Greetings from Pablo Neruda's 'Love Nest'

Yes, in this episode of "Poetry Cribs" (it doesn't really exist, but we wish it did...) Washington Post takes a gander at Pablo Neruda's "love nest" in the Bellavista neighborhood of Santiago, Chile. Neruda built this home, dubbed "La Chascona," as a place where he could meet his mistress, Matilde Urrutia, until he was able to obtain a divorce in 1955. More:

In the funky Bellavista neighborhood of Santiago, the capital of Chile, is a house that is as playful, quirky, colorful, political, historical and even lyrical as the great man who once lived in it. And it’s open to the public.

Pablo Neruda, arguably the greatest poet South America has ever produced (Nobel Prize for Literature, 1971), started building the structure in 1953 for trysts with his mistress. Constructed piecemeal over five years on different levels of the hill, the house doesn’t look imposing or looming so much as dry-docked. One of Neruda’s lifelong passions as well as themes was the sea, and the architecture of the upper levels evokes the contours of a boat.

Neruda christened this boat “La Chascona,” a Chilean expression referring to tousled, untamed hair — a perfect description of the extravagant red locks of his lover, Matilde Urrutia. Together they built La Chascona as a love nest until he could obtain a divorce and move in with her, which he did in 1955.

Neruda had two other homes in Chile — one in Valparaiso, the other at Isla Negra — but La Chascona was the home he and Urrutia, to whom he was married until his death in 1973, made together. She was still at La Chascona when she died in 1985. The house is now a museum run by the Neruda Foundation, which has preserved everything as it was when its residents were still alive. I visited in August.

La Chascona and its contents couldn’t be more peculiar to two people . But as I discovered, given Neruda’s tumultuous life, spirits of 20th-century Chile — including a Chilean diplomat’s brutal assassination on the streets of Washington — also hang very much in the air.

Continue at Washington Post.