Neruda, Mistral & a toast to Chile

What a favored country Chile is. Populated by only 15 million, in a long and narrow strip of land on the other side of the Pacific Ocean, Chile has given birth to two Nobel poet laureates in a span of 26 years: Gabriela Mistral in 1945 and Pablo Neruda in 1971.

And what passionate, sensitive souls Mistral and Neruda were. If you declaim their best poems in the quiet of evening, on a starry sky by the edge of the sea, you would feel the quiver in your throat, the mist in your eyes and the quickening cadence of your heart.

Mistral began to write poetry as an elementary school teacher in her village of Vicuña. After the suicide of her lover, a railway employee, Mistral began to write poetry that would characterize her emotions and suffering. In "To See Him Again," Mistral wrote these excerpts about her former lover:

And shall it never be again, never? Not on nights filled
with trembling stars, or by the pure light
of virginal dawns, or on afternoons of immolation?
Oh, no, just to see him again, no matter where
in little patches of sky or in the seething vortex,
beneath placid moons or in a livid horror.
And, together with him, to be all springtimes
and all winters, entwined in one anguished knot
around his bloodstained neck!

Mistral’s theme of love resembles the love poems of Neruda and appears in "Sonetos de la muerte" and "Desolacion," the latter detailing in "Dolor" the suicide of her former romantic love interest and plainly stating the theme of suffering which shows throughout her work.

Mistral played an important role in the educational systems of Mexico and Chile. She taught Spanish literature in the USA at Columbia University, Middlebury College, Vasaar College and at the University of Puerto Rico. When she received her Nobel Prize in 1945, she said: "At this moment, by an undeserved stroke of fortune, I am the direct voice of the poets of my race and the indirect voice for the noble Spanish and Portuguese tongues…."

On the other hand, in accepting the Nobel Prize in 1971, Neruda said:

"I did not learn from books any recipe for writing a poem… I do not know whether the lessons I learned when I crossed a daunting river, when I danced around the skull of an ox, when I bathed my body in the cleansing water from the topmost heights – I do not know whether these lessons welled forth from me in order to be imparted to others…

"The poet is not a little god… He is not picked out by a mystical destiny in preference to those who follow other crafts and professions… The best poet is…. the nearest baker who does his 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."

Neruda further explains:
And it was at that age… Poetry arrived
in search of me. I don’t know, I don’t know where
it came from, from winter or a river.
I don’t know how or when,
no, they were not voices, they were not
words, nor silence,
but from a street I was summoned,
from the branches of night,
abruptly from others,
among violent fires
or returning alone,
there I was without a face
and it touched me.

Ifirst read the poetry of these two Chilean minstrels as a journalism student at the UST Faculty of Philosophy and Letters. Since then I would dream of someday spending a week in Chile to discover how this country could bear a self-made man and a village school teacher, 15 years of age apart, who would both win the coveted Nobel Prize in literature.

My dream of traveling to South America for the second time became a reality early this year. With 21 days available vacation, I decided to spend all of it in Rio de Janeiro in Brazil, Buenos Aires in Argentina, and Cuzco and Macchu Picchu in Peru, but most anxiously in Santiago de Chile.

From the Four Points Sheraton Hotel, I rented a car with a driver and a tour guide for a negotiated fare of US$80. I was told the trip would take more than 10 hours of driving along the Pacific coast from Santiago to Valparaiso to Viña del Mar and back. I told the the tour guide I wanted to especially see the La Sebastiana and Isla Negra homes of Neruda, and a shop where I could get a copy of Mistral’s book of poems.

Leaving the hotel at 9 a.m., we opened the car windows to enjoy the cool breeze from the immense Pacific Ocean. The vast expanse of emerald water between Australia and the Chilean coast was swaying freely, a welcome relief from the tortuous climb to the lost City of the Incas which was the subject of Neruda’s Alturas de Macchu Picchu.

After briefly stopping at a fish stall on the roadside and a sumptuous lunch with two bottles of cerveza Cristal at Los Pomairinos seafood restaurant, at last we made it to La Sebastiana, Ferrari 692, Cerro Florida, Valparaiso, the least visited of the three houses of Neruda.

Describing La Sebastiana, Neruda wrote:

I built the house.
I made it first out of air.
Later I raised its flag into the air
and left it draped
from the firmament, from the stars, from
clear light and darkness.
It was a fable
of cement, iron, glass,
more valuable than wheat, like gold –
I had to go searching and selling,
and so a truck arrived.
They unloaded sacks
and more sacks.

La Sebastiana is a non-conventional three-storey residence with glass windows. You are welcomed by a tall iron gate leading to a house museum that displays sepia photographs and sketches of Neruda done during his early sixties.

On the top floor is Neruda’s large bedroom with a panoramic glass window that allows a wide view of the Pacific Ocean in all its green and blue splendor. If you lie on his bed with your head towards your right, you could see, even smell the endless, gently swelling waves and taste the ocean spray on your lips.

I knew then, as I looked at the flock of seagulls flying, that Neruda must have had a mystical link with nature. Besides his third wife Matilde Urrutia, who inspired him to limitless heights, this connection with nature must have been the main driving force that brought out his impassioned poetry.

Not far from his bed but overlooking the sea, there is a small writing table, several sheets of paper, yellow stemmed pencils and a pen with a bottle of green ink. I imagined Neruda with his dreamful eyes towards the ocean, writing his Fiesta’s End (Fin de Fiesta):

End of fiesta. Rain falling…

over the chaos of solitude, the sundering waves,

the sparkling pole of spilled salt,

everything has gelled in the stillness, except the sea’s brillance.

We proceeded to Isla Negra, his other home in the Valparaiso area between El Quisco and El Tabo. This is Neruda’s most popular home which I knew in my mind’s eye since college, as I recalled his verse:

"The great rain from the South falls on Isla Negra, like a single drop lucid and heavy."

Neruda recalled how he built this house:

"The house… I don’t know when this was born in me… It was in the mid afternoon, we were on the way to those lunch places on horseback… Don Eladio was in front, fording the Cordoba stream which had swollen… For the first time I felt the pang of this smell of winter at the sea, a mixture of sweet herbs and salty sand, seaweed and thistle."

Thank you, Chile, for giving Mistral and Neruda to the world.