After years of silence imposed by the military, Isla Negra, the fabled home of poet Pablo Neruda, is once again a blossoming cultural center. The island is an oasis in a dark and confusing post-coup history of consumerism. BY MARJORIE AGOSiN Isla Negra, the fabled home of Chilean poet Pablo Neruda, is not really an island, nor is it black. It is a small fishing cove about 100 miles west of Santiago, nestled between Valparaiso and Vifia del Mar. In the summer, Isla Negra is inundated by vacationers seeking to escape the noise and smog of Santiago. During that care- free season, many young people fall in love for the first time, reciting Neruda's 20 Poems of Love and carving hearts into the trees. But in March, when Chileans take leave of their summer homes and students go back to school, Isla Negra recov- Marjorie Agosin is a Chilean poet and professor of Spanish literature at Wellesley College. Her most recent book is A Cross and a Star: Reminiscences of a Jewish Girl in Chile (University of New Mexico Press, 1995). Translated from the Spanish by NACLA. ers its own particular rhythm and spirit. As Neruda recalled in his memoirs, I Confess that I Have Lived: it is in winter when a strange flow- ering is dressed by the rains and the green and yellow cold of the blues and the purples. Through the years, Chilean intel- lectuals, poets and sculptors have been attracted to this enchanting land. Chilean singer Violeta Parra built her house on Isla Negra in the 1940s among the wild flowers and the rocks. Pablo Neruda loved, above all things, his home on Isla Negra, a simple house built in early 1938 with stones that grew warmer or colder according to the changing seasons. He had several large bells installed in his backyard to announce lunch time, and it was here that he displayed his eclectic collections of seashells, bottles of different shapes and colors, butter- flies, and carousel horses. In this house, Neruda extolled the agate stones, the generous expanse of stones and sand that greet the ocean: The house... I don't know when this was born in me. It was in mid- afternoon, we were on the way to those lonely places on horse- back... Don Eladio was in front, fording the C6rdoba 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. Much of Neruda's later poetry refers to Isla Negra, where fisher- men and intellectuals, carpenters and poets have coexisted for decades. Neruda captured the har- mony of this coexistence in a poem about Rafita, a local carpenter who lives to this day in Isla Negra: Vol XXX, No 1 JULY/AUG 1996 0 0 a 4 0 0 0, e a 11ESSAY / CHILE Neruda often invited young poets to his house near the sea. He listened to them with prudence, aware that his company would reveal itself in their future writings. Neruda's Isla Negra house with its several large bells in the backyard to announce lunch time. Just as I've always thought of myself as a carpenter-poet, I think of Rafita as the poet of carpentry. He brings his tools wrapped in newspaper, under his arm, and unwraps what looks to me like a chapter and grasps the worn han- dles of the hammers and rasps, los- ing himself in the wood. His work is perfect. Neruda often invited young poets to his house near the sea. He lis- tened to them with prudence, aware that the gift of his company would reveal itself in their future writings. The poets congregated around the big round table, surrounded by col- orfully painted plates and enormous blue bottles, in the company of exquisite Chilean wine and living poetry. For hours on end, they could be heard speaking of different poets, and the sighs, laments, and first loves immortalized in verse. My family had a home in Isla Negra, and as a child it was a mag- ical place for me. My childhood was filled with long weekends walking arm-in-arm with my moth- er along the shores of Isla Negra, learning the textures of each rock and the violence of the moss. From a great distance, I would often glimpse the enormous figure of Don Pablo Neruda, wearing a red Araucanian poncho, furiously writ- ing with a pencil the color of the turquoise glaciers. It was then that I decided that I liked the vocation of poetry and that few tools were nec- essary: a green pencil, a piece of paper, the immense ocean for self- affirmation, and perpetual astonish- ment. This was Chile in the late 1960s and early 1970s. The country was swept up in a poetic effervescence during which the great poets of the day-Pablo Neruda, Gonzalo Rojas, Enrique Lihn, Nicanor Parra, Delia Dominguez-created their most memorable texts. This paral- leled the effervescence of the Popular Unity years, when Salvador Allende (1970-73) tried to bring socialism to Chile through democ- ratic means. Allende's government founded an editorial house, Quimantu, which published popular editions of Chilean and Latin American poetry at prices that everyone could afford. Poetry became part of daily life in Chile. Poetry readings became common in high schools, universities, and trade- union meetings. Other artistic forms also blossomed, such as the colorful murals that lit up Santiago's walls. Neruda was intensely involved in this unique experiment. His poetry expressed his preoccupation with the social history of his country, and the future of its workers, women and children. Neruda want- ed to compose a poetry of simplici- ty that could be understood by all Chileans. Exemplary in this regard is the final stanza from the 1970 poem "Regards to the North": Country, liberty is your beauty. And to defend its pure light your children are gathered here together: he who emerged from the dark mines and he who lives near the over- flowing seas and the construction worker by his architecture and even the farmer from his plough: together they surround your figure because liberty has called us. NACLA REPORT ON THE AMERICAS 12ESSAY / CHILE fter the military coup in 1973, which brought Augosto Pinochet to power, Neruda died-some say of a broken heart-- and his house in Isla Negra was shut down. For nearly two decades, Chile was subsumed by the violence of silence and censorship. Gagged and dressed in mourning clothes, Neruda's abandoned house stood as a symbol of the fate of Chilean poet- ry under the military regime. Poetry, like Neruda's bells, was forced into silence. The voice of the poet, like the voice of the nation, had been usurped. It is no accident that Allende's death, the military coup in Chile, and the death of Pablo Neruda coincided, marking the end of one of the most lyrical and visionary eras in Chilean culture. Book prices skyrocketed during the Pinochet years. Poetry recitals Neruda at his writing table in 1970. and theater performances were heavily censored. Familiar texts of Latin American poetry could not be found in any bookstore, with the occasional exception of selected works of Gabriela Mistral that rein- forced the stereotype of her as a teacher and left out references to her political activism. To speak of Neruda was dangerous. Along with singers Violeta Parra and Victor Jara, he was considered a traitor in Pinochet's Chile. During the years of the military dictatorship, Isla Negra became a deserted and disdainful place, where hungry dogs and drunkards singing to themselves roamed the dark streets together. Neruda's house, which once hummed with the rhythm of love and the seasons, remained anchored in an uncon- querable undergrowth of twigs and briers that could not be removed even by the most able of gardeners. A huge sign read "House Closed, Visits Prohibited." Many people disobeyed, however, and made secret pilgrimages to the island. When they arrived at Neruda's house, they read his poetry out loud and recited the long list of names of the disappeared. They lit candles of hope on Pablo's birthday and on that of his wife, Matilde. The most daring pilgrims scrib- bled love poems onto the wooden fence that surrounded the house. On special occa- sions, like Pablo and Matilde's wedding anniver- sary, the fences were filled with red flowers. ince Chile's return to democracy in 1990, artistic and cultural activities have been resurrect- ed from the silence imposed by the military. Isla Negra has become once again the coun- try's cultural center. It is in full bloom, like a bride wrapped in lemon flowers. Neruda's house has been reopened. The red train car rests in front of the garden, and the huge bells sound again, harmonizing with the sea. Visitors are now free to walk about Neruda's house and its grounds. Schoolchildren sit with their notebooks, learning happily about the poet's collection of butter- flies and snails. If any place in Chile irradiates the peace of demo- cracy and the sense of social com- mitment that characterized the myth of Pablo Neruda and his poetry, it is without doubt the poet's house on Isla Negra, its key which used to lie on the sand for its owner to let him- self inside: I lost my key, my hat, my head! The key came from Raidl's general store in Temuco. It was outside, immense, lost, pointing out the gen- eral store, "The Key," to the Indians. When I came north I asked Ratilfor it, I tore it from him, I stole it in the midst of fierce and stormy winds. I carried it off toward Loncoche on horseback. From there the key, like a bride dressed in white, accompanied me on the night train. I have come to realize that every- thing I misplace in the house is car- ried off by the sea. The sea seeps in at night through keyholes, under- neath and over the tops of doors and windows. Since by night, in the darkness, the sea is yellow, I suspected, with- out verifying, its secret invasion. On the umbrella stand or on the gentle ears of (the ship bow) Maria Celeste, I would discover drops of metallic sea, atoms of its golden mask. The sea is dry at night. It retains its dimension, its power and it swells, but turns into a great goblet of sonorous air; into an ungraspable volume that rids itself of its waters. It enters my house to find out what and how much I have. It enters by night, before dawn: everything in the house is still and salty, the plates, the knives, the things scrubbed by contact with its wildness lose nothing, but become frightened when the sea enters with its cat-yellow eyes. That is how I lost my key, my hat, my head. They were carried off by the ocean in its swaying motion. I found them on a new morning. They are returned to me by the har- binger wave that deposits lost things at my door In this way, by a trick of the sea, the morning has returned to me my white key, my sand-covered hat, my head-the head of a shipwrecked sailor Vol XXX, No 1 JULY/AUG 1996 13ESSAY / CHILE Book presenta- tions are celebrated in Neruda's home before enthusiastic audiences, and the house itself has become one of the country's most popular museums. Psychiatrist Luis Weinstein and poet Paz Molina are promoting poetry workshops that bring together art- ists and local resi- dents to talk and to write poems about the environment. Children from Isla Negra and neigh- One of Neruda's boring areas also carousel horses. meet weekly for these poetry work- shops, which have a true communi- tarian spirit. Two recently formed foundations support these and other cultural activities. The Cultural Corp- oration, which includes intellectu- als, teachers and fishermen from Isla Negra, was established in 1990 to promote artistic activity. The Neruda Foundation was founded in 1989 by personal friends of Pablo Neruda who wanted to preserve the poet's artistic legacy, his manu- scripts, and his homes. The Neruda Foundation sponsors a biannual cultural magazine, appropriately named Isla Negra, that publishes diverse genres of writing, from essays on the environment to love poems. The first issue of the maga- zine was published in the summer of 1994, and was presented at the well-known Poet's Caf&. With Chilean wine flowing and Neruda's spirit present, someone at the gath- ering recited Neruda's moving poem, "The Sea": The sea tumbles down like an ancient fighter What is happening there below? tomatoes, tunnels, tons of light- ning, towers and drums. eclectic collection of community. The place's cultural activi- ties have blos- somed in a wel- come challenge to the blind consumerism that took hold during the dic- tatorship and has prospered under Chile's new democra- cy. Poetry writ- ing has gained new adherents among young people in the area, even though the liter- ary critics only For me, returning to Isla Negra means returning to the places that Neruda loved so much, such as the sculptured masks from ships' bows that he collected, especially one from the Maria Celeste that "was made of dark and perfectly sweet wood." Visiting Isla Negra means encounters with the seaweed, with the delirious ocean, and with men and women who are interested in preserving their It is no accic Allende's d military couj and the d Pablo N coincided, the end of o most ly and vision in Chilean comment on religious poetry or the classics or the poets currently in fashion. Isla Negra continues to cel- ebrate poetry, even though books are extravagantly expensive and poetry collections are only pub- lished on commission. Literature in Chile today is mea- sured not by its quality but by its market potential. Book publishers prefer facile texts, flighty tales of rumor and intrigue, and other such precarious and fragile material. Dialogue about literature and poli- tics, about eroticism and women, about history and national identity, remain buried in the annals of silenced memory. The enriched life of the Popular Unity years-that sometimes bordered on euphoria- has been forgotten. In Chile today, people don't talk to each other very much and they visit each other even less, allowing the hospitality that characterized Chileans to slip into history. Chile's democracy is com- promised by the continuing power of the military. Solidarity is a rare occurrence, and "marketing" is the catchword of the day. Isla Negra is an oasis in a dark and confusing post-coup history of consumerism, cellular telephones and huge shop- ping malls. The consumerist fren- lent that zy has propagated an image of Chile death, the as an economic ) in Chile, miracle, designed to attract foreign eath of investors. But it is a Chile that exists eruda under the prism of marking the diluted colors of abundance, a ne of the Chile that during rical the military re- gime lost its iden- ary eras tity, its character, its culture. Some culture. of that identity is being recreated to- day on Isla Negra, where after years of exile, the presence of Pablo Neruda has returned to occupy the central place that it deserves. The cove's residents-its poets, its fish- ermen, its students-celebrate the right to sing, to speak, to reclaim their roots, and to remember Neruda. On Isla Negra, the island of poets, a spirit of future and of new beginnings permeates the crisp ocean air.
