Share on Facebook Share on Twitter Email
Answers.com

Pablo Neruda

 
Who2 Biography: Pablo Neruda, Poet / Political Figure

  • Born: 12 July 1904
  • Birthplace: Parral, Chile
  • Died: 23 September 1973 (cancer)
  • Best Known As: The Chilean poet who won the 1971 Nobel Prize

Name at birth: Ricardo Eliecer Neftalí Reyes Baloalto

Poet, diplomat, bohemian and political activist, Pablo Neruda was a household name throughout Latin America for much of the 20th century. In his 20s he was already famous for his Spanish-language poems of melancholy, love and eroticism, published in best-selling collections such as Crepusculario (1923) and a 1924 title translated as Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair. His writing continued in waves from 1927 to 1943 as he worked as a Chilean consular official in Burma, Ceylon, Java, Argentina, Spain, France and Mexico. His poetry turned political as he witnessed poverty in Chile and civil strife in Spain. In the latter country, his friend Federico Garcia Lorca was assassinated and Neruda helped 2,000 Republican refugees relocate to Chile. He was elected to Chile's Senate and joined the Communist Party in 1945, was forced into hiding in 1948, fled to Argentina in 1949, and in 1950 published Canto General, a sweeping work of poems devoted to the beauty and struggles of Latin America. He won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1971 and died of cancer days after the 1973 overthrow of another friend, socialist Chilean president Salvador Allende, by Augusto Pinochet.

He hastily took his pen name as a teenager, inspired by Czech writer Jan Neruda, to avoid detection by his father, who loathed the writing profession. He continued to be known by variations of his birth name, including Ricardo Reyes and Neftalí Reyes, until he legally changed his name in 1946... His writing had French, Russian and Latin American influences, but he said none was greater than that of U.S. poet Walt Whitman... Among the many women involved in Neruda's overlapping love affairs and marriages were three wives: María ("Maruca") Antonieta Hagenaar (married 1930, estranged 1936, divorced 1943), Delia del Carril (married 1943, estranged 1955, divorced 1966), and longtime lover Matilda Urrutia (married 1966).

Search unanswered questions...
Enter a question here...
Search: All sources Community Q&A Reference topics

Pablo Neruda.
(click to enlarge)
Pablo Neruda. (credit: Camera Press)
(born July 12, 1904, Parral, Chile — died Sept. 23, 1973, Santiago) Chilean poet and diplomat. He began writing poetry at age 10, and at 20 he published his most widely read work, Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair (1924), inspired by an unhappy love affair. In 1927 he was named an honorary consul, and he later represented Chile in several Asian and Latin American countries; late in life he was ambassador to France. While in Asia he began Residence on Earth (1933, 1935, 1947), a verse cycle remarkable for its examination of social decay and personal isolation. In 1945 he was elected senator and joined the Communist Party; he later spent years in exile when the government turned toward the right. Canto General (1950), his great epic poem about the American continents, was deeply influenced by Walt Whitman and is the culminating expression of his political beliefs. Elemental Odes (1954) celebrates common, everyday objects. He was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1971.

For more information on Pablo Neruda, visit Britannica.com.

Biography: Pablo Neruda
Top

Pablo Neruda (1904-1973) was one of the greatest Spanish-language poets of the 20th century.

The poet known as Pablo Neruda was named Neftalí Ricardo Reyes Basoalto at his birth in 1904. He signed his work "Pablo Neruda" (although he did not legally adopt that name until 1946) because his father, a railroad worker, disapproved of the son's poetic interests.

Neruda grew up in southern Chile and in 1921 moved to Santiago and enrolled in college with the intention of preparing himself for a career as an instructor of French. He left soon after, however, in order to devote more time to poetry, which had already become his central interest. His first book, Crepusculario (Twilight Book), was published in 1923, and the following year he published Veinte poemas de amor y una canción desesperada (Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair), a book of intensely romantic and erotic poems. This became his most popular work, more than a million and a half copies of which were published in Spanish alone before his death.

Between 1927 and 1935 Neruda was a Chilean diplomat in, successively, Burma, Ceylon, Java, Singapore, Argentina, and Spain. In 1930 he married for the first time, but the marriage was unhappy, and a few years later he left his wife to live with Delia del Carril, with whom he stayed until 1955. In the late 1920s and early 1930s he completed the first two volumes of Residencia en la tierra (Residence on Earth) (1933, 1935), universally considered the finest surrealist poetry in Spanish. He claimed, however, that when he wrote these works he knew nothing of surrealism; he had simply responded to the same currents in the air which led to the formation of the surrealist movement elsewhere.

Neruda's horror at the civil and military barbarities (including the assassination of his friend the poet Federico García Lorca) which accompanied Franco's invasion of Spain transformed him into a deeply committed political poet and led to his eventual alignment with the Communist Party. The third volume of Residencia en la tierra (1947) and his subsequent poetry, particularly Canto general (General Song, 1950), are marked by this commitment. In place of the introspection and surrealist complexities of the first two volumes of Residencia, he produced a poetry that is open and direct, written not for academics and other sophisticated readers of poetry but rather, as Neruda repeatedly emphasized, workers and the politically oppressed.

Neruda also insisted that he was specifically a Latin American poet. Canto general, which he considered his principal work, celebrates his Latin American heritage. That volume includes "Alturas de Macchu Picchu" ("The Heights of Macchu Picchu"), possibly Neruda's greatest poem.

Canto general was written largely in the late 1940s while Neruda was in hiding in Chile to avoid arrest for statements he had made against the government. He escaped from Chile in 1949 and did not return until 1952 when a new regime came to power. He married Matilde Urrutia three years later and spent most of the rest of his life with her at his homes in Santiago and at Isla Negra on the Chilean coast. Isla Negra provided him with the subject or inspiration for many later poems, including his verse autobiography, Memorial de Isla Negra (Black Island Memorial, 1964). During these years he also wrote his Odas Elementales (Elemental Odes, 1954-1957), in which he developed a clear, simple, and at times humorous poetic style.

Neruda was awarded the International Peace Prize in 1950, the Stalin Peace Prize in 1953, a Doctorate in Literature from Oxford in 1965, and the Nobel Prize in 1971. In 1969 he was nominated by the Chilean Communist Party for president, but he stepped aside in favor of his friend Salvador Allende. When Allende was murdered four years later Neruda was very sick from cancer, but that event undoubtedly hastened his own death a few days later. At his death, he left 34 books of poems, essays, and drama in print as well as eight more volumes of poetry and a memoir which he had hoped to publish on his 70th birthday.

Neruda was clearly a prolific writer. His major works include Veinte poemas de amor y una canción desesperada, the three volumes of Residencia en la tierra, Canto general, and Odas elementales, but there are few Neruda books which do not contain works or passages of a high order.

Neruda cannot be categorized by a single poetic style. No sooner had he mastered one poetic form or mood than he moved to another. The sensual, erotic poems of Veinte poemas are quite distant from the hermetic, surrealist poems of Residencia, and the political, epical Canto general is entirely unlike the conversational, colloquial, occasionally whimsical Odas elementales. His poems range from painfully intense introspection to fiery political rhetoric, yet a clarity of poetic vision and emotional conviction is found throughout his work. There have been few poets as prolific as Neruda and few who have sought after, and achieved, such high and diverse standards of excellence. The least that can be said of Neruda is that he was the greatest Spanish poet of the century.

Further Reading

Neruda has been fortunate in his translators. His chief translator has been Ben Belitt, whose anthology Five Decades: A Selection (Poems 1925-1970) provides an excellent introduction to the range of Neruda's achievement. Belitt talks about the problems and pleasures of translating (and reading) Neruda in Adam's Dream (1978). An outstanding translation of "The Heights of Macchu Picchu" was made by Nicholas Tarn (1966). Excellent translations of various works have been made by Robert Bly, Angel Flores, Alastair Reid, Donald Walsh, and many others. Neruda has been the subject of a vast amount of critical work, but most of it is available only in Spanish. English readers might begin with René de Costa's The Poetry of Pablo Neruda (1979), but Robert Pring-Mill's introduction to his Pablo Neruda: A Basic Anthology (1975) also provides a concise and valuable survey of Neruda's life and work. Valuable insights into the poetry are provided by Neruda himself in his Memoirs, translated by Hardie St. Martin (1976).

 
Columbia Encyclopedia: Pablo Neruda
Top
Neruda, Pablo ('blō nārū'THä), 1904-73, Chilean poet, diplomat, and Communist leader. He changed his original name, Neftalí Ricardo Reyes Basualto, so that his railroad-worker father would not discover that he was a poet. Neruda's highly personal poetry brought him enormous acclaim. After 1927 he was in consular service in East Asia, Argentina, Mexico, and Europe. A surrealist, Neruda revitalized everyday expressions and employed bold metaphors in free verse. His evocative poems are filled with grief and despair and bespeak a quest for simplicity. They celebrate the dramatic Chilean landscape and rage against the exploitation of the indigenous people. In his writings and during his political career as a leader of the Chilean Communist party (which he joined in 1945) and as a diplomat, Neruda exerted a wide influence in Latin America. His many volumes of poetry include Crepusculario [twilight book] (1919, his first book), Twenty Love Poems and One Song of Despair (1924, tr. 1969), the surrealistic Residence on Earth and Other Poems (1933, tr. 1946), Canto general (1950), Elemental Odes (1954, tr. 1961), Nuevas odas elementales [new elemental odes] (1955), A New Decade: 1958-1967 (tr. 1969), Extravagaria (1958, tr. 1974), New Poems: 1968-1970 (tr. 1972), and Toward the Splendid City (tr. 1974). Neruda was awarded the 1971 Nobel Prize in Literature during his service as Chilean ambassador to France. Neruda died in Chile during the week of the 1973 military coup.

Bibliography

See his Early Poems (tr. 1969), Selected Poems (tr. 1970), and The Poetry of Pablo Neruda (2003); P. Neruda, N. Parra, and M. Gottlieb, Pablo Neruda and Nicanor Parra Face to Face (1997).

Quotes By: Pablo Neruda
Top

Quotes:

"A bibliophile of little means is likely to suffer often. Books don't slip from his hands but fly past him through the air, high as birds, high as prices."

"I grew up in this town, my poetry was born between the hill and the river, it took its voice from the rain, and like the timber, it steeped itself in the forests."

"Now, on the road to freedom, I was pausing for a moment near Temuco and could hear the voice of the water that had taught me to sing."

"I do not love you

I do not love you as if you were salt-rose, or topaz,
or the arrow of carnations the fire shoots off.
I love you as certain dark things are to be loved,
in secret, between the shadow and the soul.

I love you as the plant that never blooms
but carries in itself the light of hidden flowers;
thanks to your love a certain solid fragrance,
risen from the earth, lives darkly in my body.

I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where.
I love you straightforwardly, without complexities or pride;
so I love you because I know no other way

that this: where I does not exist, nor you,
so close that your hand on my chest is my hand,
so close that your eyes close as I fall asleep.
"

"Saddest Poem

I can write the saddest poem of all tonight.

Write, for instance: "The night is full of stars,
and the stars, blue, shiver in the distance."

The night wind whirls in the sky and sings.

I can write the saddest poem of all tonight.
I loved her, and sometimes she loved me too.

On nights like this, I held her in my arms. I kissed her so many times under the infinite sky.

She loved me, sometimes I loved her.
How could I not have loved her large, still eyes?

I can write the saddest poem of all tonight.
To think I don't have her. To feel that I've lost her.

To hear the immense night, more immense without her.
And the poem falls to the soul as dew to grass.

What does it matter that my love couldn't keep her.
The night is full of stars and she is not with me.

That's all. Far away, someone sings. Far away.
My soul is lost without her.

As if to bring her near, my eyes search for her.
My heart searches for her and she is not with me.

The same night that whitens the same trees.
We, we who were, we are the same no longer.

I no longer love her, true, but how much I loved her.
My voice searched the wind to touch her ear.

Someone else's. She will be someone else's. As she once
belonged to my kisses.
Her voice, her light body. Her infinite eyes.

I no longer love her, true, but perhaps I love her.
Love is so short and oblivion so long.

Because on nights like this I held her in my arms,
my soul is lost without her.

Although this may be the last pain she causes me,
and this may be the last poem I write for her.
"

"Clenched Soul

We have lost even this twilight.
No one saw us this evening hand in hand
while the blue night dropped on the world.

I have seen from my window
the fiesta of sunset in the distant mountain tops.
Sometimes a piece of sun
burned like a coin in my hand.

I remembered you with my soul clenched
in that sadness of mine that you know.

Where were you then?
Who else was there?
Saying what?
Why will the whole of love come on me suddenly
when I am sad and feel you are far away?

The book fell that always closed at twilight
and my blue sweater rolled like a hurt dog at my feet.

Always, always you recede through the evenings
toward the twilight erasing statues.
"

See more famous quotes by Pablo Neruda

Wikipedia: Pablo Neruda
Top
Pablo Neruda

Born Neftalí Ricardo Reyes Basoalto
July 12, 1904(1904-07-12)
Parral, Chile
Died September 23, 1973 (aged 69)
Santiago, Chile
Occupation Poet, Diplomat, Political figure
Notable award(s) Nobel Prize in Literature
1971
Signature

Pablo Neruda (July 12, 1904 – September 23, 1973) was the pen name and, later, legal name of the Chilean writer and politician Neftalí Ricardo Reyes Basoalto. Neruda assumed his pen name as a teenager, partly because it was in vogue, partly to hide his poetry from his father, a rigid man who wanted his son to have a "practical" occupation. Neruda's pen name was derived from Czech writer and poet Jan Neruda; Pablo is thought to be from Paul Verlaine. With his works translated into many languages, Pablo Neruda is considered one of the greatest and most influential poets of the 20th century.

Neruda was accomplished in a variety of styles ranging from erotically charged love poems like his collection Twenty Poems of Love and a Song of Despair, surrealist poems, historical epics, and overtly political manifestos. In 1971 Neruda won the Nobel Prize for Literature, a controversial award because of his political activism. Colombian novelist Gabriel García Márquez once called him "the greatest poet of the 20th century in any language."[1]

On July 15, 1945, at Pacaembu Stadium in São Paulo, Brazil, he read to 100,000 people in honor of Communist revolutionary leader Luís Carlos Prestes.[2] When Neruda returned to Chile after his Nobel Prize acceptance speech, Salvador Allende invited him to read at the Estadio Nacional before 70,000 people.[3]

During his lifetime, Neruda occupied many diplomatic posts and served a stint as a senator for the Chilean Communist Party. When Conservative Chilean President González Videla outlawed communism in Chile, a warrant was issued for Neruda's arrest. Friends hid him for months in a house basement in the Chilean port of Valparaíso. Later, Neruda escaped into exile through a mountain pass near Maihue Lake into Argentina. Years later, Neruda was a close collaborator to socialist President Salvador Allende.

Neruda was hospitalized with cancer at the time of the Chilean coup d'état led by Augusto Pinochet. Three days after being hospitalized, Neruda died of heart failure. Already a legend in life, Neruda's death reverberated around the world. Pinochet had denied permission to transform Neruda's funeral into a public event. However, thousands of grieving Chileans disobeyed the curfew and crowded the streets. Neruda's funeral became the first public protest against the Chilean military dictatorship.

Contents

Early years

Ricardo Eliezer Neftalí Reyes y Basoalto was born in Parral, a city in Linares Province in the Maule Region, some 350 km south of Santiago. His father, José del Carmen Reyes Morales, was a railway employee; his mother, Rosa Basoalto, was a school teacher who died two months after he was born. Neruda and his father soon moved to Temuco, where his father married Trinidad Candia Marverde, a woman with whom he had had a child nine years earlier, a boy named Rodolfo. Neruda also grew up with his half-sister Laura, one of his father's children by another woman.

The young Neruda was christened "Neftalí", his late mother's middle name. His father was opposed to Neruda's interest in writing and literature, but Neruda received encouragement from others, including future Nobel Prize winner Gabriela Mistral, who headed the local girls' school. His first published work was an essay he wrote for the local daily newspaper, La Mañana, at the age of thirteen: Entusiasmo y perseverancia ("Enthusiasm and Perseverance"). By 1920, when he adopted the pseudonym of Pablo Neruda, he was a published author of poetry, prose, and journalism.

Veinte poemas

In the following year (1921), he moved to Santiago to study French at the Universidad de Chile with the intention of becoming a teacher, but soon Neruda was devoting himself full time to poetry. In 1923 his first volume of verse, Crepusculario ("Book of Twilights"), was published, followed the next year by Veinte poemas de amor y una canción desesperada ("Twenty Love Poems and a Desperate Song"), a collection of love poems that was controversial for its eroticism, especially considering its author's young age. Both works were critically acclaimed and were translated into many languages. Over the decades, Veinte poemas would sell millions of copies and become Neruda's best-known work.

Neruda's reputation was growing both inside and outside of Chile, but he was plagued by poverty. In 1927, out of desperation, he took an honorary consulship in Rangoon, then a part of colonial Burma and a place of which he had never heard before. Later, he worked stints in Colombo (Ceylon(Sri Lanka)), Batavia (Java), and Singapore. In Java he met and married his first wife, a tall Dutch bank employee named Maryka Antonieta Hagenaar Vogelzang. While on diplomatic service, Neruda read large amounts of poetry and experimented with many different poetic forms. He wrote the first two volumes of Residencia En La Tierra, which included many surrealistic poems.

Spanish Civil War

After returning to Chile, Neruda was given diplomatic posts in Buenos Aires and then Barcelona, Spain. He later replaced Gabriela Mistral as consul in Madrid, where he became the center of a lively literary circle, befriending such writers as Rafael Alberti, Federico García Lorca, and the Peruvian poet César Vallejo. A daughter, Malva Marina Trinidad, was born in Madrid in 1934; she was to be plagued with health problems, especially hydrocephalus, for the whole of her short life. During this period, Neruda became slowly estranged from his wife and took up with Delia del Carril, an Argentine woman who was twenty years his senior and who would eventually become his second wife. He divorced from his Dutch wife in 1936, who moved to the Netherlands with his only child; this child died in 1943.

As Spain became engulfed in civil war, Neruda became intensely politicized for the first time. His experiences of the Spanish Civil War and its aftermath moved him away from distinctive, privately focused labor in the direction of collective obligation and better cohesion. Neruda became an ardent communist, and remained so for the rest of his life. The radical leftist politics of his literary friends, as well as that of del Carril, were contributing factors, but the most important catalyst was the execution of García Lorca by forces loyal to Francisco Franco. By means of his speeches and writings, Neruda threw his support behind the Republican side, publishing a collection of poetry called España en el corazón ("Spain in My Heart"). Neruda’s wife and child moved to Monte Carlo; he was never to see either of them again. After leaving his wife, he took up full time with del Carril in France.

Following the election in 1938 of President Pedro Aguirre Cerda, whom Neruda supported, he was appointed special consul for Spanish emigration in Paris. There Neruda was given responsibility for what he called "the noblest mission I have ever undertaken": shipping 2,000 Spanish refugees, who had been housed by the French in squalid camps, to Chile on an old boat called the Winnipeg. Neruda is sometimes charged with only selecting Communists for emigration while excluding others who had fought on the side of the Republic[citation needed]; others deny these accusations, pointing out that Neruda chose only a few hundred of the refugees personally; the rest were selected by the Service for the Evacuation of Spanish Refugees, set up by Juan Negrín, president of the Spanish Republican government-in-exile.

Mexico

Neruda's next diplomatic post was as Consul General in Mexico City, where he spent the years 1940 to 1943. While in Mexico, he divorced Hagenaar, married del Carril, and learned that his daughter had died, age eight, in Nazi-occupied Netherlands from various health problems. He also became a friend of the Stalinist assassin Vittorio Vidali.

After the failed 1940 assassination attempt against Leon Trotsky, Neruda arranged a Chilean visa for the Mexican painter David Alfaro Siqueiros who was accused of having been one of the conspirators. Neruda later said he did it at the request of Mexican President Manuel Ávila Camacho. This enabled Siqueiros, then jailed, to leave Mexico for Chile, where he stayed at Neruda's private residence. In exchange for Neruda's assistance, Siqueiros spent over a year painting a mural in a school in Chillán. Neruda's relationship with Siqueiros attracted criticism and Neruda dismissed the allegations that his intent had been to help an assassin as "sensationalist politico-literary harassment". In Mexico, Pablo Neruda met the famous Mexican writer Octavio Paz where he nearly came to blows in 1942.

Return to Chile

In 1943, following his return to Chile, Neruda made a tour of Peru, where he visited Machu Picchu. The austere beauty of the Inca citadel later inspired Alturas de Macchu Picchu, a book-length poem in twelve parts which he completed in 1945 and which marked a growing awareness and interest in the ancient civilizations of the Americas: themes he was to explore further in Canto General. In this work, Neruda celebrated the achievement of Machu Picchu, but also condemned the slavery which had made it possible. In the Canto XII, he called upon the dead of many centuries to be born again and to speak through him. Martin Espada, poet and professor of creative writing at the University of Massachusetts, has hailed the work as a masterpiece, declaring that "there is no greater political poem".

Neruda and Stalinism

Bolstered by his experiences in the Spanish Civil War, Neruda, like many left-leaning intellectuals of his generation, came to admire the Soviet Union of Joseph Stalin, partly for the role it played in defeating Nazi Germany (poems Canto a Stalingrado (1942) and Nuevo canto de amor a Stalingrado (1943)). In 1953 Neruda was awarded the Stalin Peace Prize. On Stalin's death that same year, Neruda wrote an ode to him, as he also (during World War II) wrote praise of Fulgencio Batista (Saludo a Batista, i.e Salute to Batista) and later to Fidel Castro.

His fervent Stalinism eventually drove a wedge between Neruda and longtime friend Octavio Paz who commented that "Neruda became more and more Stalinist, while I became less and less enchanted with Stalin".[citation needed] Their differences came to a head after the 1939 Nazi-Soviet Ribbentrop-Molotov Pact when they almost came to blows in an argument over Stalin. Although Paz still considered Neruda "the greatest poet of his generation", in an essay on Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn he wrote that when he

thinks of … Neruda and other famous Stalinist writers I feel the gooseflesh that I get from reading certain passages of Dante’s Inferno. No doubt they began in good faith, but insensibly, commitment by commitment, they saw themselves becoming entangled in a mesh of lies, falsehoods, deceits and perjuries, until they lost their souls.[citation needed]

Neruda called Lenin the "great genius of this century". Another speech (June 5, 1946) is a tribute to the late Soviet leader Mikhail Kalinin, who for Neruda was "man of noble life", "the great constructor of the future", "a comrade of arms of Lenin and Stalin". [1]

Neruda later came to rue his support of the Soviet leader; after Nikita Khrushchev's famous Secret Speech at the Soviet 20th Party Congress in 1956, which denounced the "cult of personality" that surrounded Stalin and accused him of committing crimes during the Great Purges, Neruda wrote in his memoirs "I had contributed to my share to the personality cult," explaining that "in those days, Stalin seemed to us the conqueror who had crushed Hitler's armies". Of a subsequent visit to China in 1957, Neruda would later write: "What has estranged me from the Chinese revolutionary process has not been Mao Tse-tung but Mao Tse-tungism", which he dubbed Mao Tse-Stalinism: "the repetition of a cult of a Socialist deity".[citation needed] However, despite his disillusionment with Stalin, Neruda never lost his essential faith in communist theory and remained loyal to "the Party". Anxious not to give ammunition to his ideological enemies, he would later refuse publicly to condemn the Soviet repression of dissident writers like Boris Pasternak and Joseph Brodsky: an attitude with which even some of his staunchest admirers disagreed.

Senator

On March 4, 1945 Neruda was elected a Communist party senator for the northern provinces of Antofagasta and Tarapacá in the arid and inhospitable Atacama Desert. He officially joined the Communist Party of Chile four months later.

In 1946, Radical Party presidential candidate Gabriel González Videla asked Neruda to act as his campaign manager. González Videla was supported by a coalition of left-wing parties and Neruda fervently campaigned on his behalf. Once in office, however, González Videla turned against the Communist Party. The breaking point for Senator Neruda was the violent repression of a Communist-led miners' strike in Lota in October 1947, where striking workers were herded into island military prisons and a concentration camp in the town of Pisagua. Neruda's criticism of González Videla culminated in a dramatic speech in the Chilean senate on January 6, 1948 called Yo acuso ("I accuse"), in the course of which he read out the names of the miners and their families who were imprisoned at the concentration camp.

Exile

A few weeks later, Neruda went into hiding and he and his wife were smuggled from house to house, hidden by supporters and admirers for the next thirteen months. While in hiding, Senator Neruda was removed from office and in September 1948 the Communist Party was banned altogether under the Ley de Defensa Permanente de la Democracia (Law for the Permanent Defense of Democracy), called by critics the Ley Maldita ("Accursed Law"), which eliminated over 26,000 people from the electoral registers, thus stripping them of their right to vote. Neruda moved later to Valdivia in southern Chile. From Valdivia he moved to Fundo Huishue a forestry estate in the vacinities of Huishue Lake. Neruda's life underground ended in March 1949 when he fled over the Lilpela Pass on the Andes Mountains to Argentina on horseback. He would dramatically recount his escape from Chile in his Nobel Prize lecture.

Once out of Chile, he spent the next three years in exile. In Buenos Aires a friend of Neruda, the future Nobel winner and novelist Miguel Ángel Asturias, was cultural attaché to the Guatemalan embassy. There was some slight resemblance between the two men, so Neruda went to Europe using Asturias's passport. Pablo Picasso arranged his entrance into Paris[citation needed] and Neruda made a surprise appearance there to a stunned World Congress of Peace Forces, the Chilean government meanwhile denying[citation needed] that the poet could have escaped the country.

Neruda spent those three years traveling extensively throughout Europe as well as taking trips to India, China, Sri Lanka and the Soviet Union. His trip to Mexico in late 1949 was lengthened due to a serious bout of phlebitis. A Chilean singer named Matilde Urrutia was hired to care for him and they began an affair that would, years later, culminate in marriage. During his exile, Urrutia would travel from country to country shadowing him and they would arrange meetings whenever they could. Matilde Urrutia was the muse for "Los versos del Capitán", which he later published anonymously in 1952.

While in Mexico, Neruda also published his lengthy epic poem Canto General, a Whitmanesque catalog of the history, geography, and flora and fauna of South America, accompanied by Neruda's observations and experiences. Many of them dealt with his time underground in Chile, which is when he composed much of the poem. In fact, he had carried the manuscript with him on his escape on horseback. A month later, a different edition of five thousand copies was boldly published in Chile by the outlawed Communist Party based on a manuscript Neruda had left behind. In Mexico, he was granted honorary Mexican citizenship.

His 1952 stay in a villa owned by Italian historian Edwin Cerio on the island of Capri was fictionalized in the popular film Il Postino ("The Postman", 1994).

Return to Chile

By 1952, the González-Videla government was on its last legs, weakened by corruption scandals. The Chilean Socialist Party was in the process of nominating Salvador Allende as its candidate for the September 1952 presidential elections and was keen to have the presence of Neruda—by now Chile's most prominent left-wing literary figure—to support the campaign.

Neruda returned in August of that year and rejoined Delia del Carril, who had traveled ahead of him some months earlier, but the marriage was crumbling. Del Carril eventually learned of his torrid affair with Matilde Urrutia and left him in 1955, moving back to Europe. Now united with Urrutia, Neruda would spend the rest of his life in Chile, many foreign trips notwithstanding and a stint as Allende's ambassador to France from 1970 to 1973.

By this time, Neruda enjoyed worldwide fame as a poet, and his books were being translated into virtually all the major languages of the world. He was also vocal on political issues, vigorously denouncing the U.S. during the Cuban missile crisis (later in the decade he would likewise repeatedly condemn the U.S. for the Vietnam War). But being one of the most prestigious and outspoken leftwing intellectuals alive also attracted opposition from ideological opponents. The Congress for Cultural Freedom, an anti-communist organization covertly established and funded by the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency, adopted Neruda as one of its primary targets and launched a campaign to undermine his reputation, reviving the old claim he had been an accomplice in the attack on Trotsky in Mexico City in 1940[citation needed]. The campaign became more intense when it became known that Neruda was a candidate for the 1964 Nobel prize, which was eventually awarded to Jean-Paul Sartre.

Neruda recording his poetry at the U.S. Library of Congress in 1966.

In 1966, Neruda was invited to attend an International PEN conference in New York City. Officially, he was barred from entering the U.S. because he was a communist, but the conference organizer, playwright Arthur Miller, eventually prevailed upon the Johnson Administration to grant Neruda a visa. Neruda gave readings to packed halls, and even recorded some poems for the Library of Congress. Miller later opined that Neruda's adherence to his communist ideals of the 1930s was a result of his protracted exclusion from "bourgeois society". Due to the presence of many East Bloc writers, Mexican writer Carlos Fuentes later wrote that the PEN conference marked a "beginning of the end" of the Cold War.

La Sebastiana, Neruda's house in Valparaíso.

Upon Neruda's return to Chile, he stopped off in Peru, where he gave readings to enthusiastic crowds in Lima and Arequipa and was received by President Fernando Belaúnde Terry. However, the visit prompted an unpleasant backlash. The Peruvian government had come out against the government in Cuba of Fidel Castro, and in July 1966 retaliation against Neruda came in the form of a letter signed by more than one hundred Cuban intellectuals who charged Neruda with colluding with the enemy, and called him an example of the "tepid, pro-Yankee revisionism" then prevalent in Latin America. The affair was particularly painful for Neruda because of his previous outspoken support for the Cuban revolution, and he never visited the island again, even after an invitation in 1968.

After the death of Che Guevara in Bolivia in 1967, Neruda wrote several articles regretting the loss of a "great hero".[citation needed] At the same time, he told his friend Aida Figueroa not to cry for Che, but for Luis Emilio Recabarren, the father of the Chilean communist movement, who preached a pacifist revolution over Che's violent ways.[4]

La Chascona, Neruda's house in Santiago.

Final years

In 1970, Neruda was nominated as a candidate for the Chilean presidency, but ended up giving his support to Salvador Allende, who later won the election and was inaugurated in 1970 as the first democratically elected socialist head of state. Shortly thereafter, Allende appointed Neruda the Chilean ambassador to France (lasting from 1970-1972; his final diplomatic posting). Neruda returned to Chile two and half years later due to failing health.

In 1971, having sought the prize for years, Neruda was finally awarded the Nobel Prize. This decision did not come easily, as some of the committee members had not forgotten Neruda's past praise of Stalinist dictatorship. But his Swedish translator, Artur Lundkvist, did his best to ensure the Chilean the prize.[5]

Inside "La Sebastiana", home of Pablo Neruda in Valparaíso

As the disturbances of 1973 unfolded, Neruda, then terminally ill with prostate cancer, was devastated by the mounting attacks on the Allende government. The military coup led by General Augusto Pinochet on September 11 saw Neruda's hopes for a marxist Chile destroyed. Shortly thereafter, during a search of the house and grounds at Isla Negra by Chilean armed forces at which he was present, Neruda famously remarked:

Look around—there's only one thing of danger for you here—poetry.

Neruda died of heart failure on the evening of September 23, 1973, at Santiago's Santa María Clinic.[6][7][8] The funeral took place amidst a massive police presence, and mourners took advantage of the occasion to protest against the new regime, established just a couple of weeks before.

Casa la Isla Negra, Neruda's third home in Chile

Matilde Urrutia subsequently compiled and edited for publication the memoirs that Neruda had been working on just days prior to his death including, possibly his final poem 'Right Comrade, It's the Hour of the Garden'. These and other activities brought her into conflict with Pinochet's government, which continually sought to curtail Neruda's influence on the Chilean collective consciousness. Urrutia's own memoir, My Life with Pablo Neruda, was published posthumously in 1986.

Neruda owned three houses in Chile; today they are all open to the public as museums: La Chascona in Santiago, La Sebastiana in Valparaíso, and Casa de Isla Negra in Isla Negra, where he and Matilde Urrutia are buried.

Personal life

Neruda was good friends with Venezuelan intellectuals and diplomats, such as Arturo Uslar Pietri, Juan Oropeza and Miguel Otero Silva.

Neruda always wrote in green ink because it was the color of Esperanza (hope).

Neruda and Borges

During the late 1960s, Argentine writer Jorge Luis Borges was asked for his opinion of Pablo Neruda. After describing a brief meeting with him when both were young, Borges stated,

"I think of him as a very fine poet, a very fine poet. I don't admire him as a man, I think of him as a very mean man."[9]

When asked for the reasons for this, Borges continued,

"Well, he wrote a book -- well, maybe here I'm being political -- he wrote a book about the tyrants of South America, and then he had several stanzas against the United States. Now he knows that that's rubbish. And he had not a word against Perón. Because he had a law suit in Buenos Aires, that was explained to me afterwards, and he didn't care to risk anything. And so, when he was supposed to be writing at the top of his voice, full of noble indignation, he had not a word to say against Perón. And he was married to an Argentine lady, he knew that many of his friends had been sent to jail. He knew all about the state of our country, but not a word against him. At the same time, he was speaking against the United States, knowing the whole thing was a lie, no? But, of course, that doesn't mean anything against his poetry. Neruda is a very fine poet, a great poet in fact. And when they gave [ Miguel de Asturias ] the Nobel Prize, I said that it should have been given to Neruda! Now when I was in Chile, and we were on different political sides, I think he did the best thing to do. He went on a holiday during the three or four days I was there so there was no occasion for our meeting. But I think he was acting politely, no? Because he knew that people would be playing him up against me, no? I mean, I was an Argentine, poet, he was a Chilean poet, he's on the side of the Communists, I'm against them. So I felt he was behaving very wisely in avoiding a meeting that would have been quite uncomfortable for both of us."[10]

Legacy

  • A bust of Neruda stands on the south side of the Organization of American States building in Washington D.C.
  • In 2009 the Chilean Google homepage displayed a logo commemorating his birthday on July 12. [2]

Music

  • Greek composer Mikis Theodorakis set to music the famous "Canto General" (one of the most famous poems by Neruda) when he was exiled from his homeland by the dictatorship in Greece (1967-1974).
  • Folk rock / progressive rock group Los Jaivas, famous in Chile, used Las Alturas de Macchu Picchu as the text for their album of the same name. The band later made a full-length video of the piece for Chilean television. Taped at Macchu Picchu itself, the programme was hosted by Peruvian novelist Mario Vargas Llosa.
  • Neruda Songs, a classical and operatic cycle based on five of Neruda's love poems, received the $200,000 University of Louisville's Grawemeyer Award for Musical Composition. The composer, Peter Lieberson, dedicated the music to his wife, mezzo-soprano Lorraine Hunt Lieberson, who performed the music exemplifying what Neruda referred to as "the arc of love" at its world premiere.
  • Neruda's verse is quoted on the back of Jackson Browne's album The Pretender
  • Neruda is one of the people toasted to in the song "La Vie Boheme" from the Tony-winning rock opera Rent.
  • The South African musician Johnny Clegg drew heavily on Neruda in his early work with the band Juluka.
  • Canadian rock group Red Rider named their 1983 LP/CD release, Neruda.
  • Pop singer Madonna has read his poem "If You Forget Me" rather beautifully on a version of her song "Frozen", calling it "Frozen (Poetry Edit)".
  • Pop band Sixpence None the Richer set his poem "Puedo Escribir" to music on their platinum selling self-titled album (1997).

Literature

  • An edition of Neruda's On the Blue Shore of Silence was printed in honour of the poet's 100th birthday in 2004. The book featured translations of Neruda's original poems by Scottish poet Alastair Reid and original paintings from artist Mary Heebner's series Isla Negra. A companion collection, Intimacies: Poems of Love, with paintings by Mary Heebner from Muse was published in 2008.
  • Neruda is referred to frequently as "The Poet" in the novel The House of the Spirits by Isabel Allende. One character, Clara "the Clarivoyant" Trueba, is said to have helped him in his rise to fame and another member of the Trueba family later attends his funeral.
  • In 2008 the writer Roberto Ampuero published a novel El caso Neruda, about his private eye Cayetano Brulé, where Pablo Neruda is one of the protagonists.*
  • Neruda is referred to as the poet-statesmen in the 1998 Spanglish novel Yo-Yo Boing! by Giannina Braschi.

Films and television

  • In the film G.I. Jane, Master Chief John Urgayle (played by Viggo Mortensen) quotes Pablo Neruda by saying "When I see the sea once more will the sea have seen or not seen me?". This is taken from Neruda's work The Book of Questions.
  • In The Simpsons, Neruda is referenced in an argument between Bart and Lisa over the nature of the soul: (Lisa: "Hmm. Pablo Neruda said 'Laughter is the language of the soul.'" Bart: "I am familiar with the works of Pablo Neruda.")
  • Pablo Neruda is mentioned in How I Met Your Mother in the episode "The Naked Man" and in "The Three Days Rule" in the quote: (Stan: "I wait for it and it envelops me, and so you, bread and light and shadow are." Marshall: "I do not know what bread was doing in there, but that touched me, here and here.")
  • In the Italian film Il Postino, Pablo Neruda (Philippe Noiret) is living in exile on Salina Island near Sicily during the 1950s. While there, he befriends the local postman and inspires in him a love of poetry.
  • A documentary film is in production on Neruda's life, times, and poetry, Pablo Neruda: The Poet's Calling'', directed by Mexican director Carlos Bolado and Mark Eisner.
  • In the movie Patch Adams, a portion of Neruda's Love Sonnet 17 is read as a remembrance of the character's dead lover.
  • In Kevin Fry loses his beard the character Brandee states "I won't miss your beard so much, but I do love me so Pablo Neruda!.

See also

Further reading

English

  • Pablo Neruda, Selected Poems, ed. Ilan Stavans (2003).
  • Translating Neruda: The Way to Macchu Picchu, by John Felstiner (1980)
  • Pablo Neruda / Durán, Manuel., 1981
  • Pablo Neruda: The Secrets of the Chilean Poet and Diplomat, 1981
  • Pablo Neruda: all poets the poet / Bizzarro, Salvatore., 1979
  • The poetry of Pablo Neruda / Costa, René de., 1979
  • Pablo Neruda: Memoirs (Confieso que he vivido: Memorias) / tr. St. Martin, Hardie., 1977
  • The Essential Neruda / ed. Mark Eisner, intro by Lawrence Ferlinghetti (City Lights), 2004
  • Paz and Neruda: A Clash of Literary Titans/ Americas Magazine, July 2008/ Jaime Perales Contreras[3]/

Recent English translations of Neruda's late and posthumous work

  • World's End (Copper Canyon Press, 2009) (translated by William O'Daly)
  • The Hands of the Day (Copper Canyon Press, 2008) (translated by William O'Daly)
  • The Book of Questions (Copper Canyon Press, 1991, 2001) (translated by William O'Daly)
  • The Yellow Heart (Copper Canyon Press, 1990, 2002) (translated by William O'Daly)
  • Stones of the Sky (Copper Canyon Press, 1990, 2002) (translated by William O'Daly)
  • The Sea and the Bells (Copper Canyon Press, 1988, 2002) (translated by William O'Daly)
  • Winter Garden (Copper Canyon Press, 1987, 2002) (translated by James Nolan)
  • The Separate Rose (Copper Canyon Press, 1985) (translated by William O'Daly)
  • Still Another Day (Copper Canyon Press, 1984, 2005) (translated by William O'Daly)
  • On the Blue Shore of Silence: Poems of the Sea (Rayo Harper Collins, 2004) (translated by Alastair Reid, epilogue Antonio Skármeta)
  • Intimacies: Poems of Love (Harper Collins, 2008) (translated by Alastair Reid)

Spanish

  • Pablo Neruda y su tiempo. Las furias y las penas / David Schidlowsky, RIL editores, Santiago de Chile 2008, 2 Volumes.
  • Paz y Neruda: Historia de una amistad/Jaime Perales Contreras.,2008. Revista Américas, (Organización de los Estados Americanos), julio 2008.
  • Pablo Neruda en Cuba y Cuba en Pablo Neruda / Angel I Augier., 2005
  • Neruda por Skármeta / Antonio Skármeta., 2004
  • Neruda, memoria crepitante / Virginia Vidal., 2003
  • Voy a vivirme : variaciones y complementos nerudianos / Volodia Teitelboim., 1998
  • Neruda y Arauco / Maria Maluenda., 1998
  • Para leer a Neruda / Hugo Montes., 1997
  • Neruda y la mujer / Berna Pérez de Burrell., 1993
  • Para leer a Pablo Neruda / José Carlos Rovira., 1991
  • Neruda, voz y universo / Mario Ferrero., 1988
  • Neruda total / Eulogio Suárez., 1988
  • Nuevas aproximaciones a Pablo Neruda / Angel Flores., 1987
  • Neruda : un hombre de la Araucania / Rafael Aguayo., 1987
  • Asturias y Neruda : cuatro estudios para dos poetas / Giuseppe Tavani., 1985
  • Neruda, 10 años después / Floridor Pérez., 1983
  • El pensamiento poético de Pablo Neruda / Alain Sicard., 1981
  • Poesía y estilo de Pablo Neruda / Amado Alonso., 1979
  • Mi pequeña historia de Pablo Neruda / Arturo Aldunate Phillips., 1979
  • Conocer Neruda y su obra / Alberto Cousté., 1979
  • La poesía de Neruda / Luis Rosales., 1978
  • Pablo Neruda : naturaleza, historia y poética / Eduardo Camacho Guizado., 1978
  • Rilke, Pound, Neruda : tres claves de la poesía contemporánea / José Miguel Ibáñez Langlois., 1978
  • Poesía y estilo de Pablo Neruda : interpretación de una poesía hermética / Amado Alonso., 1977

Turkish'

  • Buğdayın Türküsü (Original: Oda al trigo, Translated by Hilmi Yavuz and composed by Selim Atakan for Yeni Türkü, which is a Turkish music grup. It was found albums of "Buğdayın Türküsü", which was debut album for the group in 1979 and "Rumeli Konseri" in 1991. It was published in Nihat Behram's "Türk Halk ve Dünya Edebiyatından Başkaldırı Şiirleri Antolojisi" book in 2001.)
  • Oğulları Ölen Analara Türkü (Original: Canto a las madres de los milicianos muertos, it was published in Nihat Behram's "Türk Halk ve Dünya Edebiyatından Başkaldırı Şiirleri Antolojisi" book in 2001.)
  • Karakas'taki Migual Otero Silva'ya Mektup (Original: Carta a Miguel Otero Silva, en Caracas, it was published in Nihat Behram's "Türk Halk ve Dünya Edebiyatından Başkaldırı Şiirleri Antolojisi" book in 2001.)
  • Diktatörler (Original: Los dictadores, it was published in Nihat Behram's "Türk Halk ve Dünya Edebiyatından Başkaldırı Şiirleri Antolojisi" book in 2001.)
  • Bazı Şeyleri Açıklıyorum (Original: Explico algunas cosas, it was published in Ülkü Tamer's "Çağdaş latin Amerika Şiiri Antolojisi" in 1982 and in 1999 and Nihat Behram's "Türk Halk ve Dünya Edebiyatından Başkaldırı Şiirleri Antolojisi" one in 2001.)
  • Okyanusun İhtiyar Kadınları (Origial: Las mujeres suicidas del océano, it was published in Ülkü Tamer's book of "Çağdaş latin Amerika Şiiri Antolojisi" in 1982 and in 1999)
  • Magellan'ın Yüreği (1519) (Original: El corazón magallánico (1519), it was published in Ülkü Tamer's book of "Çağdaş latin Amerika Şiiri Antolojisi" in 1982 and in 1999)
  • Tavşanlı Çocuk (Original: Oda al niño de la liebre, it was published in Ülkü Tamer's book of "Çağdaş latin Amerika Şiiri Antolojisi" in 1982 and in 1999)
  • Odun Kokusu (Original: Olor a madera, it was published in Ülkü Tamer's book of "Çağdaş latin Amerika Şiiri Antolojisi" in 1982 and in 1999)
  • Gemi (Original: El navío, it was published in Ülkü Tamer's book of "Çağdaş latin Amerika Şiiri Antolojisi" in 1982 and in 1999)
  • Guilermina Acaba Nerde ? (Original: ¿Dónde estará la Guillermina? , it was published in Ülkü Tamer's book of "Çağdaş latin Amerika Şiiri Antolojisi" in 1982 and in 1999)
  • Walking Around (it was published in Ülkü Tamer's book of "Çağdaş latin Amerika Şiiri Antolojisi" in 1982 and in 1999)
  • Alberto Rojas Jimenez Geliyor Uçarak (Original: Alberto Rojas Giménez viene volando, it was published in Ülkü Tamer's book of "Çağdaş latin Amerika Şiiri Antolojisi" in 1982 and in 1999)

Notes

  1. ^ A Reading in Honor of Pablo Neruda's Centennial : NPR
  2. ^ Neruda | La vida del poeta | Cronología | 1944–1953, Fundación Neruda, University of Chile. Accessed online 29 December 2006.
  3. ^ Wyman, Eva Goldschmidt Wyman; Fuentes, Zurita Harris, Victoria Frankel Montealegre, Jorge (December 2002). The Poets and The General: Chile's Voices Of Dissent Under Augusto Pinochet. Lom Ediciones. p. 18. 
  4. ^ "Pablo Neruda: The Poet's Calling (http://www.redpoppy.net/pablo_neruda.php)"
  5. ^ http://www.weeklystandard.com/Utilities/printer_preview.asp?idArticle=4328 A critical review
  6. ^ "Pablo Neruda, Nobel Poet, Dies in a Chilean Hospital", The New York Times, September 24, 1973.
  7. ^ Neruda and Vallejo: Selected Poems, Robert Bly, ed.; Beacon Press, Boston, 1993, p. xii.
  8. ^ Earth-Shattering Poems, Liz Rosenberg, ed.; Henry Holt, New York, 1998, p. 105.
  9. ^ Richard Burgin, Conversations with Jorge Luis Borges, Holt, Rhinehart, & Winston, 1968. Page 95.
  10. ^ Ibid, page 96.

References

  • Jaime Perales Contreras, " Paz and Neruda: A Clash of Literary Titans", Americas Magazine,(Organization of American States). July 2008.
  • Adam Feinstein, Pablo Neruda: A Passion for Life, Bloomsbury, 2004. (ISBN 1-58234-410-8)
  • Pablo Neruda, Memoirs (translation of Confieso que he vivido: Memorias), translated by Hardie St. Martin, Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 1977. (1991 edition is ISBN 0-374-20660-0)
  • Pablo Neruda: Passion, Poetry, Politics ISBN 978-0-7660-2966-8 [4]

External links


 
 

 

Copyrights:

Who2 Biography. Copyright © 1998-2008 by Who2, LLC. All rights reserved. See the Pablo Neruda biography from Who2.  Read more
Britannica Concise Encyclopedia. Britannica Concise Encyclopedia. © 2006 Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc. All rights reserved.  Read more
Biography. © 2006 through a partnership of Answers Corporation. All rights reserved.  Read more
Columbia Encyclopedia. The Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia, Sixth Edition Copyright © 2003, Columbia University Press. Licensed from Columbia University Press. All rights reserved. www.cc.columbia.edu/cu/cup/ Read more
Quotes By. Copyright © 2008 QuotationsBook.com. All rights reserved.  Read more
Wikipedia. This article is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article "Pablo Neruda" Read more