Dispatch from our Foreign Correspondent

Greetings from Chile, where I recently visited the house of the Chilean poet Pablo Neruda. I figured since I was here I might as well visit whatever literary attractions there are in Chile, and Neruda is the main draw. (I´ve been reading Roberto Bolano as well, but I´ll post on that later.) I was introduced to Neruda by an old girlfriend of mine who used to read me his poems late at night in the original Spanish. I couldn´t speak Spanish (and still can´t) but when you hear poems in a foreign language, the lack of intelligibility is compensated for by the euphonious rush of syllables and consonants. Just pure, flowing beauty.

Neruda had a house he used occasionally in Santiago, but two hours away, on a bluff over the ocean in Isla Negra, he had his main house. It´s a long strip of house, thin as a ribbon, stretching over several hectares and divided into multiple sections. Mrs. BookFox said it was constructed like a poem, as if each compartment of the house was a stanza. Inside it was extremely masculine – apparently Mrs. Neruda had very little say about the interior design – and everything was nautical themed. Sextants, ship-wheel coffee tables, a huge looming collection of life-sized ship figureheads, enormous model boats, sea shells the size of car tires, and a semaphore (two round mirrors on a tripod used for signaling). The best exhibit was a ten foot narwhal horn propped up between the open folds of a rippled seashell. Phallic imagery, anyone? Overall, it was the perfect embodiment of quirkiness, and the oddity of what he collected and how much he collected of it was actually inspiring, in a weird, decorative kind of way.

We also checked out the marble sink where he washed his hands before and after sitting down to write, a ritual that reminded me of how transcribers of religious literature would often do the same, to honor the holy text. Also, he only wrote in green ink. Why? The color of hope and light. At that´s what the tour guide said, but it sounded so lofty I wondered whether the info was colored by the hagiography that often occurs on tours like this. For extra inspiration, Neruda had huge pictures of the writers he admired around the house: Charles Baudelaire, Walt Whitman, Rimbaud, and Poe.

I would post pictures, but photography inside the house was forbidden, and the few we took outside the house are difficult to upload because of the antiquity of the computer I´m trying to use. I will say that touring a writer´s house is such an interesting pathway into a writer´s mind, especially after following  the pathway of their writing – a juxtaposition that helps me see his poetry clearer. It makes me wonder what some other writer´s houses looked like. For instance, Jonathan Safran Foer cannot live in a normal apartment. Sorry, just can´t. There´s some kind of quirkiness that has to be lurking about. And the pictures of Will Self´s eclectic desk and walls have been floating around for months now. Oooo, and I´d really like to check out Mark Danielewski´s house, especially because the central action of House of Leaves happened in a crazy labyrinth of a metaphysical house. Anyway, house speculation aside, I´ve having a great time in Chile and will post again when I get a chance. Thanks to my guest posters (it´s been relatively quiet, but I know a few of them are just working up the courage), and adios. I will leave you with a  Neruda poem:

We have lost even this twilight.
No one saw us this evening hand in hand
while the blue night dropped on the world.

I have seen from my window
the fiesta of sunset in the distant mountain tops.

Sometimes a piece of sun
burned like a coin in my hand.

I remembered you with my soul clenched
in that sadness of mine that you know.

Where were you then?
Who else was there?
Saying what?
Why will the whole of love come on me suddenly
when I am sad and feel you are far away?

The book fell that always closed at twilight
and my blue sweater rolled like a hurt dog at my feet.

Always, always you recede through the evenings
toward the twilight erasing statues.