I know many of you have stumbled upon this blog in search for information or what have you for “Los Secretos de La Roja” by Miguel Angel Diaz. Lo siento, the book is also on my wish list, and honestly, I have no idea if it will ever reach shelves of popular bookstores in my part of the world (oh, but please, Fully Booked, please include this in your foreign language shelves). Moreover, I have no idea when I’ll be able to read the book without having to flip through my English-Spanish dictionary.
Ah, once again, I’m kicking myself for not continuing my Spanish lessons and forgetting about 75% of my Spanish vocabulary (the other 25% are retained largely because they are part of my Filipino vocabulary). Here’s a bit of a back story (not that anyone cares): my mom has always pestered me to take up Spanish, largely because it’s part of our heritage. My great-great-great grandfather set off from Spain to the Philippines in the 1800s, and I still have relatives who speak the language fluently.
So finally, in college, I enrolled in several units of Spanish—but of course, I haven’t stumbled past the basics yet. My motivations for re-learning the language are piling up: to appreciate and do a lot more research about my heritage (I want to know where my abuelos came from); to appreciate Spanish movies (yes, I have gone several times to the Spanish film festival in Manila); and to recite Pablo Neruda with much elegance and fluidity (possibly to La Furia Roja? Haha! We can wish).
I’m making amends to all those who stumbled upon my blog, searching for La Roja items, only to find whatever I posted useless—so let’s talk about Pablo Neruda.
I discovered the beauty of Pablo Neruda’s poetry in English Literature class in high school. Of all the poets that we studied, none could ever convey the beauty, power, passion, rawness, gentleness, light, gravity, and depth of love than Pablo Neruda ever did. His wife and muse, Matilde Urrutia, is perhaps the luckiest woman to have ever lived—imagine being immortalized with the most beautiful of words and thoughts. I always thought it would have been much better if I could appreciate his poetry in his native language. I own several books of Pablo Neruda’s poetry, and none is more precious than “Cien Sonetos de Amor”. (It was quite a challenge for me to find a copy of this book in Manila. I was able to get my copy at a bookstore in Glendale.)
Enough rambling. For visitors of this blog looking for information on La Furia Roja, let me be of service to you by posting a few of my favorite Pablo Neruda poems from “Cien Sonetos de Amor”. If you ever bump into any of them in the streets of Madrid or Barcelona or the beaches of Ibiza, these might be a few useful things to say than, “Quiero diez mil de sus bebés!” (Or, just imagine any one of them reciting these lines to you. Really.)
Polilla de Libros 