Chapter 10 A Republic of Love where light and shadow rule

- Pablo Neruda, "One Hundred Love Sonnets" Chen Li Zhang Fenling The movie "The Postman" released in 1995 made Pablo Neruda (1904-1973), a well-known Chilean poet in Latin America, known all over the world. The story of "The Postman" tells the touching friendship between Neruda in exile and a postman on a small Italian island.This young man named Mario was hired as Neruda's personal messenger, and thus had the opportunity to meet poets and then entered the world of poetry; Neruda's poems and political ideas are like transparent roots. The silk thread travels through Mario's life and thoughts, and his life has undergone major changes since then.This film not only won multiple Academy Award nominations including "Best Foreign Language Film", but also aroused the world's nostalgia and interest in Neruda, and even set off an upsurge in rereading Neruda.In the soundtrack of the film published by the record company, 14 Neruda's poems were specially added, and Sting, Madonna, Julia Roberts, Andy Garcia and other famous movie stars were invited to recite.Most of these fourteen poems are love poems. Through listening, we revisited the integration of intellectual and sensuality, the joy of love and the pursuit of the shadow of reality, and the dialogue between beauty and sorrow in Neruda's love poems.

Neruda was born in Parral, a village rich in grapes in central Chile, and grew up in Temuco, a border town in southern Chile.During childhood, his closest playmates were trees, wildflowers, beetles, birds, and spiders.At the age of ten, he wrote his first poems.At the age of twenty, he published "Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair", which established his position in the poetry world. These love poems were eulogized like popular tunes or proverbs at that time.This collection of love poems records the young poet's mental journey, his experience of contact with women and the world, and also records his personal desire, passion, loneliness, inner alienation and many other complex emotions. There is a cry of true feelings, an analysis of emotions, and a deep lament.

The background of "The Postman" should be in 1952.The lady who accompanied the 48-year-old Neruda in exile on a leisurely tour of the Mediterranean island was Mathilde, who later became his third wife.Matilde Urrutia.In the movie soundtrack, the movie stars read three poems from "Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair", and the beginning and end are two poems from "One Hundred Love Sonnets" (Nos. 27 and 1). 81).This "One Hundred Love Sonnets" was written by Neruda between 1955 and 1957 and dedicated to Mathilde. Neruda married a total of three times in his life.The first time was in 1930, when he served as consul in Batavia, the target was Maria Antonieta Hagenaar, a Javanese woman of Dutch descent.Twenty-six-year-old Neruda wrote a letter to his father: "I think she is perfect in everything, and we are happy in everything...From now on, you don't have to worry about your son feeling lonely in a faraway land, because I I have found a partner with whom I will grow old..." The marriage lasted only until 1936.

In 1934, Neruda was stationed in Spain. In Madrid, he met Deliade Carril, who was 20 years older than him, and it was love at first sight.Carriere's father was a wealthy herdsman in Argentina. She once married a dandy and lived a ridiculous and corrupt life. When she met Neruda, she was already acquainted with Picasso, Aragon and other painters, poets, and politicians. A communist with a keen sense of smell, smart and charming, hospitable and aggressive.She soon became Neruda's mentor, mother and lover.He took the initiative to move into his house, and the doves took over the magpie's nest, forcing him to leave his original mate.The two began in Mexico in 1943 with a wedding that was not recognized by Chilean law.

Neruda and Mathilde met for the first time during the Chilean presidential election in 1946. They met through a friend's introduction at an outdoor concert in Forest Park.Neruda almost forgot about this encounter, but Mathilde couldn't forget it.Neruda went into exile in February 1949, passing through Argentina to Paris, Moscow, Poland, and Hungary.August went to Mexico, contracted phlebitis, met Mathilde again while convalescing in Mexico.She was at the San Diego Conservatory, then left to tour several Latin American countries, made a film in Peru, worked as a radio singer in Buenos Aires and Mexico, and finally settled in Mexico, where she opened a music school.The poet and singer who met again and again began a secret love affair.In order to be with the poet, Mathilde must hide in the dark and travel parallel with Neruda and Carrie.The trip to Italy in 1952 allowed the two to spend a happy time wantonly.On Capri Island, Neruda wrote a collection of poems "The Captain's Poems", which was published anonymously in Naples. Due to emotional considerations, he did not admit to being the author of the book until 1963.

After Neruda returned from exile, he had three residences: one in Lynch Street, Santiago, with Carrie; the other in Providencia, Santiago, with Marti The Den of the Elder; a small village on the Pacific coast of central Chile, Isla Negra, north of Santiago.Black Island was originally an undeveloped area with only three families. In 1939, Neruda bought a simple stone house facing the sea here and called it "Black Island" on a whim. , but it is neither island nor black in color.He lived here with Carrie and Mathilde in turn, but Carrie had never found out, until one day the housekeeper revealed the truth to Carrie, and 70-year-old Carrie resolutely begged to go.In 1955, Neruda ended his annoying double life and lived with Mathilde until his death in 1973.They were married abroad, but it was not until October 1966 that the wedding was legally completed in Chile.

Neruda and Mathilde's tortuous love journey is loaded with light and shadows. "One Hundred Sonnets of Love" was published in 1959, and it is naturally the record and token of his love with Mathilde.But in contrast to those of the Old Masters—Quevedo and Gongora in Spain, Petrarch in Italy, Shakespeare in England, for example—Neruda's sonnets mostly do not follow a traditional skeleton.The emphasis on rhyme and the design of meter in traditional sonnets strengthen the emotional density and dialectical tension of sonnets.Neruda's sonnets are often loose like a piece of prose, with an open structure and a natural flow and development of thoughts.As he said in his speech before the book: "I know that since ancient times, poets have created sonnets with sounds like silver, crystal, and cannon fire from all aspects, with elegant and outstanding taste; however, I humbly compose these sonnets out of wood, endowing them with the sound of an opaque, pure material, transmitted to your ears..."These poems are wood and plain, but the voice of the poet speaks There is a kind of cohesive force that constructs these lines of poetry into a complete organism—a small love hut built with "fourteen thick planks" that accommodates the poet's broad and wandering emotions.

In his fifties, Neruda finally found a resting place in his love for Mathilde after experiencing social and political vicissitudes: Darling, I'm back from travel and sorrow Back to your voice, back to your hand flying on the guitar, Back to disturb the autumn fire with kisses, To the night that circles the sky. I pray for bread and sovereignty for the people of the world, For the worker with no future, I pray for the fields, I wish no one told me to stop my blood or sing. Yet I cannot renounce your love, unless death comes. Just play a waltz and sing about the peaceful moonlight,

A boat song, in the flowing water of the guitar, Till my head bowed, dreaming: For I have spent a lifetime of sleepless weaving This shelter in the grove? Thy hand dwells and flies Vigil for the sleeping traveler. (eightieth song) Although Neruda sometimes showed joy in these sonnets and sometimes sang emotionally, he rarely showed a clear smile, and there was always a bit of bitterness and loneliness mixed with sweet satisfaction.He thinks that love is sometimes "a mad city, with pale-faced people on the porch", and sometimes like a huge wave, which will push the lovers "to the hard stone and smash it", grinding them into pieces. Powder, sometimes "drags its painful tail, followed by a long row of still thorns", because the shadow of reality is always behind love and snickers sinisterly:

Vicious footsteps follow me, I laugh, and hideous grimaces imitate my countenance, I sang, jealously gnashing their teeth and cursing me. And that, O love, is the shadow that life throws at me: An empty suit, limp Chasing me like a scarecrow with a bloody smile. (sixtieth song) But although love is bitter, it is a pair of wings that lead lovers to fly out of the shadows. It is a secret castle that keeps the chaotic world out of the door. It is the only key to open the door closed by the shadows. The power to counterbalance the darkness of the world such as loneliness: In our troubled life, love is but

A wave higher than other waves, But when death knocks at our door, then Only your gaze fills the void, Only your clarity will push back nothingness, Only your love, block the shadows. (90th song) This collection of love poems is by no means a one-sided ode to love, in which light and shadow compete with each other and complement each other.A deep understanding of the bittersweet nature of life endows Neruda's love poems with richer texture and more complex color.Though at some moments his love was a rose among thorns, an island of melancholy, an aching window in a lonely house, a drop into sweet sorrow, and, at best, a drop in the pulse of a slow river; But more often than not, his love is an unquenchable fire, a slender thorn that cannot be broken, a luxurious light passing through the tree of life, and a gentle fire that pours on the cold branches and leaves of life. A hundred sonnets of love are a hundred nets thrown into the sea in an attempt to catch the fry of love; a hundred tentacles stretching out into the future in an attempt to seek eternity from time; a hundred waves crashing on the shore , involved the poet into the turbulent and sinister reality, and sent him tired back to the shore—and Mathilde is the soft and moist grass waiting on the shore. Like his first collection of love poems "Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair", Neruda used a lot of images related to the natural world to describe the female body in this collection of sonnets, elevating Mathilde into a chaotic A symbol of good order in the world, a power to stabilize the soul.She is the earth, the fruitful tree, the plump apple, the earth and resin of the fragrant land, the familiar black clay, the wheat of the field; she is music, time, rain-tree, sand, wood, cloth, Amber, agate, borders, rivers, hamlets, transparent peaches, cellars overflowing with wine; she is life, bread kneaded by the fragrant moon, her brow, legs, and mouth The bread devoured and born with the morning light, she is the banner of the bakery, the daily bread of his soul; she is the embodiment of beauty, her naked body is the line of the moon, the path of the apple, slender as the naked grain of wheat The vast and bright yellow is like a golden church in summer, the blue is like the night of Cuba, vines and stars stay in her hair; she is the most moving scenery in the world, she crosses mountains and mountains, like a breeze, like a torrent of water. The snow is falling, the hills ruled by tangled vines, the desolate silver-gray prairie.She combines the deep essence of water and the earth, pure as water and rich in earthy fragrance, making the tide full and the seeds swell-like the shadow follows the light, she is the best reason for his existence. The whole "One Hundred Sonnets of Love" is divided into four parts: morning, noon, evening, and night. The light and shadow of changing seasons, the appearance of death and life, and the colors of love's joy and sorrow are constantly flashing in it.This is the poet's work and rest in a day, and it is also the work and rest in his life.It is a landmark in the history of sonnets. It not only allows readers to witness Neruda's overflowing creative talent again, but also injects new life into the gradually dry and rigid ancient poetry.It magically transforms the most subservient and feudal form of poetry (the sonnets often reveal the selflessness and courteous flattery of the knight-wooing patron) into a memorandum of a husband's daily routine, misery, privacy, and concern.It brought the once shy, sometimes cruel lover from the towers of medieval castles, bringing "wax, wine, oil, / garlic" as weapons, "cups, butter pots" and ladles and sickles. , The middle-class kitchen with soap bubbles as armor, listening to her "up and down the stairs, singing, running, bending, planting, sewing, cooking, hammering, writing...". Neruda's sonnets combine the graceful and the vulgar, the eternal and the present, where love and death, light and shadow, reign supreme.