“Dear compañeros: I am”: OC, 5:102–103.
CHAPTER TWENTY: TRIUMPH, DESTRUCTION, DEATH
“Right, comrade, it’s the hour of the garden”: From El mar y las campanas (The Sea and the Bells), published posthumously. Neruda did not title most of the poems in the book. In their absence, Matilde bracketed the first line of each poem for reference in the table of contents. This translation is by Forrest Gander in Neruda, The Essential Neruda.
“Confidential: We are getting married”: APNF.
On a beautiful spring day: Teitelboim, Neruda: La biografía, 425.
“The Pacific Ocean overflowed the map”: “El mar” [“The Sea”]. A House in the Sand.
On October 14, 1967, Neruda’s play: “Anti-U.S. Play by Neruda, Chilean Poet, Opens,” New York Times, October 16, 1967.
“two hours of drama”: Ibid.
“One generalization that I”: Letter dated November 2, 1967, APNF.
“because the same wild racism”: Neruda, Pablo.“Un ‘bandido’ chileno,” (1966) Para nacer he nacido (Barcelona: Seix Barral, 1985), 102.
“I’ve achieved a lucid translation”: APNF.
Rodrigo Rojas points out: Author interview with Rodrigo Rojas, April and June 2015.
“Thus forgive me for the sadness”: “El que cantó cantará” [“He Who Sung Will Sing”], The Hands of the Day.
“Forgive me, if when I want”: “XI,” Aún.
“Books and authors were discussed”: Edwards, Adiós, poeta, 183.
“I am a friend of Czechoslovakia”: “Invasão da Tchecoslováquia féz sofrer o poeta Neruda,” O Globo (Rio de Janeiro), September 11, 1968. Available in Schidlowsky, Las furias y las penas (2008), 2:1218.
“The hour of Prague fell”: Neruda, Pablo. “1968,” World’s End, trans. William O’Daly (Port Townsend, WA: Copper Canyon Press, 2009).
“I was unaware”: “The Worship (II),” World’s End.
“When we made that trip”: Author interview with Aida Figueroa, 2005.
“Death of a Journalist”: “Muerte de un periodista,” World’s End.
“There was disagreement”: Author interview with Sergio Insunza, July 2003.
His friends saw Neruda quickly: Edwards, Adiós, poeta, 201.
“¡Neruda, Neruda, Barrancas te saluda!”: “‘Neruda, Neruda, Barrancas te saluda,’ gritan las cuatro marchas,” El Siglo, October 10, 1969.
“No one was seeking absolute”: Edwards, Adiós, poeta, 206.
Levine—on this first: Author conversation with Suzanne Jill Levine, 2015.
“I cannot really consider”: Stitt, Peter A. “Stephen Spender, the Art of Poetry No. 25,” Paris Review, Winter–Spring 1980.
“Listen, dammit, you know”: Author interview with Francisco Velasco, 2008.
“if Allende should win”: As said in Nixon’s fourth interview with David Frost: “An Italian businessman came to call on me in the Oval Office, and, ah, he said, ‘If Allende should win the election in Chile, and then you have Castro in Cuba, what you will in effect have in Latin America is a red sandwich, and eventually it will all be red.’ And that’s what we confronted.”
In fact, in the run-up: U.S. Senate Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities (Church Committee), S. Rep. No. 94-755 (1976).
President Johnson’s administration moved to support: Church Committee, Covert Action in Chile, 1963–1973, 10. Available at U.S. National Archives, https://www.archives.gov/declassification/iscap/pdf/2010-009-doc17.pdf.
Though Chile faced few: Kornbluh, Peter. The Pinochet File: A Declassified Dossier on Atrocity and Accountability (New York: The New Press, 2003), 5–6.
It also now appears: Reid, Michael. Forgotten Continent: The Battle for Latin America’s Soul (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2007), 112.
“tangible economic losses”: Kornbluh, Pinochet File, 6.
Following Allende’s victory: Ibid., 1.
Helms cabled Kissinger: Ibid., 17.
ITT had holdings: Ibid., 18.
U.S. interests also schemed: Loveman, Chile, 248.
As the Church Committee report: Church Committee, Covert Action in Chile, 5.
The CIA funneled weapons: Ibid.
U.S. ambassador Edward Korry: Kornbluh, Pinochet File, 8.
The old orthodoxy: Most thoughts in this paragraph come from author discussion with Ariel Dorfman, 2004.
In a phone call: Kornbluh, Pinochet File, 99, as well as interview and discussion on Democracy Now! September 10, 2013.
After Allende’s inauguration: Steenland, Kyle. “Two Years of ‘Popular Unity’ in Chile: A Balance Sheet,” New Left Review, no. 78 (March–April 1973): 3–25.
The CIA, as confirmed: Church Committee, Covert Action in Chile, 2.
“foot-drag to maximum possible”: Kornbluh, Pinochet File, 7–18.
“He wasn’t optimistic”: Edwards, Adiós, poeta, 210–211.
The writer Jay Parini: Author correspondence with Jay Parini, June 3, 2016, and from “The Home of Pablo Neruda,” Commentary Series, Vermont Public Radio, November 13, 2007, http://vprarchive.vpr.net/commentary-series/the-home-of-pablo-neruda/.
“sense comes first”: From a recording of the evening.
“one last senile love”: Author interview with Aida Figueroa, July 2003.
While in London, Parini had dinner: Author correspondence with Jay Parini, June 3, 2016.
One day when Alicia had: Author interview with Francisco Velasco, 2008.
“I’ll tell you that your friend”: Teitelboim, Neruda: La biografía, 449. When Matilde says that Neruda is “sick,” she is presumably referring to his prostate cancer, which he already had before he met Alicia; she’s not saying that Alicia was the one who made him “sick down there.”
“There is a part of the night”: Ibid., 453.
Despite his departure for Paris: Edwards, Adiós, poeta, 296. Edwards doesn’t mention Alicia by name, just that Neruda had fallen in love with a “considerably younger woman” right before he left for France.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE: THE FLOWERS THAT SLEEP
“Autumn”: “Otoño,” Winter Garden. The autumn the title is referring to is the autumn of April–June 1973; the tensions would break that September.
“My country is experiencing”: Neruda interview by Axelsson, SVT.
As soon as they arrived in Paris: Velasco, Francisco. Neruda: El gran amigo (Santiago: Galinost-Andante, 1987), 121.
“Everything is the same”: Teitelboim, Neruda: La biografía, 455–456.
“The poet is not a ‘little god’”: “Pablo Neruda—Nobel Lecture.”
“hissed, laughed”: Raymont, Henry. “Neruda Opens Visit Here with a Plea for Chile’s Revolution,” New York Times, April 11, 1972.
“return to the concerns”: OC, 5:357–362.
“there [were] already ashes”: Alegría, Fernando. “Neruda: Reminiscences and Critical Reflections,” trans. Deborah S. Bundy, Modern Poetry Studies 5, no. 1 (1974): 44. Last line truncated from Bundy’s translation to just “did” instead of “did know.”
“We are sick ones”: Velasco, Neruda: El gran amigo, 122.
The poet gave him: Edwards, Adiós, poeta, 252.
“I realized he was very bad”: Velasco, Neruda: El gran amigo, 123.
the truckers blamed: Sigmund, Paul E. The Overthrow of Allende and the Politics of Chile, 1964–1976 (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1977), 184.
one hundred thousand campesinos: Ibid., 185.
a letter thanking the poet: Letter dated November 16, 1972, APNF.
“carrying on his perpetual dialogue”: Quoted in Poirot, Pablo Neruda, 124.
“bring back
