The Hermit Poet

Sometimes we need to be reminded why we write.  I like going back to this passage from Neruda’s Memoirs where he relates the account that Nazim Hikmet shared with him:

“Accused of attempting to incite the Turkish navy into rebellion, Nazim was condemned to the punishments of hell. The trial was held on a warship. He told me he was forced to walk on the ship’s bridge until he was too weak to stay on his feet, then they stuck him into a section of the latrines where the excrement rose half a meter above the floor. My brother poet felt his strength failing him. The stench made him reel. Then the thought struck him: my tormentors are keeping an eye on me, they want to see me drop, they want to watch me suffer. His strength came back with pride. He began to sing, low at first, then louder, and finally at the top of his lungs. He sang all the songs, all the love songs he could remember, his own poems, the ballads of the peasants, the people’s battle hymns. He sang everything he knew. And so vanquished the filth and his torturers.”

Neruda, Pablo. Memoirs, trans. Hardie St. Martin (New York: Penguin, 1978), pp. 195-96