Poetic justice for Pablo Neruda
July 12, 2004 | 12:00am
Cynical bureaucrats and bitter politics fade away like dust and garbage, but great poets live on forever.
Today, July 12, three decades after his tragic death, Chile’s greatest and once controversial poet, Pablo Neruda, will finally be honored properly and celebrated by his nation. Due to the poet’s radical leftist political ideas, the right-wing military regime tried to erase his name from national memory. Not only was Neruda a great writer of love, nature and socio-political poems, he served his country as a diplomat, a senator and was 1970 Communist Party nominee for president, but he withdrew his candidacy to give way to his friend Salvador Allende, who won.
Decades of market-oriented reforms and stable governance by the military regime ironically ushered in prosperity and subsequent democratization, which has now made possible Chile’s belatedly honoring its brilliant poet.
In 1973, two weeks after the poet’s friend and political ally Allende was deposed as president in a bloody military coup aided by the US government, Neruda died of cancer. At his sickbed in his seaside home at Isla Negra, he was helpless to stop soldiers from digging all over his garden in search of arms for a trumped up case of sedition. He told them: "The only weapons you will find in this place are words." Legend tells the poet didn’t really died of cancer, but of sadness over the political earthquake that shook up his country, toppling its democratically-elected Marxist president, and of hearing news of military atrocities against his leftist allies.
Similar to the protests by rightwing zealots a few years ago over Indonesian literary genius and political detainee Pramoedya Ananta Toer winning the Magsaysay Award for Literature, Neruda was also vilified by rightwing political foes and America’s Central Intelligence Agency in 1964 when he was the favorite to win the Nobel Prize for Literature. When Jean-Paul Sartre was given instead the Nobel Prize due to pressure and a smear campaign, Sartre turned down the prestigious award. One version of this event claimed that Sartre said: "I’m not going to have it. Neruda should have got it."
Despite continued political pressure, the sheer beauty and brilliance of Neruda’s poetry cannot be denied for long. He won the Nobel Prize in 1971. In his speech, he said: "…The poet is not a ‘little god’. No, he is not a ‘little god’. He is not picked out by a mystical destiny in preference to those who follow other crafts and professions. I have often maintained that the best poet is he who prepares our daily bread: The nearest baker who does not imagine himself to be a god. He does his majestic and unpretentious work of kneading the dough, consigning it to the oven, baking it in golden colors and handing us our daily bread as a duty of fellowship. And, if the poet succeeds in achieving this simple consciousness, this too will be transformed into an element in an immense activity, in a simple or complicated structure which constitutes the building of a community, the changing of the conditions which surround mankind, the handing over of mankind’s products: Bread, truth, wine, dreams. If the poet joins this never-completed struggle to extend to the hands of each and all his part of his undertaking, his effort and his tenderness to the daily work of all people, then the poet must take part, the poet will take part, in the sweat, in the bread, in the wine, in the whole dream of humanity. Only in this indispensable way of being ordinary people shall we give back to poetry the mighty breadth which has been pared away from it little by little in every epoch, just as we ourselves have been whittled down in every epoch."
In parts of his speech, he refers to his leftist ideology and his views of Latin America’s colonial and feudal past: "…Our original guiding stars are struggle and hope. But there is no such thing as a lone struggle, no such thing as a lone hope. In every human being are combined the most distant epochs, passivity, mistakes, sufferings, the pressing urgencies of our own time, the pace of history. But what would have become of me if, for example, I had contributed in some way to the maintenance of the feudal past of the great American continent? How should I then have been able to raise my brow, illuminated by the honor which Sweden has conferred on me, if I had not been able to feel some pride in having taken part, even to a small extent, in the change which has now come over my country? It is necessary to look at the map of America, to place oneself before its splendid multiplicity, before the cosmic generosity of the wide places which surround us, in order to understand why many writers refuse to share the dishonor and plundering of the past, of all that which dark gods have taken away from the American peoples."
He continued on his political views: "I chose the difficult way of divided responsibility and, rather than to repeat the worship of the individual as the sun and center of the system, I have preferred to offer my services in all modesty to an honorable army which may from time to time commit mistakes but which moves forward unceasingly and struggles every day against the anachronism of the refractory and the impatience of the opinionated. For I believe that my duties as a poet involve friendship not only with the rose and with symmetry, with exalted love and endless longing, but also with unrelenting human occupations which I have incorporated into my poetry."
His last wish of being buried in his Isla Negra hamlet by the Pacific Ocean was not fulfilled. His body was quickly buried in Santiago, the national capital, and one of his homes was ransacked by soldiers. The funeral procession was tightly guarded by soldiers and the eulogies offered were the last act of public protest allowed by the new military dictatorship led by its new president, General Augusto Pinochet.
This year, today, Chile will officially celebrate the centennial of the birth of its greatest poet with cities and towns across that nation holding their special projects and ceremonies. President Ricardo Lagos – a center-left socialist politician who nevertheless embraced free trade with the former military dictatorship’s patron, the US – will take a historic train ride from Santiago City southwards to the poet’s birthplace in Parral town and join Latin America’s literary giants in honoring his memory. In his beloved Isla Negra, where Neruda was belatedly reburied according to his wishes, a fiesta atmosphere is marked by various festivities including poetry falling literally from the sky.
Although this writer does not share his lofty yet impractical leftist political views, we respect his poetry, his literary genius, and we condemn the right-wing political bigots who condemn his literary genius due to his politics.
The exciting life, sad death and belated vindication of Pablo Neruda, the magnificent poet and fearless political activist of the 20th century, is sublime poetic justice.
Comments and suggestions are welcome at wilson_lee_flores@hotmail.com, wilson_lee_flores@ newyork.com, wilson_lee_flores@yahoo.com or PO Box 14277, Ortigas Center, Pasig City.
Today, July 12, three decades after his tragic death, Chile’s greatest and once controversial poet, Pablo Neruda, will finally be honored properly and celebrated by his nation. Due to the poet’s radical leftist political ideas, the right-wing military regime tried to erase his name from national memory. Not only was Neruda a great writer of love, nature and socio-political poems, he served his country as a diplomat, a senator and was 1970 Communist Party nominee for president, but he withdrew his candidacy to give way to his friend Salvador Allende, who won.
Decades of market-oriented reforms and stable governance by the military regime ironically ushered in prosperity and subsequent democratization, which has now made possible Chile’s belatedly honoring its brilliant poet.
In 1973, two weeks after the poet’s friend and political ally Allende was deposed as president in a bloody military coup aided by the US government, Neruda died of cancer. At his sickbed in his seaside home at Isla Negra, he was helpless to stop soldiers from digging all over his garden in search of arms for a trumped up case of sedition. He told them: "The only weapons you will find in this place are words." Legend tells the poet didn’t really died of cancer, but of sadness over the political earthquake that shook up his country, toppling its democratically-elected Marxist president, and of hearing news of military atrocities against his leftist allies.
Similar to the protests by rightwing zealots a few years ago over Indonesian literary genius and political detainee Pramoedya Ananta Toer winning the Magsaysay Award for Literature, Neruda was also vilified by rightwing political foes and America’s Central Intelligence Agency in 1964 when he was the favorite to win the Nobel Prize for Literature. When Jean-Paul Sartre was given instead the Nobel Prize due to pressure and a smear campaign, Sartre turned down the prestigious award. One version of this event claimed that Sartre said: "I’m not going to have it. Neruda should have got it."
Despite continued political pressure, the sheer beauty and brilliance of Neruda’s poetry cannot be denied for long. He won the Nobel Prize in 1971. In his speech, he said: "…The poet is not a ‘little god’. No, he is not a ‘little god’. He is not picked out by a mystical destiny in preference to those who follow other crafts and professions. I have often maintained that the best poet is he who prepares our daily bread: The nearest baker who does not imagine himself to be a god. He does his majestic and unpretentious work of kneading the dough, consigning it to the oven, baking it in golden colors and handing us our daily bread as a duty of fellowship. And, if the poet succeeds in achieving this simple consciousness, this too will be transformed into an element in an immense activity, in a simple or complicated structure which constitutes the building of a community, the changing of the conditions which surround mankind, the handing over of mankind’s products: Bread, truth, wine, dreams. If the poet joins this never-completed struggle to extend to the hands of each and all his part of his undertaking, his effort and his tenderness to the daily work of all people, then the poet must take part, the poet will take part, in the sweat, in the bread, in the wine, in the whole dream of humanity. Only in this indispensable way of being ordinary people shall we give back to poetry the mighty breadth which has been pared away from it little by little in every epoch, just as we ourselves have been whittled down in every epoch."
In parts of his speech, he refers to his leftist ideology and his views of Latin America’s colonial and feudal past: "…Our original guiding stars are struggle and hope. But there is no such thing as a lone struggle, no such thing as a lone hope. In every human being are combined the most distant epochs, passivity, mistakes, sufferings, the pressing urgencies of our own time, the pace of history. But what would have become of me if, for example, I had contributed in some way to the maintenance of the feudal past of the great American continent? How should I then have been able to raise my brow, illuminated by the honor which Sweden has conferred on me, if I had not been able to feel some pride in having taken part, even to a small extent, in the change which has now come over my country? It is necessary to look at the map of America, to place oneself before its splendid multiplicity, before the cosmic generosity of the wide places which surround us, in order to understand why many writers refuse to share the dishonor and plundering of the past, of all that which dark gods have taken away from the American peoples."
He continued on his political views: "I chose the difficult way of divided responsibility and, rather than to repeat the worship of the individual as the sun and center of the system, I have preferred to offer my services in all modesty to an honorable army which may from time to time commit mistakes but which moves forward unceasingly and struggles every day against the anachronism of the refractory and the impatience of the opinionated. For I believe that my duties as a poet involve friendship not only with the rose and with symmetry, with exalted love and endless longing, but also with unrelenting human occupations which I have incorporated into my poetry."
His last wish of being buried in his Isla Negra hamlet by the Pacific Ocean was not fulfilled. His body was quickly buried in Santiago, the national capital, and one of his homes was ransacked by soldiers. The funeral procession was tightly guarded by soldiers and the eulogies offered were the last act of public protest allowed by the new military dictatorship led by its new president, General Augusto Pinochet.
This year, today, Chile will officially celebrate the centennial of the birth of its greatest poet with cities and towns across that nation holding their special projects and ceremonies. President Ricardo Lagos – a center-left socialist politician who nevertheless embraced free trade with the former military dictatorship’s patron, the US – will take a historic train ride from Santiago City southwards to the poet’s birthplace in Parral town and join Latin America’s literary giants in honoring his memory. In his beloved Isla Negra, where Neruda was belatedly reburied according to his wishes, a fiesta atmosphere is marked by various festivities including poetry falling literally from the sky.
Although this writer does not share his lofty yet impractical leftist political views, we respect his poetry, his literary genius, and we condemn the right-wing political bigots who condemn his literary genius due to his politics.
The exciting life, sad death and belated vindication of Pablo Neruda, the magnificent poet and fearless political activist of the 20th century, is sublime poetic justice.
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