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Published: August 4th 2011
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Art, ocean, stone and wood, ocean, balconies and towers, ocean, rocks, shells and ocean. Ocean--the real reason that Pablo Neruda and I loved this house. Not really an island, Isla Negra is perched on a cliff above the crashing Pacific and an amazing colony of boulders. Pablo Neruda's house, which he named Casa de Isla Negra, was as eccentric and colorful as he.
Neruda was a collector of all things nautical and a lover of beauty and the ocean (as long as he wasn't on it) and had filled every corner of his house inside and out with savory treasures. The Nobel-prize winning Chilean poet had built three houses, and for both of us, Isla Negra was our favorite, undoubtedly because it was right on the ocean.
The poet and his third wife and true love, Matilda Urrutia, are buried behind the house on a promontory overlooking the ocean. Standing there amidst flowering aloes like those I had at home, and looking out at the Pacific and back at Neruda's low, blue rambling house, I felt as if I were at my beloved Hendry's Beach in Santa Barbara. I was washed with homesickness. I'm fine in places like Santiago
and Valparaiso--big cities that are so different from my coastal paradise, but this was too similar to home.
I've now been traveling for about a year, and I longed to be back on Santa Barbara's endless sands with a friend and a couple of dogs at my side. To sate my longing, I walked along the shore and played among the Henry Moore boulders so like those at Lizard's Mouth in our foothills.
I'd arrived at Isla Negra on a local bus from Valparaiso. We'd driven through hills of eucalyptus forests and finally past both charming and high-rise marred coastal villages. After an hour, I disembarked and walked down to the cliffs above the ocean.
Isla Negra's administrative center had attractive posters of his poems displayed on the walls around an open courtyard as well as biographical information on the poet's early years, three wives, socialist politics, time in exile, and years as Chile's ambassador to various European countries.
After laboriously reading all this Spanish, I was free to wander the grounds, after which I took a leisurely tour (in Spanish) of the house's interior. This was so much better than the quick, assembly line tour
(in English) of his house, La Chascona, in Santiago.
The rambling house, what we'd call a ranch house, had originally just been a stone cabin, but over the years, he'd added a string of stone and wooden rooms with balconies and towers connected by arched passageways and with stone mosaics of fish running along its ocean side. A metal roof, like those in the rainy south of his youth, let him enjoy the sound of rain. The front yard had an ancient, restored locomotive, like those of many Chilean parks.
In this off-season, I was the only English-speaker around, so I joined eight others on the Spanish-speaking tour. The guide spoke slowly enough that I understood, plus he was great about answering all our questions. Best of all, there wasn't another group nipping at our heels as in Santiago, so we had time to savor the incredible treasures all over the house.
The rooms, all of which overlooked the ocean, and the passageways were full of his extensive collections of masks, colored bottles, incredible seashells, beautiful women bowsprits from ships, musical instruments, ships in bottle, pipes and more. I once heard that he badgered friends to bring
him gifts, which he'd often specify, from their travels. In return, he was a generous host and always had a least one bar in each of his houses and big dining room tables for entertaining.
When in Chile, he split his time between his houses in Santiago, Valparaiso and Isla Negra. In September 1973 when General Pinochet (with US support) mounted a coup that deposed Neruda's friend, the elected socialist Salvador Allende, Neruda was terminally ill with prostrate cancer. However, the news of the coup so shocked his system that he died of heart failure days after the coup.
The Pinochet troops ransacked and pillaged Neruda's other two houses, but since Neruda and Matilde were living at Isla Negra at the time, it was relatively left alone; thus, it's also has more of his original collections.
The visits to the three nautically-themed houses of this amazing writer, humanitarian and collector were highlights of my visit to central Chile. Soon, I would be off to visit the birthplace of Chile's other winner of the Nobel prize for literature, the poet Gabriela Mistral, who had a home in Santa Barbara in which I had lived for three years. These
two poets had been calling me for years; it's great to answer their call.
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