“Did they kill Neruda? I can’t believe it… so big, so alive, so strong even in the last days of his life. No, it can’t be.” George Edwards sitting in it sunbed As always, under a large mirror, in front of the countless books that accompanied him in his retirement in Madrid, here is a writer, Jorge BenavidesA Peruvian friend who goes to see him often, and this journalist visits him to find out how this man is, who, despite being 92 years old, retains an unbreakable crystal memory, how his health is.
First, we gave the details disclosed by the Chilean press: it was a poisonRumors that he was assassinated and that spread like wildfire (or poison) seem to be true, but we told him it won’t be known for sure until this Wednesday whether the regime has recently launched Pinochet’s satrapy. He achieved the goal of erasing even this impressive trace of poetry that created and created Pablo Neruda.
Edwards met Neruda as a wounded youth who took care of the teacher as if their friendship would last forever. And I found this purpose. Even when they had already left their way: the poet (El Poeta) returned from Paris to Chile in June 1971 to “help Salvador Allende win the presidency” (he said this in Tenerife, Christophoro Colombo carrying him and his wife, Matilde Urrutia) and Edwards continued in the City of Light, which they both loved.
Since Neruda’s trunk was opened, he has not stopped correspondence by letter or by phone. The letters preserved in the archives of Princeton University were open to scrutiny and were frequently sought, especially those of Pablo, who was astonished by what was going on in Chile. He realizes that a brutal victory by the military far-right will make his friend Allende and himself part of a bloody booty. But the poet resisted reality like a child. Shortly thereafter, Chile was dying at the hands of a dictatorship that bared its teeth and Neruda spoke of its brutality in the occasional letter from that time.
But Neruda eventually died a natural death. From natural death? The snake of suspicion soon emerged: Pinochet didn’t want him alive, he was also a legend, the brutal disappearance of Allende and his fellow countrymen wasn’t enough. And yes, rumors of the time insisted that it was all too easy to kill him, even in his protracted agony, now that it seemed to be confirmed by science.
In our conversation with Edwards, Cervantes Award about the resurrection of a rumor that seems outdated, its author goodbye poetThe memory of his unforgettable years with Neruda began to connect the dots of those last days of Neruda. The poet’s health was very delicate, “I saw him very sick.” He met Velasco, the doctor who took care of Nobel’s already impossible health, and this doctor made him realize the impossible recovery of the sick person whenever they talked. He struggled to survive, as if holding on to the wood he had kept as a talisman in his home on Isla Negra.
Neruda was terribly afraid of dying because he knew he was sick, and he clung to life with all his might, even against the power of doubt.”
Neruda went to his country, “I stayed in Paris.” “He wrote to me from Chile and called me from Isla Negra, and in these conversations, just before the disaster, he told me the country was getting better, and also the horses on the right told me, he was scared.” . Edwards stressed that it was impossible to kill him, as if possible evidence of the poison was still, at the time of the conversation, a detective hypothesis taken from an incredible novel. Author of “Neruda” Persona non grata Looking up into the air like someone imagining all conjectures, he said, “He was so afraid of dying because he knew he was sick, and he clung to life with all his might, despite the power of doubt. His friend was the same age, and when he learned of his death, knowing that they both suffered from the same disease, he immediately linked his fate with his fate: prostate cancer”.
We have said that this disease is not necessarily fatal, so it is true what they say now that he may have been poisoned, that is, helped to force his removal from this world. They may have hastened his death, Jorge.
“It’s hard to believe… He was a vitalist, he didn’t want to die, he loved life. He had a love for food, women, nature… Neruda was first and foremost a poet of nature. [Urrutia] She told me that her husband liked to get up at six in the morning and listen to the birds chirping when he was in Isla Negra…”
that book goodbye poetis the most reliable representative of the friendship and passion for literature that existed among the testimonies after Neruda’s death. “But your big book in which everything, everything, Black Island Monument. It’s all about him there.” You, Edwards, know him best. “Matilde told me the same thing. Well, of course, this is true”.
And now Chile is hearing from Don Pablo again. Chile at his heart… “Yes, but Neruda had two loves: Paris and Baudelaire… And women too? Well, yes. Was he a predator or a womanizer? I don’t know. I don’t think so. She asked him to take a girl to the clinic where she was dying. The police found out and the secretary was arrested. She was so abused that she died two weeks later”.
The conversation lasted longer, until noon in Madrid when hunger required Chinese food this time. But we’re left with this final interpretation of the story (a server close to neruda was killed for absolutely not conforming to the dictatorship). We asked Edwards whether this new hypothesis supported the suspicion that Pinochet was not seriously interested in the survival of the most important poet in his history. A communist who came to help Allende fight “against the frightened horses of the right.”
The writer closest to Neruda reversed the story several times to achieve his own suspicion.
As he was about to die, “Neruda called me and said, ‘The sea is magnificent. Come back from Paris and you will see.’ I loved him very much. A Chilean poet, Armando Uribehe told me that Neruda was my father… He has fascinated me ever since I read his first lines in school. twenty love poems… ‘Female body / white tops / white hips. / You look like the world in your delivery attitude’… and I don’t know. For me, the day I met him is unforgettable. They took me to their home, where their passion for photography was evident. i had photos decoration stuffrelated to walt whitmanrelated to Alan Poe. This was his trio. We are always writing to each other, looking for each other. It was letters in which he told me about his taste for ‘cheerful custard apples’… Last time we spoke, he was very ill. So sick. That’s why I’m telling you I don’t believe in poison.”
-Science says so.
-NO. Or maybe, who knows, now that they say it. Anyway. Look: Neruda stayed with me late, drank whiskey, chatted. There was a teddy bear in the bedroom. And she had many cashmere jackets in her wardrobe. She also loved clothes. One day in Paris, he bought himself a black jacket and said, “We should throw this beautiful jacket a party.” Ah. He was like that.
has it been poisoned? Maybe. She remembers him vividly.