Spotlighting: Pablo Neruda

Pablo Neruda was the pseudonym of the Chilean poet Ricardo Neftali Reyes Basualto. He was born in Parral a little town in central Chile, but moved to Temuco city when he was only months old. It was in this city where he showed interest in poetry and made his early works, and where he picked Pablo Neruda as a pseudonym because his father did not approve of his writing. He is considered one of the greatest Spanish-language poets of the 20th century.

He is called the poet of love, because his poetry is so sensual and sometimes very erotic. He was Chilean honorary consulship in Burma, Ceylon, Java, Singapore, Buenos Aires, Barcelona, and Madrid. In 1943, he returned to Chile but he left the country in 1949 because the Chilean President Gabriel Gonzalez Videla was chasing him for political reasons. Between 1949 to 1952 he lived in exile in different European countries. He was also known as an outspoken communist. he died in Santiago de Chile, few days after the coup of state on September 11th of 1973 where his friend Salvador Allende (the first socialist President to been elected democratically by the people in Latin America) died.

Trivia

He was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1971.

Children: Malva Marina (b.1934, d.1942)

Colombian novelist Gabriel García Márquez considers him the greatest poet of the 20th Century in any language. Mexican poet Octavio Paz considered Neruda "a servant of fascism".

Federico García Lorca was a primary influence on his style. The two poets were close friends up until Lorca's execution during the Spanish Civil War.

Biography/bibliography in: "Contemporary Authors". New Revision Series, Vol. 131, pages 321-330. Farmington Hills, MI: Thomson Gale, 2005.

The love poetry Patch Adams (Robin Williams) read to Corinne Fisher (Monica Potter) in the movie Patch Adams was from Pablo Neruda's "100 Love Sonnets : Cien sonetos de amor".

Kenneth Rexroth's translation of Pablo Neruda's 1955 poem "Brown and Agile Child" is shown on the back cover of Jackson Browne's 1976 album "The Pretender".

Adopted the pen name Pablo Neruda as a tribute to the Czech writer and poet Jan Neruda (1834-1891).


Personal Quotes

Love is so short and forgetting so long.

Only with burning patience shall we conquer the splendid city which shall give light, justice and dignity to all men. Thus shall Poetry not have sung in vain.

They may mow down all the flowers, but they can't stop spring. (I LOVE this quote)

Someday, somewhere - anywhere, unfailingly, you'll find yourself, and that, and only that, can be the happiest or bitterest hour of your life.

Shyness is a condition foreign to the heart - a category, a dimension which leads to loneliness.

The poem featured below is from Pablo's 100 Love Sonnets and is one of my favorites by him--Sonnet XLV "Don't Go Far Off, Not Even For A Day"

Don't go far off, not even for a day, because --

because -- I don't know how to say it: a day is long

and I will be waiting for you, as in an empty station

when the trains are parked off somewhere else, asleep.

Don't leave me, even for an hour, because

then the little drops of anguish will all run together,

the smoke that roams looking for a home will drift

into me, choking my lost heart.

Oh, may your silhouette never dissolve on the beach;

may your eyelids never flutter into the empty distance.

Don't leave me for a second, my dearest,

because in that moment you'll have gone so far

I'll wander mazily over all the earth, asking,

Will you come back? Will you leave me here,

dying?