The houses are quite spectacular -- each with a distinct character, but all filled with Neruda's indomitable spirit as reflected in the architecture, art collections and the remnants of the well-lived and complex life that run through each room. Neruda -- and his artist companions who helped to design and decorate his homes -- clearly had a love for small, funky spaces. The houses are a series of individually-themed rooms, most with huge windows that help to confuse outside with inside. The houses in the port city of Valparaiso and on the coast in Isla Negra feature nearly full walls of glass that look out over the Pacific. Equipped with secret passages leading to napping areas, winding pathways that twist through trees and flowers, and sculptures, paintings and installations from artist contemporaries and friends like Pablo Picasso, Diego Rivera and Chilean sculptor and muralist, Maria Martner, Neruda's homes are works of art in themselves -- and now, they are museums.
Neruda was clearly a playboy -- walking through his homes visitors get a small glimpse into his fondness for entertaining large parties with Chilean and international dignitaries, intellectuals and artists that of course featured gourmet food and fine liquor. Like his poetry, his homes reflect his fondness for beautiful people and things, his interest in different cultures and in methods of meaning-making, and most importantly, his passion for all things related to the sea. I could feel -- and I identified with -- his excitement about the possibilities in the beauty around him, the potential of life and of living. He was a man who loved deeply and who seemed in love with the world he inhabited. One can almost feel the frenetic energy with which he lived and wrote pulsing through the corridors.
I have been thinking a lot about what it must have felt like to Neruda to be in such deep love with the world. I imagine it was the same sensation that the Prophets or King David felt when they burst out in song and celebration realizing their awe at God's creation. Like passionate love, I imagine it consumed him -- an experience of both painful longing and riveting energy -- and compelled him to write, to get it out of his body and share it with others. I am coming to believe that the capacity to hold that kind of awe, curiosity and wonder -- to touch and feel connected to holiness and the "bigness" of creation in that way -- is rare. Or at least not all of us are willing to live our lives in the places in which we feel that kind of extreme emotion -- that sense of being both tiny and filling everything, of feeling endless and finite all at once. Artists communicate to us from those places, and it is their descriptions of their experiences (through music, words, works of art) that allow others of us to touch our own capacity for divine awe, even if just for a moment. In Neruda's case, he spoke to Chileans -- and to all of us -- from that place through his simple, thoughtful poetry.
Neruda was a poet who understood and took seriously the public and political importance of art and of the artist. He considered his work as writer and as a politician as almost one and the same. He saw himself as Chilean through and through -- not in an unquestioningly patriotic or jingoistic way, but in the way that loyal friends push each other to be better and stronger. He more than supported political leaders who he considered good for the Chilean people; he believed in them, invested in them as part of a larger vision for the country and his beloved community. Reports are that when he got news of the coup that killed President Allende and plunged the country into the hands of the dictator General Pinochet, he collapsed of a heart attack. A broken heart. When soldiers came to search his house a few days later knowing him to be a supporter of the Marxist government, he opened his doors readily and with now famous words: "Look around—there's only one thing of danger for you here—poetry."
The people of Chile have continued to claim Neruda as their voice -- not only because he is a Nobel prize winning poet who is one of their own, but also because of his ability to mix his two public roles of artist and politician. Neruda died of prostate cancer not long after Pinochet took power, but even after his life ended, his words and confidence continued to inspire in a moment when Chileans desperately needed inspiration. The poet's funeral has been described as the first public protest against the dictatorship in Chile. While Pinochet ordered soldiers to prevent gathering in his memory, thousands defied the national curfew and risked arrest to fill the streets in the poet's honor. Neruda's death gave Chileans an opening to cry aloud about the injustice that was occurring around them -- to publicly lament, as theologian Walter Breuggemann might say. And even though it would take nearly twenty years for citizens to build the collective power needed to oust Pinochet, Neruda's words inspired movement building and encouraged other artists by laying a foundation of hope from which others could build. In the words of Gabriela Mistral, another Nobel Prize winning Chilean poet: “Lo que el alma hace por su cuerpo es lo que el artista hace por su pueblo. / That which the heart does for the body, the artist does for the people.”
Below are some excerpts from Book of Questions (Libro de las Preguntas), one of eight of Neruda's works that were not published until after his death. The collection is quickly becoming a favorite of mine -- I love the simplicity of the reflections and, at the same time, the depth they provoke. An entire book of poems made entirely of questions also made me start to think that maybe Neruda was Jewish -- more research about that is needed, I think.
Enjoy the poems as well as the pictures from Neruda's three homes.
Until next time,
ek
III.
Dime, la rosa está desnuda
o sólo tiene ese vestido?
Por qué los árboles esconden
el esplendor de sus raíces?
Quién oye los remordimientos
del automóvil criminal?
Hay algo más triste en el mundo
que un tren inmóvil en la lluvia?
Tell me, is the rose naked
or is that her only dress?
Why do trees conceal
the splendor of their roots?
Who hears the regrets
of the thieving automobile?
Is there anything in the world sadder
than a train standing in the rain?
XIV.
Y qué dijeron los rubíes
ante el jugo de las granadas?
Pero por qué no se convence
el Jueves de ir después del Viernes?
Quiénes gritaron de alegría
cuando nació el color azul?
Por qué se entristece la tierra
cuando aparecen las violetas?
And what did the rubies say
standing before the juice of pomegranates?
Why doesn't Thursday talk itself
into coming after Friday?
Who shouted with glee
when the color blue was born?
Why does the earth grieve
when the violets appear?
XXXI.
A quién le puedo preguntar
qué vine a hacer en este mundo?
Por qué me muevo sin querer,
por qué no puedo estar inmóvil?
Por qué voy rodando sin ruedas,
volando sin alas ni plumas,
y qué me dio por transmigrar
si viven en Chile mis huesos?
Whom can I ask what I came
to make happen in this world?
Why do I move without wanting to,
why am I not able to sit still?
Why do I go rolling without wheels,
flying without wings or feathers,
and why did I decide to migrate
if my bones live in Chile?
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| View of the ocean from the patio of Casa de Isla Negra |
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| Bedroom - Casa de Isla Negra |
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| Architecture of Casa de Isla Negra |
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| View from Neruda's and Maltide Urrutia's graves at Casa de Isla Negra |
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| Grave site at Casa de Isla Negra |
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| Bar/Entertainment Room overlooking the ocean - Casa de Isla Negra |
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| La Sebastiana - home in Valparaiso |
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| Coat Room at La Sebastiana in Valparaiso |
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| Dan enjoying the murals at La Chascona, Neruda's home in Santiago |
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| Reuben and Dan in front of La Chascona, Santiago |
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| Santiago's Celebration of the 91st year of the publication of Veinte Poemas de Amor y una Canción Desesperada. Artistic interpretations of the poems, commissioned by the city, cover the walls and ceilings of trains on 2 metro lines. |
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