Pablo Neruda’s Seashell

When I reached out to the author of the book The Gift, I was hoping for a juicy conversation about his thorough delve into the history and origins of giving and receiving. I’ve spent many hours with the book considering my own indoctrinations about women given as gifts, about how the term “Indian Giver” came to mean something derogatory, versus the intended spirit of Native giving, and how we have moved into a capitalist consumer market around gifting.

Instead, he told me he’d moved on to other topics and wasn’t that interested in returning just for my edification. However, he did share that he was once challenged to give a gift to the famous poet Pablo Neruda and was determined to give something special and memorable.

Lewis said, “I knew that he collected sea shells and so I took it upon myself to locate a Rare Unique Pyritized Brachiopod.” This is a fossil seashell, the original shell which has been replaced by iron pyrites, also known as fool’s gold. They are very difficult to find. They date back to the Middle Devonian 345 to 395 million years ago.

When I asked if Mr. Neruda gave him anything in exchange he replied, “of course, he gave me a poem.”

Lewis Hyde

Lewis Hyde is a scholar, essayist, translator, cultural critic and writer whose scholarly work focuses on the nature of imagination, creativity, and property, .author of The Gift