Ira Maine is back!
The metaphysical poet, Pablo Neruda (1904-1973) was Chilean Consul to Spain when General Franco and his Nationalists, in the aftermath of their failed coup d’etat, laid siege to the Spanish capital, Madrid, in 1936. Franco’s Fascist armies, which included Legionnaires, North Africans, Italians and Germans, found themselves pitted against a determined Republican opposition which was commanded, extraordinarily, by Russian generals!
Franco of course, was not alone. All over Europe, in Britain , France, the Netherlands and elsewhere the predictable rabble of Blackshirts and Brownshirts strutted, celebrating the German ‘Aryan’ economic miracle whilst the rest of ‘degenerate’ Europe continued to suffer the horrors of the Great Depression.
Neruda, before the Franco business and already a well established poet, lived in the Madrid suburb of Arguelles;
‘…with bells and clocks and trees…..My house[he says] was called
the house of flowers because in every cranny
geraniums burst; it was
a good-looking house
with its dogs and children.
Remember, Raul?
Eh, Rafael?
Frederico, do you remember
from under the ground
my balconies on which
the light of June drowned flowers in your mouth?
Brother, my brother! ….’
Neruda here is remembering how things were, before the siege, before the bombing, when fellow poets sat with him in the ‘…good-looking house…’ amongst the geraniums and laughed and drank and sang. I have not yet discovered who ‘Raul’ might be, but ‘Rafael’ is surely Rafael Alberti, a great friend of Neruda and a towering figure in twentieth century Spanish letters. Without question ‘Frederico’ is Frederico Garcia Lorca, poet and dramatist and ‘…under the ground…’ because he was murdered by the Nationalists for both his anti-fascist views and his homosexuality. His grave has never been found.
At the beginning of this poem called ‘I’m Explaining a Few Things’ the poet asks;
‘You are going to ask; where are the lilacs?
And the poppy-petalled metaphysics?
And the rain repeatedly spattering
its words and drilling them full
of apertures and birds?
I’ll tell you all the news.
I lived in a suburb
….with bells
and clocks and trees…’
Here is nothing his audiences might expect. The poet does not, cannot have this poem;
‘…speak of dreams and leaves
and the great volcanoes of his native land…’
as his more recognisably romantic work undoubtedly would. Instead, he is going to give you the news.
This poem demands something other than the otherworldly technicalities of the metaphysical. The bombing of Madrid took away everything Neruda saw as representing ‘…the sharp measure of life…’
‘…Everything
loud with big voices, the salt of merchandise,
pile-ups of palpitating bread.
The stalls of my suburb of Arguelles with its statue
Like a drained inkwell in a sea of hake;
Oil flowed into spoons,
A deep baying
Of feet and hands swelled in the streets,
Metres, litres, the sharp
Measure of life,
Stacked up fish,
The texture of roofs with a cold sun in which
The weather vane falters,
The fine, frenzied ivory of potatoes,
Wave on wave of tomatoes rolling down to the sea.
And one morning, all that was burning….’
There, in a few lines, miraculously, an astonishing evocation of the bursting, bustling joyous love of life that deserves no horror, no war, only continuance and celebration. Neruda cannot help himself with his ‘…drained inkwell in a sea of hake…’ glorious, splendid stuff and deeply reminiscent of Clochemerle and the films of Jacques Tati.
Yet…
‘…one morning the bonfires
leapt out of the earth
devouring human beings
and from then on fire,
gunpowder from then on,
and from then on blood.
Bandits with planes and moors
Bandits with finger rings and duchesses,
Bandits with black friars spattering blessings
Came through the sky to kill children
And the blood of children ran through the streets
Without fuss, like children’s blood.
Jackals that the jackals would despise,
Stones that the dry thistle would bite on and spit out.
Vipers that the vipers would abominate.
Face to face with you I have seen the blood
Of Spain tower like a tide
To drown you in one wave
Of pride and knives.
Treacherous generals,
See my dead house,
Look at broken Spain
From every house, burning metal flows
Instead of flowers.
From every socket of Spain
Spain emerges
And from every dead child a rifle with eyes
And from every crime bullets are born
Which one day will find
The bull’s eye of your hearts.
And you will ask; why doesn’t his poetry
Speak of dreams and leaves
And the great volcanoes of his native land?
Come and see the blood in the streets.
Come and see
The blood in the streets.
Come and see the blood
In the streets!
END
This last few lines is almost too much, a screaming, appalled, unbearable demand, from a mind broken, made mad by the blood and the butchery.
‘Come and see the blood in the streets!’
There’s no room here for the philosophy of mind, of being and knowing, the transcendental, the abstract.
There’s only, in Joseph Conrad’s words;
“…the horror, the horror…’