NIGHT OF THE AMERICAS
Principal Speakers
Vicente LOMBARDO TOLEDANO * Pablo NERUDA
President, Confederation Latin American Workers * Great Chilean
Poet Consul General to Mexico
Langston Hughes was one of the emcees.
Neruda told the crowd about Talcahuano’s coal mines, where, when the first Soviet boat came to Chile, the miners climbed up onto the hills at night and used their lanterns to cast signals out to the Soviet sailors below, a greeting of “international fraternity.” He ended his speech with the conclusion that “all countries must search for each other beneath the stars to unite on the sea.”
Outside of the event, talking to the press, Neruda made a push for his country to fully renew its relations with Russia, which “will definitely be in Chile’s interest.” His words immediately filled the papers back home. Once again, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs expressed its continued displeasure that, as consul, he would make such inappropriate public statements, especially in an international setting. Tension grew on both sides.
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In March, Delia and Neruda headed to Washington, D.C., where Neruda was received as a celebrity poet-dignitary, with members of Washington’s cultural and political elite eager to meet him. The Washington Post referred to Neruda as “the outstanding Spanish poet of his day.” He was feted at the Chilean embassy and gave a lecture at the Pan-American Union (now the Organization of American States). Attorney General Francis Biddle invited Neruda to his home for tea; his wife, Katherine Garrison Chapin, was a poet and literary patron. He was invited to the Library of Congress by the chief librarian, the poet Archibald MacLeish, who had been picked by FDR to push a progressive agenda. Among other activities, Neruda signed the library’s holding of the fifth of the five hundred copies of Spain in the Heart printed by Manuel Altolaguirre and the Republican soldiers.*
On March 19, 1943, Carlos Morla Lynch, now part of the Chilean delegation in Switzerland, sent a diplomatic telegram to Santiago: “Señora Neruda advises from Holland that her little daughter died March 2nd, without suffering. She urges that her father be advised. She wants to reunite with her husband as soon as possible.” There is no record of the poet demonstrating any strong emotion upon hearing the news. None of his friends remembered him talking about Malva Marina much. While he had just written a poem on Tina Modotti’s death, as he had done previously for the deaths of other friends, Neruda wrote nothing upon the death of his daughter.
Nine days later, another death occurred that seemed to have a greater emotional impact on Neruda than that of his daughter. On March 28, Miguel Hernández, the young Spanish poet Neruda had urged Octavio Paz to include in Laurel, died of untreated tuberculosis in jail in Alicante, Spain. It was the twelfth prison he had been held in during the previous three years. Neruda, Delia, and many others had begged the Catholic Church to intervene on his behalf, to no avail. Some of Hernández’s greatest poetry had been composed during his final years, his last poem scribbled next to his bed on the prison wall: “Farewell, brothers, comrades, friends: Give my good-byes to the sun and the wheat fields.” Neruda and Delia were anguished by his death; they felt they should have done more to prevent it. Their grief fueled their compromiso politico, their personal political commitment.
Two months later, Neruda received a telegram from Morla Lynch reiterating that Maruca wanted to return to Chile and that Neruda needed to get her a Chilean passport. Neruda’s response was calculated: “In spite of the fact that I appreciate Ambassador Barros’s interest, I lament that I must manifest that I do not want my ex-wife to return to Chile and that I’ll suspend her monthly stipend if she does so.”
Indeed, Neruda had already begun divorce proceedings, even before Malva’s death. In his archives is a receipt from a Mexican lawyer for the sum of fifteen pesos for a certified translation of their marriage act from Dutch to Spanish. Neruda petitioned a judge near Cuernavaca for the dissolution of his marriage to Maruca. There, as in other parts of Mexico at the time, legislation had been enacted to expedite divorces, partially out of progressive ideals, partially to attract foreigners and the fees they’d pay for an easy and quick divorce.
His lawyers printed a legal notice in a small newspaper addressed to “Sra. María Antonia Hagenaar,” stating that contested divorce proceedings had been “initiated against you by Neftalí Ricardo Reyes for irreconcilable differences,” and that “you are summoned to respond in person to this suit within three days of this publication.” If she did not respond within this time frame, she would lose her opportunity to contest the divorce. Considering that Maruca was in Nazi-occupied Holland at the time and unable to travel with her sick daughter, not to mention the probability that she never even saw the notice, it was virtually impossible for her to respond in time.
Neruda would be granted the divorce, and in the charming pueblo of Tetecala, in the shadows of the Xochicalco pyramid, at one o’clock on July 2, 1943, Ricardo Neftalí Reyes Basoalto married Delia del Carril Iraeta. Despite the heat and mosquitoes, they held a lunch outside for guests, and drank and sang and read poetry until nightfall. Pablo gave his new wife a necklace of Oaxacan silver. He announced that he had found in Delia that which all his friends put together could not give him.
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A tragic incident in Brazil accelerated Neruda’s involvement in politics beyond his consular role. In those years, Brazil was ruled by a right-wing dictatorship that had outlawed all leftist political activity. In 1935, Luís Carlos Prestes, the Brazilian “cavalier of hope,” as Neruda called him, had been arrested and tortured. His mother, who
