Pablo Neruda Author of Poetry

Pablo Neruda was born Ricardo Eliécer Neftalí Reyes Basoalto on 12 July 1904, in Parral, Chile, a city in Linares Providence to José del Carmen Reyes Morales, a railway worker, and Rosa Basoalto, a teacher who died months after Neruda was born. After her death, Reyes-Morales moved to Temuco, where he married a woman who he had another child a few years earlier with, named Rodolfo. Neruda grew up in Temuco with Rodolfo and a sister, Laura, one of his father’s kids by another woman.

He made his first poem in the winter of 1914. Neruda’s father was against his son’s interest in writing and poetry, but he received encouragement and inspiration from others, including a future Nobel Prize recipient Gabriel Mistral. On July 18, 1917, at the age of thirteen, he published his first work, an essay titled ‘Entusiasmo y perseverance translated to ‘Enthusiasm and Perseverance’ in the local newspaper La Mañana.

By the middle of 1920, he adopted the name Pablo Neruda, he was a published author of poetry.

He is thought to have derived his pen name from the Czech poet Jan Neruda. In 1921, at the age of 16, Neruda moved to Santiago to study French with the goal of becoming a teacher. However, he was soon devoting all his time to writing poetry with the help of writer, Eduardo Barrios. Pablo Neruda managed to meet Don Carlos George Nascimento, and impressed him. He was the most important publisher in Chile at a specific time. By the age of 20, Neruda had established a quite strong reputation as a poet, but yet he was faced with poverty.

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Although he may be hardly known in North America, throughout Latin America he is a huge inspiration, or to some a disappointment.

Pablo Neruda was very heavily involved with the politics going on around him, and his poetry and other works clearly showed his stance on what was occurring around the poet. He took his stance as a communist and pretty much rolled with it. As Spain became heavily involved in a civil war, Neruda became intensely politicized. His experiences he encountered during the Spanish Civil War and its aftermath moved him. Neruda became a communist. The most important movement for his decision was the execution of García Lorca. Neruda showed his support behind the Spanish Republic by publishing the collection Spain in Our Hearts, in1938, or better known as España en el corazón. He later lost his post as consul because of his political militancy. While the election of Pedro Aguirre Cerda took place for President of Chile in 1938, Neruda was made special consul for the Spanish emigrants. There he was held responsible for transporting 2,000 Spanish refugees. Neruda is held accountable for having selected only other communists for emigration. He officially joined the Communist Party of Chile in 1945.

Neruda held many diplomatic positions in various countries during his lifetime and served a term as a Senator for the Chilean Communist Party. When President Gabriel Gonzalez outlawed communist in Chile in 1948, a warrant was issued for Neruda’s arrest. Some of Neruda’s friends hid him for months in the basement of a house in the port city of Valparaiso. Neruda escaped through a pass near a lake headed into Argentina. A few years later, Neruda became an advisor to Chile’s President Salvatore Allende, who was a socialist. When Neruda returned to Chile after his Nobel Prize acceptance speech, Allende invited him to read at the Nacional in front of 70,000 people.

“Down there on those vast expanses in my native country, where I was taken by events which have already fallen into oblivion, one has to cross, and I was compelled to cross, the Andes to find the frontier of my country with Argentina. Great forests make these inaccessible areas like a tunnel through which our journey was secret and forbidden, with only the faintest signs to show us the way. There were no tracks and no paths, and I and my four companions, riding on horseback, pressed forward on our tortuous way, avoiding the obstacles set by huge trees, impassable rivers, immense cliffs and desolate expanses of snow…”.

He spoke clear and used such a wide variety of words that described his struggle and triumph, he sparked the vivid imagination of everyone that sat patiently and calmly in front of him. Throughout his speech, he would dramatically recount his escape from Chile. Although he came from a not so bright back ground, he showed that the past is only what it is called, the past. He was proof that with hard work and dedication you can literally become anything and anyone you want to become, even an international poet, journalist, and author.

After Neruda’s nineteen seventy-one Noble Peace Prize win for his literature and poetry, Neruda was hospitalized with cancer at the time of the coup d’état which was lead by Augusto Pinochet. Initially Pinochet’s movement overthrew the socialist government. Neruda returned home a few days later when he thought a doctor tried injecting him with an unknown substance to murder him on the orders of Pinochet. Pablo Neruda died in his house in Isla Negra on September 23, 1973, very soon after leaving the hospital. Although it was in a report that he died of heart failure, the Interior Ministry of the Chilean government issued a statement 42 years later pretty much acknowledging a document indicating the government’s word that ‘it was clearly possible and highly likely’ that Neruda was killed as a result of ‘the intervention of third parties’.

Pinochet, backed by elements of the armed forces, denied permission for Neruda’s funeral to be made a public event, but thousands of grieving Chile natives disobeyed the curfew that was ordered and flooded the streets to show their gratitude and love for Pablo Neruda. Neruda is normally considered the national poet of Chile. His poetry and other works have been popular and influenced many throughout the world. Whether Pinochet really did try to rid of the Chilean poet, it’s safe to say that Pablo Neruda is still one of the most beloved poets and political figures that Chile has had throughout the years. He is remembered by those who still read his words, like in Canto General.  A Concordance of Canto General by Pablo Neruda. His book Residence on Earth even grew to be beloved by so many. Pablo Neruda made a huge risk standing strong in his firm communistic beliefs. He was persecuted verbally by many people who were against the communist regime. Neruda became one of the greatest poets in Chile and all throughout Latin America. His influential beliefs encouraged many and made many upset. Regardless, he is very famous throughout literature today for not just his beliefs but also his Noble Peace Prize win.