The future of humanity may be endangered in the hands of a few evil men, but it does not belong to them. The future of man is ours, because we are the embodiment of hope. We Chileans have a lot to do. I will be working with you, among you, as just another one of you. When I return to my homeland after such a long trip, I only say to you: “I dedicated my life to defending the honor of Chile. Now I return once again to put my life in the hands of my people.”
* * *
On August 12, 1952, people from all over Santiago came to the airport to welcome Neruda home. He arrived alone, with Matilde traveling separately from Montevideo so as to conceal their relationship. Delia and the press went to the front of the airplane stairs. Neruda descended, a little plump, in a sports coat and a green sombrerito. The poet’s first hug was for Delia. His first words in Chile after four years were: “I salute the noble people of Chile, to whom I owe my return. I salute my beloved homeland, and I hope that freedom, peace, and happiness will always be the law of the land here.” The crowd on the terrace sang the national anthem to him.
He returned with eight suitcases stuffed with books, shells, and other objects he had collected in exile. Other possessions had been shipped separately.
Flowers lined the walk at La Michoacán from the street to the halls within, while two policemen stood outside, writing down the license plate numbers of all the guests. The crackdown on the Communists may have softened, but with the Cold War still going strong in South America, the party stayed outlawed until 1958, and the government kept tabs on its former members and other leftists.
Once in the house, Neruda gave an interview to the magazine Ercilla, declaring that for the upcoming elections,
I will offer my support to Allende as the people’s candidate . . . As for my future activities, I cannot add anything more at this time. Those decisions are not mine to make; they are for my party. I am a disciplined Communist militant.
I want to make something clear about the rumors going around that conditions were placed upon my arrival. There have been no such conditions, and I would not have accepted any. My arrival is the result of a triumphant struggle that began the moment I left. I have no grudges or hatred against anyone.
He then tried to dispel any notions that his life in exile had been full of bourgeois indulgences, that he had become too international. He claimed that he was just a typical Chilean, “the opposite of cosmopolitan. Before, people in my generation liked living in Paris. I like living in my land, with everything it produces. Chilean peaches and oysters are beyond comparison.” There was sincerity in those words. Neruda could live anywhere in the world, but other than frequent short trips and his brief time as ambassador to France in the early 1970s, from this point on he would always live in his beloved Chile. The Uruguayan writer Emir Rodríguez Monegal named Neruda the “Immobile Traveler,” with one foot always in his home country.
When he donated a vast portion of his library and seashell collection to the University of Chile just before his fiftieth birthday, Neruda posited, “The poet isn’t a lost stone. He has two sacred obligations: to leave and to return.” He added that especially in countries like Chile, geographically “isolated in the wrinkles of the planet,” where the origins of everyone from the humblest to the most distinguished are known, “we have the fortune to be able to create our nation, to all be something like parents to it.”
The welcome party for his return from exile moved on to Plaza Bulnes, where three or four thousand people were waiting for the returning hero. There was a band dressed in yellow satin. When the poet arrived, the crowd started chanting, “¡Neruda! ¡Neruda!” Tomás Lago said that Neruda wept. When the speeches were done, the multitude marched in a parade down La Alameda, Santiago’s great boulevard, to Salvador Allende’s presidential campaign headquarters. The Allende command had in fact been eagerly awaiting Neruda’s return, hoping his celebrity and energy would invigorate its campaign, which had failed to gain much traction. But Neruda’s support gained little, especially with the Communist Party still illegal, the Socialists suffering from internal divisions, and Allende’s group lacking the resources to mount a sufficient national campaign. Allende received just 5 percent of the vote. Carlos Ibáñez, a former dictator who had run as an independent populist promising to clean up Chile, became the new president. It was Chile’s first presidential election in which women could vote.
Neruda settled back into La Michoacán with Delia, where he would spend less time with her and more at his writing desk. The desk was made of blond wood and surrounded by stacks of books and photographs of Edgar Allan Poe, Walt Whitman, and Charles Baudelaire. He usually started around nine in the morning, after breakfast. He had a regimen, setting out to write one, two, sometimes three poems each day. Neruda said he had neither the time nor desire to reread his poems over and over. He always wrote in green ink, though he never specifically explained why. Many attribute Neruda’s use of green to it being a symbol of hope. He rarely used a typewriter after a hand injury he had incurred. In a 1971 interview with the Paris Review, he explained:
Ever since I had an accident in which I broke a finger and couldn’t use the typewriter for a few months, I have followed the custom of my youth and gone back to writing by hand. I discovered when my finger was better and I could type again that my poetry when written by hand was more sensitive; its plastic forms could change more easily. In an interview, Robert
