Del océano al verso. Las caracolas de Pablo Neruda

his profound observation abilities and we can easily notice it in the quality of the verses inspired by the thousands of seashells he patiently gathered, with the collaborative effort of friends and admirers. In his memoirs he wrote: "But, actually, the loveliest things I ever collected were my seashells. They gave me the pleasure of their extraordinary structure: a mysterious porcelain with the purity of moonlight combined with numerous tactile, Gothic, functional forms." 2 A big part of Neruda’s life took place in the coast, perhaps that’s why most species in his collection are of marine origin. Nevertheless, it is surprising to find some of terrestrial or limnic origins. Neruda, during his travels, also bought several specimens, that’s why he points out in his memoirs: "But I must confess that it was the sea of Paris that, wave after wave, washed ashore most of my shells for me. Paris had transported all the mother-of-pearl of Oceania to its naturalist shops, to its flea markets". 3 But he got most of the others by simply trading with his friends. All this information explains why we can find in the collection shells from the coasts of every single continent, islands in every ocean and sea, and even some collected in exotic, distant, and sometimes occult places. Even though most species are represented by a single specimen, it’s noteworthy that among the catalogued 1.129 species and 8.400 specimens, we occasionally find numerous pieces of certain families, such as Cypraeidae. The Neruda Collection includes 59 of these, and, considering we currently know 202 varieties of Cypraeidae, this means that he owned 29.2% of the total. This might indicate that the poet professed certain preference for [2] Pablo Neruda, Memoirs. (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, Inc., 1976), 272. [3] Neruda, Memoirs , 272. 28 universidad de chile