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Morton Marcus: He said: Gaspar Rivera: Estoy mirando, oyendo, con la mitad del alma en el mar y la mitad del alma en la tierra, y con las dos mitades del alma miro el mundo.

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Morton Marcus: I'm watching, hearing with half my soul on sea and half my soul on land, and with both halves of my soul, I look at the world. His name was Pablo Neruda. It was not his real name, it was a

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pseudonym. And he was born on July 12th, 1904, one of the most protean, one of the most exciting, one of the most influential poets of the 20th century, one of the greatest poets of the Spanish language or any language. Tonight, Gaspar

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Rivera, a local poet and yours truly, Mort Marcus, celebrate Pablo Neruda's birthday. Good evening, everybody. This is Mort Marcus and tonight, certainly one of my favorite poets, who is the great Pablo

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Neruda, who died within a week of the death of his friend Salvador Allende? Salvador Allende was his name. In the great tragedy that has overtaken Chile, but who was a native son of Chile, a native son of South America. He was born July 12th,

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1904, which makes him eighty-six years young, within two days. And if you're wondering what to do with your Thursday, why don't you take yourself out and lift your glass and toast one of the real great lovers of the earth and certainly one of the most

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incredible singers, Gaspar Rivera. Good evening, Gaspar. Gaspar Rivera: Good evening, Morton. Morton Marcus: It's great to have you here. Gaspar Rivera: Thank you for inviting me to celebrate. Great,

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he's a great poet. Morton Marcus: I know that this is a poet who has a natural affinity with your brilliance and general love and excitement of the world and he certainly is a poet who is so accessible to

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so many people. I'm just going to say some brief words about him. He was born the son of a railroad worker in southern Chile in 1904. His father was a very rough, rugged man who beat the child up. His mother died when he was three years old. And

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he was sent to the school system and in the school system, he- it was discovered that he had a real penchant for writing poetry, but he could not tell any of his relatives this because they were working people and they had no time for poetry.

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He went on to get a teaching credential at the age of fifteen, sent in his first poems, by the age of seventeen he was known in Santiago, where he had gone to school, gone to live. And by the age of twenty, with a book called, "Twenty

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Poems of Love," he was making an impact in more than Chile but throughout South America. The poetry of Neruda goes through around five or six definite stages. The poems in each stage are completely different from the others. I was drawn to a

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book of his called, "Residence on Earth," numbers one, two, and three, a very heavy dark book, very depressing, about the stifling quality of middle class life in a very surrealistic style.

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He wrote that, by this time, I should say, let me catch up, he had been made a consul, as so many writers in South America are, their governments recognize them and send them off sort of as superstars around the globe. It's also to keep them out of

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trouble at home so they won't become political leaders and usually upset a corrupt regime. Neruda was made a council, entered the diplomatic service for Chile, and was given his first assignments in such places as Southeast Asia, so we find

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him in Java, we find him in Ceylon, and when he makes his way back to Europe from these series of assignments in the 1930s, around the mid 1930s, we have a lot of poems, therefore, about Asia with Asian imagery in them, and they make up the first

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part of, "Residence on Earth," or, "Residencia en la Tierra." They are really astonishing poems, one of them is a poem to this mad woman he had this wild affair with, which he calls, "Widower's Tango," and we will be reading that later on. He

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makes his way to Europe, where he is then made consul to Spain at one of the most exciting times in Spanish life because a government made up of communists, made up of old line right wingers and monarchists and Christian Democrats and you

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name it, are ruling Spain, and he is so well-known by this time that all of the young bright brilliant poets such as Lorca, such as Aleixandre, all of the great names of Spanish poetry of the generation of '27, all of these people rally around him,

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and together with them, he publishes a literary magazine in Spain, which is like a shining torch. He's very, very well-known in Spain. This magazine stops publishing the day the Spanish Civil war breaks out, and the fascists come in to

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disrupt this collaborative government that's going on. He is very affected by this. This is one of the great changes in Neruda's life. He was a very dreamy, very thin, consumptive almost, young man. When the civil war breaks out, and

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suddenly, terror is loosed upon the people for democratic reasons, he begins to work with enormous concerns, and publishes, "Residence on Earth Number Three," which is very, very political. And he becomes very political, no longer as a

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private poet, he becomes publicly a communist and is really, one of the poems we will read, in fact, the whole third part, "Spain in the Heart" of "Residence Number Three," is published by the loyalist soldiers during the Civil War.

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He goes to Paris, he's been assigned by the government to Paris because he's getting into too much trouble. And he's assigned to the ambassador in Paris and there he continues to help the refugees from Spain and to make known the Spanish cause.

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He's then called back to Chile and is already writing what many people in the 50s considered his great masterpiece, which is the, "Canto General," or, "The General Song," of first Chile and then it becomes so large, it's over five hundred pages

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long in the original, it becomes, "The Great Song of South America," all about the birth of South America, not really just physically, but politically, and it shows how man has exploited the entire continent down there. A very,

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very pointed criticisms of the United States and their foreign policy are to be found in this book. He is asked by the Communist Party to run for the Senate. He runs for the Senate in Chile and then finally runs for the

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presidency, has a huge dispute with the president of Chile, which even makes it to the New York Times in 1947-48, takes his case to the Supreme Court, the Supreme Court finds for the president, and for the next year he goes into hiding, tries to

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escape from Chile three times, and finally succeeds in getting to Mexico. After this, the, "Canto General," comes out in 1950. He is now known as one of the great poets of the world. Because he is a communist, he is one of the recipients of the

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Stalin Prize, but because he is a communist also, he has suddenly turned the extreme surrealism of the "Residencies," into a very, very simple style. And he begins to write poems for the workers, for the uneducated, which are called, "Odas

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Elementales," or, "Elemental Odes," very primary poems, in which he celebrates such things as salt, celebrates such things as socks, celebrate such things as a sunlit morning. And they are the poems, I think, that have become the most popular

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poems that he's ever written. And they're not poems that we should say, well, you know, they're just for political reasons and they're really simple for the peasants and feel superior to them. They are maybe some of the most naked,

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beautiful, imaginative, buoyant, abelian poems, in any language to really just celebrate the wonders of existence. He goes on to publish more love poems to his wife, "The Captain's Verses," two extraordinary volumes, "

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Estravagario," which are the "Vagaries" of the imagination, and, "Fully Empowered," which we will be reading from. So, we have a man who writes many different kinds of poems, and I would certainly suggest you run out and get one of the many

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books that's out by Neruda right now. If you read Spanish, all the better, if you don't, you are at the mercy of a group of translators who are terrible. And I would certainly warn you off of the Grove books, the ones that really first appeared,

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which are done by Ben Belitt, a very fine poet, but a person who even has admitted that Pablo Neruda is so powerful, even in translation, that it would affect a change on Belitt's style, so he chose to change Neruda instead in English, and

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those are the Grove books and it's very unfortunate. Okay, well, let us go back now and read this first poem. I'll have Gaspar read it and I will take the book from him and I will read you W.S. Merlin's translation. And this is:

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A LOVE POEM FROM TWENTY POEMS OF LOVE, Gaspar, you can announce it. Gaspar Rivera: Okay, I'm gonna read in Spanish, the first poem of:

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VEINTE POEMAS DE AMOR Y UNA CANCION DESESPERADA, CORPO DE Cuerpo de mujer, blancas colinas, muslos blancos, te MUJER pareces al mundo en tu actitud de entrega. Mi cuerpo de

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labriego salvaje te socava y hace saltar el hijo del fondo de la tierra. Fui solo como un túnel. De mí huían los pájaros y en mí la noche entraba su invasión poderosa. Para sobrevivirme te forjé como un arma, como una flecha en mi

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arco, como una piedra en mi honda. Pero cae la hora de la venganza, y te amo. Cuerpo de piel, de musgo, de leche ávida y firme. Ah los vasos del pecho! Ah los ojos de ausencia! Ah las rosas del pubis! Ah tu voz lenta y triste! Cuerpo de mujer mía,

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persistirá en tu gracia. Mi sed, mi ansia sin limite, mi camino indeciso! Oscuros cauces donde la sed eterna sigue, y la fatiga sigue, y el dolor infinito. Morton Marcus: BODY OF A WOMAN, first poem from TWENTY LOVE

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POEMS AND A SONG OF DESPAIR by Pablo Neruda. Body of a woman, white hills, white thighs, you look like a world lying in surrender. My rough peasant's body digs in you and makes the son leap from the depth of the earth. I was alone

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like a tunnel. The birds fled from me, and night swamped me with its crushing invasion. To survive myself I forged you like a weapon, like an arrow in my bow, a stone in my sling. But the hour of vengeance falls, and I love you. Body of skin, of

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moss, of eager and firm milk. Oh the goblets of the breast! Oh, the eyes of absence! Oh, the roses of he pubis! Oh, your voice, slow and sad! Body of my woman, I will persist in your grace. My thirst, my boundless desire, my shifting road! Dark

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river-beds where the eternal thirst flows, and weariness follows, and the infinite ache. This book, in which you can f nd the entire twenty love poe s, and then in smaller print, he "Song of Despair," i

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was published by Gross an's Publishers in the 1970 and translated entire, beauti ully translated by W.S. Merwin one of the great translato s in English. And anytime, in act, you do see a Merwin by ine, certainly I would urge y

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u to pick up whatever he's trans ated from whatever language, h 's a consummate poet and a wond rful linguist. This book, "T enty Love Poems," totally broke with the rather hackneyed tra ition that had come into Spanis love poetry, and it gav

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it a tremendous, earthy, po erful voice. Also the great prop et of modern poetry in South Am rica, Ruben Dario had prescr bed a very honeyed musical wate -like lyric, which Neruda now is going to directly break. He is going to give the very, ver

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hard clashing sounds of spee h and anger. Anger at a world increasingly un form, increasingly co rupt, increasingly automate , and increasingly cutting o f one human being from anothe . Two more volumes follow, th

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n the first, "Residence," come . And if I can ask you, Gas ar, I think I put some of it in- Which one do you have Gaspar Rivera: "Only Death." Morton Marcus: "Only Death." What I'm going to do is with,

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"Only Death," I'm going to have Pablo Neruda read it himself, okay? He's just come into the studio since he decided that he was having an early birthday, he has picked himself up from Chile. And though of course, as many of you know, and as I said

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at the beginning of the show, Neruda is dead. Here is this amazing voice that he had, and I had the honor to hear back in 1966 when he was first allowed to come to the United States, he had been kept out for years because he was a communist. Here

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is Pablo Neruda reading and I might pick up a little bit of the last poems that he's going into: DEATH ALONE, and then I will read you my translation of this poem. Okay and this is one of his famous poems now from the

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first part of, "Residencia." Pablo Neruda: -como un sonido puro, como un ladrido de perro, saliendo de ciertas campanas, de ciertas tumbas, creciendo en la humedad como el llanto o la lluvia.

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Yo veo, solo, a veces, ataúdes a vela zarpar con difuntos pálidos, con mujeres de trenzas muertas, con panaderos blancos como ángeles, con niñas pensativas casadas con notarios, ataúdes subiendo el río vertical de los muertos, el río morado,

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hacia arriba, con las velas hinchadas por el sonido de la muerte, hinchadas por el sonido silencioso de la muerte. Sin embargo sus pasos suenan y su vestido suena, callado como un Yo no sé, yo conozco poco, yo ap nas veo, pero creo que su canto

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árbol. Pero la muerte va también por el mundo vestida de escoba, lame el iene color de violetas húmedas, de violetas acostumbradas a la t erra, porque la cara de la m erte es verde, y la mirada de

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a muerte es verde, con la agud humedad de una hoja de violet y su grave color de invierno e asperado. suelo buscando difuntos; la muerte está en la escoba, en la lengua de la muerte buscando muertos, es la aguja de la

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muerte buscando hilo. La muerte está en los catres: en los colchones lentos, en las frazadas negras vive tendida, y de repente sopla: sopla un sonido oscuro que hincha sábanas, y hay camas navegando a

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un puerto en donde está esperando, vestida de almirante. Morton Marcus: That was Pablo Neruda himself reading, "Death Alone," so, "Muerte Solo." And I will now read my translation of the poem from, "Residencia en la Tierra:"

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DEATH ALONE There are only cemeteries, graves full of bones without sound, the hard passing through a tunnel, dark, dark, dark, like a shipwreck within toward which we die, as if we drown in the

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heart, as if we go falling from the skin to the soul. There are cadavers, there are feet of cold clammy gravestones. There is death in the bones like a pure sound, like a bark without a dog, coming from certain bells, from certain tunes, swelling in

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dampness, like a flood of tears, or rain. I see alone. Sometimes, coffins appear on the water, weighing anchor with pale corpses, with women in braided dead hair, with white bakers like angels, with pensive girls married to notaries, coffins

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rising from the vertical river of death, the purple river, upward with sails swollen by the noise of death, swollen by the silent noise of death. Like a sonorous noise, death arrives, like a shoe without a

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foot, like a suit without a man, arrives to knock with a ring that has no stone and no finger, arrives to shout without mouth, without tongue, without throat. Nevertheless, his step-sound and his close sound, silent as a tree. I don't know, I understand

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little, I hardly see. But I believe this song has the color of damp violets, of violets accustomed to the earth, because the face of death is green with a keen dampness of the leaf of a violet and the ponderous color of exasperated winter, but death

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also goes through the world dressed as a broom, he licks the ground looking for corpses. Death is in the broom, it is the tongue of death looking for the dead, it is the needle of death looking for thread. Death is in cots and sluggish mattresses,

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stretched out in gloomy blankets and suddenly he inflates. He blows an obscure noise that swells the sheets, and there are beds sailing to a harbor where he waits, dressed as an admiral. So this is the new book, again, a very, what we call in

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California a heavy book, a depressing book in this metaphorical picture of death. He goes on to tell you what it's like to live in the world that he lives in at this time, and this is the world of a poem called, "Walking Around," one of

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his most anthologized poems, maybe the poem if he's ever represented in one anthology, that they may choose by him, because it really illustrates the surrealistic imagery that he has. I would like you to listen to something else though. Neruda

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was very, very taken with Walt Whitman, the other great American voice from the North. And it seems to me even in my translations of Neruda, especially in these poems, that we can hear Whitman: the cataloguing, the repetition of

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phrases, the huge expansive sense of the poet as embracer of the world, in this case, a not very happy world. There are many poems in which Whitman too is not happy with the world, just look at the poems on the Civil War wounded that he tended.

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Anyway, here is Gaspar Rivera again reading one of the most famous poems Neruda wrote from, "Residencias" Pablo Neruda's: WALKING AROUND Gaspar Rivera: Sucede que me canso de ser hombre. Sucede que

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entro en las sastreràas y en los cines marchito, impenetrable, como un cisne de fieltro Navegando en un agua de origen y ceniza. El olor de las peluqueràas me hace llorar a gritos. Sólo quiero un descanso de piedras o de lana, sólo

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quiero no ver establecimientos ni jardines, ni mercaderàas, ni anteojos, ni ascensores. Sucede que me canso de mis pies y mis uñas y mi pelo y mi sombra. Sucede que me canso de ser hombre. Sin embargo seràa delicioso asustar a un notario

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con un lirio cortado o dar muerte a una monja con un golpe de oreja. Seràa bello ir por las calles con un cuchillo verde y dando gritos hasta morir de frào No quiero seguir siendo raàz en las tinieblas, vacilante, extendido, tiritando

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de sueño, hacia abajo, en las tapias mojadas de la tierra, absorbiendo y pensando, comiendo cada dàa. No quiero para mà tantas desgracias. No quiero continuar de raàz y de tumba, de subterráneo solo, de bodega con muertos ateridos,

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muriéndome de pena. Por eso el dàa lunes arde como el petróleo cuando me ve llegar con mi cara de cárcel, y aàºlla en su transcurso como una rueda herida, y da pasos de sangre caliente hacia la noche. Y me empuja a ciertos rincones, a

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ciertas casas hàºmedas, a hospitales donde los huesos salen por la ventana, a ciertas zapateràas con olor a vinagre, a calles espantosas como grietas. Hay pájaros de color de azufre y horribles intestinos colgando de las puertas de las

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casas que odio, hay dentaduras olvidadas en una cafetera, hay espejos que debieran haber llorado de vergüenza y espanto, hay paraguas en todas partes, y venenos, y ombligos. Yo paseo con calma, con ojos, con zapatos, con furia, con olvido,

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paso, cruzo oficinas y tiendas de ortopedia, y patios donde hay ropas colgadas de un alambre: calzoncillos, toallas y camisas que lloran lentas lágrimas sucias. Morton Marcus: WALKING AROUND by Pablo Neruda, this Translation

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by H.R. Hayes. It so happens I am tired of being a man. It so happens that going into tailor shops and movies, I am withered and pervious like a swan of felt, navigating a water of beginnings

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and ashes. The smell of barber shops makes me weep aloud. All I want is a rest from stones or wool. All I want is not to see establishments or gardens, no merchandise, or goggles, or elevators. So happens I am tired of my feet and my nails and my

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hair and my shadow. It so happens I am tired of being a man. It would be delicious to frighten a notary with a cut lily, or do a man to death with a punch on the ear. It would be fine to go through the streets with a green knife, letting out

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yells until I died of cold. I do not want to go on being a root in the darkness, vacillating, spread out, shivering with sleep, downwards in the drenched bowels of the earth, absorbing and thinking, eating every day. I do not want so many

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afflictions, I do not want to go on being rude and tune, being alone underground, being a vault for dead men, numb with cold, dying of anguish. That is why Monday blazes like petroleum when it sees me coming with my jailbird face, and it howls like

00:26:16.920 - 00:26:32.220

a wounded wheel when it passes and takes hot-blooded steps towards night. And it shoves me into certain corners, certain damp houses, into hospitals where bones fly out of the window, in certain shoe shops with a stench of vinegar, in the

00:26:32.220 - 00:26:47.640

streets as frightful as chasms. There are silver-colored birds, and horrible intestines hanging from the doors of the houses that I hate. There are false teeth forgotten in a coffee pot, there are mirrors that ought to have wept for shame and fear.

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There are umbrellas all over, and poisons, and navels. I walk with composure, with eyes, with shoes, with fiore, with forgetfulness, I pass, I cross by offices, and orthopedic shoe shops, and patios where the washing hangs from wires,

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underwear, towels, and shirts that weep, slow, filthy tears. We are celebrating Pablo Neruda's birthday. Gaspar Rivera and I, Mort Marcus, will be back after a short musical interlude. This is Mort Marcus again and this is the Poetry Show, and

00:28:35.660 - 00:28:50.600

guess what? Tonight I have no announcements to make whatsoever except for "Lend Me Your Ear" which I'll do at the end of the show. We are Gaspar Rivera, a young local poet who I've read with before and you may have heard of, reading the works of

00:28:50.600 - 00:29:06.350

Pablo Neruda, and we are reading the, "Residencias," and we look up and we realize that already half an hour of the show is gone, and we're not gonna get out of, "Residencias," tonight most probably. So Gaspar has consented to come back and do

00:29:06.350 - 00:29:22.340

the second part of Pablo Neruda's career, from the time that he leaves Spain and writes the great, "General Song," the wonderful inspired political and natural history of South America, an imagined history of South America, all the way

00:29:22.340 - 00:29:35.570

through those wonderful, delightful poems of the odes, and we'll do that in two weeks. But for the next half-hour, let us go over some of these absolutely astonishing poems that I think you got quite a flavor of in "Walking Around."

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And what- what are we going to read next is- "Sexual Water," okay. What we have here is imagery now not only taken from literature, but imagery taken from the modern world in which he operated, the world of elevators, cheap

00:29:54.200 - 00:30:14.690

movies, nicotine-stained fingers, shoe shops that smell like vinegar, hospital windows, washing hanging from wires, underwear, towels, barber shops, the world that we know, the urban world that we know that is around us, the world that he saw

00:30:14.690 - 00:30:32.870

not only in Europe and in Santiago, but also in Southeast Asia. So, what I propose to read now is this idea of sexual water, this sense, a visionary sense - and Neruda is not the first one to do this, there was a Bolivian poet who was a real

00:30:32.870 - 00:31:14.580

mystic whose work he had read in the late 20s - and this real sense of getting to the heart of things in this extraordinary poem [cut-off]. Gaspar Rivera: El agua, a goterones lentos, hacia su mar,

00:31:14.940 - 00:31:35.490

hacia su seco océano, hacia su ola sin agua. extenso, y un estertor saliendo de un granero, bodegas, cigarras, poblaciones, estímulos, habitaciones, niñas durmiendo con las manos en el corazón, soñando con bandidos,

00:31:35.580 - 00:31:58.830

con incendios, veo barcos, veo árboles de médula erizados como gatos rabiosos, veo sangre, puñales y medias de mujer, y pelos de hombre, veo camas, veo corredores donde grita una virgen, veo frazadas y órganos y hoteles. Veo los sueños

00:31:58.830 - 00:32:19.920

sigilosos, admito los postreros días, y también los orígenes, y también los recuerdos, como un párpado atrozmente levantado a la fuerza estoy mirando. Y entonces hay este sonido: un ruido rojo de huesos, un pegarse de carne, y piernas

00:32:19.950 - 00:32:37.950

amarillas como espigas juntándose. Yo escucho entre el disparo de los besos, escucho, sacudido entre respiraciones y sollozos. Estoy mirando, oyendo, con la mitad del alma en el mar y la mitad del alma en la tierra, y con las dos

00:32:37.950 - 00:32:59.670

mitades del alma miro al mundo. y aunque cierre los ojos y me cubra el corazón enteramente, veo caer un agua sorda, a goterones sordos. Es como un huracán de gelatina, como una catarata de espermas y medusas. Veo correr un arco iris turbio.

00:32:59.880 - 00:33:17.430

Veo pasar sus aguas a través de los huesos. Morton Marcus: SEXUAL WATER by Pablo Neruda as translated by H.R. Hayes. Running in single drops, in drops like teeth, in thick drops

00:33:17.430 - 00:33:34.440

of marmalade and blood, running in drops the water forms. Like a sort of drops, like a rending river of glass, it falls binding, striking the axis of symmetry, hitting on the ribs of the soul, breaking cast off things, soaking the darkness. It

00:33:34.440 - 00:33:52.110

is only a gust, damper than tears, a liquid of sweat, a nameless oil, a sharp movement creating itself, thickening itself, the water falls in slow drops toward the sea, toward its dry ocean, toward its wave without water. I see a long

00:33:52.110 - 00:34:06.570

summer in a deathrattle coming out of a granary, cellars, cicadas tune, stimuli, habitations, girl children sleeping with hands on their hearts, dreaming with pirates with fire. I see ships, I see trees of spinal cord bristling

00:34:06.570 - 00:34:24.300

like furious cats. I see blood, daggers, and women's stockings. I see men's hair, I see beds, I see corridors where a virgin screams, I see blankets and organs and hotels. I see stealthy dreams, I accept the preceding days, and also

00:34:24.300 - 00:34:43.200

origins, and also memories. Like an eyelid dreadfully raised by false, I am watching. And then there is this noise, the red sound of bones, and the hearing of flesh, and legs yellow as green stalks joining together. I am listening along explosions of

00:34:43.200 - 00:35:01.260

kisses. I am listening, shaking among breathing and sobs. I am watching, hearing with half my soul on sea and half my soul on land, and with both halves of my soul, I look at the world. And I close my eyes and cover my heart completely, I see a deaf water

00:35:01.260 - 00:35:21.960

falling in deaf drops. It is like a hurricane of gelatin, like a cataract of sperm and medusas, I see a muddy rainbow flowing, I see its waters passing through my bones. Well, this amazing ability to pierce through to the very

00:35:22.080 - 00:35:41.700

essence of existence comes out of, yes, a picture of tiredness and exhaustion and ennui, a horror of the modern world around him and the way that world is moving in the early 1930s, of course, it's moving towards the Spanish Civil War

00:35:41.700 - 00:35:59.220

and towards World War Two. But on his way back to Europe, he writes a series of poems which I can, going back to, I don't have all the poems here, so I probably won't be able to find them. But they're all the poems really of, "Residencias Number

00:35:59.220 - 00:36:16.200

One," written in 1933, and includes such famous poems as, "Arte Poetica," "The Ars Poetica," "Sonata and Destructions," the wonderful one about the ship which is not in here, "The Dream Horses," "The Phantom Ship," the two poems

00:36:16.200 - 00:36:35.610

we're going to read now, "Caballero Solo," and, "Tango del Viudo," or, "The Widower's Tango." They're an amazing series of poems and let us start off with this dual picture really, which is- do we have, "Caballero Solo," next? Okay,

00:36:35.640 - 00:36:52.350

this is, and you're going to have to transfer the book to me. This is really Neruda's picture of himself and how he feels the world invades you rapaciously like a jungle, interesting imagery because he was born in the jungle. In fact, may I

00:36:52.350 - 00:37:06.360

suggest to you if this program interests you, not only his poems, but a wonderful autobiography that he wrote called, "Memoirs," which I'm sure you can still get in places down like Logos. It is an incredible book, it was put out

00:37:06.510 - 00:37:18.030

in hardback, but it's been in paperback for years from Penguin. I don't know whether it's still around but it is just a beautifully evocative work, and much of the information I'm giving you about his life tonight is taken from it, but it

00:37:18.150 - 00:37:34.920

in no way I can capture the gorgeous style, and the sense of everything this man touches turns to poetry. Here is this poem, "The Caballero," the gentleman, "Alone," right? That's the one we're reading next? Okay, and this is the way

00:37:34.920 - 00:37:48.510

they follow one poem, two poems, we're going to do, "Gentleman Alone," and then we're going to do, "The Widower's Tango," and I'll tell you about that. But here is Pablo Neruda's sort of painting this portrait of himself and the sickness of the

00:37:48.510 - 00:38:02.130

soul that he feels in 1933. Gaspar Rivera: CABALLERO SOLO Los jóvenes homosexuales y as muchachas amorosas, y las largas viudas que sufren el d lirante insomnio, y las jóven

00:38:02.130 - 00:38:17.700

s señoras preñadas hace trei ta horas, y los roncos gat s que cruzan mi jardín e tinieblas, como un collar de p lpitantes ostras sexuales rod an mi residencia solitaria, como enemigos establecidos cont a mi alma, como conspiradores

00:38:17.700 - 00:38:36.210

n traje de dormitorio que cambi ran largos besos espesos por onsigna. formes regimientos melancól cos, hechos de gordas y flac s y alegres y tristes parejas: bajo los elegantes cocoter

00:38:36.210 - 00:38:55.110

s, junto al océano y la luna hay una continua vida de pantalo es y polleras, un rumor de med as de seda acariciadas, y s nos femeninos que brillan como ojos. espués de mucho, después del t dio semanal, y las novelas

00:38:55.110 - 00:39:12.660

eídas de noche, en cama, ha d finitivamente seducido a su vec na, y la lleva a los m serables cinematógrafos donde l s héroes son potros o príncipe apasionados, y acaricia us piernas llenas de dulce vel o con sus ardientes y húme

00:39:12.660 - 00:39:31.530

as manos que huelen a cigarril o. r y las noches de los esposos tándome, y las horas después de almuerzo en que los jóvenes es udiantes, y los jóvenes estudi ntes, y los sacerdotes se mast

00:39:31.530 - 00:39:45.990

rban, y los animales forn can directamente, y las a ejas huelen a sangre, y las moscas zumban coléricas, y l s primos juegan extrañamente con sus primas, y los médico miran con furia al marido e la joven paciente, y las hora

00:39:46.140 - 00:40:03.600

de la mañana en que el profes r, como por des- cuido, cum le con su deber conyugal, y esayuna, y, más aún, los adúlte os, que se aman con verdadero amor sobre lechos al os y largos como embarcac ones: seguramente, eternament

00:40:03.600 - 00:40:23.950

me rodea este gran bosque respiratorio y enredado con grandes flores como bocas dentaduras y negras raíces e forma de uñas y zapatos. Morton Marcus: "Solo Gentleman," by Pablo Neruda translated by

00:40:24.370 - 00:40:41.770

yours truly. If there is graphic language which does offend people listening out there, turn the radio off for the next two minutes I'd say because there are one or two lines here that are graphic. This is one of my favorite poems. It really

00:40:41.800 - 00:40:56.680

describes a kind of life, a quiet desperation, as Thoreau would call it, and the images are absolutely, I think, startling. And this, connected with the next poem we're going to read, really can just show you. These poems alone would

00:40:57.100 - 00:41:09.490

make him great. There are around twenty or thirty poems from, "The Residencias," this one book alone, that are alone considered great poems in the Spanish language. I mean, he has written so many great poems that we really don't know how to edit

00:41:09.490 - 00:41:23.700

them, I think. THE SINGLE GENTLEMAN The homosexual young men and the amorous girls, and the long widows who suffer from delirious insomnia, and the young wives

00:41:23.700 - 00:41:39.240

thirty hours pregnant, and the raucous cats that cross my garden in the dark, they surround my solitary house like a necklace of throbbing sexual oysters, like enemies established against my soul, like conspirators in pajamas who

00:41:39.240 - 00:41:56.040

exchange long thick kisses on signal. The radiant summer leads the lovers in uniform melancholy regiments, made of fat and skinny and happy and sad couples. Beneath the elegant coconut trees, near the ocean and the moon, there was a

00:41:56.040 - 00:42:14.730

continuous life of trousers and skirts, a murmur of caressed silk stockings and feminine breasts that shine like eyes. The petit employee after a long time, after the weekly tedium in the novels read in bed at night, has definitively seduced his

00:42:14.730 - 00:42:30.360

neighbor and takes her to miserable movies where the heroes are cults or passionate princes, and he strokes her legs covered with soft down with his hot, moist hands that smell of cigarettes. The twilights of the seducer in the nights of the

00:42:30.360 - 00:42:47.400

married couples unite like two bedsheets burying me. And the hours after lunch when the young male students and the young women students, and the priests, masturbate, and the animals openly fuck, and the bees smell of blood, and the flies buzz

00:42:47.400 - 00:43:02.850

angrily, and the boy cousins play strangely with the girl cousins, and the doctors look furiously at the husband of the young patients, and the morning hours when the professor absent mindedly fulfills his conjugal duty and has breakfast. And

00:43:02.850 - 00:43:21.840

still more, the adulterers, who love each other with true love on beds as high and long as ocean liners. Surely, eternally, I am surrounded by this great breathing, an entangled forest with huge flowers like mouths and teeth and black roots shaped

00:43:21.990 - 00:43:43.920

like fingernails and shoes. Well, one thing was that Neruda was coming from a disastrous love affair with a psychotic young woman in Ceylon. He calls her Maligna, the malignant one. And this is the subject for one

00:43:43.920 - 00:43:59.880

of the most extraordinary love poems, a love poem of fear and longing, and yet, of goodbye and an amazing tone, which is called, "The Widower's Tango," as he remembers her and here, reading it in Spanish once again, is my dear friend.

00:44:02.460 - 00:44:17.160

Gaspar Rivera: TANGO DEL VIUDO Oh Maligna, ya habrás hallado la carta, ya habrás llorado de furia, y habrás insultado el recuerdo de mi madre llamándola perra podrida y madre de perros, ya habrás bebido sola,

00:44:17.160 - 00:44:34.530

solitaria, el té del atardecer mirando mis viejos zapatos vacíos para siempre, y ya no podrás recordar mis enfermedades, mis sueños nocturnos, mis comidas, sin maldecirme en voz alta como si estuviera allí aún quejándome

00:44:34.530 - 00:44:54.510

del trópico, de los coolíes corringhis, de las venenosas fiebres que me hicieron tanto daño y de los espantosos ingleses que odio todavía. Maligna, la verdad, qué noche tan grande, qué tierra tan sola! He llegado otra vez a los

00:44:54.510 - 00:45:12.570

dormitorios solitarios, a almorzar en los restaurantes comida fría, y otra vez tiro al suelo los pantalones y las camisas, no hay perchas en mi habitación, ni retratos de nadie en las paredes. Cuánta sombra de la que hay en mi alma daría

00:45:12.570 - 00:45:30.600

por recobrarte, y qué amenazadores me parecen los nombres de los meses, y la palabra invierno qué sonido de tambor lúgubre tiene. Enterrado junto al cocotero hallarás más tarde el cuchillo que escondí allí por temor de

00:45:30.600 - 00:45:47.760

que me mataras, y ahora repentinamente quisiera oler su acero de cocina acostumbrado al peso de tu mano y al brillo de tu pie: bajo la humedad de la tierra, entre las sordas raíces, de los lenguajes humanos el pobre sólo sabría tu nombre, y

00:45:49.860 - 00:46:08.730

la espesa tierra no comprende tu nombre hecho de impenetrables substancias divinas. de tus piernas recostadas como detenidas y duras aguas solares, y la golondrina que durmiendo y volando vive en tus ojos, y el

00:46:08.790 - 00:46:28.140

perro de furia que asilas en el corazón, así también veo las muertes que están entre nosotros desde ahora, y respiro en el aire la ceniza y lo destruido, el largo, solitario espacio que me rodea para siempre.

00:46:28.140 - 00:46:44.850

tu brusca respiración oída en largas noches sin mezcla de olvido, uniéndose a la atmósfera como el látigo a la piel del caballo. y por oírte orinar, en la oscuridad, en el fondo de la casa, como vertiendo una miel delgada,

00:46:45.000 - 00:47:03.330

trémula, argentina, obstinada, cuántas veces entregaría este coro de sombras que poseo, y el ruido de espadas inútiles que se oye en mi alma, y la paloma de sangre que está solitaria en mi frente llamando cosas desaparecidas, seres

00:47:03.360 - 00:47:24.870

desaparecidos, substancias extrañamente inseparables y perdidas. Morton Marcus: Yes, so I'm going to read now, "The Widower's Tango." Again, he is talking to this woman who he calls in the

00:47:24.870 - 00:47:38.940

poem, Maligna, or malignant one, and what I love about this poem is that she is really dangerous and is trying to kill him and he has had to get away from her. And yet now looking back over the love affair, even as dangerous as she is, there was

00:47:38.970 - 00:47:57.630

an excitement, a primal urge that was set off by her that he does not deny. Recognizing his actual physical danger from her, he still longs for her and tries to talk to her in the quiet of the poem, actually, as he is moving by ship towards Europe,

00:47:59.310 - 00:48:13.920

south probably around the southern tip of both India and then Africa. Anyway, this is: THE WIDOWER'S TANGO, he is obviously the widow and he is dancing with himself as he has seen people do in South America

00:48:13.920 - 00:48:30.720

who are all alone and he recalls this love affair in a voice of anguish, terror, and longing, and I think it's an amazing piece of work. Oh Maligna, by now you will have found the letter, by now you

00:48:30.720 - 00:48:45.960

will have cried with rage, and you will live insulted the memory of my mother, calling her a rotten bitch and a mother of dogs. By now you will have drunk alone, all by yourself, your afternoon tea with your eyes on my old shoes which are empty

00:48:45.960 - 00:49:00.330

forever. And by now you will not be able to recall my illnesses, my dreams at night, my meals without cursing me out loud, as though I was still there, complaining of the tropics, of the coolies Coringhis, of the poisonous fevers that did me

00:49:00.330 - 00:49:17.970

such harm and of the horrendous English, whom I still hate. Maligna, the truth of it: how huge the night is, how lonely the earth. I have gone back to single bedrooms, to cold lunches and restaurants, and I dropped my pants and my shirts on the

00:49:17.970 - 00:49:32.970

floor as I used to, there are no hangers in my room and nobody's pictures are on the walls. How much of the shadow that is in my soul I would give to have you back. The names of the months sounds to me like threats, and the word winter is like the

00:49:32.970 - 00:49:48.300

sound of a lugubrious drum. Later on you will find buried near the coconut tree the knife which I hid there for fear you would kill me, and now, suddenly, I would be glad to smell its kitchen steel used to the weight of your hand, the

00:49:48.300 - 00:50:05.940

shine of your foot, under the dampness of the ground, among the leaf roots. In all the languages of men, only the poor will know your name, and the dense earth does not understand your name made of impenetrable divine substances. Oh, thus it

00:50:05.940 - 00:50:22.680

hurts me to think of the clear day of your legs in repose like waters of the sun made to stay in place, and the swallow that lives in your eyes sleeping and flying, and the mad dog that you harbor in your heart, and that's also I see the dead who are

00:50:22.680 - 00:50:43.860

between us and will be from now on, and I breathe ash and other ruin in the air itself. I would give this giant sea when for your sudden breath and the vast solitary space that will be around me forever. I would give this wind off the giant sea for

00:50:43.860 - 00:50:58.620

your hoarse breathing heard in the long nights unmixed with oblivion, becoming part of the atmosphere as the whip becomes part of the horse's skin. And to hear you, urinate, in the darkness, at the bottom of the house, as though you were

00:50:58.620 - 00:51:15.540

pouring a slow tremulous, silvery, obstinate honey. How many times over would I yield up this choir of shadows which I possess now. And the clash of useless swords, which is audible in my soul, and the dove of blood alone in my forehead,

00:51:15.600 - 00:51:32.070

calling to things which have vanished, to beings who have vanished, to substances incomprehensively inseparable and lost. We are coming up to five of the hour, and I am going to ask you

00:51:32.370 - 00:51:56.220

if you could just read the last half of that poem that we're going to end with. We now jump to the third part of, "Residencias," and again, we will continue this Pablo Neruda party two weeks from tonight, when we will do poems from the

00:51:56.220 - 00:52:09.750

end of the Civil War, the end of, "Residencias," or from, "Canto General," all the way up through the end of Neruda's life. And we will end now with one of the traumatic moments of his life as we have read, and as I think you've heard, what we

00:52:09.750 - 00:52:24.420

have been given here is a portrait of a man who is completely isolated within himself, and who reacts to the world in a personal manner. What is going to change, and what's going to change with this next poem, is that he is going to

00:52:24.420 - 00:52:40.980

become a man of the people, he is going to go out to the people, and he is going to become a member of the Communist Party because of the horror he sees during the Spanish Civil War. This is the great change in his life and let me just get

00:52:41.010 - 00:53:00.450

Gaspar who I'm giving a whole lot of mixed signals to here. Why don't we just read the Spanish from, "Generales Traidores," okay. And then I will read, again, these poems are just so astonishing and they are so different. What we will

00:53:00.450 - 00:53:15.960

read next week, or two weeks from tonight, will be totally different kinds of poems, very celebratory, very positive poems, and very funny poems, and in many ways, even more accessible though these things beat an elemental self. So, here

00:53:15.960 - 00:53:27.600

is Gaspar Rivera, who has been nice enough to come up here at night and read one of his favorite poets, reading only the last part of this poem, which is entitled, Gaspar? Gaspar Rivera: EXPLICO ALGUNAS COSAS

00:53:27.720 - 00:53:38.790

Morton Marcus: I SAY A FEW THINGS, or, I EXPLAIN A FEW THINGS Gaspar Rivera: Generales traidores: mirad mi casa muerta, mirad España rota: pero de cada casa muerta sale

00:53:38.790 - 00:53:56.880

metal ardiendo en vez de flores, pero de cada hueco de España sale España, pero de cada niño muerto sale un fusil con ojos, pero de cada crimen nacen balas que os hallarán un día el sitio del corazón. Preguntaréis por qué su poesía

00:53:57.270 - 00:54:11.970

no nos habla del sueño, de las hojas, de los grandes volcanes de su país natal? a ver la sangre por las calles, venid a ver la sangre por las calles!

00:54:17.760 - 00:54:31.080

Morton Marcus: And this is the poem in which Neruda, who had always been active among people, very gregarious man, really comes out of the private self and out of the depression of the rest of the book, of, "Residences," and finds a

00:54:31.080 - 00:54:44.960

totally new life, which again, as I said, we will go into two weeks from tonight, as we cover the second half of his career. The Spanish Civil War has broken out, the poem: I EXPLAIN A FEW THINGS, from the third part of "Residences on

00:54:44.960 - 00:54:57.750

Earth." You will ask: and where are the lilacs? and the metaphysical blanket of poppies? and the rain that often struck your words filling them with holes and birds? I'm going to tell you all

00:54:57.750 - 00:55:11.850

that is happening to me. I lived in a quarter of Madrid with bells, with clocks, with trees. From there, one could see the dry face of Castille like an ocean of leather. My house was called the house of flowers, because it was bursting

00:55:11.850 - 00:55:28.920

everywhere with geraniums, it was a fine house with dogs and children. Raul, do you remember? Do you remember, Rafael? Federico, do you remember? Under the earth, do you remember my house with balconies with June lights smothered flowers in my

00:55:28.920 - 00:55:46.410

mouth? Brother, brother! Everything was great voices, the tang of merchandise, heaps of throbbing bread, markets of Arguelles quarter with its statue like a pale inkwell among the hanoch(?). The olive oil reached the ladles, a deep

00:55:46.410 - 00:56:03.330

throbbing of feet and hands filled the streets, meters, liters, sharp essence of life, fish piled up like a pattern of roofs and a cold sun where the vane grows weary, frenzied, fine ivory of potatoes, tomatoes stretching to the sea. And one

00:56:03.330 - 00:56:20.100

morning all was in flames. And one morning, the fires came out of the earth devouring people, and from then on, fire, gunpowder from then on, and from then on, blood. Bandits with airplanes and with Moors, bandits with rings and

00:56:20.100 - 00:56:34.440

duchesses, bandits with a black robe friars blessing came through the air to kill children, and through the streets, the blood of the children ran simply like children's blood. Jackals that the jackal would spurn, stones

00:56:34.440 - 00:56:53.010

that the dry thistle would bite while spitting them out, vipers and vipers would abhor. Facing you, I have seen the blood of Spain rise up to drown you in a single wave of pride and knives. Treacherous generals: look at my dead house, look at broken

00:56:53.490 - 00:57:13.290

Spain. But from each dead house comes burning metal instead of flowers, but from each hollow of Spain, Spain comes forth, but from each dead child comes a gun with eyes, but from each crime, bullets are born that will one day find where your heart lies.

00:57:15.360 - 00:57:36.720

You will ask, why does my poetry not speak to us of dirt, of leaves, of the great volcanoes of my native land? Come and see the blood in the streets. Come and see the blood in the streets. Come and see the blood in the streets!

00:57:40.050 - 00:57:57.570

Pablo Neruda, born July 12th, 1904, this has been Gaspar Rivera, Morton Marcus on the Poetry Show. Let me make some announcements before we leave. We will be back in two weeks with the second part of Pablo Neruda's career. KUSP though

00:57:57.570 - 00:58:14.220

thanks Nicholas Van Angle for providing a grant to help make this program possible. Nicholas Van Angle is a realtor in Carmel. And Playhouse, this Thursday at 9pm, radio drama from National Public Radio. Frankenstein Part Four, a

00:58:14.220 - 00:58:26.160

Frankenstein family nursemaid stands accused of the murder of young William Frankenstein. Dr. Frankenstein knows in his heart that the monster is guilty, but he cannot bring himself to reveal the truth of his awful creation.

00:58:27.740 - 00:58:45.290

This is Mort Marcus saying that you should stay tuned for "Out Front Outback" with Larry Blood and to tell you, because it is after the hour, that this is KUSP Santa Cruz, Monterey, Salinas at 88.9 to 91.7 on your dial.