One
by Pablo Neruda
My speech is going to be a long journey, a trip that I have taken through regions that are
distant and antipodean, but not for that reason any less similar to the landscape and the
solitude in Scandinavia. I refer to the way in which my country stretches down to the
extreme South. So remote are we Chileans that our boundaries almost touch the South
Pole, recalling the geography of Sweden, whose head reaches the snowy northern
region of this planet.
Down there on those vast expanses in my native country, where I was taken by events
which have already fallen into oblivion, one has to cross, and I was compelled to cross,
the Andes to find the frontier of my country with Argentina. Great forests make these
inaccessible areas like a tunnel through which our journey was secret and forbidden,
with only the faintest signs to show us the way. There were no tracks and no paths, and I
and my four companions, riding on horseback, pressed forward on our tortuous way,
avoiding the obstacles set by huge trees, impassable rivers, immense cliffs and
desolate expanses of snow, blindly seeking the quarter in which my own liberty lay.
Those who were with me knew how to make their way forward between the dense leaves
of the forest, but to feel safer they marked their route by slashing with their machetes
here and there in the bark of the great trees, leaving tracks which they would follow back
when they had left me alone with my destiny.
Each of us made his way forward filled with this limitless solitude, with the green and
white silence of trees and huge trailing plants and layers of soil laid down over centuries,
among half-fallen tree trunks which suddenly appeared as fresh obstacles to bar our
progress. We were in a dazzling and secret world of nature which at the same time was a
growing menace of cold, snow and persecution. Everything became one: the solitude,
the danger, the silence, and the urgency of my mission.
Sometimes we followed a very faint trail, perhaps left by smugglers or ordinary criminals
in flight, and we did not know whether many of them had perished, surprised by the icy
hands of winter, by the fearful snowstorms which suddenly rage in the Andes and engulf
the traveller, burying him under a whiteness seven storeys high.
On either side of the trail I could observe in the wild desolation something which betrayed
human activity. There were piled up branches which had lasted out many winters,
offerings made by hundreds who had journeyed there, crude burial mounds in memory
of the fallen, so that the passer should think of those who had not been able to struggle
on but had remained there under the snow for ever. My comrades, too, hacked off with
their machetes branches which brushed our heads and bent down over us from the
colossal trees, from oaks whose last leaves were scattering before the winter storms.
And I too left a tribute at every mound, a visiting card of wood, a branch from the forest to
deck one or other of the graves of these unknown travellers.
We had to cross a river. Up on the Andean summits there run small streams which cast
themselves down with dizzy and insane force, forming waterfalls that stir up earth and
stones with the violence they bring with them from the heights. But this time we found
calm water, a wide mirrorlike expanse which could be forded. The horses splashed in,
lost their foothold and began to swim towards the other bank. Soon my horse was
almost completely covered by the water, I began to plunge up and down without support,
my feet fighting desperately while the horse struggled to keep its head above water. Then
we got across. And hardly we reached the further bank when the seasoned countryfolk
with me asked me with scarce-concealed smiles:
"Were you frightened?"
"Very. I thought my last hour had come", I said.
"We were behind you with our lassoes in our hands", they answered.
"Just there", added one of them, "my father fell and was swept away by the current. That
didn't happen to you."
We continued till we came to a natural tunnel which perhaps had been bored through the
imposing rocks by some mighty vanished river or created by some tremor of the earth
when these heights had been formed, a channel that we entered where it had been
carved out in the rock in granite. After only a few steps our horses began to slip when they
sought for a foothold in the uneven surfaces of the stone and their legs were bent, sparks
flying from beneath their iron shoes - several times I expected to find myself thrown off
and lying there on the rock. My horse was bleeding from its muzzle and from its legs, but
we persevered and continued on the long and difficult but magnificent path.
There was something awaiting us in the midst of this wild primeval forest. Suddenly, as if
in a strange vision, we came to a beautiful little meadow huddled among the rocks: clear
water, green grass, wild flowers, the purling of brooks and the blue heaven above, a
generous stream of light unimpeded by leaves.
There we stopped as if within a magic circle, as if guests within some hallowed place,
and the ceremony I now took part in had still more the air of something sacred. The
cowherds dismounted from their horses. In the midst of the space, set up as if in a rite,
was the skull of an ox. In silence the men approached it one after the other and put coins
and food in the eyesockets of the skull. I joined them in this sacrifice intended for stray
travellers, all kinds of refugees who would find bread and succour in the dead ox's eye
sockets.
But the unforgettable ceremony did not end there. My country friends took off their hats
and began a strange dance, hopping on one foot around the abandoned skull, moving in
the ring of footprints left behind by the many others who had passed there before them.
Dimly I understood, there by the side of my inscrutable companions, that there was a
kind of link between unknown people, a care, an appeal and an answer even in the most
distant and isolated solitude of this world.
Further on, just before we reached the frontier which was to divide me from my native
land for many years, we came at night to the last pass between the mountains. Suddenly
we saw the glow of a fire as a sure sign of a human presence, and when we came
nearer we found some half-ruined buildings, poor hovels which seemed to have been
abandoned. We went into one of them and saw the glow of fire from tree trunks burning
in the middle of the floor, carcasses of huge trees, which burnt there day and night and
from which came smoke that made its way up through the cracks in the roof and rose up
like a deep-blue veil in the midst of the darkness. We saw mountains of stacked
cheeses, which are made by the people in these high regions. Near the fire lay a number
of men grouped like sacks. In the silence we could distinguish the notes of a guitar and
words in a song which was born of the embers and the darkness, and which carried with
it the first human voice we had encountered during our journey. It was a song of love and
distance, a cry of love and longing for the distant spring, from the towns we were coming
away from, for life in its limitless extent. These men did not know who we were, they knew
nothing about our flight, they had never heard either my name or my poetry; or perhaps
they did, perhaps they knew us? What actually happened was that at this fire we sang
and we ate, and then in the darkness we went into some primitive rooms. Through them
flowed a warm stream, volcanic water in which we bathed, warmth which welled out from
the mountain chain and received us in its bosom.
Happily we splashed about, dug ourselves out, as it were, liberated ourselves from the
weight of the long journey on horseback. We felt refreshed, reborn, baptised, when in the
dawn we started on the journey of a few miles which was to eclipse me from my native
land. We rode away on our horses singing, filled with a new air, with a force that cast us
out on to the world's broad highway which awaited me. This I remember well, that when
we sought to give the mountain dwellers a few coins in gratitude for their songs, for the
food, for the warm water, for giving us lodging and beds, I would rather say for the
unexpected heavenly refuge that had met us on our journey, our offering was rejected out
of hand. They had been at our service, nothing more. In this taciturn "nothing" there were
hidden things that were understood, perhaps a recognition, perhaps the same kind of
dreams.
Ladies and Gentlemen,
I did not learn from books any recipe for writing a poem, and I, in my turn, will avoid giving
any advice on mode or style which might give the new poets even a drop of supposed
insight. When I am recounting in this speech something about past events, when reliving
on this occasion a never-forgotten occurrence, in this place which is so different from
what that was, it is because in the course of my life I have always found somewhere the
necessary support, the formula which had been waiting for me not in order to be petrified
in my words but in order to explain me to myself.
During this long journey I found the necessary components for the making of the poem.
There I received contributions from the earth and from the soul. And I believe that poetry
is an action, ephemeral or solemn, in which there enter as equal partners solitude and
solidarity, emotion and action, the nearness to oneself, the nearness to mankind and to
the secret manifestations of nature. And no less strongly I think that all this is sustained -
man and his shadow, man and his conduct, man and his poetry - by an ever-wider sense
of community, by an effort which will for ever bring together the reality and the dreams in
us because it is precisely in this way that poetry unites and mingles them. And therefore I
say that I do not know, after so many years, whether the lessons I learned when I
crossed a daunting river, when I danced around the skull of an ox, when I bathed my body
in the cleansing water from the topmost heights - I do not know whether these lessons
welled forth from me in order to be imparted to many others or whether it was all a
message which was sent to me by others as a demand or an accusation. I do not know
whether I experienced this or created it, I do not know whether it was truth or poetry,
something passing or permanent, the poems I experienced in this hour, the experiences
which I later put into verse.
From all this, my friends, there arises an insight which the poet must learn through other
people. There is no insurmountable solitude. All paths lead to the same goal: to convey
to others what we are. And we must pass through solitude and difficulty, isolation and
silence in order to reach forth to the enchanted place where we can dance our clumsy
dance and sing our sorrowful song - but in this dance or in this song there are fulfilled
the most ancient rites of our conscience in the awareness of being human and of
believing in a common destiny.
The truth is that even if some or many consider me to be a sectarian, barred from taking
a place at the common table of friendship and responsibility, I do not wish to defend
myself, for I believe that neither accusation nor defence is among the tasks of the poet.
When all is said, there is no individual poet who administers poetry, and if a poet sets
himself up to accuse his fellows or if some other poet wastes his life in defending
himself against reasonable or unreasonable charges, it is my conviction that only vanity
can so mislead us. I consider the enemies of poetry to be found not among those who
practise poetry or guard it but in mere lack of agreement in the poet. For this reason no
poet has any considerable enemy other than his own incapacity to make himself
understood by the most forgotten and exploited of his contemporaries, and this applies
to all epochs and in all countries.
The poet is not a "little god". No, he is not a "little god". He is not picked out by a mystical
destiny in preference to those who follow other crafts and professions. I have often
maintained that the best poet is he who prepares our daily bread: the nearest baker who
does not imagine himself to be a god. He does his majestic and unpretentious work of
kneading the dough, consigning it to the oven, baking it in golden colours and handing
us our daily bread as a duty of fellowship. And, if the poet succeeds in achieving this
simple consciousness, this too will be transformed into an element in an immense
activity, in a simple or complicated structure which constitutes the building of a
community, the changing of the conditions which surround mankind, the handing over of
mankind's products: bread, truth, wine, dreams. If the poet joins this never-completed
struggle to extend to the hands of each and all his part of his undertaking, his effort and
his tenderness to the daily work of all people, then the poet must take part, the poet will
take part, in the sweat, in the bread, in the wine, in the whole dream of humanity. Only in
this indispensable way of being ordinary people shall we give back to poetry the mighty
breadth which has been pared away from it little by little in every epoch, just as we
ourselves have been whittled down in every epoch.
The mistakes which led me to a relative truth and the truths which repeatedly led me
back to the mistakes did not allow me - and I never made any claims to it - to find my way
to lead, to learn what is called the creative process, to reach the heights of literature that
are so difficult of access. But one thing I realized - that it is we ourselves who call forth the
spirits through our own myth-making. From the matter we use, or wish to use, there arise
later on obstacles to our own development and the future development. We are led
infallibly to reality and realism, that is to say to become indirectly conscious of everything
that surrounds us and of the ways of change, and then we see, when it seems to be late,
that we have erected such an exaggerated barrier that we are killing what is alive instead
of helping life to develop and blossom. We force upon ourselves a realism which later
proves to be more burdensome than the bricks of the building, without having erected the
building which we had regarded as an indispensable part of our task. And, in the contrary
case, if we succeed in creating the fetish of the incomprehensible (or the fetish of that
which is comprehensible only to a few), the fetish of the exclusive and the secret, if we
exclude reality and its realistic degenerations, then we find ourselves suddenly
surrounded by an impossible country, a quagmire of leaves, of mud, of cloud, where our
feet sink in and we are stifled by the impossibility of communicating.
As far as we in particular are concerned, we writers within the tremendously far-flung
American region, we listen unceasingly to the call to fill this mighty void with beings of
flesh and blood. We are conscious of our duty as fulfillers - at the same time we are
faced with the unavoidable task of critical communication within a world which is empty
and is not less full of injustices, punishments and sufferings because it is empty - and
we feel also the responsibility for reawakening the old dreams which sleep in statues of
stone in the ruined ancient monuments, in the wide-stretching silence in planetary
plains, in dense primeval forests, in rivers which roar like thunder. We must fill with
words the most distant places in a dumb continent and we are intoxicated by this task of
making fables and giving names. This is perhaps what is decisive in my own humble
case, and if so my exaggerations or my abundance or my rhetoric would not be anything
other than the simplest of events within the daily work of an American. Each and every
one of my verses has chosen to take its place as a tangible object, each and every one of
my poems has claimed to be a useful working instrument, each and every one of my
songs has endeavoured to serve as a sign in space for a meeting between paths which
cross one another, or as a piece of stone or wood on which someone, some others,
those who follow after, will be able to carve the new signs.
By extending to these extreme consequences the poet's duty, in truth or in error, I
determined that my posture within the community and before life should be that of in a
humble way taking sides. I decided this when I saw so many honourable misfortunes,
lone victories, splendid defeats. In the midst of the arena of America's struggles I saw
that my human task was none other than to join the extensive forces of the organized
masses of the people, to join with life and soul with suffering and hope, because it is
only from this great popular stream that the necessary changes can arise for the authors
and for the nations. And even if my attitude gave and still gives rise to bitter or friendly
objections, the truth is that I can find no other way for an author in our far-flung and cruel
countries, if we want the darkness to blossom, if we are concerned that the millions of
people who have learnt neither to read us nor to read at all, who still cannot write or write
to us, are to feel at home in the area of dignity without which it is impossible for them to
be complete human beings.
We have inherited this damaged life of peoples dragging behind them the burden of the
condemnation of centuries, the most paradisaical of peoples, the purest, those who with
stones and metals made marvellous towers, jewels of dazzling brilliance - peoples who
were suddenly despoiled and silenced in the fearful epochs of colonialism which still
linger on.
Our original guiding stars are struggle and hope. But there is no such thing as a lone
struggle, no such thing as a lone hope. In every human being are combined the most
distant epochs, passivity, mistakes, sufferings, the pressing urgencies of our own time,
the pace of history. But what would have become of me if, for example, I had contributed
in some way to the maintenance of the feudal past of the great American continent? How
should I then have been able to raise my brow, illuminated by the honour which Sweden
has conferred on me, if I had not been able to feel some pride in having taken part, even
to a small extent, in the change which has now come over my country? It is necessary to
look at the map of America, to place oneself before its splendid multiplicity, before the
cosmic generosity of the wide places which surround us, in order to understand why
many writers refuse to share the dishonour and plundering of the past, of all that which
dark gods have taken away from the American peoples.
I chose the difficult way of divided responsibility and, rather than to repeat the worship of
the individual as the sun and centre of the system, I have preferred to offer my services in
all modesty to an honourable army which may from time to time commit mistakes but
which moves forward unceasingly and struggles every day against the anachronism of
the refractory and the impatience of the opinionated. For I believe that my duties as a poet
involve friendship not only with the rose and with symmetry, with exalted love and endless
longing, but also with unrelenting human occupations which I have incorporated into my
poetry.
It is today exactly one hundred years since an unhappy and brilliant poet, the most
awesome of all despairing souls, wrote down this prophecy: "A l'aurore, armés d'une
ardente patience, nous entrerons aux splendides Villes." "In the dawn, armed with a
burning patience, we shall enter the splendid Cities."
I believe in this prophecy of Rimbaud, the Visionary. I come from a dark region, from a
land separated from all others by the steep contours of its geography. I was the most
forlorn of poets and my poetry was provincial, oppressed and rainy. But always I had put
my trust in man. I never lost hope. It is perhaps because of this that I have reached as far
as I now have with my poetry and also with my banner.
Lastly, I wish to say to the people of good will, to the workers, to the poets, that the whole
future has been expressed in this line by Rimbaud: only with a burning patience can we
conquer the splendid City which will give light, justice and dignity to all mankind.
In this way the song will not have been sung in vain.
______________________________________
Pablo Neruda won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1971. As a poet, he has influenced
generations of writers. This is the speech he gave upon winning the Nobel Prize. Though
he died in 1973, Pablo Neruda's spirit lives in all poets who understand the importance,
the relevance and the magic of the word.
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