, Pablo Neruda: Los caminos de América, 751.
“I live, I still live”: Author interview with Ariel Dorfman, 2004.
José Corriel, a construction engineer: Author interview with José Corriel, 2003.
Canto general—a title: González Echevarría, Roberto. Introduction to Canto general, by Pablo Neruda (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991), 6.
This optimism, though, is dependent: Mascia, Mark J. “Pablo Neruda and the Construction of Past and Future Utopias in the Canto general,” Utopian Studies 12, no. 2 (2001): 65–81. Available at http://digitalcommons.sacredheart.edu/lang_fac/4.
“covering the streets”: CHV, 565.
This directly inspired Neruda’s vision: Author interview with John Felstiner, 2001, and Felstiner, Translating Neruda, 129.
Higher-quality editions: Author interview with Inés Valenzuela, July 2003. Inés helped in the distribution of the clandestine copy.
It’s a call for the spirit: Triunfo, November 13, 1973.
“It struck me like a bomb”: Author interview with Jack Hirschman, 2010.
Yet as he says in the poem: Cardona Peña, Pablo Neruda y otros ensayos, 36–37.
“I had two immense sources of happiness”: Ibid., 37.
However, all this satisfaction: Ibid., 38, and Salerno, “Alone y Neruda,” 324.
He was impressed by the poems: Alone. “Neruda,” El Mercurio, September 7, 1947. Quoted ibid., 324–327.
Neruda was struck by: Cardona Peña, Pablo Neruda y otros ensayos, 40–41.
the two spent time in Prague: Hernán Loyola lists the stops in OC, 1:1223–1224.
With the help of his friends: Details of how Neruda worked with party leaders, friends, artists, etc., in different countries to schedule speaking engagements and prizes to help facilitate his being with Matilde in OC, 1:1224.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN: MATILDE AND STALIN
“The Mountain and the River”: “El monte y el río,” The Captain’s Verses.
“tax inspectors or people”: Varas, José Miguel. “Neruda en exilio,” Mapocho 34 (1993): 93–94.
“if this Chilean girl comes”: Varas, José Miguel. Nerudarío (Santiago: Planeta, 1999), 122.
Neruda and Delia had rented: Varas, “Neruda en exilio,” 94.
At this point, all governments: Ibid.
a former Spanish Republican general: Gattai, Zélia. Senhora Dona do Baile (Rio de Janeiro: Ed. Record, 1985), 112–114. Quoted in Schidlowsky, Las furias y las penas (2008), 2:826–827.
“Our angel or devil”: Neruda, Cartas de amor: Cartas a Matilde Urrutia, 26.
“generous and full of youthful happiness”: Toledo, Manuel. “Aída Figueroa: Pablo fue un gran ejemplo,” BBC Mundo, July 10, 2004, http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/spanish/specials/2004/cien_anos_de_neruda/newsid_3868000/3868781.stm.
And Matilde was as Neruda hoped: Ibid.
Matilde was simple: Ibid.
He sent Matilde a welcoming telegram: Urrutia, Matilde. My Life with Pablo Neruda, trans. Alexandria Giardino (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2004), 44.
At the festival, Neruda spoke: Neruda, Pablo. “¡Hacia Berlin!” Democracia, August 29, 1951. Available in OC, 4:819.
