“Who fired it? We’ll find out soon, but there’s no doubt Neruda was killed through the direct intervention of a third party.” “We’ve found the bullet that killed Neruda, and it was in his body,” Reyes told Efe. Reyes said analysis by experts at McMaster University in Canada and the University of Copenhagen had established the bacteria did not find their way into Neruda’s body from the coffin or the surrounding area. The bacteria, which produce the neurotoxin that causes botulism, were discovered on one of Neruda’s exhumed teeth in 2017. “What does that mean? It means Neruda was murdered through the intervention of state agents in 1973.” “We now know that there was no reason for the clostridium botulinum to have been there in his bones,” Reyes told the Spanish news agency Efe. The results of expert analysis are due to be published in a report on Wednesday. On Monday, Reyes said scientific tests had shown the toxin clostridium botulinum was present in his uncle’s body when he died, suggesting he was indeed “poisoned” in the aftermath of the coup. Two years later, a team of international scientists said they were “100% convinced” the poet did not die from prostate cancer. Samples of Neruda’s remains were dispatched to forensic laboratories in four countries for analysis, and in 2015 the Chilean government said it was “highly probable that a third party” was responsible for his death. Ten years ago, a Chilean judge ordered the exhumation of the poet’s remains after his former chauffeur, Manuel Araya, revealed that an agitated Neruda had called him from the Santiago hospital where he was being treated to say that he had been injected in the stomach while asleep. He’s no Neruda but he’s definitely a romantic.But some, including Neruda’s nephew, Rodolfo Reyes, have long believed he was murdered because of his opposition to the then incipient dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet. From one of his e-mails released last week: “I could say that you have the ability to give magnificently gentle kisses, or that I love the curves of your hips, the erotic beauty of you holding yourself in the faded glow of night’s light.” It sounds like Mark Sanford, the governor of South Carolina who recently admitted to having an affair with a woman from Argentina, also has a poetic streak. Probably his best-known book of love poems- One Hundred Love Sonnets -was written for her (though he withheld publication for a number of years to spare the feelings of his previous wife). Whether Revera was a fan of Matilde or not, she was definitely an important muse to Neruda. I don’t know how well you can see it in this photo (which I had to take on the sly since it is forbidden to photograph inside the house), but if you move in a straight line from the eye on the right, you’ll see his lips and from there it’s not hard to make out his chin, protruding nose, and a single eye. One of the more interesting things about the painting is that Rivera hid the profile of Neruda in the unruly hair on the right side of her head. But, according to Alejandro, not everyone was thrilled when Neruda abandoned his painter wife (who was a decade older than him) and took up with the much younger Matilde, a singer. Was Revera aware of this Freudian interpretation? Impossible to know. Which is understandable considering that in Greek mythology Medusa is a beautiful maiden with the ability to turn men into stone.Ī decade or so before Rivera painted Matilde as Medusa, Sigmund Freud wrote an article suggesting that Medusa was the “supreme talisman who provides the image of castration.” Then Alejandro took us inside one of the buildings, constructed like a lighthouse, to look at a painting by the Mexican artist Diego Rivera (Frida Kahlo’s husband) called “Medusa Matilde.” According to Alejandro, Neruda quite liked the painting Matilde, not so much. La Chascona was Neruda’s nickname for Matilde and referred to “her rebellious red hair.” In the courtyard behind the main part of the house, she told us that Neruda moved to La Chascona in 1955 with the woman who was to become his third wife, Matilde Urrutia, while still married to his second wife, the painter Delia del Carril. Our guide was a young college-aged woman named Alejandro. It just so happens one was just starting up and I was permitted to join a South African couple. Only a handful of people are allowed through the house cum museum at a time and usually you need to make a reservation at least a day in advance, so I was half expecting to be turned away when I showed up and asked if there was any way I could join the next English tour.
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