Tarot Explorations of Neruda’s Book of Questions I
Recently, I stumbled across a children’s picture book of Pablo Neruda’s Book of Questions. It’s a beautifully illustrated book of intriguing, poetic questions, and I bought it, because I thought, this lovely thing can’t just be for children.
I didn’t know much about Neruda beyond his love poems, and I certainly didn’t know anything about his Book of Questions, a collection of 74 poems, comprised of 314 unanswerable questions, questions that remind you of a child tugging at your sleeve, “what’s that” “why is” “what for” “how come” “why does”, to which when we apply our adult experiences maybe we can answer, maybe we can’t. When I read the questions posed in the Book of Questions, I get lost in the experience of trying to picture them, to create an image of the question, much like looking at the clouds in the sky, and trying to discern a bird’s wings, or an elephant’s trunk, and then perhaps a story of the answer.
And the more I thought about these questions, some lyrical, some disturbing, some about nature, some about conflict, and about creating images to which I then could attach language, I couldn’t help thinking of the Marseille tarot, because that is indeed what we do with the tarot. We give names, we create, and each time we observe the cards, the names change, and the narrative changes depending on the context. In thinking about these poems, I did what Enrique Enriquez advises to do in reading the Marseille Tarot – ask two questions – what is happening, and how does it make you feel? In his short book, Looking at the Marseille Tarot, he says:
There are two fundamental processes taking place in our mind while we experience tarot: poiesis is and anamensis.
The word poiesis means “to make” in Greek (creation, from the original to make). This word, the root of our modern word “poetry”, was first a verb meaning, “an action that transforms and continues the world.”
The word ‘anamnesis’ means “recollection, reminiscence” in Greek, a recall to mind.
The experience of Tarot can be described then as a creative act of memory.
By perceiving a message in the Tarot cards, create a new meaning for the cars every time we observe them, taking an “action that transforms and continues the world,” or poiesis.
-Enrique Enriquez, Looking At The Marseille Tarot
In his Nobel Laureate acceptance speech, Neruda explained,
During this long journey I found the necessary components for the making of the poem. There I received contributions from the earth and from the soul. And I believe that poetry is an action, ephemeral or solemn, in which there enter as equal partners solitude and solidarity, emotion and action, the nearness to oneself, the nearness to mankind and to the secret manifestations of nature. And no less strongly I think that all this is sustained – man and his shadow, man and his conduct, man and his poetry – by an ever-wider sense of community, by an effort which will for ever bring together the reality and the dreams in us because it is precisely in this way that poetry unites and mingles them.
Neruda’s poetry is also a creative act of memory.
And, Neruda, like Enriquez, eschews layering and correspondences on top of his poetry:
I don’t have a poetic doctrine; I don’t have a poetic ideology. I am a poet by vital, biological need, and that is my whole doctrine. And I detest in general philological interpretation. No, the philological is rather an external matter, but I detest the extra-philosophic interpretation of poetry in general, not only my own. I believe that it is enough that poets only exist—it’s good that poets exist—but if to forty books by poets one adds forty thousand books of poetic interpretation, where are the poets going to live, I ask you? I am a poet in this absolutely elemental sense: I go no further in the interpretation of my poetry than my need to sing, to express myself, to regard the wonder of the world. And in the marvelousness of the world I find also cataloged the struggle of mankind for a future. For to change the destiny of humanity is a great part of life, and so I consider it.
When Enriquez looks at the pips in the Marseille tarot, in the suits, he sees coins, branches, swords and cups. It’s this same plain language and imagery that Neruda tries to accomplish in his poetry:
INTERVIEWER
There are symbols in your poetry which recur, and they always take the form of the sea, of fish, of birds . . .
NERUDA
I don’t believe in symbols. They are simply material things. The sea, fish, birds exist for me in a material way. I take them into account, as I have to take daylight into account. The fact that some themes stand out in my poetry—are always appearing—is a matter of material presence.
INTERVIEWER
What do the dove and guitar signify?
NERUDA
The dove signifies the dove and the guitar signifies a musical instrument called the guitar.
A dove signifies a dove and guitar signifies guitar sounds an awful lot like Camelia Elias’ Read Like the Devil insistence on looking at the function of the image – the Emperor is the Emperor, the Devil is the Devil – in the context of the question. And, in the introduction to the Questions, the Questions are compared to Zen koans, questions disguised as statements that form a paradox, used to aid students of Zen in their meditation practice, in an attempt to free their minds — “when one is rid of the hypotheses and certainties that haunt the daydreams of past and future, the mind is freed to listen and exist where it is,” allowing the unknowable questions to enter the imagination. I bring this up because Camelia Elias is also a devoted student of Zen and practices what she calls a martial arts style of cartomancy.
Anyway, that’s the long introduction to my Tarot Explorations of Neruda’s Book of Questions series. I could have just said, here’s a fun set of questions, let’s pull some cards, and frankly, that’s my intent, but I went down a rabbit hole of finding similarities between Neruda’s poetry and reading Marseille tarot, that I thought I’d share. The similarities of course end, because Neruda didn’t just write this Book of Questions and his poems of the ordinary dove or guitar, he was also an activist, and his poetry reflected his politics, namely Communism. So when he says a dove is a dove, well, that’s also his brand of egalitarianism, too I suppose. His poetry often has an agenda, and Marseille tarot does not.
But, that’s where I am. I want to play with these unknowable questions, invite them into my land of imagination and to begin to know them through the Marseille tarot, combining the styles of Enrique Enriquez and Camelia Elias, i.e., read the damn cards. Each week I’m going to post a poem, and respond to the poem with the Marseille cards. When I say respond, I don’t know exactly what that response might be – another question, another series of questions, and answer. Some days, like today, I may break the poem down into its individual questions. Other days, I may respond to the poem as a whole. I’m always going to use a Marseille Tarot or a Marseille Style Tarot, and today I’m using my new favorite, Marco Benedetti‘s Jean Payen, Tarot de Marseille, and for today at least, I’m just using the Trumps.
So, here we go!
I.
Why don’t immense airplanes fly around with their children?
Which yellow bird fills its nest with lemons?
Why don’t they train helicopters to suck honey from the sunlight?
Where did the full moon leave its sack of flour tonight?
Why don’t immense airplanes fly around with their children?
Why did the Magician squander his talent, and become ordinary?
Which yellow bird fills its nest with lemons?
A mother views her children. Sometimes possessed by a demon, sometimes bathed in the sun. They have gone, however, to dance with the devil and play in the sun, and she sits alone. To remember them, she places two lemons in the nest, one on each side of the scale, perfectly balanced, in memory of her children who have flown.
Why don’t they train helicopters to suck honey from the sunlight?
Because the star has the honey market cornered. Justice is there to enforce that contract.
Where did the full moon leave its sack of flour tonight?
The moon left its flour at a birthday party. Temperance retrieved the flour, and she and the Magician baked up the most delicious birthday cake of moonbeams and magic.
If you’d like to play along, use the hashtag #nerudatarot on Instagram and I’d love to see your answers. Use the Marseille Tarot, don’t use the Marseille Tarot, it’s all good. If you’d like to do a guess blog post, that would be awesome! Just drop a comment below or send me an email.
Until next time!