COPIA OMAGGIO • COMPLIMENTARY COPY EDIZIONI PRC

Between Man and the Earth
The touching restraint of the verses from the prologue and epilogue of Las uvas y el viento
testifies to Neruda’s yearning for harmony between man and his kind, and between the
earth and man, where the essential thing is very simple, an eternal truth: “(..) The best of
one land/and another land/I lifted to my mouth with my song:/the freedom of the wind,/the
peace among the vines./The people seemed to be/enemies,/but on the same night/they
were covered in/and awakened by/the same glow:/the light of the world./(…) All men were
equal./Their eyes were all/turned to the light/looking for the roads./They all had a voice,/they
sang/in the direction of spring./All of them./For this reason I searched/between the wind and
the vines/to find the best of men”. 1
“Where I’ve been I’ve found/even in the thorns/that tried to scratch me,/a dove whose flight/
knit my heart/to other hearts./Everywhere I’ve found/bread, wine, fire, hands, tenderness./I
have slept under all/the flags/reunited/as if under the branches/of a single green forest./(…)
Like the land,/I belong to everyone./There is not a single drop/of hate in my breast./My open
hands move/scattering grapes to the wind./(…) May love defend us./May the earth never
cease/having flowered/to flower./(...) May every song on the earth/be distributed./May the
grapes be raised high./May the wind scatter them./Let it be”. 2
1
Prologue Las uvas y el viento
2
Epilogue Las uvas y el viento
vuole offrirle almeno Una veduta del Faro
di Punta Carena.
un’unione simbolica
La bellezza
del paesaggio
altrettanto valida. Una di Capri per Pablo
sartina cuce l’abito di Neruda è stata
ispiratrice
nozze, Neruda addobba
la casa con festoni
di numerose
composizioni.
The lighthouse on
di foglie e fiori intrecciati
personalmente. inspired several
Punta Carena. Capri’s
magnificent scenery
Quando la luna piena of Pablo Neruda’s
works.
domina alta sul mare e
la terrazza è tutta illuminata
dal suo chiarore, conduce Matilde
nell’irreale dimensione argentata. Al sorriso
misterioso che li guarda dall’alto chiede
di legarlo per sempre all’amata e,
in-arm across the island refuge that was to be
their love nest. First stop was the Casetta’s
own garden, overlooking the gulf at Marina
Piccola, “which descends to the sea with its
slender lances, the cypresses”. This was Capri
in the winter, the season of the sullen blues and
silvers magically captured by Diefenbach in his
large, tempestuous canvases. “That special
silence that distinguishes Capri and fills every
inch of the island like a substance you could rub
between your fingers” accompanied the lovers
in their childlike discovery of paths, stairways,
dense orchards, courtyards enclosed by old
whitewashed houses, and sudden glimpses
of the blue sea far below. The play of the
jagged rocks and cliffs would reveal a view of
the Faraglioni, the grottoes, or the scalloped
beaches. The couple went to Anacapri for
leisurely carriage rides, pulled by a horse draped
in feathers, bells, and ribbons, and savoured the
simple country pleasures. And from the top of
Monte Solaro, linked to the village by a chairlift,
Matilde would set the blue sky reverberating
with her Chilean songs sung for her Pablo
alone, in her clear voice, the modern-day siren
songs of a fiery-haired enchantress.
And then there were the flowers: the delight
in seeing the first violets bloom in the villa’s
garden, the apple tree in a neighbouring
orchard “suddenly transformed/into a cascade
of fragrant stars”; the two lovers were set on
stealing a budding branch to bring the spring
inside the house as well as out. As the spring
progressed, Neruda found flowers he had never
seen in the cracks in the dry-stone walls; he
collected them in a herbarium and presented
them to Matilde. Many years later, an exchange
of letters between Neruda and Edwin Cerio
unexpectedly came to light in the library of the
Centro Caprense Ignazio Cerio (founded by
Edwin), allowing us to track the poet-turnednaturalist’s
thirst for knowledge over time. Cerio
was a patient teacher; he would bring Neruda
small specimens he collected on the island (an
insect or a shell, along with a few pages of his
own observations), and the poet promised him
“to read it all, and become rich thanks to your
gains”; he reminded Cerio: “I still need to read
the little book on plants and flowers. And I need
to read it here”.
In the evenings Pablo and Matilde liked to go sit
on a bench on the panoramic round terrace at
Tragara and enjoy the seagulls’ acrobatics and
the play of colours, ever-changing, on the sea’s
surface, even if the exile was given to grumbling,
remembering the crashing waves on his Pacific
coast: “This sea is too calm! And it doesn’t even
smell like ours!” On those occasions, however,
when “the wind is a steed/(...) and races over
the sea, across the sky/(...)”, the exile would
recognize the voice that called him “at a gallop,
to take him far, far away”. Then he would beg
his lover: “Hide me in your arms/(...) let the wind
rush past/without carrying me away with it./Let
the wind race past/in its crown of sea foam.”
Little by little, Neruda and his lady love
discovered that “secret Capri, which can be
reached only after a long pilgrimage, when
the label you wore that says ‘tourist’ has long
since fallen off”. The poet now penetrated the
inner soul of the island he called “the queen
of the rocks”. He was on intimate terms with
the essence of the island stone, since he
himself was composed of it; he knew that it
was a stone that expressed tenacity, pride, and
endurance, all of which were readily apparent
on the face of the man from the Americas: the
Indian with his craggy features, vanquished but
unbowed. His heart guarded the memory of the
heart of the Inca Empire, “the throne of turrets
in Cuzco, (...)/the high solitudes of Macchu
Picchu at the sky’s edge,/the immortal abode
built/of heavy granite flowers.” He recognized
its language in the “proud towers of flowered
stone” and the “rugged peaks that held my love
aloft and will preserve, with implacable hands,
the imprint of my kisses,” thus sealing his love
for Matilde for eternity as well.
A ring for Matilde
So it was that the ideal “ring of water” inside of
which Neruda situates love in his poetry - the
island with a stony beauty - inspired the actual
ring he would give Matilde, designed to order
by a Capri jeweller. The poet had inscribed
on the inside of the ring: “Capri, 3 May, 1952.
Your Captain”. This was the date the two
secretly wed.
Neruda was still legally married to the Argentine
painter Delia del Carril, whom he’d met in
Spain during the Civil War. And remorse, along
with bursts of tenderness for the wife he had
deserted, would accompany the impetuous
crescendo of the new love, which would prove
to be definitive. To complicate things even
further, Matilde was expecting Neruda’s
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