While Neruda was troubled by the paltry attention venture had received, this was partly a consequence of being overshadowed by the reception of his new poem “Galope muerto” (“Dead Gallop”). The poem was an exercise by Neruda to try to tackle the dead gallop of his mental state. It was a very serious composition for him, and he aimed for perfection. It appeared in Claridad right after venture came out and is one of the most important poems in the history of Spanish literature. Professor John Felstiner of Stanford University writes that in “Dead Gallop,” Neruda achieved a “sense of a new reality that included not only the world’s phenomena but the mind’s potential to grasp them. ‘Galope muerto’ is Neruda’s first attempt to embody—or rather, to enact—such a reality in verse.” As the mental experiences he tries to communicate are not communicable in the inherited poetic language, he invents his own, a hermetic language of strange and esoteric symbolic imagery. Just like the lyrics of a song, even if their meaning is not immediately clear, the words can still exert a powerful hold on the listener. “Dead Gallop” would be the first poem in Residence on Earth, published eight years later.*
In the poem, Neruda is trying to bring some order to his innermost feelings. He is unable to grasp the “constant swirl,” the rush of life that’s “so quick, so lively,” where his mind is “immobile . . . like the pulley wild on itself.” It is only through finding and using his poetic perspective that he is able “to perceive . . . ay, that which my pale heart can’t embrace.” Through poetry, which slows life down for him, he can now get to the business of making sense of it all. He can contemplate, inquire. Everything begins to fall into order. Clarity comes only through the act of creating poetry.
Neruda also expresses a rare will to remain resilient in the face of the emotional, mental, and situational stimulants that swirl around him (as described midway through the poem):
in multitudes, in tears scarcely shed,
and human exertions, storms,
black actions suddenly discovered,
like ice, vast disorder,
oceanic . . .
Instead of just expressing his helplessness in its face, he inserts himself directly into the chaos; he “enters singing / like a sword among the defenseless.” His singing—his poetry—is a weapon to fight off what’s subsuming him, his will to create some semblance of order.
The poem moves from negativity to positivity. The first stanza ends with:
the fragrance of the plums rolling to the ground,
which rot in time, infinitely green.
The last lines of the poem read:
Within the ring of summer
the great pumpkins . . .
[are] stretching out their poignant plants,
With this stretching out of the pumpkin plants, Neruda too decides that he will stretch out, move forward. He is like that pumpkin, now being filled with inspiration.
It is one thing to write it on paper, though, and another to endure the realities of life.
* * *
In order to break out of his Santiago funk, Neruda would visit Valparaíso. Beyond the port and the large plazas lined by ornate colonial buildings, customhouses, and naval facilities, the city’s forty-two hills rise on curved, mounded slopes like a natural amphitheater. Laid out along narrow, winding streets free of any sense of a grid, the city’s two- and three-story houses tumble over the hillsides in a patchwork of colors, each house a different-colored brushstroke—magenta, topaz, aquamarine; the rich reds of Chilean wines—a bouquet of tones like a flock of parrots. And those colors are bejeweled with glittering zinc rooftops, laundry hung from windows, and countless church spires sticking up like little masts from ships. English funiculars—little trams on cables—run up and down the steepest hills, as if in a South American San Francisco. Valparaíso, in fact, was known as the “Jewel of the Pacific,” and for Neruda it was just that.
Even during his first years in Santiago, Valparaíso’s “magnetic pulse” seemed to beckon to him and his friends. After spending a whole night fraternizing in Santiago, they might impulsively take a third-class train car there at the break of dawn. For this motley crew of poets and painters, activists and romantics, “Valpo” was the perfect setting to let their brimming madness expand, explode, and release down the crazy hills and out into the Pacific.
Now, more mellow and contained than in those first years of active camaraderie, Neruda made his way to Valpo alone, to escape the scene in Santiago. He stayed with some new friends he had made: Álvaro Hinojosa, his sister, Sylvia, and their mother. The Hinojosa family had extended an open invitation to Neruda, and he took them up on it for a couple of days or even a couple of months at a time, not just for the inspiration of the unique atmosphere and the salty sea breeze, but also for the friendship of the Hinojosas, especially Álvaro. In Valparaíso’s offbeat culture, in the poetry of its magnificent hills, twisted streets, and alleys, in his friends’ home near the ocean, Neruda sought respite from his dour mood. Despite the admiration he had earned in Santiago, despite his energetic circle of friends, he was in a haze, more depressed than before. The relief he had experienced in Chiloé was already a distant memory. It didn’t help that both Laura Arrué and Albertina Azócar had been sequestered away from him by their parents. He likely had found other romantic outlets during this time, but nothing lasted.
Álvaro was also a writer, primarily of short stories and columns. He never wrote the great work to which he aspired and never published a book. But that didn’t matter to Neruda. What was of great importance was Álvaro’s example of discipline and commitment to writing. Every morning Neruda stayed at their house, he would see Álvaro, still in bed, glasses on the bridge of his nose, typing quickly, continuously, consuming reams of whatever paper he could get his hands on.
Álvaro was
