Original subtitles

[Music]

[Music]

it's a kind of obsession for me now

an obsession with birth

that birth

repeats itself in life almost every day

when

and this feeling

repeats itself in my poetry

as if

it's a kind of immortality as well that

i seem to be looking for

or perhaps

it's a nostalgic regret

at not finding that

freshness

of the first vision of life

and looking for it

in the thing that i can do

in other words

my poetry

you want to have that way of looking

for me

it's a poetic prescription that i'm

obsessed with

i don't know

but it's a worthwhile experience

a glorious experience to accept that

risk a glorious would accept this risk

this poetic prescription that pablo

neruda speaks of was his unending

lifelong quest to rediscover the way a

child first looks at the world

this continual amaze discovery of the

universe provided the impulse for all

his writing

keeping his eyes fixed on the reality

around him neruda was by turns consul

militant poet senator ambassador

candidate for the chilean presidency and

winner of the nobel prize for literature

combining the life of a politician with

that of a poet

never abandoning the search for that

sharp vision of the world

even at times when his own life was in

turmoil

neruda was a contradictory character

he lived life to the full yet worked

fiendishly hard

a bourgeois stalinist he was devoted to

the most just of causes

he was independent generous and

authoritarian requiring submissiveness

and devotion from the many women he

loved yet in his poetry he made it his

duty to be lucid to look at the world

with clear eyes

i must speak of the ground that the

stones darken of the river that enduring

is destroyed i know only the things that

the birds lose the sea left behind or my

sister weeping

if you ask me where i come from i have

to converse with broken things with

utensils bitter to excess with great

beasts frequently rotted and with my

anguished heart

it was in spain in 1934 that neruda

personally encountered political

militancy

the light of the young republic was to

leave its mark on him forever

at the age of 30 he was already famous

throughout latin america for his

collection of poems residents on earth

the chilean government appointed him

council in madrid

he became friends with the spanish poets

particularly raphael alberti and

federico garcia lorca

he set up home in the casa de las flores

in the argoes district

i lived in a quarter of madrid with

bells with clocks with trees

my house was called the house of flowers

because it was bursting everywhere with

geraniums

it was a fine house with dogs and

children

raul do you remember

do you remember rafael

federico

do you remember

[Music]

lorca whom neruda loved as a brother in

poetry and blood introduced him to the

artistic circles of the happy years of

democracy in madrid

he launched a collective publication

celebrating neruda's work and began to

make his poetry known in europe

neruda enthusiastically attended

productions by lorca's traveling theater

company la baraka which was taking

theater into the heart of spain

[Music]

for the first time there were cultural

missions driving into the heart of

castile in cars

arriving in completely ignorant places

which knew absolutely nothing of

civilization

and the republic brought a creative

generosity an entirely new power to this

spain which was so backward it sent a

shockwave through spain

and also generated a reaction among the

most backward social strata

and you know what happened after that

[Applause]

and one morning all was a flame 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 duchesses bandits

with black robed friars blessing came

through the air to kill children

and through the streets the blood of the

children ran simply like children's

blood

on the 19th of august 1936 lorca was

murdered by the frankists in the visna

ravines near granada

neruda was inconsolable incensed

the event left a deep mark on his poetry

it was at this time that he wrote spain

in our hearts which became the symbolic

book of the republicans

the brigadistas even printed copies when

the war was at its height using paper

made from shirts and flags taken from

the enemy

treacherous generals look at my dead

house look at broken 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 are born bullets that will

one day seek out in you where the heart

lies

come and see the blood in the streets

come and see the blood in the streets

come and see the blood in the streets

the chilean government judged that its

council in madrid had overstepped the

mark and suspended him from his

functions

before spain neruda had been consoled in

rangoon colombo batavia and singapore

for five years

in india while concentrating on his

poetic explorations he had been an

attentive but passive witness to the

colonized people's emerging struggles

for independence

[Music]

far from his home country he wrote

residence on earth a collection of poems

close to surrealism

residence on earth is his descent into

hell

the book of a solitary man approaching

his maturity

a man who is leaving behind his dead

loves and personal sufferings to stand

before his future

it was in spain that he took up arms he

was one of the men

with his eyes more open to the present

than ever before he became a militant

poet and turned his poetry into a weapon

against dictatorship

i arrived in my country with different

eyes which the war had grafted

underneath my own other eyes burned in

the bonfire splashed by my own tears in

the blood of others

on his return to chile neruda

rediscovered temuko imperial caraway

puerto savedra his childhood places

his childhood was la frantera the

frontier in the south of chile by the

great lakes on the road to patagonia

la frontera is the land of the mapuche

indians

mapu is the earth

che is man

the conquistadors call them araucans and

their land ar

these indefatigable warriors resisted

the spanish in a war that lasted three

centuries

as a boy neruda was greatly fascinated

by them

as an adult he made them his mythical

ancestors his poems pay homage to them

my arakanian ancestors had no crests of

luminous plumes they didn't rest on

nuptial flowers they spun no gold for

the priest they were stone and tree

roots of the intractable brambles

launch-shaped leaves heads of militant

metal

narula arrived in temuka in 1906 at the

age of two

it was here that he discovered the world

at that time temuka was a pioneer

village surrounded by the southern

forest icy rain and constant wind

i can live only on my native soil i

can't live without setting my feet and

hands on it without putting my ear to it

without surprising the circulation of

its waters and shadows without

perceiving the way that my roots seek

out maternal substances in its alluvium

in 1938 when neruda returned to his

country jose del carmen reyes morales

his father died

a few months later it was the turn of

his mother his beloved stepmother his

father's second wife

the woman who had taken him to her as a

tiny child in temuko

neruda was born in parallel in central

chile on the 12th of july 1904

and was named nephthali ricardo eliz

his mother donna rosa alto primary

school teacher and insatiable reader of

poetry died of tuberculosis

two months after his birth

lama madre brought him up with love and

affection and years later when he wrote

a poem about motherly love he dedicated

it to her

mother

[Music]

a

was his beloved everyday mother

don rosa his birth mother a dream

as a child he spent long hours secretly

contemplating the few fans postcards and

shawls which might have belonged to her

and were kept shut away in a forbidden

trunk

[Music]

neruda's dreamy solitary childhood left

him with a great liking for objects an

insatiable passion for collecting things

as if this way he could escape from loss

and forgetting and organize the chaos of

the world

his houses were like curiosity shops

bringing together the many countries he

had traveled in and the treasures he

brought back with him

he telescoped up places and periods

combining them in a magical crucible

in his houses neruda's mental universe

becomes visible concrete

in memory of his adolescence neruda

named his figureheads after the girls he

had loved

each wooden woman hid a woman of flesh

and bone

guillermina was his favorite

in a constant search for new emotions

that reflected a need to be loved to

seduce he made conquest after conquest

he is said to have had a great many

mistresses and countless friends all

over the world

there's no such thing as an honest

collector he would say

he did not hesitate to pressurize his

friends into giving him objects he liked

or he would simply take them

neruda looked at the world around him

and the people who filled it and

organized it to suit his own

excessiveness

very often his books of poetry are like

themed collections

20 love poems and a song of despair

published in 1924 is a series of love

poems

a hundred love sonnets published in 1957

is organized along similar lines

as are the books of oaths isla negra and

stones of the sky written at the end of

his life

neruda was also an avid collector of

encyclopedias books of poetry

manuscripts and first editions in

english french and spanish

he started his collection as a child

guided by the chilean poet gabriela

mistral

mistral was a recognized poet and high

school headmistress

her arrival in temuko in 1914 was one of

the great strokes of good fortune in

neruda's life

when the timid adolescent knocked at her

door with his poems mistral agreed to

read them

she was amazed by the quality of his

writing and took him under her wing

she opened his eyes to literature and

poetry giving him books particularly the

works of the russian authors tolstoy

dostoyevsky

she championed his work throughout her

life

and on receiving the nobel prize for

literature in 1945

said that the academy should have given

it to the greatest poet in her country

pablo neruda

gabriela mistral supported the young

poet's vocation which his father

disapproved of

neruda's first poems earned him a

whipping and it was to escape his

father's rage that at the age of

fourteen

nephthali ricardo

eliz passo alto adopted the pseudonym

pablo neruda

when neruda returned to chile in 1943

after his years as a consul he lived in

santiago in the district of los guindos

his house michoacan was always full

at the instigation of his wife delia del

carrill whom he had met in madrid the

round of political meetings literary

exchanges dinners and spontaneous

parties would continue late into the

night

in the midst of all these comings and

goings neruda never forgot lorca

in memory of la baraka he built a little

theater at the bottom of his garden as a

homage to his dead friend

if i could weep with fear in a solitary

house if i could take out my eyes and

eat them i would do it for your black

draped orange tree voice and for your

poetry that comes forth shouting

when you fly dressed as a peach tree

when you laugh with a laugh of hurricane

rice when to sing you shake arteries and

teeth throat and fingers

i could die for how sweet you are i

could die for the red lakes where in the

midst of autumn you live with a fallen

steed and a bloodied god

isla negra the black island is a beach

south of valparaiso washed by the

pacific ocean

isla negra was neruda

where he would retire to write and to

observe

and listen to nature

when he had to be away for several

months he would have recordings sent to

him

of the sounds of this place he loved so

dearly

[Applause]

in 1945 politics drew neruda away from

his island

he joined the communist party having

been a communist sympathizer since his

time in spain

and ran for the post of senator in the

mining provinces of northern chile

his campaign took him all over the area

reading poetic speeches before enormous

crowds

[Applause]

north i have come at last to your rude

mineral silence of yesterday and today

i have come to look for your voice and

to know what belongs to me yet i have

not come with an empty heart i bring you

all that i am

i want my voice to reach every corner of

the pampa to touch every clod i want my

song to harmonize with the saltpeter

i was recognized by the soul of the

people

i had that recognition from the people

when i talk about the people i really

talk about the people

because i can read my poems in my

country in places where people often go

barefoot and are often also illiterate

but i can speak my poems to these people

i can make myself understood

and if my poetry has deserved this

dignity

that is the greatest prize a poet can

have

peace

was elected as a senator in the

provinces of tara paka and

[Music]

immersed in action and history he did

not see the writing on the wall

in 1948 under pressure from the united

states president videla who had been

elected with neruda's support excluded

the communists from his government

neruda responded with a violent protest

speech

i accuse

chile is the only country on the

continent where strikes are settled by

crushing underfoot the labor code and

firing our mass presumed political

opponents of the government

i accuse president gonzalez videla of

being responsible for these actions

which are a dishonor to our democracy

a warrant was put out for his arrest

this was the start of over a year spent

in hiding foreign

he adopted the name antonio ruiz

and at the risk of drawing attention to

himself the profession of ornithologist

reflecting his passion for birds

hidden by his supporters he moved from

house to house and eluded the soldiers

sent to look for him

during this period of hiding neruda

wrote most of the kanto general which

had begun several years earlier but had

not found the time to work on

the kanto general is a history and

geography of latin america

in which neruda reinvented his continent

just as he was losing it

it is a homage to his land and his

people

i'm not such a distant bell or a crystal

buried so deep that you can't decipher

i'm just people

hidden door

dark bread

and when you welcome me you welcome

yourself that guest repeatedly beaten

and repeatedly reborn

a campaign

a

sheltered by sailors in valparaiso

naruto waited two months for a ship to

take him to europe

he continually watched the port from a

window and worked ceaselessly

in the house of the people who were

hiding him there was an atlas of chile

in which he found the names of the

forests mountains and rivers that he

needed for his song

at the bottom of america without name

was arauco among the vertiginous waters

separated by all the planets cold

behold the great solitary south

no smoke can be seen in the heights

nothing but glaciers and blizzards

repelled by the bristling aracarias

do not seek the song of pottery beneath

the dense green all is silence of water

and wind

with the kanto general his major work

neruda brought grandeur and epic stature

to the south american continent so long

mistreated despised and neglected by the

rest of the world

his insatiable eye moves from primordial

chaos all the way through latin american

history from its beginnings to himself

this book ends here it was born of fury

like a live coal like territories of

burned forests and i hope that it

continues like a red tree propagating

its transparent burn

but you found not only rage in its

branches its roots sort not only sorrow

but strength and i'm strength of pensive

stone happiness of joined hands

neruda crossed the cordillera on

horseback with the manuscript of the

canto general in his pack

and went to europe

he came out of hiding in paris at the

first world congress of the partisans of

peace

introduced by pablo picasso who had been

his friend since the spanish civil war

in paris in 1949 neruda fell madly in

love with matilde

he gave her the secret name rosario de

la cedra mischievously slipping it into

his poems

matilda became his last wife

they shared a great passion until the

poet's death

she was his muse his inspiration

with matilda he became once more the

poet of love and nature

she was a woman of the people they came

from the same world

the same araucana

she was the companion he'd been

searching for throughout his life found

at last

you come from poverty from the houses of

the south from the rugged landscapes of

cold and of earthquake that offered us

after those gods had tumbled to their

deaths the lesson of life shaped in clay

you are a little horse of black clay a

kiss of dark mud my love a clay poppy

dove of the twilight that flew along the

roads piggy bank of tears from our poor

childhood

little one you've kept the heart of

poverty in you your feet used to sharp

rocks your mouth that didn't always have

bread or sweets you come from the poor

south where my soul began in that high

sky your mother is still washing clothes

with my mother that's why i chose you

companera

after three and a half years in exile in

europe and in the countries of the

eastern bloc where he was received with

full honours after the repeal of the lay

maldita the cursed law that drove the

communists out of chile neruda returned

home where his people gave him a hero's

welcome

he returned to isla negra

in isla negra neruda and matilda would

get up very early to go and listen to

the birds singing in the woods

the moment when nature awakens with his

favorite time

the new birth of each new day

he spent long periods sitting on the

ground with a large magnifying glass

scrutinizing the insects and plants

he would observe the birds rocks and sea

using a variety of binoculars and

telescopes

he also collected astronomers telescopes

with which he contemplated the stars

he retained his childlike wonder at the

natural world into adult life

he had the understanding of a true

ornithologist and entomologist

i knew all about animals plants and

shellfish

um

[Music]

the humble collections of beetles

flowers stones and other child's

treasures with which the little neruda

had filled his pockets

were no doubt the source of this love of

nature and of his meticulous

observations

his father a train driver used to take

him into the forests of southern chile

sometimes as far as patagonia

and would spend hours exploring the

natural world with him

[Music]

i first saw trees ravines adorned with

flowers of wild beauty moist territory

forests of flame and winter behind the

world in flood

my childhood is wet shoes broken trunks

fallen in the forest devoured by vines

and beetles sweet days upon the oats and

the golden beard of my father leaving

for the majesty of the railways

[Music]

foreign

during the peaceful years he spent with

matilda in isla negra neruda returned to

his favorite poetic themes

around 1954 he wrote the books of odes

the poetic transcription of the hours he

spent observing nature

ode to celery

ode to leningrad

owed to the apple

to a big tuna fish in the market

to the cactus that was moved

to scissors

to the diver

to a star

to the offended piccaro

to seaweeds

orange rusted spatulate shapes eggs of

date palms drifting fans flailed by the

eternal flux of a marine heart

islands of sargasso that reach my door

with the plunder of the rainbow

let me wear around my neck on my head

the wet vine tendrils of the ocean the

spent comet

of the wave

when at the end of his life the poet was

asked how it was that he could penetrate

into the secret heart of so many things

trees birds stones water

the whole world of nature

he would reply

it's in the way that one looks at things

[Music]

so

[Music]

i believe to some extent in the

autobiographism or auto experimentalism

of poetry

i always say that i haven't made things

up that things are like that

he has a duty to experiment with

language to change language in each new

period but starting from personal

experience from his own life his

knowledge of the world his relation to

other human beings and to nature

now neruda dreamed of being stoned to

become eternity

he dreamed of dissolving into the

elements of isla negra that surrounded

him

he glimpsed a mystical nature

inhabited by earth forces

in doing this he was returning to the

intuition of the poems of his youth

the only eternity possible

is within nature

[Music]

scarcely with my reason with my fingers

with slow waters slow inundated i fall

into the realm of the forget-me-nots

into a tenacious atmosphere of mourning

into a forgotten decayed room

into a cluster of bitter clover

gentle matter oh rows of dry wings in my

collapse i climb up your petals my feet

heavy with red fatigue

and in your harsh cathedral i kneel

beating my lips with an angel

in 1970 neruda became politically active

for the last time

when the communist party selected him as

its candidate for the presidential

elections so that the left could use his

fame as a basis for building popular

unity

a poet known throughout the world was

working for the victory of his ideals

he went back to the crowds travelled his

country from one end to the other and

read his political poems

on the threshold of becoming president

of the chilean republic he stood down at

the request of his party in favor of the

candidate salvador allende who was

elected

[Applause]

the government of popular unity set

about implementing its program of social

reform and nationalization

inflation and unemployment were halved

[Applause]

confident in his country's future neruda

asked to be appointed ambassador to

france

in the same year he received the nobel

prize for literature

neruda had spent his life trying to

maintain a difficult balance between his

vocation as a poet

and his life as a political activist

now with the recent triumph of the

chilean left and the award of the nobel

prize

both his political struggle and his work

were crowned with success

[Music]

but soon afterwards the blockade by the

united

was to strangle chilean democracy

the industrialists and conservative

elements opposed to the nationalizations

paralyzed the country's economy

worried and ill neruda returned to chile

he could no longer travel and joined in

his people struggle through his writing

in less than three days he wrote a

virulent poem

incitement to nick sonicide and praise

of the chilean revolution

i must also explain that this book does

not concern itself with or aspire to

either expressive delicacy or the

natural hermeticism of some of my

metaphysical books

i have no recourse

against the enemies of my people my song

is offensive and hard as arcanian stone

this can be an ephemeral function but i

have undertaken it and i resort to the

most ancient weapons of poetry the song

and pamphlet used by classicists and

romantics and destined for the

destruction of the enemy steady now i'm

going to fire

on the 11th of september 1973 came the

coup d'etat

pinochet shelled the presidential palace

of la moneda

allende was killed

in isla negra sick and bedridden his

eyes fixed on the television screen

neruda followed his country's tragedy as

it unfolded

his houses la cascona and la sebastiana

were looted

matilda could not keep from him the

horrors of the santiago stadium the

massacres

the chopping off of poet's hands

his last words were for his friends who

had disappeared

all shot

in chile's tragedy he was reliving the

tragedy of spain forty years after the

event

the tragedy of spain in our hearts

[Music]

[Music]

meruda died 12 days after the coup

he was killed not by cancer but by the

dictatorship that had just murdered

everything that gave him reason to live

his funeral gave rise to the first

gathering of the opposition

[Music]

matilda remembers

when the procession came to the san

cristobal hill on the way to the

cemetery i saw people appearing on all

sides

they were workers with sombra faces

silent

just outside the cemetery

half the people who are accompanying

neruda to his last resting place

began shouting pablo neruda

and the other half shouted

present

it was suicidal but fortunately nothing

happened

the crowd walked into the cemetery

singing the international

i stated

i was there

yes i was there

and i suffered and i uphold my testimony

although no one remembers

i am the one who remembers

and even if there are no eyes left on

earth

i will look

[Music]

so

[Music]

[Applause]

[Music]

so

you