Neruda, page 66
Neruda’s father’s life in, 17–20, 22–25, 64
Neruda’s life in, 22, 25, 27–29, 33–36, 42–44, 46–48, 51, 53, 55–56, 58–59, 63–65, 68, 71, 93, 110–11, 115, 275–76, 345, 349, 373, 402, 423, 518
Neruda’s vacations and, 75, 93, 99, 121–22, 124, 130–31
politics in, 16, 262–63
railroad in, 16, 20, 29–31, 36
Tolrá, Aurelia, 15, 21–25, 36, 130
Tomic, Radomiro, 456–58
Tornú, Sara “La Rubia” (the Blonde), 206, 219, 232
Torrealba, Ernesto, 59–60, 126n
Translator to Poet (Reid), 486
Trotsky, Leon, 289–91, 300, 371, 385
Truman, Harry, 337, 358, 387
Trump, Donald, 11, 497
Turner, John R. G., 473–74
Ubico, Jorge, 295–97
última niebla, La (The Final Mist) (Bombal), 208
Ulysses (Joyce), 78, 207
United States, 6, 8, 57, 200, 221, 281, 290n, 321, 358–64, 375, 378n, 428, 430, 455n, 468, 488
Chilean coup and, 458–61
Chilean elections and, 456–57
Chilean workers’ movement and, 329, 332, 335
and fall of Pinochet, 488n, 489n
“Let the Rail-Splitter Awake” and, 377–79
Neruda’s centennial and, 500–501
Neruda’s legacy and, 497–98
Neruda’s politics and, 361, 369
Neruda’s trips to, 436–42, 445, 468–69, 502
politics in, 325, 332–33, 370, 379, 436–40
Spanish Civil War and, 252, 254, 261, 269, 412
World Congress and, 358–60
World War II and, 302–3
Urrutia, Alicia (niece), 463–64, 472–73, 597n
Urrutia Cerda, Matilde Rosario (third wife), 384–99, 435–36, 440–41
Central and South American travels of, 366, 381, 389–90, 392, 398–99, 427–28, 440, 454–55, 456n
Chilean coup and, 478, 480
Cuban trip of, 428–29
domestic abilities of, 367, 386, 392, 396, 402
European travels of, 386–94, 396–98, 426n, 428, 435, 454, 456, 465–66, 469–70, 472
hives of, 388–89
houses of, 4–5, 402, 415, 417, 463
memoir of, 387–88, 390, 393, 395, 397, 480
miscarriages of, 381, 389–90, 394, 397, 415–16
Neruda’s death and, 480–81, 489
Neruda’s first meeting with, 366–67
Neruda’s illnesses and, 367, 466, 472–73, 479, 492, 597n, 600n
Neruda’s letters to, 385–86, 394, 472
Neruda’s marriage to, 435, 443–44
Neruda’s relationship with, 367–68, 381–82, 385–99, 401–2, 414–19, 421–22, 424–27, 431–32, 447, 463–64, 466, 472–73, 480
physical appearance of, 4, 366–67, 417–18, 428–29, 443–44
politics of, 366–67, 386–87, 394, 456, 489
pregnancies of, 368, 392, 396–97, 415
Valdivia, 51, 346, 348–49, 354
Valenzuela, Inés, 227–28, 319, 402, 418–19, 480–81
Valle, Juvencio, 37–38, 345–46, 375n
Vallejo, César, 78, 86n, 128n, 143, 153, 179n, 259, 268, 271, 407, 430n
Valparaíso, 51, 142, 179n, 194, 273–74, 445, 466
Neruda’s hiding in, 343, 345
Neruda’s illnesses and, 472–73
Neruda’s trips to, 4, 139–43, 424–25, 432, 473, 491
Spanish refugee crisis and, 282–83
strikes and violence in, 67, 323, 476
Vargas Llosa, Mario, 167, 438, 469, 500
Vargas Rosas, Luis, 279–80
Velasco, Francisco, 424, 469–70, 473, 491
Venegas, Alejandro, 45–46
Venezuela, 325, 369, 375n, 427–28, 454–55, 455n–56n
Venturelli, José, 377
Verlaine, Paul, 59, 63–64, 75–76, 113, 143
Verónica (Neruda Foundation employee), 5–6, 10
Vial, Sara, 424
Vietnam, Vietnam War, 8, 150, 157, 160, 378n, 447–48, 468–69
Villalobos, Agustina, 108–9
Washington, D.C., 304, 438–39, 500–501, 601n
Wendt, Lionel, 172–73, 188
Western Canon, The (Bloom), 243
Whitman, Walt, 5, 7, 78, 149, 242–43, 364, 372, 394, 401, 407, 417, 423, 425, 437
Winter, Augusto, 57–58, 110
World Congress of Partisans for Peace, 357–60
World War I, 65, 86, 194, 321
World War II, 283, 298, 301–3, 306, 315, 337, 357, 379
Zniewolony umysł (The Captive Mind) (Milosz), 413–14
Zurita, Raúl, 315–16, 517, 520–21
Photo Section
Rosa Neftalí Basoalto Opazo, Neruda’s mother, in Parral, circa 1900.
Archivo personal de Bernardo Reyes
José del Carmen Reyes Morales, Neruda’s father, in Temuco, 1920s.
Archivo personal de Bernardo Reyes
Neruda, at age two, in Temuco, 1906.
Archivo personal de Bernardo Reyes
Trinidad Candia Malverde, Neruda’s stepmother, whose “gentle shadow watched over my childhood.” She signed the photo, “To my son Rodolfo and family, this memento of your mother . . .” It is dated Temuco, 1927.
Archivo de Marycruz Jara Urrutia, through Bernardo Reyes
Neftalí (about age fourteen) and his half sister, Laura (about age eleven), in Temuco, 1918.
Archivo de Escritor, Biblioteca Nacional de Chile
Teresa León Bettiens (around age twenty), 1925. The queen of Temuco’s spring fiesta, she was a muse for Twenty Love Poems.
Rosa León Muller
Neruda (left) with the poet Romeo Murga, in the Calle Maruri pension house they lived in when Neruda first moved to Santiago, 1922.
Archivos de la Fundación Pablo Neruda
Neruda in his “poet’s outfit” of black cape and wide-brimmed sombrero.
Archivo personal de Bernardo Reyes
Cover of Crepusculario (1923), with illustrations by the anarchist leader Juan Gandulfo.
Colección Archivo Fotográfico, Archivo Central Andrés Bello, Universidad de Chile
Albertina Rosa Azócar, one of the principal muses of Twenty Love Poems, in the 1920s.
Archivos de la Fundación Pablo Neruda
Neruda with his friend Álvaro Hinojosa, 1925. The two would travel to Burma together in 1927.
Archivo personal de Bernardo Reyes
Neruda back in Santiago, no longer the “somber, melancholic, absent muchacho,” here with his gang of friends, including Alberto Rojas Jiménez, (top row, second from left) and Tomás Lago (top row, to the right of Neruda, fourth from left,) 1932.
Colección Museo Histórico Nacional (Chile)
Neruda and Maria Antonia Hagenaar on their wedding day, December 6, 1930, outside their house in Batavia.
Archivo personal de Bernardo Reyes
Federico García Lorca and Carlos Morla Lynch in front of the Alahmbra of Granada, Lorca’s hometown.
Editorial Renacimiento, Seville
María Luisa Bombal.
Colección Museo Histórico Nacional (Chile)
Neruda and Delia del Carril, Madrid, 1935.
Archivos de la Fundación Pablo Neruda
Neruda’s daughter, Malva Marina, around age five, in Holland.
Frederik Julsing
Neruda and Delia (far left) arriving in São Paulo, July 1945. They were greeted by the renowned novelist Jorge Amado (right). Neruda, Amado, and Luís Carlos Prestes would read before a crowd of at least eighty thousand in celebration of Prestes’s release from jail after ten years as a political prisoner.
Archivos personales de Bernardo Reyes
Delivering his “Yo Acuso” (“I Accuse”) speech on the Senate floor, 1948.
Archivos de la Fundación Pablo Neruda
Just before crossing the Andes into exile with Jorge Bellet and Victor Bianchi.
Colección Archivo Fotográfico, Archivo Central Andrés Bello, Universidad de Chile
Neruda and Matilde in Nyon, on the shore of Lake Geneva, where they spent a few days alone for the first time, 1951.
Archivos de la Fundación Pablo Neruda
On April 25, 1949, at the end of the First World Congress of Partisans for Peace in Paris, Pablo Picasso announced he had a surprise and revealed Neruda, who had just fled Chile into exile.
Associated Press
Neruda’s bedroom, Isla Negra, 2015.
Danielle Villasana
Neruda’s house in Isla Negra, spreading across the hill like a ship above the water, 1999.
Macduff Everton
“Neruda for President” rally in Santiago’s working-class Barrancas neighborhood, October 1969.
Colección Archivo Fotográfico, Archivo Central Andrés Bello, Universidad de Chile
Neruda campaigning for Salvador Allende.
Archivos de la Fundación Pablo Neruda
The bar inside Isla Negra, with rafters carved with names of friends who had died, 1967.
Milton Rogovin/Courtesy Center for Creative Photography, University of Arizona Foundation
Matilde hugging Neruda after hearing the announcement that he had won the Nobel Prize, October 21, 1971.
Bridgeman Images
Neruda’s funeral, September 25, 1973.
Marcelo Montecino
Neruda’s funeral, September 25, 1973.
Marcelo Montecino
Soldier flanking the funeral procession.
David Burnett/Contact Press Images
Matilde Urrutia walking behind her husband’s coffin.
David Burnett/Contact Press Images
Credits
I am deeply grateful to the Agencia Literaria Carmen Balcells S. A. and the Fundación Pablo Neruda (© Fundación Pablo Neruda, 2017) for their permission to reprint the work of Pablo Neruda included within this biography.
Excerpts from Pablo Neruda’s lecture “Towards the Splendid City” (© the Nobel Foundation, 1971) are reprinted with the kind permission of the Nobel Foundation.
And I thank the following for their gracious permission to reprint these translations of Pablo Neruda’s poetry:
Farrar, Straus & Giroux for the following translations by Alastair Reid: “Where Can Guillermina Be?”; excerpts from “Forget About Me,” “Keeping Quiet,” from Extravagaria. Translation copyright © 1974 by Alastair Reid. Excerpts from “Fully Empowered,” “The Poet’s Obligation,” “To ‘La Sebastiana,’” and “The Word” from Fully Empowered. Translation copyright © 1975 by Alastair Reid. Excerpts from “The Birth,” “The Father,” “The More-Mother,” and “Poetry” from Isla Negra. Translation copyright © 1981 by Alastair Reid.
City Lights Books for excerpts from venture of the infinite man, translated by Jessica Powell © 2017; and the following from The Essential Neruda: Selected Poems, edited by Mark Eisner, © 2004: “Canto XII” and other excerpts from “Heights of Macchu Picchu” translated by Mark Eisner with John Felstiner and Stephen Kessler; excerpts from “The Fugitive XII” and “United Fruit Co.” translated by Jack Hirschman; excerpts from “Right, comrade, it’s the hour of the garden (from El mar y las campanas) and “Ode with a Lament” translated by Forrest Gander; “Poem XV” translated by Robert Hass; “Ode to Wine,” “Sonnet XVII,” “The Potter,” “The Sea,” “Poem XX,” and excerpts from “Dead Gallop” translated by Mark Eisner; “Ars Poetica” and “It Means Shadows” translated by Stephen Kessler.
The Kenneth Rexroth Trust for an excerpt of “Poem VI,” from Thirty Spanish Poems of Love and Exile, edited and translated by Kenneth Rexroth, City Lights Books, © Kenneth Rexroth, 1968.
Copper Canyon Press for the following translations by William O’Daly: “Returning,” The Sea and the Bells. Translation copyright © 1988, 2002 by William O’Daly. Excerpts from “1968,” “The Worship (II),” and “Death of a Journalist,” from World’s End. Translation copyright © 2009 by William O’Daly. Excerpts from “I,” “XIII,” and “LXXII,” from The Book of Questions. Translation copyright © 1991, 2001 by William O’Daly. “Winter Garden,” from Winter Garden. Translation copyright © 1986, 2002 by William O’Daly.
International Publishers Co./New York for excerpts from “Let the Rail-Splitter Awake” translated by Waldeen, from Masses and Mainstream, © 1950.
I am also grateful to the Colchie Agency, GP, for permission to reprint “Translator to Poet” by Alastair Reid, from Weathering: Poems and Translations by Alastair Reid (New York: E. P. Dutton, 1978). Copyright © 1978 by Alastair Reid; and copyright © 2015 by Leslie Clark. All rights reserved. Lastly, I am grateful to Vintage Books, an imprint of the Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Random House LLC, for permission to reprint “Spain 1937,” copyright © 1940 and copyright renewed 1968 by W. H. Auden; from Selected Poems by W. H. Auden, edited by Edward Mendelson.
About the Author
MARK EISNER has spent most of the past two decades working on projects related to Pablo Neruda. He conceived, edited, and was a principal translator of The Essential Neruda: Selected Poems (City Lights, 2004). He wrote the introduction to City Lights’ first-ever English translation of Neruda’s Venture of the Infinite Man, a project he developed. He is a producing a documentary on Neruda, with support from Latino Public Broadcasting. An initial version, narrated by Isabel Allende, won the Latin American Studies Association Award of Merit.
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Copyright
NERUDA. Copyright © 2018 by Mark Eisner. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
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*Complete poem in Appendix I.
*The original Spanish of Neftalí’s earliest recorded poem, on the postcard to his stepmother, is indeed a poem of true complexity. Besides the themes mentioned in the text, when one reads the original Spanish, there is a sublime rhythm of internal rhymes:
De un paisaje de áureas
regiones,
yo escogí
para darle querida mamá
esta humilde postal. Neftalí
The internal rhyme runs around the j in front of the short e vowels in paisaje, pronounced paee-sah-heh, a similar inflect with the combination of gi, which sounds like hee: regiones and escogí. Then there are the ee sounds (as the i in Spanish sounds like English’s long e), sometimes accented, sometimes milder: regiones, escogí, querida, humilde, Neftalí. As well, there are the last two lines’ short ahs: para, dar, querida, mamá, esta, postal, Neftalí.
*In these early works, Neruda often employs the alexandrine, a classic form found in both French and Spanish poetry (among others) for centuries. It is composed of five symmetrical quartets of flexible fourteen-syllable lines that rhyme alternately. Neruda also built upon recent trends with the form. This is most notable in Poem XV, from Twenty Love Poems, and its famous lyrics: “I like it when you’re quiet . . .” Allowing himself the flexibility to break out of the traditional patterns of where the stresses fell in each line, he could dynamically accentuate specific words, intensifying their impact. As author René de Costa highlights, in Poem XV, for instance, Neruda actually targets stress on phrases that hit on the poem’s themes of absence, distance, and the inability to communicate with one’s lover. Sometimes he compounds the effect by repeating a line’s resonant pattern a little later, adding just a slight variation. The second line of Poem XV reads: “y me oyes desde lejos, y mi voz no te toca” (and you hear me from afar, and my voice does not touch you). Then two quatrains later he writes, “Y me oyes desde lejos, y mi voz no te alcanza” (And you hear me from afar, and my voice does not reach you).
*See Appendix II for more on this history.
*Since Neruda never gave a definitive answer, scholars like Hernán Loyola have speculated the choice could also relate to Dante’s Divina commedia and Paolo with his star-crossed lover, Francesca. Around the time Neruda came up with his new name, he wrote “Ivresse” (the title being the French word for “exalted intoxication”): “Let the passion of Paolo dance in my body today / and my heart will shake, drunk with a merry dream.” At the end of his teenage years, he would write “Paolo” next to “Teresa,” his lover’s name, in the sand of Puerto Saavedra.
