Pablo Neruda: I know that half of all living beings live in hiding| A poem and a moment

Neruda's life had two themes, one was love and the other was politics. At the age of 20, Neruda published his famous work, Twenty Love Poems and a Desperate Song, which made it onto the Chilean poetry scene. Around the same time, his political career as a diplomat was also on track.

From 1925 onwards, Neruda was first commissioned to Yangon, Burma as consul, and then extensively traveled to the Far East. For several years, he served as Chilean consul in Colombo, Jakarta, Buenos Aires, Barcelona, and Madrid, but the job did not bring decency and ease, but great loneliness. For a long time, he constantly changed his residence, often living alone on the open seashore, and at the same time, he witnessed the harsh reality of the people of many colonial areas who were plunged into the depths of war, poverty, and disease. After the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War in 1936, Neruda went deeper into the public sphere and fervently participated in the struggle to defend the Republic, calling on the peoples of all countries to stand in solidarity with Spain through poems and speeches. During this period, politics became an important theme in his work, and the lives of conquerors, martyrs, heroes and ordinary people appeared in his pen.

At the outbreak of World War II, Neruda had traveled to Mexico City as consul general and visited the United States, Guatemala, Panama, Colombia, Peru and other countries. At that time, Chile's Ministry of Foreign Affairs forced him to find out the ethnic origin of the immigrants and not allow Africans, Asians and Jews to enter, which made him completely tired of consular work. In his view, "certain South American countries are themselves the product of multiple hybrids and hybrids, and their absurd 'racist' demands are the legacy of colonialists." Before resigning from his post and returning to Chile, Neruda ascended to the site of Machu Picchu in Peru and saw from above the ancient stone buildings surrounded by the verdant and green and Peaks of the Andes. At that moment, he "felt that he was Chilean, Peruvian, American," and "in some distant time my hands had labored there—ditching and polishing rocks." Later, he wrote the famous group poem "The Peak of Machu Picchu".

In 1945, Neruda was elected to the National Assembly, and in the same year he joined the Communist Party of Chile, but soon went into exile due to political persecution. His collection of poems,"ManGe", was written during this most difficult period, and the book was divided into 15 chapters, depicting the historical geography, customs and customs of the American continent with a majestic handwriting, and the group poem "Top of Machu Picchu" was also included. In a sense, "The Long Song" can be seen as a summary of the first half of Neruda's own life, where the poet not only records history, but also intertwines the examination of history with personal epics. The book begins with a depiction of the peace and quiet of the Land of America before the European colonists arrived in the New World, recounts the 300 years of suffering and suffering of the European colonists against the American Indian peoples, and extends all the way to what the author saw and heard during his exile and his responsibilities as a poet. As the Nobel Prize for Literature award speech put it: "His poems have the effect of a natural force, reviving the fate and dreams of a continent."

<h3></h3>

Mammals

It was dusk for iguanas.

Its tongue is like a shotgun

From rainbow-like spiny scales

Moving towards the green,

The Ant Monk strides in harmony

Walk through the forest,

The small alpaca is like oxygen,

Wear the Golden Boot

Walking among the brown broad mountains,

The vicuña is sprinkled

The exquisite world of dewdrops

Opened his innocent eyes.

Monkeys on the shores of dawn

Weave one

The never-ending line of love,

Overturn the walls of pollen,

Scatter the purple flight of the Musso butterflies.

It was the night of the crocodile, the night of reproduction,

Long mouth sticking out of the mire,

A faint sound of armor

Again from the fantastic swamp

Return to the roots of the earth.

The jaguar uses a flickering phosphorescence

Shake the leaves,

The mountain lion is like a fire that devours everything

Run among the branches

And the forest's intoxicated eyes

Burn on it.

Eurasian badger scratched the feet of the river,

Sniff to find the cave, with red teeth

Attack the tempting delicacies there.

Under the vast water,

Huge water snake

It's like a ring on the earth

Covered in celebratory dirt

Religious and fierce and greedy.

<h3>Guatemala</h3>

Sweet Guatemala,

Every stone slab in your capital

All stained with tigers

Devoured ancient blood.

Alvarado destroyed your family,

Mashed the taillight of your stars,

Do whatever you want in your suffering.

Behind a white-skinned tiger

A bishop came to Yucatan.

He brought together the World's Founding Day

People are in the air

Hear the most profound knowledge,

The first Mayans at that time

Records the trembling of the river,

The mystery of pollen,

The wrath of the gods of all things,

Migration through the primordial universe,

The law of the hive,

The wonders of the green bird,

The language of the stars,

On the shores of the development of the earth

About the collected

The secrets of day and night.

<h3>Discoverers of Chile</h3>

Almagro brought a faint glow of fire from the north.

Amid the sound of sunset and explosions, he worked day and night

Leaning over this territory, it was as if on a map.

The shadow of thorns, the shadow of thistle and beeswax,

The Spaniard clings to their dry image,

Look at the gloomy strategy of the land.

Night, snow and yellow sand

Created the slender shape of my motherland,

All the waves poured out of its ocean beard,

All the coals make it full of mysterious kisses,

All the silence is on its long borders.

Gold burns like a charcoal fire between its fingers,

Silver shines on the hard silhouette of the eerie planet

It's like a green moon.

One day the Spaniard sat by the roses,

Surrounded by oil, wine and the ancient sky,

He couldn't imagine this place full of angry rocks

It was born under the dung of sea eagles.

<h3>The dead in the square</h3>

(Santiago, Chile, 28 January 1946)

I did not come to the place where they had fallen to cry:

I have come to you, to find the living.

I look for you, find me, and slap your chest.

Once upon a time, someone else had fallen. Do you remember?

Yes, you remember. Their names are all the same.

In San Gregorio, in the rainy Longime,

In Langier, they were blown around by the wind,

In Iquique, they were buried in yellow sand,

Smoke, rain,

Along the sea, along the sand,

From the steppes to the archipelago,

Other people were also killed,

They're called Antonio, like you,

Like you, the same fisherman or blacksmith:

Chilean body, stabbed by the wind,

Tortured by the steppe, signed by suffering.

On the walls of the fatherland,

Beside the snow and its crystallization,

Behind the river of green branches,

Under the saltpeter and ears of wheat,

I found the drops of my people's blood,

Every drop is burning, like fire.

(Note: On that day, in the Plaza de Bulnes in Santiago, Chile, there was an incident in which the masses of the marchers were shot and six people died instantly.) ）

<h3>gold</h3>

Gold once had days of purity.

Re-invested in its form

Waiting for its dirty exit:

Just formed, just disengaged

The solemn body of the earth,

Purified by fire,

Wrapped in the sweat of man and hands.

Since then, the people have bid farewell to gold.

At that time, their touch was still very rustic,

As pure as the gray jade before the emerald took shape.

The one who picked up the unpolished gold ingots

Sweaty hands,

It's like being overwhelmed by infinite time

the roots in the condensed soil,

Like the seeds of the color of the earth,

Like a strong soil of mystery,

It's like the earth of grapes.

The unfiled land of gold,

Benevolent materials belong to the people

Pure metal, flawless minerals,

Touch each other, ignore each other, be in

Unavoidable fork in the road:

Man will continue to chew the sand,

The earth is still a stone-bearing earth,

And gold will float with the help of human blood

Until the wounded are mutilated and ruled.

<h3>poet</h3>

Once upon a time, I was in a painful love

Rushing for life,

Once upon a time, I stared intently at life

Kept a small piece of crystal for myself.

I have bought mercy,

I've been to the market of greed,

I have breathed the water of the most merciless jealousy,

Brutal hostility between masks and people.

I've lived in a quagmire world by the sea,

There, flowers—lilies—would suddenly come

Shivering like a bubble swallowed me up,

And everywhere my feet point

Sharp teeth that the heart will slide into the abyss.

And so my poetry was born.

Barely breaking free from the nettle bush,

As if it were a punishment for loneliness,

Or in the garden of the vulgar and shameless

Pick the most intimate flowers until they are buried.

In this way, it is like rushing into a deep canal

Hidden in the river, I was alone

Tossing and turning in the palm of one hand, tossing and turning in the loneliness of people,

Caught between everyday hatred.

I know that half of all living beings are like this

Hide and hide alive, as if

Schools of fish in the most remote oceans,

And in the boundless mire I met the god of death.

The Grim Reaper who broke the door.

Death through the gap through the wall.

<h3>I remember the sea</h3>

Chilean, have you been to the sea lately?

Go in my name, wet your hands, and hold them up,

And I will worship in a foreign land

Endless seawater sprinkles down on your face bit by bit.

I have lived by the sea that belongs to me,

Familiar with the vast sea surface of the north and the wasteland,

And the weight of the waves on the island.

I remember the sea, I remember the rugged, steely rocky shores of Coquimbo,

Remembering the raging waves of Trarkana,

I remember the lonely waves of the South that nurtured me.

Remember, on Puerto Montt or on the island,

Return to the beach at night to wait for the ship,

And our feet leave flames in the footprints of the strings,

It was the mysterious flame of the Phosphorus Fire God.

Sprinkle a puddle of white phosphorus with each step.

We write on the earth with the stars.

And in the sea, the ship slid and swayed

The branches of the fire of the ocean, the swarms of fireflies,

It was as if I had just opened my eyes

An endless wave that sleeps in the abyss again.

The poems in this article are selected from the book "Long Song" and published with the permission of the publishing house.