Τρίτη 30 Σεπτεμβρίου 2008

ΞΗΜΕΡΩΝΟΝΤΑΣ!


-Έι, ξύπνα σου λέω.
-Έλα, τι είναι, τι θες;
-Σήκω, σε χρειάζομαι...
-Πας καλά; Τώρα; Ξέρεις τι ώρα είναι;
-Τι σημασία έχει; Τώρα σε χρειάζομαι, τώρα θα σηκωθείς.
-Δεν είσαι με τα καλά σου.
-Ε τι λέμε τόση ώρα; Άντε σήκω...
-Καλααααά...
-Και ρίξε και λίγο νερό στο πρόσωπό σου.
...........
-Άντε λέγε, τι θες;
-Αχ μην με αποπαίρνεις φλασάκι μου και μόνο εσένα έχω να μου συμπαρασταθείς. Συγνώμη που σε ξύπνησα. Και εγώ δεν έχω κλείσει μάτι...
-Σε βλέπω.
-Χάλια;
-Μην το συζητάς!... Θα μου πεις ή να μαντέψω;
-Θέλω να του γράψω.
-Α μάλιστα! Υπέροχα!
-Δεν είναι;;
-Πάντως ενθουσιασμένη σε βρίσκω.
-Όλο το βράδυ βαλάντωσα αλλά τώρα έχω μεγάλα κέφια! Επειδή το πήρα απόφαση μάλλον.
-Αμ δεν είναι από αυτό. Είναι γιατί τον τελευταίο καιρό είσαι μια ήλιος μια βροχή. Μας έχεις τρελάνει με την κυκλοθυμία σου.
-Έλα βρε φλασάκι μου, το ξέρω, μην με μαλώνεις. Πες μου εσύ, τι να κάνω;
-Τίποτα να μην κάνεις. Να κοιτάξεις να συνέλθεις μόνο.
-Όχι δεν γίνεται, το προσπάθησα. Σου λέω θέλω να του γράψω, αυτό αποφάσισα και τέρμα.
-Κάνε ότι θες στην τελική... πάω να συνεχίσω...
-Εσύ τι λες;
-Α μάλιστα! Ότι κοιμηθήκαμε, κοιμηθήκαμε για απόψε. Τέλεια!
- :-)
-Αν θες την γνώμη μου αυτά τα πράγματα δεν χρειάζονται σκέψη, ούτε συζήτηση χρειάζονται. Πάρε ένα μολύβι, πάρε και χαρτί και άσε την καρδιά σου να κάνει τα υπόλοιπα.
-Δηλαδή συμφωνείς!
-Ναι.
-Το ήξερα εγώ οτι είσαι ψυχάρα!
-Ωραία λοιπόν, το λύσαμε, τα λέμε το πρωί.
-Ε, που πας; Κάτσε κάτω λέμε. Θέλω να με βοηθήσεις. Τι θα του γράψω; Έχει σταματήσει το μυαλό μου.
-Ε όχι! Δικό σου θέμα αυτό.
-Έλα τώρα, τι εγώ τι εσύ. Το ίδιο δεν είναι;
-Μάλιστα. Ας μην συγχιστώ, όχι πριν πιώ καφέ τουλάχιστον... Φτιάξε έναν.
-Εντάξει, θα μας φτιάξω έναν. Γλυκό ε;
-Ε μα ναι!

Παρασκευή 26 Σεπτεμβρίου 2008

YOUR SILENCE IS THAT OF A STAR



Από το soundtrack της ταινίας Il Postino (1994).


I Like For You To Be Still


I like for you to be still
It is as though you are absent
And you hear me from far away
And my voice does not touch you
It seems as though your eyes had flown away
And it seems that a kiss had sealed your mouth
As all things are filled with my soul
You emerge from the things
Filled with my soul
You are like my soul
A butterfly of dream
And you are like the word: Melancholy

I like for you to be still
And you seem far away
It sounds as though you are lamenting
A butterfly cooing like a dove
And you hear me from far away
And my voice does not reach you
Let me come to be still in your silence
And let me talk to you with your silence
That is bright as a lamp
Simple, as a ring
You are like the night
With its stillness and constellations
Your silence is that of a star
As remote and candid

I like for you to be still
It is as though you are absent
Distant and full of sorrow
So you would've died
One word then, One smile is enough
And I'm happy;
Happy that it's not true



by Pablo Neruda
(Translated by W.S. Merwin
)

Μ' αρέσεις άμα σωπαίνεις


Μ' αρέσεις άμα σωπαίνεις, επειδή στέκεις εκεί σαν απουσία
κι ενώ μεν απ' τα πέρατα με ακούς,
η φωνή μου εμένα δεν σε φτάνει.
Μου φαίνεται ακόμα ότι τα μάτια μου σε σκεπάζουν πετώντας
κι ότι ένα φιλί, μου φαίνεται,
στα χείλη σου τη σφραγίδα του βάνει.

Κι όπως τα πράγματα όλα ποτισμένα είναι από την ψυχή μου,
έτσι αναδύεσαι κι εσύ μεσ' απ' τα πράγματα,
ποτισμένη απ' τη δική μου ψυχή.
Του ονείρου πεταλούδα, της ψυχής μου εσύ της μοιάζεις έτσι,
σαν όπως μοιάζεις και στη λέξη μελαγχολία, καθώς ηχεί.

Μ' αρέσεις άμα σωπαίνεις, επειδή στέκεις εκεί σαν ξενητειά.
Κι άμα κλαις μου αρέσεις,
απ' την κούνια σου πεταλούδα μικρή μου εσύ.
Κι ενώ μεν απ' τα πέρατα με ακούς,
η φωνή μου εμένα δεν μπορεί να σ' αγγίξει:
Άσε με τώρα να βυθιστώ κι εγώ σωπαίνοντας
μες τη δική σου σιωπή.

Άσε με τώρα να σου μιλήσω κι εγώ με τη σιωπή
τη δικιά σου
που είναι απέριττη σα δαχτυλίδι αρραβώνων
και που λάμπει σαν αστραπή.
Είσαι όμοια με την νύχτα, αγάπη μου,
η νύχτα που κατηφορίζει έναστρη.
Απόμακρη και τόση δα και απ' τα αστέρια φτιαγμένη
είναι η δικιά σου σιωπή.

Μ' αρέσεις άμα σωπαίνεις, επειδή στέκεις εκεί σαν απουσία.
Μακρινή κι απαρηγόρητη, σα να σε σκέπασε χώμα.
Μια λέξη μόνο αν πεις, ένα χαμόγελο - μου αρκεί
για να πανηγυρίσω που είσαι εδώ κοντά μου ακόμα.


(μετάφραση: Γ. Κεντρωτής)


NOBEL PRIZE IN LITERATURE 1971



Pablo Neruda (July 12, 1904–September 23, 1973) was the pen name and, later, legal name of the Chilean writer and politician Neftalí Ricardo Reyes Basoalto.
With his works translated into many languages, Pablo Neruda is considered one of the greatest and most influential poets of the 20th century. Neruda was accomplished in a variety of styles ranging from erotically charged love poems like his collection Twenty Poems of Love and a Song of Despair, surrealist poems, historical epics, and overtly political manifestos. In 1971 Neruda won the Nobel Prize for Literature, a controversial award because of his political activism. Colombian novelist Gabriel García Márquez once called him "the greatest poet of the 20th century in any language".
On July 15, 1945 at Pacaembu Stadium in São Paulo, Brazil, he read to 100,000 people at a reading in honor of Communist revolutionary Luís Carlos Prestes.Upon returning to Chile after his Nobel Prize acceptance speech, Salvador Allende invited Neruda to read at the Estadio Nacional before 70,000 people.
During his lifetime, Neruda occupied many diplomatic posts and served a stint as senator for the Chilean Communist Party. When Conservative Chilean President González Videla outlawed communism in Chile, a warrant was issued for Neruda's arrest. Friends hid him for months in a basement of a home in the Chilean port of Valparaíso. Neruda then escaped into exile through a mountain pass near Maihue Lake into Argentina. Years later, Neruda was a close collaborator to socialist President Salvador Allende.
Hospitalized with cancer at the time of the Chilean coup d'état led by Augusto Pinochet, Neruda died of heart failure twelve days later. Already a legend in life, Neruda's death became charged with an intense symbolism that reverberated around the world. Pinochet had denied permission to transform Neruda's funeral into a public event, but thousands of grieving Chileans disobeyed the curfew, flooding the streets in tribute. Neruda's funeral became the first public protest against the Chilean military dictatorship.
Neruda assumed his pen name as a teenager, partly because it was in vogue, partly to hide his poetry from his father, a rigid man who wanted his son to have a "practical" occupation. Neruda's pen name was derived from Czech writer and poet Jan Neruda; Pablo is thought to be from Paul Verlaine. It later became his legal name.

Early years
Ricardo Eliezer Neftalí Reyes y Basoalto was born in Parral, a city in Linares Province in the Maule Region, some 400 km south of Santiago. His father, José del Carmen Reyes Morales, was a railway employee; his mother, Rosa Basoalto, was a school teacher who died two months after he was born. Neruda and his father soon moved to Temuco, where his father married Trinidad Candia Marverde, a woman with whom he had had a child nine years earlier, a boy named Rodolfo. Neruda also grew up with his half-sister Laura, one of his father's children by another woman.
The young Neruda was christened "Neftalí", his late mother's middle name. His father was opposed to Neruda's interest in writing and literature, but Neruda received encouragement from others, including future Nobel Prize winner Gabriela Mistral, who headed the local girls' school. His first published work was an essay he wrote for the local daily newspaper, La Mañana, at the age of thirteen: Entusiasmo y perseverancia ("Enthusiasm and Perseverance"). By 1920, when he adopted the pseudonym of Pablo Neruda, he was a published author of poetry, prose, and journalism.

Veinte poemas
In the following year (1921), he moved to Santiago to study French at the Universidad de Chile with the intention of becoming a teacher, but soon Neruda was devoting himself full time to poetry. In 1923 his first volume of verse, Crepusculario ("Book of Twilights"), was published, followed the next year by Veinte poemas de amor y una canción desesperada ("Twenty Love Poems and a Desperate Song"), a collection of love poems that was controversial for its eroticism, especially considering its author's young age. Both works were critically acclaimed and were translated into many languages. Over the decades, Veinte poemas would sell millions of copies and become Neruda's best-known work.
Neruda's reputation was growing both inside and outside of Chile, but he was plagued by poverty. In 1927, out of desperation, he took an honorary consulship in Rangoon, then a part of colonial Burma and a place of which he had never heard before. Later, he worked stints in Colombo (Ceylon), Batavia (Java), and Singapore. In Java he met and married his first wife, a tall Dutch bank employee named Maryka Antonieta Hagenaar Vogelzang. While on diplomatic service, Neruda read large amounts of poetry and experimented with many different poetic forms. He wrote the first two volumes of Residencia en la tierra, which included many surrealistic poems, later to become famous.

Spanish Civil War
After returning to Chile, Neruda was given diplomatic posts in Buenos Aires and then Barcelona, Spain. He later replaced Gabriela Mistral as consul in Madrid, where he became the center of a lively literary circle, befriending such writers as Rafael Alberti, Federico García Lorca, and the Peruvian poet César Vallejo. A daughter, Malva Marina Trinidad, was born in Madrid in 1934; she was to be plagued with health problems, especially hydrocephalus, for the whole of her short life. During this period, Neruda became slowly estranged from his wife and took up with Delia del Carril, an Argentine woman who was twenty years his senior and who would eventually become his second wife. He divorced from his Dutch wife in 1936, who moved to the Netherlands with his only child; this child died in 1943.
As Spain became engulfed in civil war, Neruda became intensely politicized for the first time. His experiences of the Spanish Civil War and its aftermath moved him away from distinctive, privately focused labor in the direction of collective obligation and better cohesion. Neruda became an ardent communist, and remained so for the rest of his life. The radical leftist politics of his literary friends, as well as that of del Carril, were contributing factors, but the most important catalyst was the execution of García Lorca by forces loyal to Francisco Franco. By means of his speeches and writings, Neruda threw his support behind the Republican side, publishing a collection of poetry called España en el corazón ("Spain in My Heart"). Neruda’s wife and child moved to Monte Carlo; he was never to see either of them again. After leaving his wife, he took up full time with del Carril in France.
Following the election in 1938 of President Pedro Aguirre Cerda, whom Neruda supported, he was appointed special consul for Spanish emigration in Paris. There Neruda was given responsibility for what he called "the noblest mission I have ever undertaken": shipping 2,000 Spanish refugees, who had been housed by the French in squalid camps, to Chile on an old boat called the Winnipeg. Neruda is sometimes charged with only selecting Communists for emigration while excluding others who had fought on the side of the Republic; others deny these accusations, pointing out that Neruda chose only a few hundred of the refugees personally; the rest were selected by the Service for the Evacuation of Spanish Refugees, set up by Juan Negrín, president of the Spanish Republican government-in-exile.

Mexico
Neruda's next diplomatic post was as Consul General in Mexico City, where he spent the years 1940 to 1943. While in Mexico, he divorced Hagenaar, married del Carril, and learned that his daughter had died, age eight, in the Nazi-occupied Netherlands from her many health problems. He also became a friend of the Stalinist assassin Vittorio Vidali .
After the failed 1940 assassination attempt against Leon Trotsky, Neruda arranged a Chilean visa for the Mexican painter David Alfaro Siqueiros who was accused of having been one of the conspirators. Neruda later said he did it at the request of Mexican President Manuel Ávila Camacho. This enabled Siqueiros, then jailed, to leave Mexico for Chile, where he stayed at Neruda's private residence. In exchange for Neruda's assistance, Siqueiros spent over a year painting a mural in a school in Chillán. Neruda's relationship with Siqueiros attracted criticism and Neruda dismissed the allegations that his intent had been to help an assassin as "sensationalist politico-literary harassment". In Mexico, Pablo Neruda met the famous Mexican writer Octavio Paz where he nearly came to blows in 1942.

Return to Chile
In 1943, following his return to Chile, Neruda made a tour of Peru, where he visited Machu Picchu. The austere beauty of the Inca citadel later inspired Alturas de Macchu Picchu, a book-length poem in twelve parts which he completed in 1945 and which marked a growing awareness and interest in the ancient civilizations of the Americas: themes he was to explore further in Canto General. In this work, Neruda celebrated the achievement of Machu Picchu, but also condemned the slavery which had made it possible. In the Canto XII, he called upon the dead of many centuries to be born again and to speak through him. Martin Espada, poet and professor of creative writing at the University of Massachusetts, has hailed the work as a masterpiece, declaring that "there is no greater political poem".

Neruda and Stalinism
Bolstered by his experiences in the Spanish Civil War, Neruda, like many left-leaning intellectuals of his generation, came to admire the Soviet Union of Joseph Stalin, partly for the role it played in defeating Nazi Germany (poems Canto a Stalingrado (1942) and Nuevo canto de amor a Stalingrado (1943)). In 1953 Neruda was awarded the Stalin Peace Prize. On Stalin's death that same year, Neruda wrote an ode to him, as he also (during World War II) wrote praise of Fulgencio Batista (Saludo a Batista, i.e Salute to Batista) and later of Fidel Castro .
His fervent Stalinism eventually drove a wedge between Neruda and longtime friend Octavio Paz who commented that "Neruda became more and more Stalinist, while I became less and less enchanted with Stalin". Their differences came to a head after the 1939 Nazi-Soviet Ribbentrop-Molotov Pact when they almost came to blows in an argument over Stalin. Although Paz still considered Neruda "the greatest poet of his generation", in an essay on Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn he wrote that when he thinks of … Neruda and other famous Stalinist writers I feel the gooseflesh that I get from reading certain passages of Dante’s Inferno. No doubt they began in good faith, but insensibly, commitment by commitment, they saw themselves becoming entangled in a mesh of lies, falsehoods, deceits and perjuries, until they lost their souls.
Neruda called Lenin the "great genius of this century". Another speech (June 5, 1946) is a tribute to the late Soviet leader Mikhail Kalinin, who for Neruda was "man of noble life", "the great constructor of the future", "a comrade of arms of Lenin and Stalin".
Neruda later came to rue his support of the Soviet leader; after Nikita Khrushchev's famous Secret Speech 20th Party Congress in 1956, in which he denounced the "cult of personality" that surrounded Stalin and accused him of committing crimes during the Great Purges, Neruda wrote in his memoirs "I had contributed to my share to the personality cult," explaining that "in those days, Stalin seemed to us the conqueror who had crushed Hitler's armies". Of a subsequent visit to China in 1957, Neruda would later write: "What has estranged me from the Chinese revolutionary process has not been Mao Tse-tung but Mao Tse-tungism", which he dubbed Mao Tse-Stalinism: "the repetition of a cult of a Socialist deity". However, despite his disillusionment with Stalin, Neruda never lost his essential faith in communism and remained loyal to "the Party". Anxious not to give ammunition to his ideological enemies, he would later refuse publicly to condemn the Soviet repression of dissident writers like Boris Pasternak and Joseph Brodsky: an attitude with which even some of his staunchest admirers disagreed.

Senator
On March 4, 1945 Neruda was elected a Communist party senator for the northern provinces of Antofagasta and Tarapacá in the arid and inhospitable Atacama Desert. He officially joined the Communist Party of Chile four months later.
In 1946, Radical Party presidential candidate Gabriel González Videla asked Neruda to act as his campaign manager. González Videla was supported by a coalition of left-wing parties and Neruda fervently campaigned on his behalf. Once in office, however, González Videla turned against the Communist Party. The breaking point for Senator Neruda was the violent repression of a Communist-led miners' strike in Lota in October 1947, where striking workers were herded into island military prisons and a concentration camp in the town of Pisagua. Neruda's criticism of González Videla culminated in a dramatic speech in the Chilean senate on 6 January 1948 called Yo acuso ("I accuse"), in the course of which he read out the names of the miners and their families who were imprisoned at the concentration camp.

Exile
A few weeks later, Neruda went into hiding and he and his wife were smuggled from house to house, hidden by supporters and admirers for the next thirteen months. While in hiding, Senator Neruda was removed from office and in September 1948 the Communist Party was banned altogether under the Ley de Defensa Permanente de la Democracia (Law for the Permanent Defense of Democracy), called by critics the Ley Maldita ("Accursed Law"), which eliminated over 26,000 people from the electoral registers, thus stripping them of their right to vote. Neruda's life underground ended in March 1949 when he fled over the Andes Mountains to Argentina on horseback. He would dramatically recount his escape from Chile in his Nobel Prize lecture.
Once out of Chile, he spent the next three years in exile. In Buenos Aires a friend of Neruda, the future Nobel winner and novelist Miguel Ángel Asturias, was cultural attaché to the Guatemalan embassy. There was some slight resemblance between the two men, so Neruda went to Europe using Asturias's passport. Pablo Picasso arranged his entrance into Paris and Neruda made a surprise appearance there to a stunned World Congress of Peace Forces, the Chilean government meanwhile denying that the poet could have escaped the country.
Neruda spent those three years traveling extensively throughout Europe as well as taking trips to India, China, and the Soviet Union. His trip to Mexico in late 1949 was lengthened due to a serious bout of phlebitis. A Chilean singer named Matilde Urrutia was hired to care for him and they began an affair that would, years later, culminate in marriage. During his exile,Urrutia would travel from country to country shadowing him and they would arrange meetings whenever they could. Matilde Urrutia was the muse for "Los versos del Capitán", which he later published anonymously in 1952.
While in Mexico Neruda also published his lengthy epic poem Canto General, a Whitmanesque catalog of the history, geography, and flora and fauna of South America, accompanied by Neruda's observations and experiences. Many of them dealt with his time underground in Chile, which is when he composed much of the poem. In fact, he had carried the manuscript with him on his escape on horseback. A month later, a different edition of five thousand copies was boldly published in Chile by the outlawed Communist Party based on a manuscript Neruda had left behind. In Mexico, he was granted honorary Mexican citizenship.
His 1952 stay in a villa owned by Italian historian Edwin Cerio on the island of Capri was fictionalized in the popular film Il Postino ("The Postman", 1994).

Return to Chile
By 1952, the González-Videla government was on its last legs, weakened by corruption scandals. The Chilean Socialist Party was in the process of nominating Salvador Allende as its candidate for the September 1952 presidential elections and was keen to have the presence of Neruda—by now Chile's most prominent left-wing literary figure—to support the campaign.
Neruda returned in August of that year and rejoined Delia del Carril, who had traveled ahead of him some months earlier, but the marriage was crumbling. Del Carril eventually learned of his torrid affair with Matilde Urrutia and left him in 1955, moving back to Europe. Now united with Urrutia, Neruda would spend the rest of his life in Chile, many foreign trips notwithstanding and a stint as Allende's ambassador to France from 1970 to 1973.
By this time, Neruda enjoyed worldwide fame as a poet, and his books were being translated into virtually all the major languages of the world. He was also vocal on political issues, vigorously denouncing the U.S. during the Cuban missile crisis (later in the decade he would likewise repeatedly condemn the U.S. for the Vietnam War). But being one of the most prestigious and outspoken leftwing intellectuals alive also attracted opposition from ideological opponents. The Congress for Cultural Freedom, an anti-communist organization covertly established and funded by the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency, adopted Neruda as one of its primary targets and launched a campaign to undermine his reputation, reviving the old claim he had been an accomplice in the attack on Trotsky in Mexico City in 1940. The campaign became more intense when it became known that Neruda was a candidate for the 1964 Nobel prize, which was eventually awarded to Jean-Paul Sartre.
In 1966, Neruda was invited to attend an International PEN conference in New York City. Officially, he was barred from entering the U.S. because he was a communist, but the conference organizer, playwright Arthur Miller, eventually prevailed upon the Johnson Administration to grant Neruda a visa. Neruda gave readings to packed halls, and even recorded some poems for the Library of Congress. Miller later opined that Neruda's adherence to his communist ideals of the 1930s was a result of his protracted exclusion from "bourgeois society". Due to the presence of many East Bloc writers, Mexican writer Carlos Fuentes later wrote that the PEN conference marked a "beginning of the end" of the Cold War.
Upon Neruda's return to Chile, he stopped off in Peru, where he gave readings to enthusiastic crowds in Lima and Arequipa and was received by President Fernando Belaúnde Terry. However, the visit prompted an unpleasant backlash. The Peruvian government had come out against the government in Cuba of Fidel Castro, and in July 1966 retaliation against Neruda came in the form of a letter signed by more than one hundred Cuban intellectuals who charged Neruda with colluding with the enemy, and called him an example of the "tepid, pro-Yankee revisionism" then prevalent in Latin America. The affair was particularly painful for Neruda because of his previous outspoken support for the Cuban revolution, and he never visited the island again, even after an invitation in 1968.
After the death of Che Guevara in Bolivia in 1967, Neruda wrote several articles regretting the loss of a "great hero". At the same time, he told his friend Aida Figueroa not to cry for Che, but for Luis Emilio Recabarren, the father of the Chilean communist movement, who preached a pacifist revolution over Che's violent ways.

Final years
In 1970, Neruda was nominated as a candidate for the Chilean presidency, but ended up giving his support to Salvador Allende, who later won the election and was inaugurated in 1970 as the first democratically elected socialist head of state. Shortly thereafter, Allende appointed Neruda the Chilean ambassador to France (lasting from 1970-1972; his final diplomatic posting). Neruda returned to Chile two and half years later due to failing health.
In 1971, having sought the prize for years, Neruda was finally awarded the Nobel Prize. This decision did not come easily, as some of the committee members had not forgotten Neruda's past praise of Stalinist dictatorship. But his Swedish translator, Artur Lundkvist, did his best to ensure the Chilean the prize.
As the disturbances of 1973 unfolded, Neruda, then terminally ill with prostate cancer, was devastated by the mounting attacks on the Allende government. The military coup led by General Augusto Pinochet on 11 September saw Neruda's hopes for a marxist Chile destroyed. Shortly thereafter, during a search of the house and grounds at Isla Negra by Chilean armed forces at which he was present, Neruda famously remarked:
“ Look around—there's only one thing of danger for you here—poetry. ”
Neruda died of heart failure on the evening of September 23, 1973, at Santiago's Santa María Clinic. After his death, Neruda's homes in both Valparaiso and Santiago were looted and vandalized. The funeral took place amidst a massive police presence, and mourners took advantage of the occasion to protest against the new regime, established just a couple of weeks before.
Matilde Urrutia subsequently compiled and edited for publication the memoirs that Neruda had been working on just days prior to his death including, possibly his final poem 'Right Comrade, Its the Hour of the Garden'. These and other activities brought her into conflict with Pinochet's government, which continually sought to curtail Neruda's influence on the Chilean collective consciousness. Indeed, Neruda's poetry was outlawed in Chile by the junta until the restoration of democracy in 1990. Urrutia's own memoir, My Life with Pablo Neruda, was published posthumously in 1986.
Neruda owned three houses in Chile; today they are all open to the public as museums: La Chascona in Santiago, La Sebastiana in Valparaíso, and Casa de Isla Negra in Isla Negra, where he and Matilde Urrutia are buried.

Legacy
• An edition of Neruda's On the Blue Shore of Silence was printed in honor of the poet's 100th birthday in 2004. The book featured translations of Neruda's original poems by Scottish poet Alastair Reid and original paintings from artist Mary Heebner's series Laguna Salada.
• Neruda always wrote in green ink because it was the color of Esperanza (hope).
• Neruda was good friends with Venezuelan intellectuals and diplomats, such as Arturo Uslar Pietri, Juan Oropeza and Miguel Otero Silva.
• In the Italian film Il Postino, Pablo Neruda, portrayed by Philippe Noiret, befriends a postman and inspires in him a love of poetry.
• A bust of Neruda stands on the south side of the Organization of American States building in Washington D.C.
• The South African musician Johnny Clegg drew heavily on Neruda in his early work with the band Juluka.
• Neruda is referred to frequently as "The Poet" in the novel The House of the Spirits by Isabel Allende. One character, Clara "the Clarivoyant" Trueba, is said to have helped him in his rise to fame and another member of the Trueba family later attends his funeral.
• Greek composer Mikis Theodorakis set to music the famous "Canto General" (one of the most famous poems by Neruda) when he was exiled from his homeland by the dictatorship in Greece (1967-1974). It's a very well-known and popular musical work in both countries (Chile and Greece). The world premiere of this music work occurred in Athens, Greece in 1975. Over 125,000 attended this concert. Theodorakis has visited Chile many times and had the opportunity to present "Canto General" in concerts in Santiago.
• "Neruda Songs," a classical and operatic cycle based on five of Neruda's love poems, received the $200,000 University of Louisville's Grawemeyer Award for Musical Composition. The composer, Peter Lieberson, dedicated the music to his deceased wife, mezzo-soprano Lorraine Hunt Lieberson, who performed the music exemplifying what Neruda referred to as "the arc of love" at its world premiere shortly before her death.
• Documentary film in production on Neruda's life, times, and poetry, Pablo Neruda: The Poet's Calling, directed by Mexican director Carlos Bolado and Mark Eisner, narrated by singer/songwriter Suzanne Vega.
• In 2008 the writer Roberto Ampuero published a fictional novel El caso Neruda, about his private eye Cayetano Brulé, where Pablo Neruda is one of the protagonists.

wikipedia

Σάββατο 20 Σεπτεμβρίου 2008

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θα ΄χω τώρα προορισμό
εισιτήριο δεν έχω
μοναχά αποχωρισμό

Πες, ότι η ζωή, είναι μια στάλα ταξίδι,
και πιες, σε ένα φιλί, τον κόσμο, θέλει θάρρος και αλήθεια μαζί,
όμως εσύ, είσαι τραγούδι, είσαι πόνος και εγώ,
σε κυνηγώ, δε σ' αφήνω γι' άλλο τίποτα πάνω στη γη -ναι-,
δεν αφήνω την τρέλα αυτή,
γι’ άλλο τίποτα πάνω στη γη...

Η ψυχή μου φωνάζει
τη φοβισμένη σου αγκαλιά
Κι ακολουθώ τις γραμμές σου
μήπως και φτάσω στην καρδιά
Θέλω να ‘μαι μαζί σου, μοναχά

Πες, ότι η ζωή, είναι μια στάλα ταξίδι,
και πιες, σε ένα φιλί, τον κόσμο, θέλει θάρρος και αλήθεια μαζί,
όμως εσύ, είσαι τραγούδι, είσαι πόνος και εγώ,
σε κυνηγώ, δε σ' αφήνω γι' άλλο τίποτα πάνω στη γη -ναι-,
δεν αφήνω την τρέλα αυτή,
γι’ άλλο τίποτα πάνω στη γη....


Στίχοι: Ελεάνα Βραχάλη
Μουσική: Γιάννης Χριστοδουλόπουλος
Ερμηνεία: Έλενα Παπαρίζου

Παρασκευή 19 Σεπτεμβρίου 2008

ALL NIGHT LONG

NIGHT ON THE ISLAND

All night I have slept with you
next to the sea, on the island.
Wild and sweet you were between pleasure and sleep,
between fire and water.

Perhaps very late
our dreams joined
at the top or at the bottom,
Up above like branches moved by a common wind,
down below like red roots that touch.

Perhaps your dream
drifted from mine
and through the dark sea
was seeking me
as before,
when you did not yet exist,
when without sighting you
I sailed by your side,
and your eyes sought
what now--
bread, wine, love, and anger--
I heap upon you
because you are the cup
that was waiting for the gifts of my life.

I have slept with you
all night long while
the dark earth spins
with the living and the dead,
and on waking suddenly
in the midst of the shadow
my arm encircled your waist.
Neither night nor sleep
could separate us.

I have slept with you
and on waking, your mouth,
come from your dream,
gave me the taste of earth,
of sea water, of seaweed,
of the depths of your life,
and I received your kiss
moistened by the dawn
as if it came to me
from the sea that surrounds us.

Pablo Neruda

(Αγγλική μετάφραση από την ισπανική γλώσσα)

Πέμπτη 18 Σεπτεμβρίου 2008

ΕΥΧΗ



ΕΙΣΙΤΗΡΙΟ ΣΤΗΝ ΤΣΕΠΗ ΣΟΥ

Ήθελα να 'μαι η αφή στην άκρη των δακτύλων σου
ό,τι αγγίζεις να 'χει κάτι κι από μένα
να 'μαι τη νύχτα η φωνή χαμένων φίλων σου
που λεν τραγούδια παλιά κι αγαπημένα

Ήθελα να 'μαι εισιτήριο στην τσέπη σου
όταν σε μένα ταξιδεύει η σκέψη σου
ήθελα να 'μαι εισιτήριο στην τσέπη σου
όταν σε μένα ταξιδεύει η σκέψη σου

Ήθελα να 'μαι η σκιά στην άκρη των βλεφάρων σου
η μόνη λέξη στο παραμιλητό σου
να 'μαι η πρώτη ρουφηξιά απ' το τσιγάρο σου
κι η τελευταία η γουλιά απ' το ποτό σου

Ήθελα να 'μαι εισιτήριο στην τσέπη σου
όταν σε μένα ταξιδεύει η σκέψη σου
ήθελα να 'μαι εισιτήριο στην τσέπη σου
όταν σε μένα ταξιδεύει η σκέψη σου

Θα 'θελα να 'μαι αστραπή που σβήνει μες στο βλέμμα σου
πάνω στο χέρι η τυχερή γραμμή σου
να 'μαι κρυμμένος πυρετός μέσα στο αίμα σου
για να ξυπνάω τις φωτιές μες στο κορμί σου

Ήθελα να 'μαι εισιτήριο στην τσέπη σου
όταν σε μένα ταξιδεύει η σκέψη σου
ήθελα να 'μαι εισιτήριο στην τσέπη σου
όταν σε μένα ταξιδεύει η σκέψη σου


Στίχοι: Ηλίας Κατσούλης
Μουσική: Παντελής Θαλασσινός
Ερμηνεία: Παντελής Θαλασσινός

Τρίτη 16 Σεπτεμβρίου 2008

ΣΕ ΔΙΝΗ


Χθες βράδυ φυσούσε πολύ. Άκουγα τον άνεμο να φωνάζει αλαζονικά, να κινείται βιαστικά, παρορμητικά, και απαιτητικά να οθεί τα κλαδιά των δέντρων να λυγίσουν κατά την επιθυμία του, πότε αριστερά, πότε δεξιά, να σκίζουν τον αέρα για το χατήρι του.
Βγήκα για μια βόλτα κοντινή. Ήθελα να νιώσω το κορμί μου να κρυώνει, να ξυπνάει, το μυαλό να δραστηριοποιείται, χρειαζόμουν να βάλω τις σκέψεις μου σε τάξη.

Ο ουρανός φωτιζόταν στιγμιαία από αστραπές, υπόκωφες, σχεδόν βουβές-μόνες και αυτες. Περπατούσα με τα μάτια στραμένα ψηλά, προσπαθώντας να μαντέψω την επόμενη λάμψη. Επιθυμούσα να πιάσει βροχή, να μουσκέψουν τα ρούχα μου, να μοιρίσει το χώμα. Νομίζω, θα μου αρκούσε έστω και μια βαθιά ανάσα φθινοπωρινής βροχής.
Τίποτα δεν έγινε. Δεν έβρεξε. Και η θερμοκρασία κανονική, δεν μου χάρισε μια τόση δα ανατριχίλα στο κορμί. Ο άνεμος, που έφτανε στα αυτιά μου όλο υποσχέσεις λίγο πριν, κόπασε και αυτός. Γύρισα στο σπίτι φτωχή από συγκινήσεις, φτωχότερη από πριν.

Με μαλλιά και σκέψεις ανάστατες, έκλεισα την πόρτα πίσω μου. Δεν άναψα φως. Σε λίγα βήματα, βρέθηκα στον καναπέ, σε λίγες κινήσεις, είχα στο χέρι τσιγάρο και φωτιά. Βάλθηκα να καπνίζω, χωρίς να γουστάρω, εντελώς μηχανικά, ήθελα μόνο να βλέπω το τσιγάρο που καιγόταν αργά, όλες οι ελπίδες μου να συγκεντρωθώ ήταν αυτή η μικρή πηγή φωτός.
Μέρες τώρα που δεν μπορώ να συγκεντρωθώ, μέρες τώρα που δεν μπορώ να γράψω, δεν μπορώ να σκεφτώ. Μέρες τώρα που ζω χωρίς να ζω. Όχι, όχι μη ρωτας. Δεν έχω τίποτα να πω. Τι έλεγα; Α ναι... ξεκίνησα να λέω για τον καιρό που άλλαξε, αγρίεψε. Όμως δεν με ξεγελάει, ο χειμώνας θα αργήσει λίγο ακόμα.

Σκέφτομαι τον χειμώνα που έρχεται. Τον λατρεύω τον χειμώνα! Είναι η εποχή που μπορείς να νιώσεις αυτό το συναίσθημα που ονομάζεται θαλπωρή, να το βιώσεις με όλο σου το είναι, σώμα και ψυχή. Κάνω σχέδια για τον χειμώνα. Παντού εσύ. Δεν μπορώ να κάνω αλλιώς, ότι προσπαθώ να σκεφτώ χωρίς εσένα, μένει μισό. Μια σκέψη κενή. Μια τρύπα στων στιγμών τη συνεχή εναλλαγή, μια δίνη στου χρόνου την άσπαστη δομή.

Δευτέρα 15 Σεπτεμβρίου 2008

ΕΙΜΑΣΤΕ ΚΑΤΙ



-Δεν ξέρω καν γιατί μας ήρθε το καλοκαίρι αυτό.


[ΣΑΝ ΔΕΣΜΗ ΑΠΟ ΤΡΙΑΝΤΑΦΥΛΛΑ...]

Σαν δέσμη από τριαντάφυλλα
είδα το βράδυ αυτό.
Κάποια χρυσή, λεπτότατη
στους δρόμους ευωδιά.
Και στην καρδιά
αιφνίδια καλοσύνη.
Στα χέρια το παλτό,
στ' ανεστραμμένο πρόσωπο η σελήνη.
Ηλεκτρισμένη από φιλήματα
θα 'λεγες την ατμόσφαιρα.
Η σκέψις, τα ποιήματα,
βάρος περιττό.

Έχω κάτι σπασμένα φτερά.
Δεν ξέρω καν γιατί μας ήρθε
το καλοκαίρι αυτό.
Για ποιον ανέλπιστη χαρά,
για ποιες αγάπες
για ποιο ταξίδι ονειρευτό.


ΚΙΘΑΡΕΣ

Είμαστε κάτι ξεχαρβαλωμένες
κιθάρες. Ο άνεμος όταν περνάει,
στίχους, ήχους παράξενους ξυπνάει
στις χορδές που κρέμονται σαν καδένες.

Είμαστε κάτι απίστευτες αντένες.
Υψώνονται σαν δάχτυλα στα χάη,
στην κορυφή τους τ' άπειρο αντηχάει,
μα γρήγορα θα πέσουνε σπασμένες.

Είμαστε κάτι διάχυτες αισθήσεις,
χωρίς ελπίδα να συγκεντρωθούμε.
Στα νεύρα μας μπερδεύεται όλη η φύσις.

Στο σώμα, στην ενθύμηση πονούμε.
Μας διώχνουνε τα πράγματα, κι η ποίησις
είναι το καταφύγιο που φθονούμε.


Κ.Γ.Καρυωτάκης

-Από την ποιητική συλλογή Ελεγεία και Σάτιρες (1927)
-Το απόσπασμα 'Σαν δέσμη από τριαντάφυλλα' έχει μελοποιηθεί από την Λένα Πλάτωνος και έχει ερμηνευτεί από την Σαββίνα Γιαννάτου.

Σάββατο 13 Σεπτεμβρίου 2008

ΔΥΟ ΡΩ ΓΙΑ ΤΟΝ ΟΥΡΑΝΟ



ΤΑ ΡΩ ΤΟΥ ΕΡΩΤΑ (1972)

"Οι άγγελοι τραγουδάνε. Και οι ερωτευμένοι επίσης. Πίσω από κάθε
ανάταση, από κάθε μεράκι, μια κιθάρα περιμένει έτοιμη να πάρει τα
λόγια και να τα ταξιδέψει από χείλη σε χείλη. Δεν είναι λίγο αυτό.
Είναι η χαρά να δίνεις χαρά στους άλλους, είναι αυτό που μας βα-
στάει στη ζωή. Γι΄ αυτό, κοντά στα ποιήματά μου, δοκίμασα να γρά-
ψω και μερικά τραγούδια, χωρίς να τα υποτιμώ καθόλου. Έτσι ή αλ-
λιώς, μιλά κανείς για τα ίδια πράγματα που αγαπά, και από κει και πέ-
ρα το λόγο έχουν αυτοί που θα τ' ακούσουν. Λένε πως το είδος έχει
ορισμένους κανόνες. Δεν τους ξέρω και, πάντως, δεν ενδιαφέρθηκα
ή δεν μπόρεσα να τους ακολουθήσω. Δουλεύει ο καθένας όπως
νοιώθει. Και η θάλασσα είναι απέραντη, τα πουλιά μυριάδες, οι ψυχές
όσες και οι συνδυασμοί που μπορούν να γεννήσουν οι ήχοι και τα λόγια,
όταν ο έρωτας και το όνειρο συμβασιλεύουν."

Οδ. Ελύτης


Ο ΤΑΧΥΔΡΟΜΟΣ

Κάθε πρωί όπου ξυπνώ
τρέχω στην πόρτα και κοιτώ
Τρίτη Κυριακή Δευτέρα
κι άλλη μια χαμένη μέρα

Πάνε κι έρχονται ολοένα
τα βαπόρια και τα τρένα
Ταχυδρόμε ανάθεμα σε
μόνο εμένα δε θυμάσαι

Πιάνει ο κόσμος περιστέρια
κι εγώ μένω μ' άδεια χέρια
-Γράμμα τέτοιο δε λαβαίνεις
άδικα μην περιμένεις

Δε σου το 'χουνε γραμμένο
κι αν σου το 'χουν πάει αλλού
Άλλος μένει εκεί που μένεις
και το δίνουνε αυτουνού

Ίσως να 'ναι και σταλμένο
σ' άνθρωπο του φεγγαριού
Ή και παραπεταμένο
σε μιαν άκρη τ' ουρανού.

(Από το υποσύνολο Το Θαλασσινό Τριφύλλι της συλλογής Τα Ρω Του Έρωτα,
Ο Ταχυδρόμος έχει μελοποιηθεί από τον Λίνο Κόκοτο και έχει ερμηνευτεί από την Ρένα Κουμιώτη.)


ΤΟ ΧΡΥΣΟ ΚΛΕΙΔΙ

- Εσείς του κόσμου οι σοφοί
για δώστε απόκριση σωστή:
Ποιος έχει το χρυσό κλειδί
όπου ανοίγουν οι ουρανοί;

-Ένα κορί- ένα κορί-
ένα κορίτσι το 'χει
Κι όποιος κι αν το παρακαλεί
όχι του λέει όχι

Βρε κορίτσι βρε κορίτσι μια ζωή την έχουμε
άνοιξε μας άνοιξε μας άλλο δεν αντέχουμε
Μάγισσες ρίχτε τα χαρτιά
και μελετήστε τα καλά:

Ποιος έχει το χρυσό κλειδί
όπου ανοίγουν οι ουρανοί;
Ένα κορί- ένα κορί-
ένα κορίτσι το 'χει

Κι όποιος κι αν το παρακαλεί
όχι του λέει όχι
Βρε κορίτσι βρε κορίτσι θα μας φάει η άβυσσο
άνοιξε μας άνοιξε μας λίγο τον Παράδεισο.

(Από το υποσύνολο Ο Χαμαιλέων της συλλογής Τα Ρω Του Έρωτα,
Το Χρυσό Κλειδί έχει μελοποιηθεί από τον Λίνο Κόκοτο και έχει ερμηνευτεί από τον Γιάννη Πουλόπουλο.)

Πέμπτη 11 Σεπτεμβρίου 2008

ΠΡΩΤΑΚΙ




Πρώτη μέρα της νέας σχολικής χρονιάς.

Ο μικρός μου ανιψιός εγκαινιάζει και τυπικά μια νέα περίοδο στη ζωή του, μια σπουδαία περίοδο που εύχομαι να είναι γεμάτη γνώσεις, επιτυχίες και χαρές, εποικοδομητικά διδάγματα και πνευματικές ικανοποιήσεις.


Αυτήν την ώρα θα έχει ήδη διαβεί την μεγάλη πόρτα του Δημοτικού σχολείου, κρατώντας το χέρι της μαμάς ή του μπαμπά του, με εκείνο το χαμόγελο στα μάτια και τα χείλη σουφρωμένα – να μην φανεί πόσο ενθουσιασμένος είναι που από σήμερα θα λογίζεται πια και αυτός Μαθητής!

Αυτήν την ώρα έχει ήδη διαβεί την μεγάλη πόρτα, έχει κάνει τις πρώτες γνωριμίες με τους καινούριους συμμαθητές, οι πρώτες συμπάθειες έχουν ήδη διαφανεί, σίγουρα έχει από ώρα μπει στη σειρά για τον καθιερωμένο αγιασμό, από το μυαλουδάκι του έχουν περάσει δεκάδες σκέψεις, ανησυχίες, ανασφάλειες, όνειρα και σχέδια για σκανταλιές, έχει αφαιρεθεί ακούγοντας την μονότονη φωνή του ιερέα, έχει ιδρώσει κάτω από τον ήλιο, μα και από αγωνία, έχει κρυφογελάσει με τις σταγόνες που τον έβαλαν σημάδι και έχει έρθει ήδη αντιμέτωπος με εκείνον τον άγιο άνθρωπο-δάσκαλο ή δασκάλα-που για μια τουλάχιστον χρονιά θα είναι για αυτόν όλα τα πρέπει και τα μη-το έχει ήδη αποφασίσει-όχι, δεν θα του πάρει εύκολα τον αέρα!


Πάει, την πέρασε την πόρτα… και εγώ ήμουν εδώ… αλλά δεν το έχασα, η καρδιά μου ήταν εκεί και τον είδε καθαρά, καμαρωτό καμαρωτό, με μια λάμψη στη ματιά και την σάκα του στην πλάτη…

Η καινούρια σάκα – μέρες τώρα την προετοίμαζε, και την άνοιγε, και την έψαχνε, την έκλεινε, την καμάρωνε και δεν πέρασε άνθρωπος από το σπίτι τις τελευταίες μέρες που να μην του τη δείξει, φουσκώνοντας από περηφάνεια… αυτήν και όλο της το περιεχόμενο… τετράδια αδειανά, καθαρά σαν τις παιδικές ψυχές, που προσμένουν να γεμίσουν στιγμές, γνώσεις, εμπειρίες, όνειρα, χαρές, μολύβια καλοξυσμένα, από αυτά που φτιάχτηκαν για να αποτυπώνουν τα όνειρα των μικρών παιδιών στα καθαρά τους τετράδια, και γόμες, γόμες που διορθώνουν τα πρώιμα όνειρα, τα σβήνουν για να ξαναγραφούν με καλύτερα γράμματα, να γίνουν ακόμα πιο μεγάλα, ακόμα πιο σπουδαία.

Με μια τέτοια σάκα γεμάτη όνειρα πέρασε σήμερα την πόρτα του Δημοτικού σχολείου το πιο γλυκό μουτράκι της καρδιάς μου, ένα μουτράκι – ήλιος φωτεινός! Καλή αρχή μικρέ μου! Καλή αρχή σε σένα!


Καλή αρχή και σε μένα, που ξεκινάω σήμερα εδώ να γράφω για πράγματα που είναι ‘εγώ’, για ό, τι με εκφράζει, για ό, τι αισθάνομαι και αγαπώ. Όλα αφιερωμένα σε έναν άλλο Ήλιο φωτεινό, από έναν γαλαξία μακρινό…

Ας διαβούμε μαζί την πόρτα για τον ουρανό….