Pablo Neruda: one poet, three houses, and thousands of intentional toys

Part 1: La Sebastiana

Cerro Bellavista, Valparaíso

8 March 2014

So, Pablo Neruda. Poet. Chileno. Won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1971. He is a huge deal in Chile, and he was even a huge deal while he was still alive to enjoy it, which must put him in the top 0.01% or so of poets worldwide. I did in fact read and enjoy Neruda prior to coming here; his Twenty Poems of Love and a Song of Despair is one of a handful of poetry books I bothered to both buy and keep over the years.

As a commercially successful poet (I think he also bred unicorns and hiked with Bigfoot), Neruda owned multiple houses, all of which he filled with lots and lots of stuff.

I'm not talking about the usual "Hey, I own a house now. I better find a couch" approach. This is more like, "Hey, which one of my three houses should host my nautical figurehead collection and my carousel horse?" (The answers are Isla Negra and Le Sebastiana, respectively.) I'll get into the topic of his stuff more when I blog about house number two, Isla Negra.

The first Neruda house we visited was the closest to home: La Sebastiana on Cerro Bellavista in Valpo. It was the hottest day of our entire time in Chile, so of course we walked up a really steep hill with a broken acensor (elevator). I think it was snowing in Minnesota that day; we tried not to complain much.

 

Hanging out at a park near his house

Photography inside the house is forbidden, so I don't have much visual evidence of my visit to the inside...besides this one. What can I say, my finger slipped. As you can see, the entrance to the house proper is a narrow doorway flanked by lady angels on great big gilded pillars. Typical Chilean architecture, really.

From the outside it looks like the multi-layer cake version of a typical (if unusually well-maintained) Valparaíso house.

I was completely taken with the vertical method of home building. This is a house with basically five rooms stacked on top of one another. Not convenient if you've got mobility issues, but otherwise kind of awesome. Each room feels completely independent from the others, each has a different theme and quirky collection of stuff, and each is a comfortable not-too-big size with excellent views from every window. Of course, that might be more about location than architecture.

View from the porch(es)

 Pablo Nerudo: he knew how to pick a house. And also write a poem.

Chilean Writer, Poet, Thinker, Politician and Diplomat