Pablo Neruda Biography

Pablo Neruda (1904-1973) was a Chilean poet and diplomat who is widely regarded as one of the most important and influential poets of the 20th century. He was born Ricardo Eliécer Neftalí Reyes Basoalto in Parral, Chile, and began writing poetry as a teenager.

Neruda's early poetry was heavily influenced by modernist and surrealist movements, but he later developed his own unique style, characterized by his vivid imagery, political themes, and passion for life. His most famous collections include Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair (1924), Residencia en la Tierra (1933), and Canto General (1950), which chronicles the history of Latin America and the struggles of its people.

Neruda was a committed communist and spent much of his life advocating for social justice and political change. He served as a senator for the Communist Party in Chile and was later forced to go into hiding when the government declared communism illegal. During this time, he wrote some of his most powerful political poetry.

In 1971, Neruda was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature for his "poetry that with the action of an elemental force brings alive a continent's destiny and dreams." He was also known for his work as a diplomat, serving as a consul in several countries and representing Chile at the United Nations.

Neruda died in 1973, just days after a military coup overthrew the democratically elected government of Chile. His death is widely believed to have been caused by heart failure, but many have also speculated that he was poisoned by the military regime. His poetry continues to be celebrated around the world for its beauty, passion, and political significance.

Life of Pablo Neruda

Pablo Neruda read to 100,000 people in honor of Communist revolutiınary leader Luis Carlos Prestes on July 15, 1945, at Pacaembu Stadium in Brazil. Neruda had a number of political posts during his lifetime, including a stint as a Chilean Communist Party senator. In 1948, when conservative Chilean President González Videla declared communism illegal, a warrant for Neruda's arrest was issued. In the Chilean port of Valparaso, friends harbored him for months in a home basement. Later, through a mountain route near Maihue Lake in Argentina, Neruda slipped into exile. Years later, Neruda became a close associate of Salvador Allende, the socialist president of Chile. Allende asked Neruda to read at the Estadio Nacional in front of 70,000 people when he returned to Chile following his Nobel Prize acceptance speech.

Neruda was hospitalized because of cancer at the time of the Chilean coup d'état led by Augusto Pinochet. Neruda died of heart failure three days after being admitted to the hospital. Neruda's death echoed over the world, as he was already a legend in life. Pinochet had refused to allow Neruda's burial to be turned into a public event. Thousands of heartbroken Chileans, on the other hand, violated the curfew and swarmed the streets.

Legacy of Pablo Neruda

Neruda's poetry is so diverse and deep that it defies easy categorization or summarization. It did, however, developed in four distinct directions. His love poetry is sensitive, sad, sensual, and passionate, as seen by the juvenile Twenty Love Poems and the mature Los versos del Capitán (1952; The Captain's Verses). Loneliness and sadness submerge the author in a subterranean realm of dark, demonic powers in "material" poetry like Residencia en la tierra. His epic poetry is best represented by Canto general, which is a Whitmanesque attempt at reinterpreting the past and present of Latin America and the struggle of its oppressed and downtrodden masses toward freedom. Finally, in Odas elementales, Neruda writes poems on daily things, animals, and plants.

Neruda’s work is gathered in Obras completas (1973; 4th ed. expanded, 3 vol.). Four essential works are Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair, translated by W.S. Merwin (1969, reissued 1993); Residence on Earth, and Other Poems, translated by Angel Flores (1946, reprinted 1976); Canto general, translated by Jack Schmitt (1991); and Elementary Odes of Pablo Neruda, translated by Carlos Lozano (1961). All the Odes (2013) collected Neruda’s odes both in the original Spanish and in English translation. Then Come Back: The Lost Neruda (2016) is a collection (in Spanish and English) of 21 previously unpublished poems discovered in his archives.