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rightest political dynasty. But Pablo cultivated a peaceful coexistence
with the owners of the inn and he used
to
pass by in the afternoons to
taste their wines, which continue to be excellent, especially when
accompanied by a plate of enormous, succulent sea urchins. The bed of
sea urchins stretches along the coast of Isla Negra (a coastal town that
is not an island, as Neruda experts know) and still offers a very
abundant catch, as if to show me, yet once again, nature's indifference
to history. Senora Elena told me that Rafita, Neruda's carpenter-the
poet had a mania for building endless additions
to
his houses-was
living in his little house on the other side of the road, undoubtedly
with less work than before.
In a wooden cabin among the pines at the base of a hill facing the
sea lives Nicanor Parra. A very different poet [rom Neruda, Parra is less
natural and torrential than the author of
Residence on Earth,
more
incisive, abstract, and contradictory, as is suggested by the title of his
most important work:
Poems and Antipoems.
With glass after glass of
a coastal wine that is, as Chileans say, "chewable," Nicanor recounts
his odyssey of the last few years
to
me: everything started with an
unfortunate cup of tea at the White House, to which he was invited as a
gesture of public relations with Latin American writers by Patricia
Nixon. Since it was a matter, precisely, of public relations, the cup of
tea received intense publicity and provoked furious attacks from Cuban
writers, followed by the cancellation' of an invitation from the Casa de
la Americas in Havana. Then during the Unidad Popular, the young
Castroite Chileans, the neophytes of the .Revolution, had to be more
Catholic than the pope. "They came along and expelled me from the
university," Nicanor says, with his slightl y rasping voice and intense
look, raising his hands emphaticall y. "They expelled you?" "They
kicked me out!" Nicanor insists and later adds several unpleasant
details related to that expulsion. That was the beginning of his being
condemned, Nicanor comments: "I was already a dissident [rom the
future Chi lean socialism
I"
Nasty rumors have it that icanor, resentful of the young guardi–
ans of revolutionary culture, was one of those who rejoiced at the
military coup. They say he was seen eating ice cream with one of the
intervening generals on a university patio. A little more than a year
later, however, Nicanor wrote a work for presentation at La Carpa, a
tent theater, and this work,
Leaves of Parra,
offered a bloody, merciless
satire of the new regime established in Chile. They were able
to
put the
work on for several days, amidst threats, jittery nerves, and municipal
sanctions. "Once they closed down La Carpa because of a lack of
