[Heteronym]

Memoirs…

Americans have an uncanny ability to ruin good titles. They translated Pimo Levi’s Auschwitz’ memoirs as ‘Survival in Auschwitz’ (a redundancy if there ever was one: if Levi hadn’t survived he couldn’t have written it). The original title of Neruda’s autobiography roughly translates as ‘I Confess I Lived’. What may sound as a witty title is in fact a cry of revolt from a man who was chased almost his entire life for his beliefs. Many people would rather Neruda had never been born, and this book is a satisfying slap on the faces all of all those people.

Neruda spent much of his early life as a Chilean consul, first in Asia, then in Europe. In Ceylon, Rangoon and Batavia he fell in love with the local culture and resented the prejudiced and ostracising British culture.

In Europe he witnessed the Spanish Civil War firsthand and fought Franco the way only a poet can: writing inspiring poems for the soldiers; denouncing Franco’s ideology; raising awareness. Together with dozens of other poets, Neruda constituted an intellectual front against the dictator. Neruda remembers with sadness the day his poet friend, Federico García Lorca, was assassinated. Using his consul powers he managed to ship hundreds of Spanish to the Americas, where they’d be safe from the prison camps. For this he received only spite from his own government.

Around the ‘40s, when he returned to Chile, Neruda became a senator. He took up the cause of thousands of Chilean copper mine workers against the foreign companies that exploited them. Overnight Neruda became a despised, hunted man: the government tried to arrest him; Neruda remained free by changing hideouts dozens of times, until he escaped to Europe, where he continued to be a persona non grata: wherever he want authorities refused him entry or tried to expel him under false accusations.

His belief in human dignity, freedom and love inevitably turned him, like many other intellectuals at the time, into a communist: he visited Russia and China, believed in the Soviet revolution, and never lost faith in the ideology even when its atrocities became obvious. He met Mao, Che Guevara (who had a book of poems by Neruda in his sack when he died) and Fidel Castro. He received favours from Staline himself. He supported Salvador Allende. For this reason thousands wanted him dead. Hence the original title of this book, his strong declaration in favour of life.

Meanwhile he always kept writing poetry. He narrates with joy how he recited his poems to peasants and mine workers, and how it bewildered they understood him. Once he filled a Brazilian stadium with 130,000 people. He met writers from all around the world (after all the nice things he says about Jorge Amado, I have to read him), and organized countless literary events.

Reading Pablo Neruda’s memoirs will leave you with a new taste for life and especially poetry.