On the 11th of September 1973 a coup overthrew the elected President of Chile and twelve days later the poet Pablo Neruda, already terminally ill with cancer, died in the hospital in Santiago. He was 69.
His home in Santiago is a shrine to his memory and of his third and final wife, Matilde Urrutia. Indeed after he died thugs from the recently installed Pinochet dictatorship stormed through his home and wrecked it so his wife organized his wake in the basked living room so foreign diplomats and reports could see the wreckage for themselves. He was laid out here:
The drama of the poet’s life and death didn’t stop there as there were rumors he didn’t die of cancer but he was poisoned to prevent him forming a government in exile. Neruda had cancer and was knocked down by the murder of his friend President Salvador Allende killed in the coup.
He lived the life of a diplomat in the service of his country and wrote poetry that won him acclaim culminating in the Nobel Prize for literature in 1971.
His home on a hill has become a tourist attraction such that neighbors are protesting the development around the shrine. “Neither my house nor my neighborhood are for sale.”
Neruda had a secret six year affair with the woman with the wild hair (La Chascona) who became his third wife. He bought a piece of hillside and in 1953 started building their love nest that would become his home in Santiago ( he also kept a house in Valparaiso and a beach house on the coast at Isla Negra).
Neruda joined the Communist party as a young man driven by the politics of the early 20th century, influenced by the Spanish Civil War mercies of fascism. He served as a diplomat in Burma and the Far East and juggled his life as a civil servant with that of a poet participating in literary completions and winning lots of attention.
His house was designed to be snug and intimate on the inside, and he fancied himself a man of the sea and liked to be addressed as “Captain.” His home was modest outside and eccentric inside.
We paid ten bucks for admission took the self guided audio tour in eleven stops through the home that is owned by the Neruda Foundation which was organized by his widow. We also purchased a salt and pepper set like the “Marijuana” and “Morphine” spice jars below that he used to shock and amuse his guests.
Neruda, the captain, wanted low ceilings and a narrow dining table partly to emulate a shop but also to force intimacy on his guests.
He had a private entrance to the dining room that he also used to slip away from parties and go upstairs to escape the crowd. My kind of host as I used to announce I was tired and was going to bed when Layne was entertaining friends in our house and I was worn out.
His widow stayed in the house for the decade she outlived him and adapted the structure to her use including this rather eccentric dining room at the top of the spiral stairs.
I don’t think Neruda thought too much about the difficulties of aging as his home is filled with uneven stone flagged paths and steep stairs not gentle on aging joints.
The house is built on several levels up the hillside.
He used to sit here and view the Andes across the city but since then development as you can see has ruined the view.
Matilde of the unruly hair who also died of cancer but was said to be vain enough to be concerned with her appearance up to the end.
Oddly enough there isn’t huge collection of books here as the poet’s library was kept mostly at his other homes.
The map of cities important to Neruda. He visited the United States rarely as he was a Cold War Communist and a visa was hard to come by for him. Oddly enough I noticed he highlighted Spoleto in Umbria not far from my former Italian home.
Neruda adopted his last name from Jan Neruda a 19th century Czech writer he admired and left his mark on the 20th century. He was made Chile’s Ambassador to France by his friend President Salvador Allende and he was at his beach house at Isla Negra when he heard Allende’s famous good bye speech on the radio while under air attack at the presidential palace.
There was a room full of visitors watching the film narrating his life and attachment to his home at the start of our time there and on our way to call an Uber to go back to Rusty aboard GANNET2 we walked the rather pleasant hillside neighborhood around his home, the shrine.
I bought a paperback of his later poems in Spanish with an English translation alongside to add to my small collection of paper books in GANNET2’s onboard library. I enjoy poetry on paper for some reason.
We found our elderly dog fast asleep on his bed when we got back to the parking lot.
Santiago is a modern town with no architectural pretensions but the parking garages are all underground, a sensible arrangement unless your car is nine feet tall and doesn’t fit inch case it’s hell to find parking in the center of the city. We parked her at Parque de Los Reyes and took Uber to the museums.
The city market:
Plaza de Armas, the heart of downtown.
A traffic jam of course but polite and orderly, mostly.
