To be clear, I rarely think about feet. Especially poets’ feet. They’re just not that attractive. But I make an exception for Pablo Neruda’s feet for reasons I’ll explain, if you’ll grant me a minute or two of your time, and allow me to get there in my usual roundaboutatious sort of way.
Today is the 120th anniversary of the birth of the Chilean poet Pablo Neruda, a man who’s been called “the greatest poet of the twentieth century in any language.” (Disclaimer: For me, the accolade “greatest poet of the twentieth century in any language” sets a pretty low bar, at least when it comes to the few modern languages I am familiar with. But–as Joe Biden might say–“uuh, whatever….”)
Neruda was born as Ricardo Eliécer Neftalí Reyes Basoalto, on July 12, 1904, growing up in Temuco Chile in a family whose patriarch opposed his son’s literary pretensions. But the young man persisted, and by his mid-teens, he was publishing his poems in local newspapers, and had assumed his literary pseudonym, which he was to use for the rest of his life.
His career grew by leaps and bounds, and eventually Neruda–a communist–began infusing his poems with political messaging, a stance that, depending on the political winds most abundant in Santiago at any given time, brought him either career–and later political–success (from the 1920s to the 1940s) or opprobrium and state sanction (early 1950s).
He spent the first few years of the 1950s in exile in Argentina or traveling throughout Europe on a fake passport, having extra-marital affairs (one of which later resulted in destruction of his own marriage in favor of another one) and settling for a time in Mexico.
He returned to Chile in the Fall of 1952 to support the first campaign of socialist presidential candidate Salvador Allende, and spoke to denounce the United States during the Cuban Missile Crisis, after which he became something of a hero to the American Left, entering the United States against all odds to attend an International Pen conference in 1966, in New York. (The more things change, the more they stay the same.)
Perhaps the “beginning of the end” came after that visit. From the Neruda Wikipedia entry:
Upon Neruda’s return to Chile, he stopped in Peru, where he gave readings to enthusiastic crowds in Lima and Arequipa and was received by President Fernando Belaúnde Terry. However, this visit also prompted an unpleasant backlash; because the Peruvian government had come out against the government of Fidel Castro in Cuba, July 1966 saw more than 100 Cuban intellectuals retaliate against the poet by signing a letter that charged Neruda with colluding with the enemy, calling him an example of the “tepid, pro-Yankee revisionism” then prevalent in Latin America. The affair was particularly painful for Neruda because of his previous outspoken support for the Cuban revolution, and he never visited the island again, even after receiving an invitation in 1968.
After the death of Che Guevara in Bolivia in 1967, Neruda wrote several articles regretting the loss of a “great hero”. At the same time, he told his friend Aida Figueroa not to cry for Che but for Luis Emilio Recabarren, the father of the Chilean communist movement who preached a pacifist revolution over Che’s violent ways.
Poor guy. You win some, you lose some.
A point made just a few years later in 1970, after Neruda was nominated as a candidate for Chilean president but ended up supporting Allende, who returned the favor by sending Neruda to Paris as the Chilean ambassador. In 1971, Neruda was nominated for, and won, the Nobel Prize for Literature.
Then–on September 11, 1973–came the Chilean coup d’état and the installation of General Augusto Pinochet as head of state.
Less than two weeks later, reports began leaking out that Chilean literary giant Pablo Neruda had died of heart failure on September 23, 1973 at the age of 69, in Santiago’s Santa Maria Clinic.
His apparently sudden death led to an immediate explosion of conspiracy theories as to what might have caused it. Rumors of long standing illness (exhumation of Neruda’s body in 2013 indicated that he was suffering from prostate cancer–deemed a “not-likely” cause of death at the time) didn’t seem to lead anywhere. Subsequent tests confirmed the presence of botulism bacteria in his body, leading to rumors that he’d been poisoned by one of Pinochet’s stooges. Early #MeToo feminists seemed not to care that he was dead, shrieking that something, somewhere in one of his memoirs indicated that he might once, long ago, have raped a maid in Ceylon. (The more things change, the more they stay the same.)
Neruda the man remains a controversial figure in his native Chile to this day, although most acknowledge that his poetry is still very fine.
Be that as it may:
I am charmed by only one of Pablo Neruda’s poems, Ode to my Socks, which begins (translation by Stephen Mitchell)
Maru Mori brought me
a pair
of socks
which she knitted with her own
sheepherder hands,
two socks as soft
as rabbits.
I slipped my feet
into them
as if they were
two
cases
knitted
with threads of
twilight
and the pelt of sheep.
“Two socks as soft as rabbits.” That’s what you want. Sweet. Cuddly. Warm. Knitted with “threads of twilight and the pelt of sheep.”
Indeed.
It goes on like that, to describe the loveliest socks in the world.
my feet
were honored
in this way
by
these
heavenly
socks.
And the grand finale
And the moral of my ode
is this:
beauty is twice
beauty
and what is good is doubly
good
when it’s a matter of two
woolen socks
in winter.
Ain’t that the truth? There’s nothing better than soft, warm, handknitted woolly socks on a cold winter’s night. I’m sorry for anyone who doesn’t know that.
Some decades ago, I was inspired to knit a pair of socks which celebrated this particular aspect of Neruda’s poetry, for my stepdaughter.
The pattern appears in Socks Socks Socks, a paperback celebrating winning entries from the now defunct Knitter’s Magazine contest. But you can still buy it here (Amazon helpfully tells me I already purchased it, on February 25, 2000. Yeah. That’s prolly right. Almost a quarter-century ago.)
The pattern, titled “Pearls of Wisdom” is listed as one for the “experienced knitter.” Here’s a picture of the completed socks. I can’t find a photo of the ones I knitted, but they looked exactly like these (from page 96 of Socks Socks Socks):
The verse–knitted across both socks–is the one mentioned above, from the end of the poem:
beauty is twice
beauty
and what is good is doubly
good
when it’s a matter of two
woolen socks
in winter.
The knitting is challenging, but give it a go if you’re up for one. (If–like me–you suffer from Second Sock Syndrome, it might be tough.)
I gave them as a gift, along with a pair of boots that were something of a thing among knitters at the time–plastic and transparent, so you could pull them on over your socks and everyone could see how gorgeous they were and how much someone must have loved you to knit such socks for you. Apparently you can still buy such things (who knew!) marketed as clear rain boots. These, along with several other options, are on Amazon. (I’d replace the laces with white or clear silcone) :
Sadly I don’t know if I could knit these socks any more. Between and among the arthritis, last year’s wrist break, and any other number of elderly issues, I’m just not as good as I once was at what the late Mr. Right used to call “the fiddly stuff.”
But, once I was that good.
And the memory of that will comfort me, and will have to do.
Just as Pablo Neruda found comfort in the memory of his friend and the socks she knitted for him.
