Mercurialgem’s Reviews > Pablo Neruda: A Passion for Life > Status Update

In 2000, Neruda ruthlessly exposes his lack of faith in any utopia....at least since 1956. We are looking at a very different Pablo Neruda from the one who, the Spanish poet Jorge Guillen once said, had been taught the playfulness of life by Federico Garcia Lorca. 'Lorca invented Neruda,' Guillen had said - but political disillusionment was now chipping away at him.

Just before Neruda left Paris for good, he acquired a new habit: he would gaze from his Embassy bedroom out on to the golden dome of Les Invalides, through a cheap telescope. Significantly, it was a child's telescope: to the end, he never lost his curiosity about the world.

pg. 390

"I was barely fifteen when I discovered Walt Whitman, my primary creditor...Greatness has many faces but I, a poet who writes in Spanish , learned more from Walt Whitman than from Cervantes. In Whitman's poetry, the ignorant are never humbled, and the human condition is never derided." pg. 386

Neruda was appalled by Che's bad manners. (Paradoxically, Neruda was Che's favourite poet - he took a copy of the Canto general with him everywhere, and in 1965, before returning a volume of Spanish-language poetry to the Cuban writer, Roberto Fernandez Retamar, Che took the trouble to copy out one of his favourite Neruda poems, 'Farewell' from Crepusculario.

On another occasion, the two men (Neruda and Picasso) were sitting alone in a restaurant. At the precise moment when the waiter was bringing them a chicken, a photographer emerged out of nowhere, snapped a picture, and disappeared as quickly as he had arrived. Picasso stood up, indignant, but Neruda calmed him, saying: 'Sit down, he only wanted to photograph the chicken!'

He had an unforgettable visit to the astronomical observatory of Binakan - where he noted that 'each star has its own distinct way of writing, tremulous and fascinating, but unintelligible to the eyes of an earth-bound poet.'