Pablo Neruda (1904-1973), whose real name is Neftalí Ricardo
Reyes Basoalto, was born on 12 July, 1904, in the town of Parral in Chile.
His father was a railway employee and his mother,
who died shortly after
his birth, a teacher. Some years later his father, who had
then moved to
the town of Temuco, remarried doña Trinidad Candia
Malverde. The poet
spent his childhood and youth in Temuco, where he
also got to know Gabriela
Mistral , head of the girls' secondary school,
who took a liking to him.
At the early age of thirteen he began to contribute
some articles to the
daily "La Mañana", among them, Entusiasmo y
Perseverancia -
his first publication - and his first poem. In 1920, he
became a contributor
to the literary journal "Selva Austral" under the
pen name of Pablo Neruda,
which he adopted in memory of the Czechoslovak
poet Jan Neruda (1834-1891).
Some of the poems Neruda wrote at that time
are to be found in his first
published book: Crepusculario (1923). The
following year saw the
publication of Veinte poemas de amor y una cancion desesperada ,
one of his best-known and most translated works. Alongside his literary activities,
Neruda studied French and pedagogy at the University
of Chile in Santiago.
Between 1927 and 1935, the government put him in charge of a number of honorary
consulships, which took him to Burma, Ceylon, Java, Singapore, Buenos Aires,
Barcelona, and Madrid. His poetic production during that difficult period included,
among other works, the collection of esoteric surrealistic poems, Residencia
en la tierra (1933), which marked his literary breakthrough.
The Spanish
Civil War and the murder of García Lorca, whom Neruda knew, affected
him strongly and made him join the Republican movement, first in Spain, and later
in France, where he started working on his collection of poems España
en el Corazón (1937). The same year he returned to his native country,
to which he had been recalled, and his poetry during the following period was
characterised by an orientation towards political and social matters. España
en el Corazón had a great impact by virtue of its being printed
in the middle of the front during the civil war.
In 1939, Neruda was appointed consul for the Spanish emigration, residing in
Paris, and, shortly
afterwards, Consul General in Mexico, where
he rewrote his Canto
General de Chile ,
transforming it into an epic poem about the
whole South
American continent, its nature,
its people and its historical destiny. This
work,
entitled Canto General , was
published in Mexico 1950, and also
underground
in Chile. It consists of
approximately 250 poems brought together
into fifteen
literary cycles and constitutes the
central part of Neruda's production. Shortly
after its publication, Canto General was
translated into some ten languages.
Nearly all
these poems were created in a difficult
situation, when Neruda was
living abroad.
In 1943, Neruda returned to Chile, and in 1945 he was elected senator of the
Republic, also joining the Communist Party of Chile. Due to his protests against
President González Videla's repressive policy against striking miners
in 1947, he had to live underground in his own country for two years until he
managed to leave in 1949. After living in different European countries he returned
home in 1952. A great deal of what he published during that period bears the
stamp of his political activities; one example is Las Uvas y el Viento (1954),
which can be regarded as the diary of Neruda's exile. In Odas elementales (1954-
1959) his message is expanded into a more extensive description of the world,
where the objects of the hymns - things, events and relations - are duly presented
in alphabetic form.
Neruda's production is exceptionally extensive. For example, his Obras Completas ,
constantly republished, comprised 459 pages in 1951; in 1962 the number of pages
was 1,925, and in 1968 it amounted to 3,237, in two volumes. Among his works
of the last few years can be mentioned Cien sonetos de amor (1959),
which includes poems dedicated to his wife Matilde Urrutia, Memorial de Isla
Negra , a poetic work of an autobiographic character in five volumes, published
on the occasion of his sixtieth birthday, Arte de pajáros (1966), La
Barcarola (1967), the play Fulgor y muerte de Joaquín Murieta (1967), Las
manos del día (1968), Fin del mundo (1969), Las piedras
del cielo (1970), and La espada encendida .
| Further works |
| Geografía infructuosa/Barren Geography (poetry), 1972 |
| El mar y las campanas/The Sea and the Bells , tr. (poetry), 1973 |
| Incitación al nixonicidio y alabanza de la revolución chilena/A Call for the Destruction of Nixon and Praise for the Chilean Revolution , tr. (poetry), 1974 |
| El corazón amarillo/The Yellow Heart (poetry), 1974 |
| Defectos escogidos/Selected Waste Paper (poetry), 1974 |
| Elegía/Elegy (poetry), 1974 |
| Confieso que he vivido. Memorias/Memoirs , tr. (prose), 1974 |
| Para nacer he nacido/Passions and Impressions , tr. (prose), 1978 |
From Nobel Lectures, Literature 1968-1980 , Editor-in-Charge Tore Frängsmyr, Editor Sture Allén, World Scientific Publishing Co., Singapore, 1993
This autobiography/biography was written at the time of the award and later published in the book series Les Prix Nobel / Nobel Lectures . The information is sometimes updated with an addendum submitted by the Laureate. To cite this document, always state the source as shown above.
Pablo Neruda died in 1973.
Works:
| 1. I like for you to be still | 6. Ode to Wine | 11. This beauty is soft... |
| 2. If you forget me | 7. Ode to Salt | 12. We are the clumsy passerby |
| 3. Past | 8. The Me Bird | 13. Ode to Sadness |
| 4. The Flight | 9. In the center of the earth... | 14. I crave your mouth... |
| 5. I do not love you... | 10. Lost in the forest... | 15. Two Happy Lovers |