Neruda’s Nobel
Lecture: Towards the
My
speech is going to be a long journey, a trip that I have taken through regions
that are distant and antipodean, but not for that
reason any less similar to the landscape and the solitude in
Down
there on those vast expanses in my native country, where I was taken by events
which have already fallen into oblivion, one has to cross, and I was compelled
to cross, the Andes to find the frontier of my country with
Each
of us made his way forward filled with this limitless solitude, with the green
and white silence of trees and huge trailing plants and layers of soil laid
down over centuries, among half-fallen tree trunks which suddenly appeared as
fresh obstacles to bar our progress. We were in a dazzling and secret world of
nature which at the same time was a growing menace of cold, snow and
persecution. Everything became one: the solitude, the danger, the silence, and
the urgency of my mission.
Sometimes
we followed a very faint trail, perhaps left by smugglers or ordinary criminals
in flight, and we did not know whether many of them had perished, surprised by
the icy hands of winter, by the fearful snowstorms which suddenly rage in the
Andes and engulf the traveller, burying him under a whiteness seven storeys
high.
On
either side of the trail I could observe in the wild desolation something which
betrayed human activity. There were piled up branches which had lasted out many
winters, offerings made by hundreds who had journeyed there, crude burial mounds
in memory of the fallen, so that the passer should think of those who had not
been able to struggle on but had remained there under the snow for ever. My
comrades, too, hacked off with their machetes branches which brushed our heads
and bent down over us from the colossal trees, from oaks whose last leaves were
scattering before the winter storms. And I too left a tribute at every mound, a
visiting card of wood, a branch from the forest to deck one or other of the
graves of these unknown travellers.
We
had to cross a river. Up on the Andean summits there run small streams which
cast themselves down with dizzy and insane force, forming waterfalls that stir
up earth and stones with the violence they bring with them from the heights.
But this time we found calm water, a wide mirrorlike
expanse which could be forded. The horses splashed in, lost their foothold and
began to swim towards the other bank. Soon my horse was almost completely
covered by the water, I began to plunge up and down
without support, my feet fighting desperately while the horse struggled to keep
its head above water. Then we got across. And hardly we
reached the further bank when the seasoned countryfolk
with me asked me with scarce-concealed smiles.
"Were
you frightened?"
"Very.
I thought my last hour had come", I said.
"We
were behind you with our lassoes in our hands", they answered.
"Just
there", added one of them, "my father fell and was swept away by the
current. That didn't happen to you."
We
continued till we came to a natural tunnel which perhaps had been bored through
the imposing rocks by some mighty vanished river or created by some tremor of
the earth when these heights had been formed, a channel that we entered where
it had been carved out in the rock in granite. After only a few steps our
horses began to slip when they sought for a foothold in the uneven surfaces of
the stone and their legs were bent, sparks flying from beneath their iron shoes
- several times I expected to find myself thrown off and lying there on the
rock. My horse was bleeding from its muzzle and from its legs, but we
persevered and continued on the long and difficult but magnificent path.
There
was something awaiting us in the midst of this wild primeval forest. Suddenly, as if in a strange vision, we came to a beautiful little
meadow huddled among the rocks: clear water, green grass, wild flowers, the
purling of brooks and the blue heaven above, a generous stream of light
unimpeded by leaves.
There
we stopped as if within a magic circle, as if guests within some hallowed
place, and the ceremony I now took part in had still more the air of something
sacred. The cowherds dismounted from their horses. In the midst of the space,
set up as if in a rite, was the skull of an ox. In silence the men approached
it one after the other and put coins and food in the eyesockets
of the skull. I joined them in this sacrifice intended for stray travellers,
all kinds of refugees who would find bread and succour in the dead ox's eye
sockets.
But
the unforgettable ceremony did not end there. My country friends took off their
hats and began a strange dance, hopping on one foot around the abandoned skull,
moving in the ring of footprints left behind by the many others who had passed
there before them. Dimly I understood, there by the side of my inscrutable
companions, that there was a kind of link between unknown people, a care, an
appeal and an answer even in the most distant and isolated solitude of this
world.
Further
on, just before we reached the frontier which was to divide me from my native
land for many years, we came at night to the last pass between the mountains.
Suddenly we saw the glow of a fire as a sure sign of a human presence, and when
we came nearer we found some half-ruined buildings, poor hovels which seemed to
have been abandoned. We went into one of them and saw the glow of fire from
tree trunks burning in the middle of the floor, carcasses of huge trees, which
burnt there day and night and from which came smoke that made its way up
through the cracks in the roof and rose up like a deep-blue veil in the midst
of the darkness. We saw mountains of stacked cheeses, which are made by the
people in these high regions. Near the fire lay a number of men grouped like
sacks. In the silence we could distinguish the notes of a guitar and words in a
song which was born of the embers and the darkness, and which carried with it
the first human voice we had encountered during our journey. It was a song of
love and distance, a cry of love and longing for the distant spring, from the
towns we were coming away from, for life in its limitless extent. These men did
not know who we were, they knew nothing about our flight, they had never heard
either my name or my poetry; or perhaps they did, perhaps they knew us? What
actually happened was that at this fire we sang and we ate, and then in the
darkness we went into some primitive rooms. Through them flowed a warm stream,
volcanic water in which we bathed, warmth which welled out from the mountain
chain and received us in its bosom.
Happily
we splashed about, dug ourselves out, as it were, liberated
ourselves from the weight of the long journey on horseback. We felt refreshed,
reborn, baptised, when in the dawn we started on the journey of a few miles
which was to eclipse me from my native land. We rode away on our horses
singing, filled with a new air, with a force that cast us out on to the world's
broad highway which awaited me. This I remember well, that when we sought to
give the mountain dwellers a few coins in gratitude for their songs, for the
food, for the warm water, for giving us lodging and beds, I would rather say
for the unexpected heavenly refuge that had met us on our journey, our offering
was rejected out of hand. They had been at our service, nothing more. In this
taciturn "nothing" there were hidden things that were understood,
perhaps a recognition, perhaps the same kind of
dreams.
Ladies
and Gentlemen,
I
did not learn from books any recipe for writing a poem, and I, in my turn, will
avoid giving any advice on mode or style which might give the new poets even a
drop of supposed insight. When I am recounting in this speech something about
past events, when reliving on this occasion a never-forgotten occurrence, in
this place which is so different from what that was, it is because in the
course of my life I have always found somewhere the necessary support, the
formula which had been waiting for me not in order to be petrified in my words
but in order to explain me to myself.
During
this long journey I found the necessary components for the making of the poem.
There I received contributions from the earth and from the soul. And I believe
that poetry is an action, ephemeral or solemn, in which there enter as equal partners solitude and solidarity, emotion and action, the
nearness to oneself, the nearness to mankind and to the secret manifestations
of nature. And no less strongly I think that all this is sustained - man and
his shadow, man and his conduct, man and his poetry - by an ever-wider sense of
community, by an effort which will for ever bring together the reality and the
dreams in us because it is precisely in this way that poetry unites and mingles
them. And therefore I say that I do not know, after so many years, whether the
lessons I learned when I crossed a daunting river, when I danced around the
skull of an ox, when I bathed my body in the cleansing water from the topmost
heights - I do not know whether these lessons welled forth from me in order to
be imparted to many others or whether it was all a message which was sent to me
by others as a demand or an accusation. I do not know whether I experienced
this or created it, I do not know whether it was truth or poetry, something
passing or permanent, the poems I experienced in this hour, the experiences
which I later put into verse.
From
all this, my friends, there arises an insight which the poet must learn through
other people. There is no insurmountable solitude. All paths lead to the same
goal: to convey to others what we are. And we must pass through solitude and
difficulty, isolation and silence in order to reach forth to the enchanted
place where we can dance our clumsy dance and sing our sorrowful song - but in
this dance or in this song there are fulfilled the most ancient rites of our
conscience in the awareness of being human and of believing in a common
destiny.
The
truth is that even if some or many consider me to be a sectarian, barred from
taking a place at the common table of friendship and responsibility, I do not
wish to defend myself, for I believe that neither accusation nor defence is
among the tasks of the poet. When all is said, there is no individual poet who
administers poetry, and if a poet sets himself up to accuse his fellows or if
some other poet wastes his life in defending himself against reasonable or
unreasonable charges, it is my conviction that only vanity
can so mislead us. I consider the enemies of poetry to be found not
among those who practise poetry or guard it but in mere lack of agreement in
the poet. For this reason no poet has any considerable enemy other than his own
incapacity to make himself understood by the most
forgotten and exploited of his contemporaries, and this applies to all epochs
and in all countries.
The
poet is not a "little god". No, he is not a "little god".
He is not picked out by a mystical destiny in preference to those who follow
other crafts and professions. I have often maintained that the best poet is he
who prepares our daily bread: the nearest baker who does not imagine himself to be a god. He does his majestic and unpretentious
work of kneading the dough, consigning it to the oven, baking it in golden
colours and handing us our daily bread as a duty of fellowship. And, if the
poet succeeds in achieving this simple consciousness, this too will be transformed
into an element in an immense activity, in a simple or complicated structure
which constitutes the building of a community, the changing of the conditions
which surround mankind, the handing over of mankind's products: bread, truth,
wine, dreams. If the poet joins this never-completed struggle to extend to the
hands of each and all his part of his undertaking, his effort and his
tenderness to the daily work of all people, then the poet must take part, the
poet will take part, in the sweat, in the bread, in the wine, in the whole
dream of humanity. Only in this indispensable way of being ordinary people
shall we give back to poetry the mighty breadth which has been pared away from
it little by little in every epoch, just as we ourselves have been whittled
down in every epoch.
The
mistakes which led me to a relative truth and the truths which repeatedly led
me back to the mistakes did not allow me - and I never made any claims to it -
to find my way to lead, to learn what is called the creative process, to reach
the heights of literature that are so difficult of access. But one thing I
realized - that it is we ourselves who call forth the spirits through our own
myth-making. From the matter we use, or wish to use, there arise later on
obstacles to our own development and the future development. We are led
infallibly to reality and realism, that is to say to become indirectly
conscious of everything that surrounds us and of the ways of change, and then
we see, when it seems to be late, that we have erected such an exaggerated
barrier that we are killing what is alive instead of helping life to develop
and blossom. We force upon ourselves a realism which later proves to be more
burdensome than the bricks of the building, without having erected the building
which we had regarded as an indispensable part of our task. And, in the
contrary case, if we succeed in creating the fetish of the incomprehensible (or
the fetish of that which is comprehensible only to a few), the fetish of the
exclusive and the secret, if we exclude reality and its realistic
degenerations, then we find ourselves suddenly surrounded by an impossible
country, a quagmire of leaves, of mud, of cloud, where our feet sink in and we
are stifled by the impossibility of communicating.
As
far as we in particular are concerned, we writers
within the tremendously far-flung American region, we listen unceasingly to the
call to fill this mighty void with beings of flesh and blood. We are conscious
of our duty as fulfillers - at the same time we are faced with the unavoidable
task of critical communication within a world which is empty and is not less
full of injustices, punishments and sufferings because it is empty - and we
feel also the responsibility for reawakening the old dreams which sleep in statues
of stone in the ruined ancient monuments, in the wide-stretching silence in
planetary plains, in dense primeval forests, in rivers which roar like thunder.
We must fill with words the most distant places in a dumb continent and we are
intoxicated by this task of making fables and giving names. This is perhaps
what is decisive in my own humble case, and if so my exaggerations or my
abundance or my rhetoric would not be anything other than the simplest of
events within the daily work of an American. Each and every one of my verses
has chosen to take its place as a tangible object, each and every one of my
poems has claimed to be a useful working instrument, each and every one of my
songs has endeavoured to serve as a sign in space for a meeting between paths
which cross one another, or as a piece of stone or wood on which someone, some
others, those who follow after, will be able to carve the new signs.
By
extending to these extreme consequences the poet's duty, in truth or in error,
I determined that my posture within the community and before life should be
that of in a humble way taking sides. I decided this when I saw so many
honourable misfortunes, lone victories, splendid defeats. In the midst of the
arena of America's struggles I saw that my human task was none other than to
join the extensive forces of the organized masses of the people, to join with
life and soul with suffering and hope, because it is only from this great
popular stream that the necessary changes can arise for the authors and for the
nations. And even if my attitude gave and still gives rise to bitter or
friendly objections, the truth is that I can find no other way for an author in
our far-flung and cruel countries, if we want the darkness to blossom, if we
are concerned that the millions of people who have learnt neither to read us
nor to read at all, who still cannot write or write to us, are to feel at home
in the area of dignity without which it is impossible for them to be complete
human beings.
We
have inherited this damaged life of peoples dragging behind them the burden of
the condemnation of centuries, the most paradisaical
of peoples, the purest, those who with stones and metals made marvellous
towers, jewels of dazzling brilliance - peoples who were suddenly despoiled and
silenced in the fearful epochs of colonialism which still linger on.
Our
original guiding stars are struggle and hope. But there is no such thing as a
lone struggle, no such thing as a lone hope. In every human being are combined
the most distant epochs, passivity, mistakes, sufferings, the pressing
urgencies of our own time, the pace of history. But what would have become of
me if, for example, I had contributed in some way to the maintenance of the
feudal past of the great American continent? How should I then have been able
to raise my brow, illuminated by the honour which
I
chose the difficult way of divided responsibility and, rather than to repeat
the worship of the individual as the sun and centre of the system, I have
preferred to offer my services in all modesty to an honourable army which may
from time to time commit mistakes but which moves forward unceasingly and
struggles every day against the anachronism of the refractory and the
impatience of the opinionated. For I believe that my duties as a poet involve
friendship not only with the rose and with symmetry, with exalted love and
endless longing, but also with unrelenting human occupations which I have
incorporated into my poetry.
It
is today exactly one hundred years since an unhappy and brilliant poet, the
most awesome of all despairing souls, wrote down this prophecy: "A l'aurore, armés
d'une ardente patience,
nous entrerons aux splendides
Villes." "In the dawn, armed with a burning
patience, we shall enter the splendid Cities."
I
believe in this prophecy of Rimbaud, the Visionary. I come from a dark region,
from a land separated from all others by the steep contours of its geography. I
was the most forlorn of poets and my poetry was provincial, oppressed and
rainy. But always I had put my trust in man. I never lost hope. It is perhaps
because of this that I have reached as far as I now have with my poetry and
also with my banner.
Lastly,
I wish to say to the people of good will, to the workers, to the poets, that
the whole future has been expressed in this line by Rimbaud: only with a
burning patience can we conquer the splendid City which will give light,
justice and dignity to all mankind.
In
this way the song will not have been sung in vain.
http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/literature/laureates/1971/neruda-lecture-e.html