by Pablo Neruda
Neruda arrived to the Soviet Union for the first time on June 6, 1949, to participate in a ceremony commemorating the one hundred and fiftieth anniversary of Pushkin’s birth. Amid recitals and lectures, he composed this text in the form of a letter, describing to the great national poet the experience of participating in a celebration of his sesquicentennial.
9. THE YOUNG POET BARQUERO
This text has been included as a continuation of the chapter “August 1952 to April 1957” because it is Neruda’s perspective in 1956 on a young poet in whom he seems to see himself as he was when he arrived in Santiago at the beginning of the twenties. The text also refers to Neruda’s literary offspring, because Efraín Barquero, as Memoria Chilena states, was considered in his early days “as a natural extension of the line of poetic development opened by Pablo Neruda.”
10. THE PERSISTENT INFLUENCE OF TREES
In this text, Neruda speaks of his own poetry, and this makes it particularly pertinent to the eleventh section of the book, “Poetry Is an Occupation,” which includes the chapters “The Power of Poetry,” “Poetry,” and “Living with the Language.” It is part of an unfinished piece initially intended to be the introduction of Elemental Odes.
11. RELIGION AND POETRY
This is an interesting text in which, departing from the candles lit on Isla Negra for one of his figureheads, Neruda reflects on the origins of religion. He expands considerably on the content of the last paragraphs of the chapter “Bottles and Figureheads.” In other passages of the Memoirs, Neruda includes reflections evoked by episodes in his life and observations of the world, for example in “The Reclining Gods,” where he reflects on Christianity and Buddhism through the lens of his experiences in the Orient.
12. LEÓN FELIPE
Neruda wrote this text in July of 1972, when he had already begun to work systematically on the Memoirs.
13. THE LITERARY ANTAGONIST
A smaller part of the contents of this extensive text was already contained in the chapter “Literary Enemies,” where Neruda offers general considerations of the behavior of his principal literary enemy, whom he refers to as Joe Blow. In the text we now include, Neruda tells in much greater detail certain facts about his legendary antagonist. The same stories appear in a highly synthetic form in the verses of the poem “Corona del archipiélago para Rubén Azócar” in the book La barcarola.
14. IF THEY STRIKE IT, LET IT SING
This is one of the poet’s responses to attacks against his poetry.
15. THE SOUTHERN COUNTRYSIDE
This was written for the Memoirs in 1973, as the author says in the text. It seems to the editors that Neruda, who had extolled and described the natural world of the south in so many poems and other writings, now wished to write a historico-political text centered on the human landscape of southern Chile.
16. ANDRÉS BELLO
This text appears to consist of travel notes. For Neruda, the marble stare of Bello “accompanied my student struggles, my first verses, my first loves.” Besides linking him with his life in this way, Neruda assigned to Bello a role of primary importance in the cultural emancipation of Spanish America. In one of his lectures, he said that Bello began the work Neruda continued in his Canto general.
17. RECABARREN
This text and the following one are part of a long lecture apparently delivered at an internal ceremony of the Communist Party in the mid-1970s. In both texts, these leaders of the workers’ movement are tied to personal memories from Neruda’s life. Luis Emilio Recabarren is the figure Neruda most admired from Latin America’s history.
18. LAFERTTE
The workers’ leader Elías Lafertte, with whom Neruda conducted his senatorial campaign for the northern provinces in 1945, is another person Neruda admired, one who was linked to an important phase in his life.
19. MAYAKOVSKY
This was written in June of 1963, possibly on the occasion of the seventieth anniversary of Mayakovsky’s birth. Neruda considered Mayakovksy one of the most important authors of contemporary poetry and described him as a “poet who sank his hand into the collective heart and extracted from it the faith and fortitude required to forge his new songs.”
Chronology
The present chronology was prepared especially for this edition of the Memoirs and attempts to follow along with its sections and their contents. Its main purpose is to orient the reader with respect to the poet’s life. However, the book does not always follow a chronological order. There are sections, like the eleventh, that deal with a miscellany of themes, with texts about poetry, diverse events, people, the author’s collector streak, etc., so that, in this case and in others like it, the chronology must be seen as independent of the matter of the book.
1. THE COUNTRY BOY
1903 OCTOBER 4: The teacher Rosa Neftalí Basoalto marries José del Carmen Reyes, son of José Angel Reyes Hermosilla, owner of the one-hundred-hectare Belén estate.
1904 JULY 12: At the home of the Reyes-Basoalto family in the city of Parral, Ricardo Eliecer Neftalí Reyes Basoalto is born. Later he will adopt the name Pablo Neruda.
1904 SEPTEMBER 14: Rosa Neftalí Basoalto dies of tuberculosis. José del Carmen goes to Argentina to work and leaves Neftalí Reyes child at the Belén estate.
1905 After returning from Argentina, José del Carmen finds work with the Araucanía railroad and moves with his son to Temuco. Neruda always insisted that his birth as a poet occurred in this region, where the basic elements of his poetic vision of the world were forged.
1905 NOVEMBER 11: José del Carmen marries Trinidad Candia Marverde, who already has a son, Rodolfo Reyes Candia, born in the spring of 1895. Trinidad takes as her own the young Ricardo Eliecer Neftalí.
1907 The girl Laura Reyes, offspring of a relationship between Neruda’s father, José del Carmen Reyes, and Aurelia Tolrá in Talcahuano, comes to live with the family. Rodolfo, Neftalí, and Laura are half siblings: all have the same father but different mothers. Trinidad Candia accepts them all with the same affection. For the poet, she is the paradigm of maternity and of the humble goodness of village people.
1910 Young Ricardo Neftalí enters the Liceo de Hombres in Temuco.
1917 The Temuco daily La Mañana publishes, in the January 18 edition, “Entusiasmo y perseverancia” (Enthusiasm and Perseverance), the first article by the young Ricardo Neftalí Reyes. Several of his early poems will appear in this paper.
1918 Between this year and 1922, Ricardo Neftalí will publish articles in La Mañana and El Diario Austral in Temuco; the Revista Cultural in Valdivia; Ratos Ilustrados in Chillán; and Corre-Vuela in Santiago.
1919 He participates in the Floral Games of Maule with the poem “Comunión ideal” (Ideal Communion), which he signs with the pseudonym Kundalini. He wins third prize.
1920 FEBRUARY: Summer trip from Temuco to Bajo Imperial (now known as Puerto Saavedra). Young Ricardo Neftalí’s encounter with the ocean is another of the key moments for the formation of his poetic world.
1920 The young poet meets Gabriela Mistral, later the winner of the 1945 Nobel Prize in Literature, who arrives in Temuco to take over as principal of the Liceo de Niñas.
1920 JULY: Assault on the headquarters of the Federation of Students and persecution of the “antipatriots,” which will lead to the imprisonment and death of the poet Domingo Gómez Rojas. Though he does not participate in the events, Neruda follows them from Temuco, where he welcomes the fleeing writer José Santos González Vera.
1920 Adopts the nom de guerre Pablo Neruda. He will later declare he took this pseudonym from the Czech author Jan Neruda. The poet Miguel Arteche has offered an alternative hypothesis: that the name Neruda may have come from A Study in Scarlet, in the Sherlock Holmes series, which alludes to a performance by the violinist Norman Neruda. Research carried out by the Chilean doctor Enrique Robertson has established that the violinist Norman Neruda actually existed. Robertson has also found scores in which the name of the composer Pablo Sara
sate appears alongside that of Norman Neruda.
1920 NOVEMBER: Neruda receives first prize in the Spring Floral Games in Temuco for his poem “Salutación a la Reina” (Salutation to the Queen).
2. LOST IN THE CITY
1921 JANUARY 22: The journal Claridad, number 12, published by the Federation of Students, publishes a laudatory notice of Neruda and his poetry signed by Fernando Ossorio, pseudonym of Raúl Silva Castro, with a brief selection of his poems.
1921 MARCH: Neruda travels by train to Santiago to begin his studies in French education at the University of Chile.
1921 APRIL 18: Neruda begins his relationship with Albertina Rosa Azócar, one of the muses of Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair. The poet never revealed the identity of the two central muses of this volume. He mentioned them only in lectures and memoirs by the names Marisol and Marisombra, and in his Memorial de Isla Negra (Isla Negra Memorial) as Rosaura and Terusa. Terusa was Teresa León, his great love from the provinces. This wasn’t discovered until 1974, when numerous love letters Neruda sent to her were published.
1921 JULY 2: Neruda becomes a regular contributor to Claridad, starting with issue 28.
1921 OCTOBER 14: Neruda receives first prize in the Prologues’ Competition in the Spring Festival for the poem “La canción de la fiesta” (The Song of the Feast).
1923 JANUARY–MARCH: The poet spends his long summer vacations in Temuco and Puerto Saavedra. He will continue to pass his summer and winter vacations in the south of Chile. This is, perhaps, a way of softening the harsh poverty he lives through in his student years in Santiago.
1923 JULY: Crepusculario (Crepusculary) is published by Claridad, based in Santiago, with illustrations by Juan Gandulfo, Juan Francisco González, Jr., and Barak. The book will make his name as an author. In the September 2 edition of La Nación, the critic Alone writes a fulsome appreciation that concludes with the prophetic words: “… as he outranks and surpasses the rest of his generation, we may rightly presume that with time, if blind destiny does not block his path, he will be counted among the very best, and not only of this country and of his era.”
1923 Neruda travels to Valparaíso with a group of friends to take leave of the artist Abelardo “Paschin” Bustamante and the poet Alberto Rojas Giménez, who are departing for Paris. Orlando Oyarzún left a record of this journey, probably the same one Neruda relates in “Roaming in Valparaíso” in these pages.
1924 JUNE: A few days before Neruda’s twentieth birthday, the first edition of Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair appears. It will become one of the most widely read, published, and translated books in the world. At the end of 1924, the poet will fail to attend his final exams for his studies in French education. His abandonment of his studies leads to a break with his father, who cuts off the meager monthly allowance he had been sending from Temuco.
3. THE ROADS OF THE WORLD
1924 Neruda meets Álvaro Hinojosa, who will become one of his closest friends. Between 1925 and 1927, Neruda travels several times to Valparaíso, invited by Hinojosa.
1925 NOVEMBER: Neruda moves to Chiloé at the invitation of his friend Rubén Azócar, who has been hired as a professor in Ancud. There, at the beginning of 1926, Neruda will write his only novel, El habitante y su esperanza (The Resident and His Hope), at the request of the publisher Nascimento.
1926 JANUARY: The same publisher releases Venture of the Infinite Man, and later the book of prose poems Anillos (Rings), written by Neruda and his friend Tomás Lago.
1926 The letters the poet sends to his sister, Laura, describe his situation: “My clothing is in an impossible state, and I can’t go out wearing it,” he tells her on March 9, and on October 27, he will write: “From today forward, I no longer have board included. How do I remedy this situation…? I’m too old not to be eating every day.”
1927 APRIL 11: Decree 372 appoints Neruda honorary consul in Rangoon.
1927 JUNE: Neruda’s voyage to the Orient begins at the Mapocho Station, in Santiago, where many friends come to say goodbye to him. From there, he catches the train to Valparaíso. After a few days at the home of Álvaro Hinojosa, they catch another train that links up with the Trans-Andean Railway. On June 15, they reach Buenos Aires, and embark two days later.
1927 JULY: Neruda and Hinojosa reach Madrid after disembarking in Lisbon. They travel to Paris by train; while there, Neruda meets César Vallejo. They continue to Marseilles, where they depart for the Orient.
1927 EARLY OCTOBER: Neruda assumes the office of consul in Rangoon, the largest city in Burma, at that time still part of the British Empire.
4. LUMINOUS SOLITUDE
1927 OCTOBER 25: Neruda sends his first letter to the Argentine writer Héctor Eandi. This is the beginning of an exchange of letters that will be fundamental for information about the poet’s life in the Orient.
1927 NOVEMBER: Neruda travels to Madras, in India.
1927 DECEMBER 7: In a letter to his friend Yolando Pino, he mentions the book he is writing, Colección nocturna. This is the initial title of Residence on Earth.
1928 JANUARY: After taking care of his initial consular responsibilities, he continues his journeys with Álvaro Hinojosa. They travel to French Indochina and to the Kingdom of Siam (now Thailand).
1928 FEBRUARY: The two men reach China, where they are met by “a winter of snow, rain, and wind.” In mid-February, they arrive in Japan.
1928 MARCH: Neruda meets Josie Bliss, the Burmese lover who will take him through many stages of passion, from the first flush of love to abandonment. In Residence on Earth, she will appear as “la bienamada” (the beloved) and “la maldita” (the damned one).
1928 AUGUST 6: In a letter to the author José Santos González Vera, Neruda writes: “I have passed over a limit I never thought myself able to cross, and the truth is, my results surprise and console me. My new book will be called Residence on Earth, and consists of twenty poems that will be published in Spain.”
1928 NOVEMBER: Neruda travels to Calcutta, where he reunites with Álvaro Hinojosa, after having parted ways with him in March. Hinojosa tries to make his fortune in the flourishing Indian cinema industry.
1928 DECEMBER 5: Neruda is named honorary consul in Colombo, capital of Ceylon (now Sri Lanka).
1928 DECEMBER: Neruda has the opportunity to attend the Indian National Congress, which takes place in Calcutta, with such luminaries as Mahatma Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru.
1929 MID-JANUARY: Neruda travels from Calcutta to Colombo, where he assumes the office of consul. Álvaro Hinojosa accompanies him briefly before departing for Bombay.
1929 NOVEMBER: Intending to publish Residence on Earth, Neruda sends the original manuscript to Spain. It reaches the hands of the Minister-Counselor of the Chilean Embassy, Carlos Morla Lynch, who passes it along to Rafael Alberti. Despite his enthusiasm, shared by other Spanish poets, he is unable to aid in its publication.
1930 MAY: Neruda is named honorary consul of Singapore and Java, with residence in Batavia and jurisdiction over the Dutch possessions of the Sunda Islands.
1930 DECEMBER 6: The poet marries Maria Antonieta Hagenaar Vogelzang, a Javanese Dutch woman. In a letter to his father on December 15, Neruda says: “For me, she is the sum of all perfections, and we are completely happy … Maria has an excellent character and we understand each other marvelously.” Nonetheless, the marriage is an unhappy one and in the poem “Itineraries” (Extravagaria, 1958) Neruda includes, among his unanswered questions: “Why did I marry in Batavia?”
5. SPAIN IN MY HEART
1932 EARLY FEBRUARY: The closure of his consulate obliges Neruda and his wife to return to Chile.
1932 APRIL 19: Neruda and his wife disembark in Puerto Montt. They will travel to Temuco by train, and from there, after a brief sojourn in the home of the poet’s family, will leave for Santiago. Neruda has neither home nor employment and arrives in a country living through one of the gravest social and economic crises of its history.
1932 The Min
istry of Foreign Affairs employs Neruda for two hours daily in its library. The salary is barely enough to cover the cost of the pension where he and his wife reside.
1932 JULY: Neruda is transferred to the Cultural Affairs Department of the Ministry of Labor as chief librarian. With its higher pay grade, the post offers a measure of relief from his economic distress.
1933 JANUARY 24: Empresa Letras of Santiago de Chile publishes El hondero entusiasta (The Enthusiastic Slinger), a book the poet wrote ten years before.
1933 APRIL: The publisher Nascimento releases Residence on Earth (1925–1931) in a limited edition of one hundred copies.
1933 AUGUST: Neruda is named assistant consul to the Consul General in Buenos Aires. It is a prominent position, better paid and with more responsibilities than his precarious consular posts in the Orient.
1933 END OF AUGUST: Neruda and his wife arrive in Buenos Aires. They visit Héctor Eandi, whom Neruda finally meets in person.
1933 OCTOBER 13: At a gathering in homage to Federico García Lorca, Neruda and the Spanish poet meet. It is the start of a very close friendship. García Lorca has just arrived in Buenos Aires to prepare the Latin American debut of his play Blood Wedding. Their meeting takes place in the home of the Argentine author Pablo Rojas Paz and his wife, Sara Tornú.
1933 NOVEMBER 10: At the Hotel Plaza in downtown Buenos Aires, there is a well-attended banquet for Neruda and García Lorca. They present a joint discourse in honor of Rubén Darío.