Neruda our Compaņero

Juan Garrido-Salgado

Neruda was born in Parral in Chile on July 12, 1904. His father 
was a train driver and his mother was a teacher. His real name 
was Naftali Reyes Basualto. Later he adopted the name "Neruda" 
from a Czech poet (Jan Neruda) and "Pablo" in honour of three 
Spanish friends. The young poet loved his art and the small town 
where he grew up as a solitary person in the embrace of the 
landscape around the regional city of Temuco.

In 1921 he moved to live and study in the Chilean capital, 
Santiago. His passions were still more individual and his 
consciousness was not yet directed outwards to the world. His 
first book Veinte poemas de amor y una cancisn desesperada 
[Twenty love poems and a song of despair] was published in 1924. 
With this book he became well known as an intelligent young poet 
of great originality.

He later joined the diplomatic corps and was Chilean Consul in 
Burma, Indonesia, Mexico, Argentina and Spain. During the Civil 
war in Spain his heart went out to the Republic being attacked by 
Franco's fascist forces and their allies. He was greatly 
influenced by the progressive poets such as Lorca, Miguel 
Hernandez, Alberti and others that he counted among his friends.

He was serving at the Chilean Embassy in Madrid when he organised 
a ship, the Winnipeg, to take 3000 workers and their families 
from a concentration camp in France to Chile as political 
refugees. The war in Spain and all the solidarity that Neruda 
mobilised transformed him into a more universal poet.

He joined the Communist Party of Chile and was elected a Senator. 
He came back to struggle in his land where he joined forces with 
Salvador Allende in a Popular Front to create socialism in Chile.

In 1943, the "leftist" candidate Gonzalez Videla became President 
but soon after turned sharply to the right. Neruda published an 
open letter accusing Videla of betraying the Communist Party and 
Popular Front. The Communist Party was declared illegal, forcing 
Neruda into hiding and then exile. During this time he wrote his 
main work Canto General in which he traces the history and 
struggles of the people of Latin America, particularly of the 
Indigenous people.

It was also at this time that Neruda's life became joined to that 
of Matilde Urrutia, his third wife and compaņera for the rest of 
his life.

Neruda moved underground and the Party took him into exile 
through the Andes Mountains on horseback with the manuscript of 
Canto General in the saddlebags. He lived in Europe with his main 
residence on the Italian island of Capri. His stay on the island 
was the subject of the Oscar winning Italian film Il Postino [The 
Postman].

Historic election win

When conditions allowed, he returned to live and join in the 
political struggle in Chile once more. He was nominated as the 
Communist Party's presidential candidate for the Popular Unity 
alliance but he declined in favour of his comrade Salvador 
Allende of the Socialist Party. Neruda worked tirelessly for 
Allende during the campaign for the presidential elections, 
travelling with him to nearly every city and town in the country. 
The campaign was crowned with the great victory of 1970 when, for 
the first time in the history of the bourgeois political system, 
a Socialist had been elected President.

In 1971, Neruda returned to Europe to serve as Chile's ambassador 
to France. In 1972, he received the Nobel Prize for literature. 
For us this was a beautiful fiesta with people filling the 
streets. Everywhere we could hear people reading the poems of 
Neruda. Allende consulted the Education Minister and a book was 
published and made available free of charge to all students in 
Chile. Virtually every household had its own special selection of 
Neruda's work.

After the coup of September 11, 1973 Pinochet seized power and 
set about killing many political opponents and exiling many 
others. Neruda's friends suffered this persecution. Others, 
including Allende and singer Victor Jara, were murdered. Neruda 
knew that Fascism was sweeping Chile. His heart was weak and his 
health deteriorated with every report of the persecution of his 
friends and the ordinary people at the hands of Pinochet's thugs. 
He died only a few days after his friend and comrade, Salvador 
Allende. His house at Isla Negra was closed and occupied by 
police. His books were prohibited and burned by the military and 
the police.

After his death the struggle continued. Neruda was alive in our 
hearts and in our daily striving for freedom and justice. July 12 
became a massive celebration and on trips to his former home at 
Isla Negra we wrote verses on the wall built by the Fascists to 
stop people paying respects at his house. We read our own verses 
alongside his poems and we sang our song for the poet to show 
that the repression never forced us onto our knees. We were 
strong in the struggle, ready to celebrate as well as to fight 
for our rights and freedom.

Compaņero Pablo Neruda, Presente Ahora y Siempre!!!

* * *

To My Party

You have given me fraternity toward the unknown man.
You have joined the strength of all the living.
You have given me the country again as in a birth.
You have given me the freedom that the loner cannot have.
You taught me to kindle kindness, like fire.
You have given me the rectitude that the tree requires.
You taught me to see the unity and the difference among mankind.
You showed me how one being's pain has perished in the victory of all.
You taught me to sleep in beds hard as my brothers.
You made me build on reality as on a rock.
You made me adversary of the evildoer and wall of the frantic.
You have made me see the world's clarity and the possibility of happiness.
You have made me indestructible because with you I do not end in myself.

Pablo Neruda

Explico algunas Cosas: A few things explained

An excerpt from Pablo Neruda's Explico algunas Cosas [A few 
things explained], a poem from the Residencia en la tierra 
[Residence on the earth cycle] that speaks about the suffering of 
the Spanish people during the Civil War.

Generales traidores: mirad mi casa muerta, mirad Espaqa rota: 
pero de cada casa muerta sale metal ardiendo en vez de flores, 
pero de cada hueco de Espaqa sale Espaqa, pero de cada niqo 
muerto sale un fusilcon ojos, pero de cada crimen nacen balas que 
os hallaran un dma el sitio del corazsn.

Preguntariis por qui su poesma no nos habla del suelo de las 
hojas de los grandes volcanes de supais natal?

Venid a ver la sangre por las calles, venid a ver la sangre por 
las calles, Venid a ver la sangre por las calles!

Turncoats and generals: see the death of my house, look well at 
the havoc of Spain: out of dead houses it is metal that blazes in 
place of flowers, out of the ditches of Spain it is Spain that 
emerges, out of the murder of children, a gunsight with eyes, out 
of your turpitude, bullets are born that one day will strike for 
the mark of your hearts.

Would you know why his poems never mention the soil or the 
leaves, the gigantic volcanoes of the country that bore him?

Come see the blood in the streets, come see the blood in the 
streets, come see the blood in the streets!

Luis Emilio Recabarren

The following are excerpts from Neruda's greatest and most well-
known work Canto General. They are part of his homage to 
Luis Emilio Recabarren, the founder of Chile's Communist Party 
and the most influential figure in the history of the early 
labour movement in the country.

Envoi (1949) Recabarren, in these days of persecution, in the 
anguish of my exiled brothers, assailed by a traitor, and with 
the homeland enveloped in hatred, struck by tyranny, I remember 
the terrible struggle of your imprisonment, your first steps, 
your solitude of an unyielding turret, and when, leaving the 
wasteland, one man and another joined you to collect the dough of 
the humble bread defended by the unity of the august people.

Father of Chile Recabarren, Chile's offspring, father of Chile, 
our father, in your construction, in your line forged in lands 
and tempests, the strength of the victorious days to come is 
born.

You're homeland, pampa and people, sand, clay, school, home, 
resurrection, fist, offensive, order, march, attack, wheat, 
struggle, greatness, resistance.

Recabarren, beneath your gaze we swear we'll cleanse the 
country's festering mutilations.

We swear that freedom will raise its naked flower over the 
dishonoured sand.

We swear we'll follow in your footsteps to the victory of the 
people.

"Isla Negra"

"I leave to the Unions of copper, coal and nitre my house by the 
sea on Isla Negra. I would like all the mistreated children of my 
homeland to find rest here, my homeland pillaged by traitors' 
axes."

Pablo Neruda (Testament II)

You were black. You were sand, rock and solitude. Black hammers, 
wood, cement, nails and hands built humble landing places on the 
shores of the island, windows of sun and sea, blue mirrors for 
the motionless Captain asleep on the horizon.

Dark skies and black seagulls gave the island its name, the two 
words became a line of poetry. The poet made a ship's bell 
announce each time a wingless poem set flight and when the poet 
was absent in winter the wind wrote its anonymous poems by the 
hundreds. The poet's house on Isla Negra is a boat on the world's 
ocean.

September 1973, sand, gunshots, rocks and waves tumble into 
emptiness. An ill-omened helicopter spewing out wounds and lives.

July 1982, I remember Isla Negra in the 'eighties. One by one we 
came to plant a dream, to talk sadly with your bells, our words 
stones tossed to the wind. Through our speech we sailed with your 
ships' figureheads. Hundreds of voices, we were the sound of the 
always present sea. In your name we drank and sang from the cup 
of the dark shore, your testament as eternal Captain for the 
liberation of dreams from injustice.

Juan Garrido-Salgado
Translated by Peter Boyle from the book Motionless navigator 
of silk and sword, who fell in love with the ocean's 
darkness.