Another favorite was the Norwegian neorealist novelist Knut Hamsun. His prevalent images of darkness and eroticism, in particular, undoubtedly had some effect on Neruda’s composition within Twenty Love Poems. Hamsun won the Nobel Prize in 1920; Twenty Love Poems was published in 1924.
Neruda found a particular bond with Rainer Maria Rilke’s German-language writing, translating a fragment of his only novel, Die aufzeichnungen des Malte Laurids Brigge (The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge), for Claridad. Published in 1910, the book is a fragmented, highly experimental exploration by a destitute twenty-eight-year-old poet yearning to find his individuality, not unlike Neruda himself.
As eager as Neruda and his cohort were to obtain the most recent work from foreign lands, they also reached back centuries. They still regarded seventeenth-century Spanish poet Francisco de Quevedo as highly relevant. His simultaneously serious and satirical verse had a significant influence on Neruda. And the great bard Shakespeare was still present; Julius Caesar’s rebellious role as a tragic hero was especially ripe and popular among the young revolutionary Chileans.
The group’s literary tastes changed with the ebb and flow of international influence. People were always arriving in Santiago from abroad, as transportation and communication improved for this country that had seemed so trapped in a lost corner of the world during the previous century. Bars like El Hércules, El Jote, and El Venezia were hubs for the exchange of these new books and ideas. The intertwined worlds of politics and literature were flourishing in fertile ground, and Neruda became a part of it.
The FECh, which had recouped from the attacks and persecution of 1919 and 1920, was a major impetus for Neruda’s integration into this circle. These incorrigible bohemians were trying to envision another kind of country. Their interest in politics was more romantic and idealistic than practical or direct. Socialist anarchism was still the most popular political ideology among them, and many were members of the Industrial Workers of the World (a group the government continued to repress).
Very slowly and still somewhat restrained, Neruda became a fixture in Santiago’s circle of young leftist poets, artists, and student activists. Compared to his “semi-mute” childhood in Temuco, here he found life and conversation and the society of people like himself. Yet he still spoke little, and when he did, it was in a smooth, even voice, monotone and rather nasal, a stark contrast to his lyrical expression on the page. In photos of the time, while surrounded by others clearly enjoying cabaret shows, banquets, or poetry events, Neruda tended to look serious, despondent, or lost in thought. His new friends, though, found him to have a sweet smile. He was tall and slim. Especially with his prominent nose, some wondered if his facial traits might have been Arab in origin, not uncommon in Chilean families from Spain.
As he emerged into prominence within his student circle, Neruda met people who’d be significant to his work, including mentors who took to him immediately. One of them was the prestigious Chilean poet Pedro Prado, a transcendent talent, thirty-three years old when they met. Prado’s support would be instrumental to Neruda in the years to come. A more immediate and direct influence on Neruda’s poetry at the time was the Uruguayan poet Carlos Sabat Ercasty, whom he revered for his intense lyricism and the depth of his connection to both nature and the human condition. Neruda expressed his raw excitement for Sabat to the readers of the December 5, 1923, issue of Claridad, in a review of his recent books:
Carlos Sabat is a great river of expressive energy linked together in athletic succession, dragging it through invading undertows, separating it into diaphanous necklaces of syllables . . . All of this under the pressure of an . . . active conscience skilled in the primary elements of reason and enigma . . . He is victory’s trumpet, the song dividing darkness . . .
With a bravado somewhat reminiscent of how he first knocked on Gabriela Mistral’s door, Neruda wrote to Sabat directly. In his first letter, dated May 13, 1923, from Santiago, he began:
Carlos Sabat. From the first line of yours that I read, you have not had a greater admirer nor more heartfelt sympathy. I’m also a poet, I write and I’ve read about three centuries[’ worth of literature], but nothing of anybody else has carried me so far away. Receive, Sabat, my embrace, through all these tongues that separate us.
The letter concluded with these curiously bold lines: “Send me all your books . . . Write me. How old are you? I’m eighteen . . .” Considering his usual timidity and the fact that he still, at the time of writing this letter, had not published his first book, the familiar tone reveals either courage or mania. Sabat’s intermittent responses to the younger poet, sometimes encouraging, sometimes double edged, would haunt Neruda throughout his career.
Just as important as his literary mentors were the fellow writers who exposed Neruda to new subjects and stylistic approaches. There were enigmatic members of the group like Alberto Rojas Jiménez, four years older than Neruda, one of the main directors of Claridad. Despite his poverty, he gave off the air of a bohemian dandy with “the eccentricity of a storybook prince.” He had a custom of giving away everything to his friends: his hat, his shirt, his jacket, even his shoes. Perhaps most important, he dispelled Neruda’s somber moods by playfully teasing him, though always with tact. His joy was contagious, and in those first years in Santiago, Neruda certainly needed it.
In October 1921, six months after his arrival in the capital, Neruda earned his greatest accolade yet at the FECh’s spring festival. The festival filled the streets of Santiago, especially around the University of Chile’s School of Fine Arts, known as the “School of the Bohemia.” This ability to exercise such a celebration, complete with the election of their queen of the fiesta, was a much-needed validation for the students. They had taken a marginalized,
