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Segura que era el título, siendo banquero, que me atraía a esta novela. En realidad, no tiene que ver mucho con el banquero, sino es más un ensayo en forma de una conversación sobre la filosofía del anarquismo. Uno de los protagonistas es banquero y anarquista. Un hecho sorprendente sin duda eligido por Pessoa para estimular el interés. A mí me parece un banquero egoísta con una teoría grande para esconder su avaricia.
Esta edición contiene la novela de 1922 y fragmentos de 1935, año en que Pessoa estaba revisando el texto. También unas páginas de una traducción en inglés del mismo Pessoa.

Comparar los dos textos es muy interesante. Queda claro que Pessoa no había cambiado mucho de ideas. En los fragmentos de 1935, año de su muerto, trata de iluminar sus ideas. De vez en cuando ideas remarcables. Por ejemplo sobre el socialismo:

- Comprenderá que yo no podía aceptar el socialismo o el comunismo, en ninguna de sus distintas manifestaciones, como pasos hacia el anarquismo, por la simple razón de que andar hacia atrás no es la forma más sencilla de ir hacia adelante. Lo cierto, amigo mío, es que el socialismo y el comunismo son regímenes de odio, y dicho sea en abono de la humanidad, los regímenes de odio no pueden durar.
- ¿Regímenes de odio?
- El objetivo del socialismo y del comunismo no es elevar el trabajador, sino rebajar al burgués. El trabajador se queda como estaba, cuando no peor, como ya le he dicho. Lo que pierde el burgués no lo gana el obrero. El anarquismo, por el contrario, es un régimen de amor, y nadie desea ver sojuzgado a quien ama.

Me interesaría saber lo que Saramago piense de ésto. Se puede leer su libro Ensayo sobre la lucidez como un ejemplo de acción anarquista.
Un otro ejemplo sobre regímenes revolucionarios:

Un régimen revolucionario, en tanto existe, y sea cual fuere el fin al que se encamine y la idea que lo mueva, no es materialmente sino una cosa -un régimen revolucionario. Un régimen revolucionario significa una dictadura de guerra, o, para no andarnos con rodeos, un régimen militar despótico, ya que una parte de la sociedad – la parte que ha asumido revolucionariamente el poder – impone a la otra parte el estado de guerra. ¿Y cuál es el resultado? El resultado es que aquellos que se adaptan a ese régimen, que en lo material, en lo inmediato, es sólo un régimen militar despótico, se adaptan a un régimen militar despótico. La idea que en un principio movía a los revolucionarios, el fin hacia el que se encaminaban, desaparecerá por completo de la realidad social, ocupada ya exclusivamente por el fenómeno guerrero. De modo que lo que resulta de una dictadura revolucionaria – y tanto más perfecto será ese resultado cuanto más tiempo dure esa dictadura – es una sociedad guerrera de tipo dictatorial, es decir, un despotismo militar. Y no veo cómo habría de ser de otro modo. Siempre ha sido asi. Yo no sé mucho de historia, pero lo poco que sé lo avala; sin asomo de duda. ¿En qué acabaron las agitaciones políticas de Roma? En el Imperio Romano y su despotismo militar. ¿Y la Revolución Francesa? En Napoleón y su despotismo militar. Y ya verá usted en qué acaba la Revolución Rusa… En algo que retrasará decenas de años la realización de la sociedad libre…

Queda claro que es un texto para provocar, para estimular las ideas. Me gusta mucho. Como socialista convencido, tengo unas reservaciones, pero en todo me interesa mucho. He encargado por internet un libro de Noam Chomsky, Chomsky on anarchism. Será muy interesante comparar los dos filósofos.

Suppose you read one book every week. If you are able to do this from, say, your youth at 15 until your old age at 85, you will have read 3.640 books. Let’s compare this respectable amount of reading with some output figures.

These figures were provided by Gabriel Zaid in his excellent work So many books. As Gutenberg started printing, the annual output of books was something like 100. Five hundred years later this amounted to 250.000, but as the television made its appearance, the end of the book was predicted. Not so, in 2000 one million new titles were published. 275 times more than you can read in a lifetime.
Of course that’s not correct. From these one million books you’ll have to deduct the books written in languages you can’t read, technical books and all kinds of books outside your fields of interest, pulp literature, etc. But even so, I believe that every year more books that I’d like to read are published than I’ll ever be able to read. Picking them good is becoming an art in itself.

To make my point: reading the right books is as important for your life as meeting the right people. They can form you, they can help you, or they can have a very negative influence.

In these pages, I’d like to talk about some of the books that matter very much to me. And the first book I’d like to comment on is Orwell’s Nineteen eighty-four.

Collecting books, can you imagine a better pastime? Perhaps you can. But, you’ll agree with me that a fine collection of books gives pleasure again and again.
I love books from cover to cover. I love the paper, the typography, the binding, but in the first place I love the text.
The books you’ll find in this library were collected over a long period of time. And in several ways. Of course a lot of books were bought in bookshops (new and antiquarian). Nothing can compare with browsing through books in a good bookshop and finding unexpected treasures.
But very often, you don’t want to depend on “unexpected” treasures. Very often you are looking for a specific book.
That’s where the internet comes in. Buying via the internet is like having incredibly huge bookshops at home. Information flows easily and buying is made very, very easy.
For secondhand and antiquarian books, the net is even better. It enables you to browse thousands of secondhand bookshops with a few clicks. For me Abebooks is by far the best site for buying secondhand books. Many of the finest volumes in my library were bought this way.

Canto General, Pablo Neruda

The first edition of Canto General was published in Mexico City in 1950 by Talleres Graficos de la Nación. It was an edition of 500 numbered copies. This edition can still be found now and then, but you’ll pay some 5000 to 6000 usd for it. The book I bought is a first print of the Mexican edition of Ediciones Océano, printed in 1950 as the commercial edition.
As a rule I’m not a collector of first prints. Mostly they’re extremely expensive, and what does it mean anyway? But for some books it really means something to have an early print.
Canto General became a world famous book, and I always wonder, with the actual book in my hands, how that book was perceived by the person who bought it then. Was it someone who had the knack of finding very special books? Or perhaps a shallow encounter, like buying a handsome book as a present for someone that never opened it.
What is really special about an early print, is that the book presents itself as it is, naked you might say. Later editions will be marked by all the humbug, the blurbs, the critical acclaim. But this book is still a book without that context. It says, modestly, ‘please, discover me’.

The Old Man and the Sea, Ernest Hemingway
Jonathan Cape, 1952

“He was an old man who fished alone in a skiff in the Gulf Stream and he had gone eighty-four days now without taking a fish.”

Unnecessary to introduce this beautiful short novel. I have always been an admirer of Hemingway’s terse style. This book has the power of his best short stories. And he certainly was a short story writer.
This edition was printed in 1952, the year the book was published in England. It is actually a second impression. The cover jacket was designed by Hans Tisdall, who was the designer of many distinctive lettered book jackets for Jonathan Cape in the 1950s. Hans Tisdall was born in Germany in 1910, and later came to England, where he died in 1997.
You can buy books like these for not too much money, because it is not a “first impression”. But you’ve got a fine early hardback edition for little more than the price of a new paper back.

Mirando los libros en mi biblioteca, me doy cuenta que tengo muchos libros relacionados con Suramérica. No solamente los libros más famosos como por ejemplo los de Isabel Allende o Gabriel García Márquez, sino también obras menos conocidas y libros históricos, políticos y filosóficos.
Desde que mi hija empezó a vivir y trabajar en La Paz, Bolivia, mi interés por el continente ha ido creciendo. He viajado en Bolivia y Peru y he encontrado a mucha gente interesante. Empecé a estudiar castellano y a leer libros latinoamericanos y encontré una cultura rica e impresionante.
El continente contiene varios mundos distintos: el mundo de las viejas civilizaciones (los Incas, los Aztecas,…), el mundo hispanoamericano después del “descubrimiento” del continente por Cristóbal Colón, el mundo actual con sus problemas económicos y políticos y con sus contribuciones en la filosofía, el arte y sobre todo en la literatura contemporáneo. Además hay la tierra misma: una naturaleza muy variada.
La tierra siempre ha sido una inspiración para el escritor chileno más famoso: Pablo Neruda. En Residencia en la tierra y sobre todo en Canto General demuestra su afición por la naturaleza, la selva, las cordilleras y la gente que vive acá. Las fotos magníficas de Luis Poirot nos muestran el poeta rodeado de sus paisajes amados. Vea también Cuentos de la selva de Horacio Quiroga.

La tierra suramericana tiene riquezas geológicas y agrarias que han sido la causa de luchas, de matanzas, de sumisión. Es la triste historia de un continente colonizado, relato en la obra maestra de Eduardo Galeano: Las venas abiertas de América Latina. La historia de la tierra americana ha sido describido muchas veces. Una interpretación muy interesante es la de Felipe Fernández-Armesto: The Americas, The History of a Hemisphere. De una otra manera, pero muy segustivo, la trilogía de Eduardo Galeano cuenta la historia desde los tiempos míticos hasta los ultimos años: Memoria del fuego: Los nacimientos, Las caras y las máscaras y El siglo del viento.

Hasta ahora las riquezas geológicas causan problemas: De kapitalisering van het staatspetroleumbedrijf in Bolivia, Een Boliviaans alternatief voor privatisering y Sociology of economic transformation and regulation de Nele Mariën. Uitdagingen voor Latijns-Amerika , op de drempel van het derde millennium, Willy Stevens.

Antes de los Incas había muchos pueblos extendidos sobre la tierra suramericana. Algunos tenían civilizaciones muy desarrollados, como por ejemplo los Tiwanaku que vivían en los altiplanos de los Andes: The archaeology of Tiwanaku; The myths, history and science of an ancient Andean civilization, Juan Albarracin-Jordan. Los Tiwanaku tenían una civilización avanzada, de tal manera que los Incas tomaran muchos elementos de la arquitectura. Tengo unos libros interesantes sobre los Incas: History of the Inca Realmde María Rostworowski de Diez Canseco y Les Royaumes préincaïques et le monde Inca. Lo más interesante es el libro de Hiram Bingham, el arqueólogo norteamericano que descubrió Machu Picchu: Lost City of the Incas, The story of Machu Picchu and its builders.

1492. Este año inició los Tiempos Nuevos. Los poderes europeos estaban creciendo y necesitaban nuevos espacios, rutas de negocios. Siempre querían más oro y plata, hierbas exoticas, seda, etc. Cristóbal Colón descubrió un “nuevo mundo”(Cristóbal Colón, Rumbo a Cipango, Edward Rosset) y puso en marcha siglos de guerras, de matanzas, de robos. Sobre este período:
Felipe II y su tiempo, Manuel Fernández Álvarez.
New Worlds, Ancient Texts; The Power of Tradition and the Shock of Discovery, Anthony Grafton.
The Jesuit and the Incas; The Extraordinary Life of Padre Blas Valera, SJpor Sabine Hyland.
Los hijos del conquistador de Carlos Fuentes.

La lucha entre los pueblos y poderes imperialistos continuan hasta nuestros tiempos. Uno de los libertadores del imperialismo español era Simón Bolívar (Mario Hernández Sánchez). Un símbolo de esta lucha es el Che. Ernesto Guevara, une légende du siècle, Pierre Kalfon.

La riqueza de la literatura latinoamericana es evidente, lo han testimoniado los cuatro ganadores del Premio Nobel de Literaturo: Miguel Angel Asturias en 1967, Pablo Neruda en 1971, Gabriel García Márquez en 1982 y Octavio Paz en 1990. Gracias a Pablo Neruda encontré a una buena amiga: Isabel Lipthay, una chilena que vive en Alemania (refugiado por la dictatura de Pinochet). Isabel ya ha publicado dos libros de cuentos: Aquel Encuentro y Curiosas plantas y otros sueños.

Libros de Isabel Allende, de Jorge Luis Borges.
Cien años atrás de Nazario Pardo Valle sobre la historia de La Paz, Bolivia.
Diego y Frida, JMG Le Clézio.
Obras de Jodorowsky: No basta decir, Donde mejor canta un pájaro, El tesoro de la sombra.

Antonio Skármeta: El baile de la Victoria, El cartero de Neruda y La boda del poeta.
El beso de la mujer araña, Manuel Puig.
Eduardo Galeano: El libro de los abrazos.
Inquieta compañía y Instinto de Iñez, Carlos Fuentes.
Mario Benedetti: La borra del café y Antología Poética.
Mario Vargas Llosa: La fiesta del Chivo, La tía Julia y el escribidor, Lituma en los Andes.
La nada cotidiana, Zoé Valdés.
Julio Cortázar: Las armas secretas, Los premios, Rayuela.
Sombras nada más, Sergio Ramírez.

Poesía:
Jaime Sabines: Te quiero a las diez de la mañana.
Mario Benedetti: Poemas de la oficina , Poemas del hoyporhoy.

Filosofía:
Poliética Francisco Fernández Buey.
Hacia una filosofía política crítica, Enrique Dussel.

Libros para viajar en Suramérica:
The Old Patagonian Express, By train through the Americas, Paul Theroux.
Lo mejor: Bolivia Handbook, Alan Murphy.
Bolivia; A guide to the people, politics and culture, Paul van Lindert.
Peru Bolivia, De gids voor de wereldreiziger.

War and literature

Warfare seems to be of all times. A simple truth, but a dangerous one. It seems to imply that war is inevitable, although most people I know only want to live in peace and welfare. But these same simple people, when called upon, put on their helmets, take their guns and go to war. Forces outside their will provide for war material, for guns and airplanes, for high-tech installations, for lots of money and for a reason to fight. Why this goes on and on is not clear to me, even after reading the splendid books by John Keegan: A History of Warfare and War and our World. But war happens, and after the war these ‘simple beings’ have to try to recover from all their wounds. And some wounds can only be healed by talking about it. Or writing.

Writing as a process of dealing with trauma is of all times. But the unprecedented horrors of the First World War gave rise to a new kind of literature. Not the epic and heroic poetry anymore, but the raw reality. In poetry this was notably so in the work of Siegfried Sassoon and Wilfred Owen. Quite a difference with the still idealistic poetry of Rupert Brooke. The horrors of the battle field have been superbly described by Ernest Hemingway in A Farewell to Arms.
The First World War still engenders literature, e.g. Marc Dugain’s ‘La chambre des Officiers’ (De officierskamer) about mutilated officers, or the splendid trilogy by Pat Barker: Regeneration, The eye in the door and The Ghost Road.
The FWW was also the subject of many historic studies, certainly John Keegan’s The First World War, but also controversial books like Alan Clark’s The donkeys in which he writes about the unbelievable way some generals sent tens of thousands of young men to their useless death.

People did not get much time to recover from the First World War. In 1936 the Spanish Civil War began and it was a foreboding of the Second World War. The Civil War was more than gruesome, this war (and the Second) started the complete war: civilians became warriors and victims. A masterpiece is Hemingway’s For whom the Bell Tolls. And of course there is George Orwell’s Homage to Catalonia, source for Ken Loach’s film “Land and Freedom”. A recent testimony is Manuel Rivas’ El lápiz del carpintero. Of course, a war never ends on the day of a peace agreement. Like in Spain under the dictatorship of Generalísimo Franco many people suffered from repression. A noteable case was that of the poet Marcos Ana (Decidme cómo es un árbol), who was a political prisoner for almost twenty years and was relieved thanks to the action of many sympathisers, among them Pablo Neruda.

The Second World War was a sad new step in the way a war was fought. One of the black pages of human history is certainly the holocaust. For a very gripping eye witness report you might read Primo Levi‘s If this is a Man.
Heinrich Böll, the German writer and Nobel Prize winner, used several novels to come to grip with Germany’s past: Billard um Halbzehn, a fantastic novel that spans three generations, from the First to the Second World War, and the superb novel Gruppenbild mit Dame.
Also Dutch authors like Simon Vestdijk and Harry Mulisch wrote several fine books about the war and about local resistance. Mulisch’s novel De aanslag was translated in english (The Assault) as well as his famous novel Het stenen bruidsbed (translated as The Stone Bridal Bed). Subject of this book is the horrendous and completely useless (from a military point of view) bombardment of Dresden in 1945. Another book with the same subject was written by an eye witness: Gert Ledig’s Vergeltung (in english translation: Payback, in dutch: Vergelding).
Harry Mulisch also wrote a fine documentary novel, De zaak 40/61: een reportage, about the process of war criminal Adolf Eichman in Jerusalem in 1961. This is also the subject of a brilliant and controversial study by Hannah Arendt: Eichmann in Jerusalem, A Report on the Banality of Evil.

To end, I’d like to mention George Orwell’s Nineteen eighty-four. It is, of course, not exactly a novel about war, it is worse. It describes a situation where the State terrorises the individual and where war between shifting enemies is continuing forever. This outstanding novel was published in 1949, but is as relevant now as ever. One Party states (like the United States in practice, Russia in practice, the Arab world and China) oppress most of their own citizens using drastic anti-terrorist laws. They are continuously at war with some other state. Demonising the enemy is also a common practice. Bush’s ‘axis of evil’ may seem unbelievably ridiculous to us, but he was serious (Lord, help us). So, if you’re following the international news on CNN or BBC, keep Nineteen eighty-four within arm’s reach. It explains a lot.

Janantoon

More in my library:
Novels about the impact of war
John Keegan: The Face of Battle
John Keegan: Intelligence in War
Julius Caesar: Oorlog in Gallië

I love the sea. Ever since I saw it for the first time when I was six, the vastness and endless rolling of the waves kept fascinating me. Traveling by boat, although almost completely replaced by the airplane, still has a sense of real adventure. The plane goes too fast: the body is already at its destination, but the mind (or soul if you like) is still lagging behind. It must have been fascinating to travel from Europe to America in one of those big liners, with the exception of the Titanic, of course. Some fine stories have been written about it. Such a boat trip is for instance the setting for Stefan Zweig’s story Schachnovelle where a chess world champion is challenged by a highly-gifted amateur.
This brings me to literature and the sea. It seems that many writers have been just as much attracted by this mysterious element. And I have several of their books! One of the classic stories is of course Moby Dick by Herman Melville with its famous opening lines:
“Call me Ishmael. Some years ago – never mind how long precisely – having little or no money in my purse, and nothing particular to interest me on shore, I thought I would sail about a little and see the watery part of the world.”
Or for instance The Ship by C.S. Forester, a very fine novel about a sea battle in the Mediterranean in the Second World War. Most of these books about the sea seem to have been written by English writers. Britannia rules the waves, and propagates it through her literature… Apart from the ‘serious’ literary novel, there are many genres, like the historic novel, the thriller, the whodunnit. And England has its own thriving genre: the marine novel. And although I don’t like to read whodunnits and thrillers (with an exception from time to time), I’m afraid I’m addicted to this kind of novel.

Perhaps the best known of these ‘marine’ writers was C.S. Forester who created the famous character Horatio Hornblower. In ten or eleven novels we follow Hornblower’s career from young midshipman, coming from a humble backgound, to eventually admiral. So, apart from the christian name, Hornblower has more likenesses to Horatio Nelson. Although, Mr Bryan Perrett states in a thorough study (The Real Hornblower) that Hornblower was based on the historic figure Admiral Sir James Gordon, GCB. Be that as it may, I love the Hornblower stories as they are. Perhaps they are not of the highest literary quality, but the story telling is gripping. The novels were published between 1937 and 1953, roughly the period of the Second World War and the aftermath in Great Britain, and may have been very comforting for British readers.

In Forester’s wake (appropriate term, I think) several other writers created their own marine heroes. For instance Alexander Kent (The Flag Captain) and certainly Patrick O’Brian with novels like The Commodore and The Yellow Admiral.

However, enjoying this genre reading didn’t stop me from buying more serious studies and novels in the same range. For instance about Captain Bligh and the mutiny on the Bounty, or Nelson’s biography and very recently a new book by the Spanish author Pérez-Reverte to commemorate the Battle of Trafalgar: Cabo Trafalgar. Or Susan Sontag’s The Volcano Lover.

I’d like to end with one of those mysterious Seamus Heaney poems from Seeing Things.

The annals say: when the monks of Clonmacnoise
Were all at prayers inside the oratory
A ship appeared above them in the air.

The anchor dragged along behind so deep
It hooked itself into the altar rails
And then, as the big hull rocked to a standstill,

A crewman shinned and grappled down the rope
And struggled to release it. But in vain.
‘This man can’t bear our life here and will drown,’

The abbot said, ‘unless we help him.’ So
They did, the freed ship sailed, and the man climbed back
Out of the marvellous as he had known it.

“The man who does not read good books has no advantage over the man who can not read them.”
Mark Twain

For many people the Bible is a Holy Book, for others this would be Al-Qur’an or still another ancient religious volume. For me the book as phenomenon is in itself holy (and holy means to me: of uttermost importance to the well-being of mankind). Ages ago humans already wanted to write down ideas to keep them and to share them with other learned men. But just writing down ideas was a poor way of dispersing them. The library of Alexandria was famous in Caesar’s time, but you had to travel to Egypt to consult the handwritten scrolls.
Only book printing and later the invention of moveable type by Gutenberg made books into a really powerful instrument to spread ideas. (Read more about early book printing in Ideas kept growing and spreading. As mentioned before this was first apparent in the spread of new interpretations of the Bible. And later in the growing political awareness of ordinary citizens, which culminated into the French Revolution and later in another kind of revolution triggered by Das Kommunistische Manifest. And clearly the enormous growth of science since the first humanists started writing until the publication of landmark studies as The Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection and Relativity, The Special and the General Theory was entirely due to the newly born publication business.
Some will say that books are now being made obsolete by the internet (and indeed, you are most certainly reading this on your screen…), but I think that for serious purposes the internet still has two disadvantages:
- there is too much information on the net and it is unstructered. Although Google managed to produce an amazing search engine, still the sheer amount of sites found works unproductive,
- the information on the internet lacks verisimilitude. Serious book printing had the same problem for a rather long time. Nowadays we trust the editor to check the credentials of authors, to edit the text, to make sure that the content lives up to academic standards. If you buy a book published for instance by Oxford University Press you may still want to disagree with the ideas of the author, but at least you’ll be sure that the author is who is claimed to be so on the book, that the text is his, and indeed that some standards of writing have been respected. This was not always the case. (Read about this aspect in Adrian John’s The Nature of the Book, Print and Knowledge in the Making).

Books are important for our society and for our lives. To study, to manage, to divert ourselves. They are very important in my life. Moreover, I like books just for the object itself: the paper, the binding, the typography, the layout, the whole of it. But always in combination with the content…
So this is another theme of my library. I like to buy books about books. Every aspect interests me: the history of book printing (eg The Making of Books in the Renaissance as told by the Archives of the Plantin-Moretus Museum), the typography like eg Beatrice Warde’s The Crystal Goblet, the lifes of famous typographers like Eric Gill, the designers (Penguin by Design, A Cover Story 1935-2005), etcetera.
I can go on: memoirs by editors (Nigel Nicolson’s Long Life), books in your interior (Living with books), or just books celebrating the writing and reading of books like the outstanding Ex Libris, Confessions of a common reader by Anne Fadiman.
For those, like me, who complain about the many many interesting books and the rare free moments to read them, this small book may bring some consolation and perspective: So many books by Gabriel Zaid.

So this is the site of a book lover, a common reader. If this is your condition too, you’ll feel happy browsing my books.

Toen ik vroeger droomde van de grote reizen die ik nog zou doen, dacht ik aan China of Indonesië of Japan, maar nooit aan zuidamerika. Nu heb ik een dochter die leeft en werkt in Bolivië, klaag ik dat ik mijn kleindochter te weinig zie, ken ik mijn schoonzoon Juan Carlos, Enrique en Raquel, zijn ouders, en zovele andere mensen. We hebben Bolivië en Peru bezocht, het Titikaka-meer, de onvergetelijke Machu Picchu, het Andesgebergte.
Ik heb kunstenaars ontdekt zoals Gabriel García Márquez, Mario Benedetti, Jaime Sabines, Isabel Allende, Jorge Luis Borges, Carlos Fuentes, Silvio Rodríguez, Diego Rivera, etc, etc. Ik heb gebabbeld met Paulino Estebán die met zijn gezin aan het Titikaka-meer woont. Paulino is de indiaan die het vlot van Thor Heyerdahl maakte. Nu weet ik het: zuidamerika is een andere wereld. Een verrassende wereld.

Pablo Neruda was een symbool van deze wereld. Charles de Gaulle zei ooit: “La France, c’est moi!” Neruda had dat ook kunnen zeggen : ” Suramérica, ¡soy yo ! ” Hij zou zeker zuidamerika gezegd hebben en niet enkel Chili, want hij voelde zich één met de zuidamerikaanse mensen, met de armen, de indianen, met de Spanjaarden die in de burgeroorlog tegen de fascisten vochten, met de vrouwen, alle vrouwen. Hij was een uitzonderlijk mens.
Laat ik eerst het verhaal van zijn dood doen. We bevinden ons in Chili, in 1973. President Salvador Allende is al enkele jaren aan de macht. Hij is een marxist, geneesheer, en democratisch verkozen president. Hij heeft al heel wat kunnen verwezenlijken, maar tegen de zin van de burgerij en een deel van het leger. Als hij de tin- en kopermijnen nationaliseert, gaat hij te ver. Met de nauwelijks verholen hulp van de CIA doet generaal Pinochet een staatsgreep. Allende verdedigt zich verbeten en vecht in het presidentieel paleis. En sterft er. 11 september 1973.
Pablo Neruda is op dat ogenblik al zwaar ziek. De dood van zijn vriend en de val van een marxistisch bewind (het eerste dat legaal aan de macht was gekomen, via verkiezingen) zullen zijn geest gebroken hebben. De kanker doet zijn verwoestend werk verder. Neruda sterft op 23 september. Pinochet’s militairen hebben zelfs niet gewacht op zijn dood om zijn huizen te plunderen.
Wat een schrijnend contrast met zijn leven! Twee jaar voordien was hij nog een gelukkig man, een gevierd dichter. In 1971 kreeg hij de Nobelprijs voor zijn volledig literair oeuvre. Hij was gelukkig met Matilde Urrutia, zijn derde vrouw en de liefde van zijn leven. Hij bezat drie huizen en een verzameling boeken en kunstobjecten. En hij was geliefd door de Chileen in de straat. Men kende zijn gedichten, men kende zijn verhaal.
Neftalí Ricardo Reyes Basoalto werd geboren op 12 juli 1904 in het koude en vochtige zuiden van Chili. Om je een idee te vormen van zijn jeugd (en trouwens zijn verdere leven) kan je zijn autobiografie lezen: “Ik beken ik heb geleefd”. Ik zal hier zijn leven niet in detail vertellen.
Hij begon met studies Frans maar bleek steeds een onrustig persoon. In 1924 publiceerde hij “Veinte poemas de amor y una canción desesperada” wat hem onmiddellijk beroemd maakte. Later werd hij consul in Birma, Ceylon en Java, waar hij voor de eerste keer trouwde.
In 1933 werd hij consul in Buenos Aires, in 1934 in Barcelona, waar hij zijn tweede vrouw leerde kennen. Hij werd tot consul benoemd in Madrid, maar toen de Spaanse burgeroorlog begon werd hij van zijn functies ontheven. In 1936 werd zijn vriend Federico García Lorca vermoord. In Parijs verblijvend kon Neruda heel wat republikeinen helpen vluchten uit Spanje. In 1940 werd hij consul in Mexico waar hij Diego Rivera en andere schilders ontmoette.
In 1945 werd hij verkozen als senator voor het noorden van Chili. Zijn odyssee is echter niet over: president Videla vervolgt de communisten (die hem gesteund hadden tijdens zijn campagne) en beschuldigt Neruda van hoogverraad. Neruda antwoordt met een toespraak in het parlement: Yo Acuso (j’acuse, ik beschuldig). In februari 1948 wordt hij vervolgd door de chileense politie en vlucht hij te paard over de bergketens van de Andes. Tijdens zijn verbanning bezoekt hij Frankrijk, de Sovietunie en uiteindelijk Mexico. In die periode werkt hij aan zijn magistraal gedicht “Canto General”, dat in 1950 in Mexico gepubliceerd wordt. In 1952 verblijft hij op Capri met zijn derde vrouw, Matilda Urrutia, de liefde van zijn leven. Hij publiceert “Los versos del capitán” In 1953 bouwt hij zijn huis ‘La Chascona’ in Santiago de Chili. In 1959 publicatie van de “Cien sonetos de amor” In In 1969 helpt hij Salvador Allende met zijn verkiezingscampagne. Op 21 oktober 1971 krijgt hij de Nobelprijs voor literatuur.

Ik vind Neruda een heerlijk dichter die heel wat genres aankan en die vooral zijn verbondenheid met de zuidamerikaanse aarde en mens laat blijken. Hij schrijft evengoed een “Ode aan de ajuin” als intieme liefdesgedichten als zijn breedvoerig gedicht Canto General dat de geschiedenis, het verhaal van mens en natuur in Zuid-Amerika beschrijft.

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Antes, cuando soñaba con las viajes grandes que quería hacer, pensaba viajar por China o Indonesia o Japón. Pero nunca pensaba viajar a Suramérica. Ahora tengo una hija que vive y trabaja en Bolivia, lamento que no pueda ver a mi nieta, conozco a Juan Carlos, mi yerno, a Enrique y Raquel, sus padres, y a tantas otras personas. Hemos visitado Bolivia y Perú. Hemos visto el Lago Titikaka, el Machu Picchu (¡inolvidable!), las cordilleras de los Andes.

He descubierto a Gabriel García Márquez, Mario Benedetti , Jaime Sabines , Isabel Allende, Jorge Luis Borges, Carlos Fuentes, Silvio Rodríguez , Diego Rivera , etcétera, etcétera.

Podría hablar de Paulino Estebán que he encontrado al borde del Lago Titikaka, donde vive con su familia. Paulino es el indígena que construyó la balsa de Thor Heyerdahl. Ahora lo sé: Suramérica es otro mundo. Un mundo sorprendente.

Pablo Neruda (1) fue un símbolo de este mundo. Un día Charles de Gaulle dijo: “La France, c’est moi!”. Me pregunto si Neruda lo ha dicho, pero es posible: “Suramérica, ¡soy yo!” Por cierto había dicho Suramérica y no sólo Chile porque se sentía unido con toda la gente suramericana, con los pobres, con los indígenas, con los españoles en la guerra civil que luchaban contra los fascistas, con las mujeres, todas las mujeres. Fue un hombre excepcional.

El 11 de septiembre 1973, hace 30 años, murió Salvador Allende, presidente elegido de Chile, en un golpe de estado dirigido por el general Pinochet (con la ayuda mal escondida de los Estados Unidos). Murió también un experimento extraodinario: el primer gobierno marxista que utilizaba únicamente métodos democráticos. El mismo día que murió su amigo Allende, murió el espíritu de Neruda. El cáncer seguía su trabajo asesino y Pablo Neruda murió el 23 de septiembre. Los militares de Pinochet ni siquiera esperaban las fúnebres para saquear sus casas. ¡Qué violente contraste con su vida!

Dos años antes era un hombre feliz, un poeta célebre. En 1971 recibió el Premio Nobel. Estaba casado con Matilda Urrutia, su tercera mujer y el amor de su vida. Tenía muchísimos amigos. Tenía tres casas y una colección famosa de libros y objetos de arte.
Pablo Neruda nació el 12 de julio 1904. Para hacerse una idea de su juventud en el sur de Chile, podéis leer su libro de memorias “Confieso que he vivido”. No voy a contar su vida con todo detalle. Estudió para ser profesor de francés. En 1924 publicó “Veinte poemas de amor y una canción desesperada”, libro que le hizo famoso. Después salió para ser cónsul en Birmania, Ceilán, y Java donde se casó con su primera mujer.

En 1933 fue cónsul en Buenos Aires, en 1934 en Barcelona, donde encontró a su segunda mujer. Fue nombrado cónsul en Madrid pero cuando comenzó la Guerra Civil en España fue destituido de sus funciones. 1936: asesinato de su amigo Federico García Lorca. Viviendo en París, Neruda ayudó a los republicanos para huir de España. En 1940 fue cónsul en Mexico donde encontró a Diego Rivera y otros pintores.
En 1945 fue elegido senador del norte de Chile. El presidente Videla persigue a los comunistas y acusa a Neruda de alta traición. Neruda responde con un discurso en el parlamento: Yo Acuso . En febrero de 1948 la policía chilena inició la búsqueda para capturar a Pablo Neruda. Él estaba huyendo a caballo por los cordilleros de los Andes. Visita a Francia, la Unión Soviética, y finalmente México. En ese periodo estaba escribiendo el Canto General que fue publicado en 1950 en México.
En 1952 permaneció en Capri con su tercera mujer, Matilda Urrutia, el amor de su vida. Publicación de “Los versos del capitán”. En 1953 construyó su casa ‘La Chascona’ en Santiago de Chile. En 1959 publicó su libro “Cien sonetos de amor”. En 1969 ayuda a Salvador Allende para su campaña electoral. El 21 de octubre 1971 recibió el Premio Nobel.

(1) Sobrenombre de Neftalí Ricardo Reyes Basoalto

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Charles Percy Snow was born in 1905, one year before my grandfather. He was to become Lord Snow, a well-known scientist, politician and writer, but his first years were humble enough.
His parents lived in Leicester, where his father was a clerk in a shoe factory. Strangely enough, he acted as a church organist while being a life-long socialist.
They had four sons. Charles (known as Percy untill he married in 1950) was the second. The youngest was Philip, who was very close to Charles and wrote a fine biography. Cricket, reading and table tennis were favourite pastimes of the young Snows.

Charles was a bright pupil at a local school where he started as a scientist (a classical education was not available). He became a student at University College, Leicester, and later made it to Cambridge. He went to Christ’s College where he became a Fellow in 1930.
There he became a close friend of the famous older mathematician G.H. Hardy. Snow wrote a biographical introduction to Hardy’s “A Mathematician’s Apology”.

Although he was schooled as a scientist, his hidden agenda was to become a writer. Still at Cambridge he wrote his first novel “Death under Sail” (1932), a whodunnit modeled by the Agatha Christie classics. In 1934 came “The Search”.
But what is really impressive is that Snow conceived in that period the idea for a novel sequence of ten or eleven novels. Many people make big long term plans, but few realize them. Snow really did write eleven novels in the “Strangers and Brothers” sequence. The first one was published in 1940, the last in 1970!
But, before going deeper into the Strangers and Brothers sequence, let’s follow his biography. In 1939 he became a civil servant, a career that lasted nearly twenty years. “During the War he was with the Ministry of Labour, where he was responsible for the allocation of scientific personnel, and after the War he was appointed consultant for the recruitment of scientists to government service. From 1945 to 1960 he served as a Civil Service Commissioner. In 1947, after serving as an adviser for three years, he became a member of the Board of Directors of the English Electric Company. With Labour’s victory in 1964 Snow resumed his official connection with government – as Parliamentary Secretary for the Ministry of Technology and as Lord Snow, of Leicester.” (Jerome Thale) Much of these connections with high civil servants and with government will be found in his novels.
In 1950 he married Pamela Hansford Johnson, who was a novelist herself. They had one son together, Philip.

In the 1950′s he became famous. The publication in 1951 of The Masters made his name as a writer. But apart from this, Snow was something like a pundit. He had been writing for a popular scientific magazine, he wrote for The Times Literary Supplement and when television started he was often asked in talking programs. This culminated when he was asked to give the Rede Lecture in 1959.

Strangers and Brothers

The series traces the career of Lewis Eliot from his boyhood in a provincial town, through law school and years as a fellow at Cambridge, to an important government position; in many respects Eliot’s career parallels that of Snow himself. Although the series has been read as a study of power, or as an analysis of the relationship between science and the community, it is primarily a perceptive and frequently moving delineation of changes in English life during the 20th century. The novels in the series are:
Strangers and Brothers (1940)
The Light and the Dark (1952)
Time of Hope (1949)
The Masters (1951), which is set in an “Oxbridge” college and depicts the closed politics and power struggle between the Fellows when they have to choose a new Master. Two opposing candidates emerge and with them two parties, fighting an ever more fierce election. In this novel we already see the nucleus of the idea of The Two Cultures: Arts versus Sciences.
The New Men (1954), set in the second World War with British scientist working hard to help the military. But they become uneasy when the possibility of a nuclear weapon is hinted at.
Homecomings (1956)
The Conscience of the Rich (1958)
The Affair (1960), again the college of The Masters is the scene. The college dismissed a Fellow for scientific fraud, but the decision is fiercely contested in what looks like a new Dreyfus Affair.
Corridors of Power (1964), a fine view into the machinations of national and international politics.
The sleep of reason (1968), a moving novel about a trial for the killing of a child.
Last Things (1970)

Snow’s other novels include his first novel Death under Sail (1932), The Search (1934), In Their Wisdom (1974), and A Coat of Varnish (1979).
Science and Government (1961), a collection of essays concerning the vocation of the scientist; biographical studies such as A Variety of Men (1967), The Realists (1978), and The Physicists (1981); and Public Affairs (1971), a collection of lectures about the benefits and dangers of technology.
Snow is most remembered for his 1959 Rede Lecture: The Two Cultures and the Scientific Revolution, which triggered off a remarkable public discussion. Here he notes that the breakdown of communication between the sciences and the humanities is a major hindrance to solving the world’s problems.

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