Art and I drove north along the coast toward Viña del Mar when we saw a small painted sign reading "Isla Negra." We’d been warned that the sign was easy to miss, so we had been looking for it. Isla Negra is the home of Pablo Neruda, the Nobel Prize winning poet/diplomat/collector extraordinaire.
Neruda had four houses in Chile. The one in Valparaiso is called La Sebastiana. In Santiago he owned La Chascona and la Quinta Michoacan. But Isla Negra, which is south of Valparaiso, was his favorite. He and his wife, Matilde Urrutia, (who was his former mistress), are buried here. Isla Negra is a wonder because of the magnificent setting and the myriad items Neruda collected and displayed. The stories about Neruda add greatly to the charm of the place.
We walked down a winding dirt road and through a stand of tall pine trees that ended at the house. Isla Negra is a mix of clapboard, stone, and tile, perched on a rocky hillside overlooking the Pacific. In front of the house was an old steam engine. Neruda was an invererate "collector."
Art and I entered through a small round hall paved with shells and white pebbles. In the hall was a wide fireplace surrounded by armchairs. It was here the poet would visit with friends.
From a bay window nearby, we saw enormous grey rocks and the vast blue ocean. Looking up huge figureheads jutted out from the wall. These included one of Jenny Lind. Neruda called them his "girlfriends."One room held bottles in odd shapes. Colored glass piano-leg coasters were arranged on a coffee table (we thought they were ashtrays). There were ships in bottles, , sea shells, not to mention a gigantic model of a shoe from a shoe store and even a life-sized model of a horse Pablo admired as a child in his hometown’s hardware store. More about that later.
We moved on through the dining room to another part of the house that overlooks the sea. Neruda had his desk by the window. He had been looking all over for the perfect desk and told Matilde that he would know it when he found it. One morning after a storm at sea, he shouted, Matilde, it’s here. My desk has arrived!” Then he hurried down to the beach and rescued an old carved ship's door, dragged it up to the house, and turned it into his desk. I wonder what wonderful lines of poetry were written on that lucky piece of wood.
A narrow wooden staircase led to his mezzanine library with 500 books. Up the steep, narrow staircase was the poet’s bedroom. The room and the bed somehow seemed too small. We learned the house also has a secret passage.
Neruda built an addition to his house solely to hold the horse I mentioned before. When the “horse’s room” was finished, Pablo threw a party to celebrate. Guests brought tails for the horse, who, unfortunately, lacked one. The horse was sporting several “gift tails” (one multi-colored) the afternoon we visited.
Pablo Neruda loved the sea and liked to call himself "captain" but he was afraid of sailing. He suffered from seasickness. He installed the large bell in the photo below. He'd ring the bell and wave when ships passed his house. He had a small white sailboat with red trim suspended a few feet above the ground. Neruda used to say the only dizziness he cared to feel was when he was in his drydocked boat after having had one too many cocktails. He wrote, "Where the sea is concerned, I am an amateur. For years I have gathered sea-wisdom which does me little good since I set sail only on land."
The outside of the house has a border of mosaic fishes. If you look at the background in one of the photos, you can see Neruda’s collection of unusual bottles shaped like everything from a French poodle to a lady's hand.
Art is standing next to the boat Neruda never took to sea. I can picture the poet ringing the bell and waving at the captain and crew of freighters as they passed. Pablo Neruda and Matilde rest side by side, facing the sea beneath a black stone monument.
