Visiting LA CHASCONA, the house of Pablo Neruda, one of Latin America’s most famous poets

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Pablo Neruda built this house for his mistress to live in and called it La Chascona which means Medusa ( because his mistress had red untamed hair like Medusa.) He built it on the other side of the river from the house he shared with his wife so he could sneak across and see his mistress unbeknown to his wife. On the side of the river where he had La Chascona built there were and still are all the entertainment venues and party places. The other side of the city where he lived with his wife is more residential, and still is where the weathier people live.

Pablo Neruda was a member of the wealthy, higher classes? but was also a socialist. In his lifetime he had been a poet, he’d studied philosophy at Oxford university in the UK, he had worked as an engineer, served as a politician working for many anti-fascists groups, he was a gourmet and an excellent cook. He had travelled extensively, and was a very sociable person who loved inviting people into his house. He met his mistress when he was at a concert with his wife in which his soon-to-be mistress was the singer, they then met up by chance later in Mexico during his exile and afterwards they travelled to Europe together. He eventually married his mistress and lived with her until he died of cancer in 1973.

His house was just as fascinating as the man himself and it gave me a really good insight into his life. I was very impressed that he had done so much with his time on earth. When learning about this man I had the exact same thought I had when Dad and I went to a museum in Scotland and we learned about the man who invented the first ever savings bank. That man, like Pablo Neruda had created and invented so many things during his lifetime and made progress in all different fields and I wondered how he’d found the time to do it all especially as he walked for four hours to attend church everyday. It turned out that he would only get 4 hours sleep a night but Pablo Neruda on the other hand loved sleep and had many naps! How did he find the time to do so much! Good heavens!

But Pablo Neruda is my kind of man, a dilitante. Throughout his house there were objects collected from all of his trips abroad, some from India when he’d met the Dalai Lama, many from Mexico and a lot of the furniture was of Italian design. He was a man obsessed with the sea, he had a love and hate relationship with it as he couldn’t swim and was scared of it but at the same time he loved living by the sea and was fascinated by nature.

His dining room in which he entertained guests was shaped like a boat and many of the objects in it were sea-related or related to nature. He would go to a lot of trouble to make sure his guests were entertained and would often host fancy dress parties, sometimes serving drinks at the bar whilst dressed up as another character. The first thing I noticed about the dining room were the salt and pepper shakers – they had ‘marijuana’ and ‘morphine’ written on them just to make his guests laugh. In the gift shop I bought two with the words written on, replicas of the original for one day when I have a place to invite my friends to, have wine and cheese parties and spend my evenings laughing and playing board games with friends like I used to do sometimes in Spain. Naturally I would fill the marijuana pot with pepper and the morphine pot with salt.

Another of the rooms was called a poets’ room. Here he would invite artists and poets who he considered to be more creative than himself to get together and share ideas. There were photos of the famous people who had attended, amongst them I noticed Edgar Alan Poe, and Pablo Picasso who had been one of his very good friends. There was another room called the French room where he had collections of French poetry. He had studied French apparently to be able to read French poetry without having to have it translated.

There was also another room dedicated to his certificates and awards. One of which was the Nobel Literature prize granted to him in 1971, in Stockholm and written in Swedish. There were certificates from his various professions such as engineering.

The year of the poets’ death was also the year of the military coup, 1973. His funeral became the first mass demonstration against the military government and had a high rate of attendance. During the military coup the house La Chascona was ruined but his second wife had it rebuilt to its original design as best she could and she continued to live in it. She had him buried in his other house according to his wishes, in Isla Negra by the sea.

For me there were two very impressive facts about this man. One - he was interested in so many different things and managed to take on so many different professions. I always feel inspired by those kind of people as I find these people have the most interesting stories to tell and they are always expanding their skills. Two – I feel this man, like Che Guevara represents a bridge between the lower and upper classes as he was liked by everybody and apparently so long as the person showed up to his house with a bottle of wine he would invite them in despite their class. He was brought up in an aristocratic family?, but like Che used this to his and to other people’s advantage through travelling, studying, working and through his experiences (facilitated by money obviously) he gained a wider perspective on life, and worked to equalize society.

He rebelled against his background and I always think that this takes something courage to do and I admire people who do this. Firstly, these people have to realise that people from a different social background are living life in a different way from their own , secondly they have to find the courage to experience other people’s lifestyles different to those of their own, thirdly they have the courage to be their own person with their own values and finally they have to learn to live according to their own values even if the people from their social background do not share their values. In my opinion, it is far easier for people who are born with the same values as their parents and those they grew up with as they will never have to question their original values, they can just accept them, always have their peers support and still live a fulfilled life without knowing any different. What both Che Guevara and Pablo Neruda did to a certain extent was follow the four steps of rebellion.

From my perspective, his double life consisting of the life lived with his mistress (on the poor but exciting side of the river) and the life lead with his wife on the wealthy but boring side of the river doesn’t represent infidelity but represents a way of bridging a gap between rich and poor, and giving priority to two types of lifestyle. Aproveche!

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