''Ardiente Paciencia'', or ''El Cartero De Neruda'', is a 1985 novel by
Antonio Skármeta
Antonio Skármeta (born Esteban Antonio Skármeta Vranicic on November 7, 1940) is a Chilean writer, scriptwriter and director descending from Croatian immigrants from the Adriatic island of Brač, Dalmatia. He was awarded Chile's National Lit ...
. The novel was published in the English market under the title ''The Postman''. It tells the story of Mario Jiménez, a fictional postman who befriends the real-life poet, politician and
Nobel Prize
The Nobel Prizes ( ; sv, Nobelpriset ; no, Nobelprisen ) are five separate prizes that, according to Alfred Nobel's will of 1895, are awarded to "those who, during the preceding year, have conferred the greatest benefit to humankind." Alfr ...
winner
Pablo Neruda, and is set in the years around the
1973 Chilean coup d'état
The 1973 Chilean coup d'état Enciclopedia Virtual > Historia > Historia de Chile > Del gobierno militar a la democracia" on LaTercera.cl. Retrieved 22 September 2006.
In October 1972, Chile suffered the first of many strikes. Among the par ...
.
The novel is based on the motion picture ' of the same author released in 1983,
[ Burning Patience, IMDB] and it was turned into another movie in 1995 as ''
Il Postino
''Il Postino: The Postman'' ( it, Il postino, lit, 'The Postman'; the title used for the original US release) is a 1994 comedy-drama film co-written by and starring Massimo Troisi and directed by English filmmaker Michael Radford. Based on th ...
'', directed by
Michael Radford
Michael James Radford (born 24 February 1946) is an English film director and screenwriter. He began his career as a documentary director and television comedy writer before transitioning into features in the early 1980s. His best-known credits ...
. It was also turned into an opera, ''Il Postino'', by
Daniel Catán
Daniel Catán Porteny (April 3, 1949 – April 9, 2011) was a Mexican composer, writer and professor known particularly for his operas and his contribution of the Spanish language to the international repertory.
With a compositional style ...
, with
Plácido Domingo
José Plácido Domingo Embil (born 21 January 1941) is a Spanish opera singer, conductor, and arts administrator. He has recorded over a hundred complete operas and is well known for his versatility, regularly performing in Italian, French ...
portraying Pablo Neruda (premiered at the
Los Angeles Opera, 2010).
Synopsis
The story opens in June, 1969 in the little village of
Isla Negra
Isla Negra is a coastal area in El Quisco commune in central Chile, some 45 km (70 km by road) south of Valparaiso and 96 km (110 km by road) west of Santiago.
Pablo Neruda
Isla Negra is best known as the residence of Chile ...
, on the coast of
Chile
Chile, officially the Republic of Chile, is a country in the western part of South America. It is the southernmost country in the world, and the closest to Antarctica, occupying a long and narrow strip of land between the Andes to the east a ...
.
Mario Jiménez, a timid teenager, rejects the profession of his father, a fisherman, and instead takes a job as the local postman. Despite the entire village being illiterate, he does have one local to deliver to—the poet, Pablo Neruda, who is living in exile. Mario worships Neruda as a hero and buys a volume of his poetry, timidly waiting for the moment to have it autographed.
After some time, Mario garners enough courage to strike up a conversation with Neruda, who is waiting for word about his candidacy for the
Nobel Prize for literature
)
, image = Nobel Prize.png
, caption =
, awarded_for = Outstanding contributions in literature
, presenter = Swedish Academy
, holder = Annie Ernaux (2022)
, location = Stockholm, Sweden
, year = 1901
, ...
, and despite an awkward beginning, the two become good friends. Neruda fuels Mario's interest in poetry by teaching him the value of a
metaphor
A metaphor is a figure of speech that, for rhetorical effect, directly refers to one thing by mentioning another. It may provide (or obscure) clarity or identify hidden similarities between two different ideas. Metaphors are often compared wi ...
, and the young postman begins practising this technique.
In the village, Mario meets Beatriz González, the daughter of the local barkeep, Rosa. Beatriz is curt and distant from Mario, and the young man finds his tongue tied whenever he tries to speak to her. With Neruda's help as a poet and an influential countryman, Mario overcomes his shy nature and he and Beatriz fall in love, much to the dismay of Rosa, who banishes Beatriz from seeing Mario.
Neruda's matters are complicated when he ran for candidacy as the
president of Chile
The president of Chile ( es, Presidente de Chile), officially known as the President of the Republic of Chile ( es, Presidente de la República de Chile), is the head of state and head of government of the Republic of Chile. The president is r ...
, but returns to the village when
socialist
Socialism is a left-wing economic philosophy and movement encompassing a range of economic systems characterized by the dominance of social ownership of the means of production as opposed to private ownership. As a term, it describes the ...
Salvador Allende
Salvador Guillermo Allende Gossens (, , ; 26 June 1908 – 11 September 1973) was a Chilean physician and socialist politician who served as the 28th president of Chile from 3 November 1970 until his death on 11 September 1973. He was the fir ...
is elected president. Neruda tries in vain to deter Rosa's negative attitude towards Mario.
Months later, when a clandestine meeting between Beatriz and Mario turns to intercourse, Beatriz discovers she is pregnant and the two are married, much to the dismay of Rosa. Neruda leaves to become the ambassador to
France
France (), officially the French Republic ( ), is a country primarily located in Western Europe. It also comprises of overseas regions and territories in the Americas and the Atlantic, Pacific and Indian Oceans. Its metropolitan area ...
, and as he leaves, he gives Mario a leather-bound volume of his entire works.
National workers enter the village to install electricity, and Rosa's bar becomes a restaurant for the workers. As Neruda is gone, Mario is no longer needed as the postman, but takes on a job as the cook in the restaurant. Some months pass and Mario receives a package from Neruda containing a Sony tape recorder. Neruda is homesick (and it is implied otherwise ill), and asks his friend to record the sounds of his homeland to send back to him. Among other things, Mario records the tiny heartbeat of his yet unborn child.
Secretly, Mario has saved enough money to purchase a ticket to visit Neruda in France, but matters change when his son is born and the money is spent on the child as he grows. It is announced that Neruda has won the Nobel Prize and Mario celebrates with the rest of the village by throwing a party at Rosa's restaurant.
Neruda returns some time later, quite ill. Mario considers sending a poem into a contest for the cultural magazine, ''La Quinta Rueda'', and seeks Neruda's help with the work. Neruda, unbeknownst to Mario, however, is on his death bed. Unable to see Neruda, Mario decides to send in a pencil sketch of his son.
The
dictatorship
A dictatorship is a form of government which is characterized by a leader, or a group of leaders, which holds governmental powers with few to no limitations on them. The leader of a dictatorship is called a dictator. Politics in a dictatorship a ...
reaches Isla Negra, and Mario takes up his job as postman in order to see Neruda. As helicopters circle the area, Mario sneaks into Neruda's house, to find the poet dying in his bed. Mario reads to Neruda telegrams that he has received offering the poet sanctuary, but it is too late—Neruda knows he is dying and gives his last words, a poem, to Mario. Neruda is taken away in an ambulance and dies in the hospital several days later.
Shortly after Neruda's death, Mario is approached by Labbé, the local right-wing general. The general asks Mario to come with him for some routine questioning. As Mario gets into the car, he overhears on the radio that several subversive magazines have been taken over by coup forces, including ''La Quinta Rueda''.
In an epilogue, the author talks to one of the editors of ''La Quinta Rueda''. The editor remembers who the winner would have been—a poem by
Jorge Teillier. When the author asks about Mario's sketch, the editor has no memory of it. The author ends the story by sipping a cup of bitter coffee.
References
{{DEFAULTSORT:Ardiente Paciencia
1985 Chilean novels
Novels set in Chile
Fiction set in 1969
Chilean novels adapted into films
Cultural depictions of Pablo Neruda