By Mursi Saad El-Din Memories and nostalgia -- the trademarks of old age -- take me to Chile. I visited Santiago and had the honour of meeting Salvador Allende. Allende's leftist government had come to power through democratic elections, not a bloody revolution. The capital was enjoying a peaceful, joyous life, with the songs of a certain Victor Jara echoing throughout. Associated with the leftist government of the country, Jara's songs were often political. In 1973 General Augusto Pinochet and the Chilean military seized power. Allende was killed and thousands of his supporters tortured and executed. Jara was one of them. A recent article in The International Herald Tribune evoked these memories. "A voice stilled in Chile revives" talks about "a full-fledged Victor Jara revival", even a "resurrection". And in her comments on the revival Jara's widow said what might easily serve as an epitaph for her husband: "It just goes to show the truth of the saying that you can kill the singer but not the song." Interestingly enough Jara's songs are heard not only by his by-now middle-aged fans but also by young Chileans not even born when he was killed. And one reason for his popularity today, his wife believes, is that he was "the personification of the rebel poet who stood for what he believed in, and young people like and respect that kind of bravery". This brought to my mind yet another Chilean artist who was also, in his own way, something of a revolutionary. I had the great pleasure of meeting Pablo Neruda at the PEN congress of 1966. Neruda was one of the greatest poets in Latin America. He was also a great supporter of Allende and played a leading role in the presidential elections of 1970 which brought Allende to power. His strong political and national stances notwithstanding, at heart Neruda was a fairly traditional romantic. His first love was Chile and in order to get to know it properly he crossed the country from east to west and from north to south. Indeed he took an entire volume to describe how he wandered through the villages of Chile, exploring every aspect of their lives, including the mines that extend from below the Equator to almost the South Pole. And everywhere he travelled people came forward to implore him to "write in the name of those who cannot write." Neruda, in his intervention in the PEN round table, said that he did this with humility and pride. His poetry, he went on to say, had been written in anguish, but in the hope that his own opposition to war and injustice would contribute to change in Latin America. He would ask only this: if the poet did not make himself the spokesman of the human condition what else was there for him to do? Finally, he concluded, he was a fully committed poet, convinced that man's future was a future of liberty, creation, dignity and justice. The poet he loved like no other was Garcia Lorca; a man of deep pride. They were intimate friends. In the Spanish Civil War Lorca had been sacrificed by what has been called "socialist totalitarianism". Neruda carried his wound "in my literature, in my poetry, in my conscience". He said to himself: "Lorca did not commit himself, but I will -- in order that this may not happen again." He was indeed committed. He carried on his shoulders the shadow of millions of illiterate Latin Americans. His ambition was, as the great Chilean poet Gabriela Mistral put it, "to give shoes to little children in the Antarctic winter of Chile". Such, indeed, is the imperative of every revolutionary, every spokesperson for the dispossessed masses fighting against injustice, awaiting a dawn of liberation. When the military took over power on 11 September 1973 and Allende was assassinated Neruda could not bear to witness the torture and execution of Chilean intellectuals, workers and students whose only ambition had been to rebuild Chile. Broken-hearted, he died on 23 September, only a few days after the death of his country. And inspite of the iron rule of the new government thousands of Chileans followed his funeral cortege. The military did not dare stop them.
