Pablo Neruda,
Interviewed by Rita Guibert
The Paris Review - The Art of Poetry No. 14
“I have never thought of my life as divided between
poetry and politics,” Pablo Neruda said in his September 30, 1969, acceptance
speech as the Chilean Communist Party candidate for the presidency. “I am a
Chilean who for decades has known the misfortunes and difficulties of our
national existence and who has taken part in each sorrow and joy of the people.
I am not a stranger to them, I come from them, I am part of the people. I come
from a working-class family . . . I have never been in with those in power and
have always felt that my vocation and my duty was to serve the Chilean people
in my actions and with my poetry. I have lived singing and defending them.”
Because of a divided Left, Neruda withdrew
his candidacy after four months of hard campaigning and resigned in order to
support a Popular Unity candidate. This interview was conducted in his house at
Isla Negra in January 1970 just before his resignation.
Isla Negra (Black Island) is neither black
nor an island. It is an elegant beach resort forty kilometers south of
Valparaiso and a two-hour drive from Santiago. No one knows where the name
comes from; Neruda speculates about black rocks vaguely shaped like an island
which he sees from his terrace. Thirty years ago, long before Isla Negra became
fashionable, Neruda bought—with the royalties from his books—six thousand
square meters of beachfront, which included a tiny stone house at the top of a
steep slope. “Then the house started growing, like the people, like the trees.”
Neruda has other houses—one on San
Cristobal Hill in Santiago and another in Valparaiso. To decorate his houses he
has scoured antique shops and junkyards for all kinds of objects. Each object
reminds him of an anecdote. “Doesn’t he look like Stalin?” he asks, pointing to
a bust of the English adventurer Morgan in the dining room at Isla Negra. “The
antique dealer in Paris didn’t want to sell it to me, but when he heard I was
Chilean, he asked me if I knew Pablo Neruda. That’s how I persuaded him to sell
it.”
It is at Isla Negra where Pablo Neruda,
the “terrestrial navigator,” and his third wife,Matilde (“Patoja,” as he affectionately calls her, the
“muse” to whom he has written many love poems), have established their most
permanent residence.
Tall, stocky, of olive complexion, his
outstanding features are a prominent nose and large brown eyes with hooded
eyelids. His movements are slow but firm. He speaks distinctly, without
pomposity. When he goes for a walk—usually accompanied by his two chows—he
wears a long poncho and carries a rustic cane.
At Isla Negra Neruda entertains a constant
stream of visitors and there is always room at the table for last-minute
guests. Neruda does most of his entertaining in the bar, which one enters
through a small corridor from a terrace facing the beach. On the corridor floor
is a Victorian bidet and an old hand organ. On the window shelves there is a
collection of bottles. The bar is decorated as a ship’s salon, with furniture
bolted to the floor and nautical lamps and paintings. The room has glass-panel
walls facing the sea. On the ceiling and on each of the wooden crossbeams a
carpenter has carved, from Neruda’s handwriting, names of his dead friends.
Behind the bar, on the liquor shelf, is a
sign that says no se fia (no credit here). Neruda takes his role
as bartender very seriously and likes to make elaborate drinks for his guests
although he drinks only Scotch and wine. On a wall are two anti-Neruda posters,
one of which he brought back from his last trip to Caracas. It shows his
profile with the legend “Neruda go home.” The other is a cover from an
Argentine magazine with his picture and the copy “Neruda, why doesn’t he kill
himself?” A huge poster of Twiggy stretches from the ceiling to the floor.
Meals at Isla Negra are typically Chilean.
Neruda has mentioned some of them in his poetry: conger-eel soup; fish with a
delicate sauce of tomatoes and baby shrimp; meat pie. The wine is always
Chilean. One of the porcelain wine pitchers, shaped like a bird, sings when
wine is poured. In the summer, lunch is served on a porch facing a garden that
has an antique railroad engine. “So powerful, such a corn picker, such a
procreator and whistler and roarer and thunderer . . . I love it because it
looks like Walt Whitman.”
Conversations for the interview were held
in short sessions. In the morning—after Neruda had his breakfast in his room—we
would meet in the library, which is a new wing of the house. I would wait while
he answered his mail, composed poems for his new book, or corrected the galleys
of a new Chilean edition of Twenty Love Poems.
When composing poetry, he writes with green ink in an ordinary composition
book. He can write a fairly long poem in a very short time, after which he
makes only a few corrections. The poems are then typed by his secretary and close
friend of more than fifty years, Homero Arce.
In the afternoon, after his daily nap, we
would sit on a stone bench on the terrace facing the sea. Neruda would talk
holding the microphone of the tape recorder, which picked up the sound of the
sea as background to his voice.
INTERVIEWER
Why did you change your name, and why did
you choose “Pablo Neruda”?
PABLO NERUDA
I don’t remember. I was only thirteen or
fourteen years old. I remember that it bothered my father very much that I
wanted to write. With the best of intentions, he thought that writing would
bring destruction to the family and myself and, especially, that it would lead
me to a life of complete uselessness. He had domestic reasons for thinking so,
reasons which did not weigh heavily on me. It was one of the first defensive
measures that I adopted—changing my name.
INTERVIEWER
Did you choose “Neruda” because of the
Czech poet Jan Neruda?
NERUDA
I’d read a short story of his. I’ve never
read his poetry, but he has a book entitled Stories from Malá Strana about the humble people of that
neighborhood in Prague. It is possible that my new name came from there. As I
say, the whole matter is so far back in my memory that I don’t recall.
Nevertheless, the Czechs think of me as one of them, as part of their nation,
and I’ve had a very friendly connection with them.
INTERVIEWER
In case you are elected president of
Chile, will you keep on writing?
NERUDA
For me writing is like breathing. I could
not live without breathing and I could not live without writing.
INTERVIEWER
Who are the poets who have aspired to high
political office and succeeded?
NERUDA
Our period is an era of governing poets:
Mao Tse Tung and Ho Chi Minh. Mao Tse-tung has other qualities: as you know, he
is a great swimmer, something which I am not. There is also a great poet,
Léopold Senghor, who is president of Senegal; another, Aimé Césaire, a
surrealist poet, is the mayor of Fort-de-France in Martinique. In my country,
poets have always intervened in politics, though we have never had a poet who
was president of the republic. On the other hand, there have been writers in
Latin America who have been president: Rómulo Gallegos was president of
Venezuela.
INTERVIEWER
How have you been running your
presidential campaign?
NERUDA
A platform is set up. First there are
always folk songs, and then someone in charge explains the strictly political
scope of our campaign. After that, the note I strike in order to talk to the
townspeople is a much freer one, much less organized; it is more poetic. I almost
always finish by reading poetry. If I didn’t read some poetry, the people would
go away disillusioned. Of course, they also want to hear my political thoughts,
but I don’t overwork the political or economic aspects because people also need
another kind of language.
INTERVIEWER
How do the people react when you read your
poems?
NERUDA
They love me in a very emotional way. I
can’t enter or leave some places. I have a special escort which protects me
from the crowds because the people press around me. That happens everywhere.
INTERVIEWER
If you had to choose between the
presidency of Chile and the Nobel Prize, for which you have been mentioned so
often, which would you choose?
NERUDA
There can be no question of a decision
between such illusory things.
INTERVIEWER
But if they put the presidency and the
Nobel Prize right here on a table?
NERUDA
If they put them on the table in front of
me, I’d get up and sit at another table.
INTERVIEWER
Do you think awarding the Nobel Prize to
Samuel Beckett was just?
NERUDA
Yes, I believe so. Beckett writes short
but exquisite things. The Nobel Prize, wherever it falls, is always an honor to
literature. I am not one of those always arguing whether the prize went to the
right person or not. What is important about this prize—if it has any
importance—is that it confers a title of respect on the office of writer. That
is what is important.
INTERVIEWER
What are your strongest memories?
NERUDA
I don’t know. The most intense memories,
perhaps, are those of my life in Spain—in that great brotherhood of poets; I’ve
never known such a fraternal group in our American world—so full of alacraneos (gossips), as they say in Buenos
Aires. Then, afterwards, it was terrible to see that republic of friends
destroyed by the civil war, which so demonstrated the horrible reality of
fascist repression. My friends were scattered: some were exterminated right
there—like García Lorca and Miguel Hernández; others died in exile; and still
others live on in exile. That whole phase of my life was rich in events, in
profound emotions, and decisively changed the evolution of my life.
INTERVIEWER
Would they allow you to enter Spain now?
NERUDA
I’m not officially forbidden to enter. On
one occasion I was invited to give some readings there by the Chilean Embassy.
It is very possible that they would let me enter. But I don’t want to make a
point of it, because it simply may have been convenient for the Spanish
government to show some democratic feeling by permitting the entry of people
who had fought so hard against it. I don’t know. I have been prevented from
entering so many countries and I have been turned out of so many others that,
truly, this is a matter which no longer causes the irritation in me that it did
at first.
INTERVIEWER
In a certain way, your ode to García
Lorca, which you wrote before he died, predicted his tragic end.
NERUDA
Yes, that poem is strange. Strange because
he was such a happy person, such a cheerful creature. I’ve known very few
people like him. He was the incarnation . . . well, let’s not say of success,
but of the love of life. He enjoyed each minute of his existence—a great
spendthrift of happiness. For that reason, the crime of his execution is one of
the most unpardonable crimes of fascism.
INTERVIEWER
You often mention him in your poems, as
well as Miguel Hernández.
NERUDA
Hernández was like a son. As a poet, he
was something of my disciple, and he almost lived in my house. He went to
prison and died there because he disproved the official version of García
Lorca’s death. If their explanation was correct, why did the fascist government
keep Miguel Hernández in prison until his death? Why did they even refuse to
move him to a hospital, as the Chilean Embassy proposed? The death of Miguel
Hernández was an assassination too.
INTERVIEWER
What do you remember most from your years
in India?
NERUDA
My stay there was an encounter I wasn’t
prepared for. The splendor of that unfamiliar continent overwhelmed me, and yet
I felt desperate, because my life and my solitude there were so long. Sometimes
I seemed locked into an unending Technicolor picture—a marvelous movie, but one
I wasn’t allowed to leave. I never experienced the mysticism which guided so
many South Americans and other foreigners in India. People who go to India in
search of a religious answer to their anxieties see things in a different way.
As for me, I was profoundly moved by the sociological conditions—that immense
unarmed nation, so defenseless, bound to its imperial yoke. Even the English
culture, for which I had a great predilection, seemed hateful to me for being
the instrument of the intellectual submission of so many Hindus at that time. I
mixed with the rebellious young people of that continent; in spite of my
consular post, I got to know all the revolutionaries—those in the great
movement that eventually brought about independence.
INTERVIEWER
Was it in India that you wrote Residence
on Earth?
NERUDA
Yes, though India had very little
intellectual influence on my poetry.
INTERVIEWER
It was from Rangoon that you wrote those
very moving letters to the Argentine, Hector Eandi?
NERUDA
Yes. Those letters were important in my
life, because he, a writer I did not know personally, took it upon himself, as
a Good Samaritan, to send me news, to send me periodicals, to help me through
my great solitude. I had become afraid of losing contact with my own
language—for years I met no one to speak Spanish to. In one letter to Rafael
Alberti I had to ask for a Spanish dictionary. I had been appointed to the post
of consul, but it was a low-grade post and one that had no stipend. I lived in
the greatest poverty and in even greater solitude. For weeks I didn’t see
another human being.
INTERVIEWER
While there you had a great romance with
Josie Bliss, whom you mention in many poems.
NERUDA
Yes, Josie Bliss was a woman who left
quite a profound imprint on my poetry. I have always remembered her, even in my
most recent books.
INTERVIEWER
Your work, then, is closely linked to your
personal life?
NERUDA
Naturally. The life of a poet must be
reflected in his poetry. That is the law of the art and a law of life.
INTERVIEWER
Your work can be divided into stages,
can’t it?
NERUDA
I have quite confusing thoughts about
that. I myself don’t have stages; the critics discover them. If I can say
anything, it is that my poetry has the quality of an organism—infantile when I
was a boy, juvenile when I was young, desolate when I suffered, combative when
I had to enter the social struggle. A mixture of these tendencies is present in
my current poetry. I always wrote out of internal necessity, and I imagine that
this is what happens with all writers, poets especially.
INTERVIEWER
I’ve seen you writing in the car.
NERUDA
I write where I can and when I can, but
I’m always writing.
INTERVIEWER
Do you always write everything in
longhand?
NERUDA
Ever since I had an accident in which I
broke a finger and couldn’t use the typewriter for a few months, I have
followed the custom of my youth and gone back to writing by hand. I discovered
when my finger was better and I could type again that my poetry when written by
hand was more sensitive; its plastic forms could change more easily. In an
interview, Robert Graves says that in order to think one should have as little
as possible around that is not handmade. He could have added that poetry ought
to be written by hand. The typewriter separated me from a deeper intimacy with
poetry, and my hand brought me closer to that intimacy again.
INTERVIEWER
What are your working hours?
NERUDA
I don’t have a schedule, but by preference
I write in the morning. Which is to say that if you weren’t here making me
waste my time (and wasting your own), I would be writing. I don’t read many
things during the day. I would rather write all day, but frequently the
fullness of a thought, of an expression, of something that comes out of myself
in a tumultuous way—let’s label it with an antiquated term,
“inspiration”—leaves me satisfied, or exhausted, or calmed, or empty. That is,
I can’t go on. Apart from that, I like living too much to be seated all day at
a desk. I like to put myself in the goings-on of life, of my house, of
politics, and of nature. I am forever coming and going. But I write intensely
whenever I can and wherever I am. It doesn’t bother me that there may be a lot
of people around.
INTERVIEWER
You cut yourself off totally from what
surrounds you?
NERUDA
I cut myself off, and if everything is
suddenly quiet, then that is disturbing to me.
INTERVIEWER
You have never given much consideration to
prose.
NERUDA
Prose . . . I have felt the necessity of
writing in verse all my life. Expression in prose doesn’t interest me. I use
prose to express a certain kind of fleeting emotion or event, really tending
toward narrative. The truth is that I could give up writing in prose entirely.
I only do it temporarily.
INTERVIEWER
If you had to save your works from a fire,
what would you save?
NERUDA
Possibly none of them. What am I going to
need them for? I would rather save a girl . . . or a good collection of
detective stories . . . which would entertain me much more than my own works.
INTERVIEWER
Which of your critics has best understood
your work?
NERUDA
Oh! My critics! My critics have almost
shredded me to pieces, with all the love or hate in the world! In life, as in
art, one can’t please everybody, and that’s a situation that’s always with us.
One is always receiving kisses and slaps, caresses and kicks, and that is the
life of a poet. What bothers me is the distortion in the interpretation of
poetry or the events of one’s life. For example, during the P.E.N. club
congress in New York, which brought together so many people from different
places, I read my social poems, and even more of them in California—poems
dedicated to Cuba in support of the Cuban Revolution. Yet the Cuban writers
signed a letter and distributed millions of copies in which my opinions were
doubted, and in which I was singled out as a creature protected by the North
Americans; they even suggested that my entry into the United States was a kind
of prize! That is perfectly stupid, if not slanderous, since many writers from
socialist countries did come in; even the arrival of Cuban
writers was expected. We did not lose our character as anti-imperialists by
going to New York. Nevertheless, that was suggested, either through the
hastiness or bad faith of the Cuban writers. The fact that at this present
moment I am my party’s candidate for president of the republic shows that I
have a truly revolutionary history. It would be difficult to findany writers who signed that letter who
could compare in dedication to revolutionary work, who could equal even
one-hundredth of what I have done and fought for.
INTERVIEWER
You have been criticized for the way you
live, and for your economic position.
NERUDA
In general, that’s all a myth. In a
certain sense, we have received a rather bad legacy from Spain, which could
never bear to have its people stand out or be distinguished in anything. They
chained Christopher Columbus on his return to Spain. We get that from the
envious petite bourgeoisie, who go around thinking about what
others have and about what they don’t have. In my own case, I have dedicated
my life to reparations for the people, and what I have in my house—my books—is
the product of my own work. I have exploited no one. It is odd. The sort of
reproach I get is never made to writers who are
rich by birthright! Instead, it is made to me—a writer who
has fifty years of work behind him. They are always saying: “Look, look how he
lives. He has a house facing the sea. He drinks good wine.” What nonsense. To
begin with, it’s hard to drink bad wine in Chile because almost all the wine in
Chile is good. It’s a problem which, in a certain way, reflects the
underdevelopment of our country—in sum, the mediocrity of our ways. You
yourself have told me that Norman Mailer was paid some ninety thousand dollars
for three articles in a North American magazine. Here, if a Latin American
writer should receive such compensation for his work, it would arouse a wave of
protest from the other writers—”What an outrage! How terrible! Where is it
going to stop?”—instead of everyone’s being pleased that a writer can demand
such fees. Well, as I say, these are the misfortunes which go by the name of
cultural underdevelopment.
INTERVIEWER
Isn’t this accusation more intense because
you belong to the Communist Party?
NERUDA
Precisely. He who has nothing—it has been
said many times—has nothing to lose but his chains. I risk, at every moment, my
life, my person, all that I have—my books, my house. My house has been burned;
I have been persecuted; I have been detained more than once; I have been
exiled; they have declared me incommunicado; I have been sought by thousands of
police. Very well then. I’m not comfortable with what I have. So what
I have, I have put at the disposal of the people’s fight, and this very house
you’re in has belonged for twenty years to the Communist Party, to whom I have
given it by public writ. I am in this house simply through the generosity of my
party. All right, let those who reproach me do the same and at least leave
their shoes somewhere so that they can be passed on to somebody else!
INTERVIEWER
You have donated various libraries. Aren’t
you now involved in the project of the writers’ colony at Isla Negra?
NERUDA
I have donated more than one entire
library to my country’s university. I live on the income from my books. I don’t
have any savings. I don’t have anything to dispose of, except for what I am
paid each month from my books. With that income, lately I’ve been acquiring a
large piece of land on the coast so that writers in the future will be able to
pass summers there and do their creative work in an atmosphere of extraordinary
beauty. It will be the Cantalao Foundation—with directors from the Catholic
University, the University of Chile, and the Society of Writers.
INTERVIEWER
Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair, one of your first books, has been and continues to be read by thousands
of admirers.
NERUDA
I had said in the prologue to the edition
which celebrated the publication of one million copies of that book—soon there
will be two million copies—that I really don’t understand what it’s all
about—why this book, a book of love-sadness, of love-pain, continues to be read
by so many people, by so many young people. Truly, I do not understand it.
Perhaps this book represents the youthful posing of many enigmas; perhaps it
represents the answers to those enigmas. It is a mournful book, but its
attractiveness has not worn off.
INTERVIEWER
You are one of the most widely translated
poets—into about thirty languages. Into what languages are you best translated?
NERUDA
I would say into Italian, because of the
similarity between the two languages. English and French, which are the two
languages I know outside of Italian, are languages which do not correspond to
Spanish—neither in vocalization, or in the placement, or the color, or the
weight of the words. It is not a question of interpretative equivalence; no,
the sense can be right, but this correctness of translation, of meaning, can be
the destruction of a poem. In many of the translations into French—I don’t say
in all of them—my poetry escapes, nothing remains; one cannot protest because
it says the same thing that one has written. But it is obvious that if I had
been a French poet, I would not have said what I did in that poem, because the
value of the words is so different. I would have written something else.
INTERVIEWER
And in English?
NERUDA
I find the English language so different
from Spanish—so much more direct—that many times it expresses the meaning of my
poetry, but does not convey the atmosphere of my poetry. It may be that the
same thing happens when an English poet is translated into Spanish.
INTERVIEWER
You said that you are a great reader of
detective stories. Who are your favorite authors?
NERUDA
A great literary work of this type of
writing is Eric Ambler’s A Coffin for Dimitrios.
I’ve read practically all of Ambler’s work since then, but none has the
fundamental perfection, the extraordinary intrigue, and the mysterious
atmosphere of A Coffin for Dimitrios.
Simenon is also very important, but it’s James Hadley Chase who surpasses in
terror, in horror, and in the destructive spirit everything else that has been
written. No Orchids for Miss Blandish is an old book, but it doesn’t cease
being a milestone of the detective story. There’s a strange similarity between No
Orchids for Miss Blandish and
William Faulkner’sSanctuary—that
very disagreeable but important book—but I’ve never been able to determine
which was the first of the two. Of course, whenever the
detective story is spoken of, I think of Dashiell Hammett. He is the one who
changed the genre from a subliterary phantasm and gave it a strong backbone. He
is the great creator, and after him there are hundreds of others, John
MacDonald among the most brilliant. All of them are prolific writers and they
work extraordinarily hard. And almost all of the North American novelists of
this school—the detective novel—are perhaps the most severe critics of the
crumbling North American capitalist society. There is no greater denunciation
than that which turns up in those detective novels about the fatigue and
corruption of the politicians and the police, the influence of money in the big
cities, the corruption which pops up in all parts of the North American system,
in “the American way of life.” It is, possibly, the most dramatic testimony to
an epoch, and yet it is considered the flimsiest accusation, since detective
stories are not taken into account by literary critics.
INTERVIEWER
What other books do you read?
NERUDA
I am a reader of history, especially of
the older chronicles of my country. Chile has an extraordinary history. Not
because of monuments or ancient sculptures, which don’t exist here, but rather
because Chile was invented by a poet, Don Alonso de Ercilla y Zúñiga, page of
Carlos V. He was a Basque aristocrat who arrived with the conquistadores—quite
unusual, since most of the people sent to Chile came out of the dungeons. This
was the hardest place to live. The war between the Araucanians and the Spanish
went on here for centuries, the longest civil war in the history of humanity.
The semisavage tribes of Araucania fought for their liberty against the Spanish
invaders for three hundred years. Don Alonso de Ercilla y Zúñiga, the young
humanist, came with the enslavers who wanted to dominate all America and did dominate it, with the exception of
this bristly and savage territory we call Chile. Don Alonso wrote La
Araucana, the longest
epic in Castilian literature, in which he honored the unknown tribes of
Araucania—anonymous heroes to whom he gave a name for the first time—more than
his compatriots, the Castilian soldiers. La Araucana, published in the sixteenth century,
was translated, and traveled in various versions through all of Europe. A great
poem by a great poet. The history of Chile thus had this epic greatness and
heroism at birth. We Chileans, quite unlike the other crossbred people of
Spanish and Indian America, are not descended from the Spanish soldiers and
their rapes or concubinages, but from either the voluntary or forced marriages
of the Araucanians with Spanish women held captive during those long war years.
We are a certain exception. Of course, then comes our bloody history of
independence after 1810, a history full of tragedies, disagreements, and
struggles in which the names of San Martín and Bolívar, José Miguel Carrera and
O’Higgins carry on through interminable pages of successes and misfortunes. All
this makes me a reader of books which I unearth and dust off and which entertain
me enormously as I search for the significance of this country—so remote from
everybody, so cold in its latitudes, so deserted . . . its saltpeter pampas in
the north, its immense patagonias, so snowy in the Andes, so florid by the sea.
And this is my country, Chile. I am one of those Chileans in perpetuity, one
who, no matter how well they treat me elsewhere, must return to my country. I
like the great cities of Europe: I adore the Arno Valley, and certain streets
of Copenhagen and Stockholm, and naturally, Paris, Paris, Paris, and yet I
still have to return to Chile.
INTERVIEWER
In an article entitled “My
Contemporaries,” Ernesto Montenegro criticizes the Uruguayan critic Rodríguez
Monegal for expressing the vain wish that contemporary European and North
American writers study their Latin American colleagues if they want to achieve
the renovation of their prose. Montenegro jokes that it is like the ant saying
to the elephant, “Climb on my shoulders.” Then he cites Borges: “In contrast to
the barbarous United States, this country (this continent) has not produced a
writer of worldwide influence—an Emerson, a Whitman, a Poe . . . neither has it
produced a great esoteric writer—a Henry James, or a Melville.”
NERUDA
Why is it important if we do or don’t have
names like those of Whitman, Baudelaire, or Kafka on our continent? The history
of literary creation is as large as humanity. We can’t impose an etiquette. The
United States, with an overwhelmingly literate population, and Europe, with an
ancient tradition, can’t be compared to our multitudes in Latin America without
books or means of expressing themselves. But to pass time throwing stones at
one another, to spend one’s life hoping to surpass this or that continent seems
a provincial sentiment to me. Besides, all this can be a matter of individual
opinion.
INTERVIEWER
Would you like to comment on literary
affairs in Latin America?
NERUDA
Whether a magazine is from Honduras or New
York (in Spanish) or Montevideo or from Guayaquil, we discover that almost all present
the same catalogue of fashionable literature influenced by Eliot or Kafka. It’s
an example of cultural colonialism. We are still involved in European
etiquette. Here in Chile, for example, the mistress of the house will show you
anything—china plates—and tell you with a satisfied smile: “It’s imported.”
Most of the horrible porcelain exhibited in millions of Chilean homes is
imported, and it’s of the worst kind, produced in the factories of Germany and
France. These pieces of nonsense are accepted as top quality because they have
been imported.
INTERVIEWER
Is fear of nonconformity responsible?
NERUDA
Certainly in the old days everybody was
scared of revolutionary ideas, particularly writers. In this decade, and
especially after the Cuban Revolution, the current fashion is just the
opposite. Writers live in terror that they will not be taken for extreme leftists, so each
of them assumes a guerrilla-like position. There are many writers who only
write texts which assert that they are in the front lines of the war against
imperialism. Those of us who have continually fought that war see with joy that
literature is placing itself on the side of the people; but we also believe
that if it’s only a matter of fashion and a writer’s fear of not being taken for
an active leftist, well, we are not going to get very far with that kind of
revolutionary. In the end, all sorts of animals fit into the literary forest.
Once, when I had been offended for many years by a few pertinacious persecutors
who seemed to live only to attack my poetry and my life, I said: “Let’s leave
them alone, there is room for all in this jungle; if there’s space for the
elephants, who take up such a lot of room in the jungles of Africa and Ceylon,
then surely there’s space for all the poets.”
INTERVIEWER
Some people accuse you of being
antagonistic toward Jorge Luis Borges.
NERUDA
The antagonism towards Borges may exist in
an intellectual or cultural form because of our different orientation. One can
fight peacefully. But I have other enemies—not writers. For me the enemy is
imperialism, and my enemies are the capitalists and those who drop napalm on
Vietnam. But Borges is not my enemy.
INTERVIEWER
What do you think about Borges’s writing?
NERUDA
He is a great writer, and people who speak
Spanish are very proud that Borges exists—above all, the people of Latin
America. Before Borges we had very few writers who could stand in comparison
with the writers of Europe. We have had great writers, but a writer of the
universal type, like Borges, is not found very often in our countries. I cannot
say that he has been the greatest, and I hope he will be surpassed many
times by others, but in every way he has opened the way and attracted
attention, the intellectual curiosity of Europe, toward our countries. But for
me to fight with Borges because everybody wants me to—I’ll never do it. If he
thinks like a dinosaur, well, that has nothing to do with my thinking. He
understands nothing of what’s going on in the contemporary world; he thinks
that I understand nothing either. Therefore, we are in agreement.
INTERVIEWER
On Sunday we saw some young Argentines who
were playing guitars and singing amilonga by Borges. That pleased
you, didn’t it?
NERUDA
Borges’s milonga pleased me greatly, most of all
because it is an example of how such a hermetic poet—let’s use that term—such a
sophisticated and intellectual poet can turn to a popular theme, doing it with
such a true and certain touch. I liked Borges’s milonga very much. Latin American poets ought
to imitate his example.
INTERVIEWER
Have you written any Chilean folk music?
NERUDA
I’ve written some songs which are very
well known in this country.
INTERVIEWER
Who are the Russian poets you like most?
NERUDA
The dominant figure in Russian poetry
continues to be Mayakovski. He is for the Russian Revolution what Walt Whitman
was for the Industrial Revolution in North America. Mayakovski impregnated
poetry in such a way that almost all the poetry has continued being
Mayakovskian.
INTERVIEWER
What do you think about the Russian
writers who have left Russia?
NERUDA
People who want to leave a place ought to
do so. This is really a rather individual problem. Some Soviet writers may feel
themselves dissatisfied with their relationship to the literary organizations
or with their own state. But I have never seen less disagreement between a
state and the writers than in socialist countries. The majority of Soviet
writers are proud of the socialist structure, of the great war of liberation
against the Nazis, of the people’s role in the revolution and in the Great War,
and proud of the structures created by socialism. If there are exceptions, it
is a personal question, and it is correspondingly necessary to examine each
case individually.
INTERVIEWER
But the creative work cannot be free. It
must always reflect the State’s line of thought.
NERUDA
It’s an exaggeration to say that. I have
known many writers and painters who have absolutely no intention of eulogizing
this or that in the State. There is a kind of conspiracy to suggest that this is
the case. But it’s not so. Of course, every revolution needs to mobilize its
forces. A revolution cannot persist without development: the very commotion
provoked by the change from capitalism to socialism cannot last unless the
revolution demands, and with all its power, the support of all the strata of
society—including the writers, intellectuals, and artists. Think about the
American Revolution, or our own war of independence against imperial Spain.
What would have happened if just subsequent to those events the writers
dedicated themselves to subjects like the monarchy, or the restitution of
English power over the United States, or the Spanish king’s over former
colonies. If any writer or artist had exalted colonialism, he would have been
persecuted. It’s with even greater justification that a revolution which wants
to construct a society starting from zero (after all, the step from capitalism
or private property to socialism and communism has never been tried before)
must by its own force mobilize the aid of intellect. Such a procedure can bring
about conflicts; it is only human and political that these occur. But I hope
that with time and stability the socialist societies will have less need to
have their writers constantly thinking about social problems, and that they
will be able to create what they most intimately desire.
INTERVIEWER
What advice would you give to young poets?
NERUDA
Oh, there is no advice to give to young
poets! They ought to make their own way; they will have to encounter the obstacles
to their expression and they have to overcome them. What I would never advise
them to do is to begin with political poetry. Political poetry is more
profoundly emotional than any other—at least as much as love poetry—and cannot
be forced because it then becomes vulgar and unacceptable. It is necessary
first to pass through all other poetry in order to become a political poet. The
political poet must also be prepared to accept the censure which is thrown at
him—betraying poetry, or betraying literature. Then, too, political poetry has
to arm itself with such content and substance and intellectual and emotional
richness that it is able to scorn everything else. This is rarely achieved.
INTERVIEWER
You have often said that you don’t believe
in originality.
NERUDA
To look for originality at all costs is a
modern condition. In our time, the writer wants to call attention to himself,
and this superficial preoccupation takes on fetishistic characteristics. Each
person tries to find a road whereby he will stand out, neither for profundity
nor for discovery, but for the imposition of a special diversity. The most
original artist will change phases in accord with the time, the epoch. The
great example is Picasso, who begins by nourishing himself from the painting and
sculpture of Africa or the primitive arts, and then goes on with such a power
of transformation that his works, characterized by his splendid originality,
seem to be stages in the cultural geology of the world.
INTERVIEWER
What were the literary influences on you?
NERUDA
Writers are always interchanging in some
way, just as the air we breathe doesn’t belong to one place. The writer is
always moving from house to house: he ought to change his furniture. Some
writers feel uncomfortable at this. I remember that Federico García Lorca was
always asking me to read my lines, my poetry, and yet in the middle of my
reading, he would say, “Stop, stop! Don’t go on, lest you influence me!”
INTERVIEWER
About Norman Mailer. You were one of the
first writers to speak of him.
NERUDA
Shortly after Mailer’s The
Naked and the Dead came
out, I found it in a bookstore in Mexico. No one knew anything about it; the
bookseller didn’t even know what it was about. I bought it because I had to
take a trip and I wanted a new American novel. I thought that the American
novel had died after the giants who began with Dreiser and finished with
Hemingway, Steinbeck, and Faulkner—but I discovered a writer with extraordinary
verbal violence, matched with great subtlety and a marvelous power of
description. I greatly admire the poetry of Pasternak, but Dr.
Zhivago alongside The
Naked and the Dead seems
a boring novel, saved only in part by its description of nature, that is to
say, by its poetry. I remember about that time I wrote the poem “Let the Rail
Splitter Awake.” This poem, invoking the figure of Lincoln, was dedicated to
world peace. I spoke of Okinawa and of the war in Japan, and I mentioned Norman
Mailer. My poem reached Europe and was translated. I remember that Aragon said
to me, “It was a great deal of trouble to find out who Norman Mailer is.” In
reality, nobody knew him, and I had a certain feeling of pride in having been
one of the first writers to allude to him.
INTERVIEWER
Could you comment on your intense
affection for nature?
NERUDA
Ever since my childhood, I’ve maintained
an affection for birds, shells, forests, and plants. I’ve gone many places in
search of ocean shells, and I’ve come to have a great collection. I wrote a
book called Art of Birds. I
wrote Bestiary, Seaquake, and “The Herbalist’s Rose,” devoted to
flowers, branches, and vegetal growth. I could not live separated from nature.
I like hotels for a couple of days; I like planes for an hour; but I’m happy in
the woods, on the sand, or sailing, in direct contact with fire, earth, water,
air.
INTERVIEWER
There are symbols in your poetry which
recur, and they always take the form of the sea, of fish, of birds . . .
NERUDA
I don’t believe in symbols. They are
simply material things. The sea, fish, birds exist for me in a material way. I
take them into account, as I have to take daylight into account. The fact that
some themes stand out in my poetry—are always appearing—is a matter of material
presence.
INTERVIEWER
What do the dove and guitar signify?
NERUDA
The dove signifies the dove and the guitar
signifies a musical instrument called the guitar.
INTERVIEWER
You mean that those who have tried to
analyze these things—
NERUDA
When I see a dove, I call it a dove. The
dove, whether it is present or not, has a form for me, either subjectively or
objectively—but it doesn’t go beyond being a dove.
INTERVIEWER
You have said about the poems in Residence
on Earth that “They
don’t help one to live. They help one to die.”
NERUDA
My book Residence on Earth represents a dark and dangerous moment
in my life. It is poetry without an exit. I almost had to be reborn in order to
get out of it. I was saved from that desperation of which I still can’t know
the depths by the Spanish Civil War, and by events serious enough to make me
meditate. At one time I said that if I ever had the necessary power, I would
forbid the reading of that book and I would arrange never to have it printed
again. It exaggerates the feeling of life as a painful burden, as a mortal
oppression. But I also know that it is one of my best books, in the sense that
it reflects my state of mind. Still, when one writes—and I don’t know if this
is true for other writers—one ought to think of where one’s verses are going to
land. Robert Frost says in one of his essays that poetry ought to have sorrow
as its only orientation: “Leave sorrow alone with poetry.” But I don’t know
what Robert Frost would have thought if a young man had committed suicide and
left one of his books stained with blood. That
happened to me—here, in this country. A boy, full of life, killed himself next
to my book. I don’t feel truly responsible for his death. But that page of
poetry stained with blood is enough to make not only one poet think, but all
poets. . . Of course, my opponents took advantage—as they do of almost
everything I say—political advantage of the censure I gave my own book. They
attributed to me the desire to write exclusively happy and optimistic poetry.
They didn’t know about that episode. I have never renounced the expression of
loneliness, of anguish, or of melancholia. But I like to change tones, to find
all the sounds, to pursue all the colors, to look for the forces of life
wherever they may be—in creation or destruction.
My poetry has passed through the same
stages as my life; from a solitary childhood and an adolescence cornered in
distant, isolated countries, I set out to make myself a part of the great human
multitude. My life matured, and that is all. It was in the style of the last
century for poets to be tormented melancholiacs. But there can be poets who
know life, who know its problems, and who survive by crossing through the
currents. And who pass through sadness to plenitude.
—Translated
by Ronald Christ
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