Pablo Neruda

Neftali Ricardo Reyes Basoalto used the pen name Pablo Neruda which he later changed to his real name…this man is a hero of mine, he stood to be counted and voiced his beliefs and spoke from the heart.  He was a Chilean poet, diplomat and politician who in 1971 (the year before I was born) won the Nobel Prize for Literature. He was born in the Chilean town of Parral in 1904. His father worked for the railroad, and his mother was a teacher (she died shortly after his birth) Some of his early poems are found in his first book, Crepusculario (Book of Twilight), published in 1923, and one of his most renowned works, Veinte poemas de amor y una canción desesperada (Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair), was published the following year. Twenty Love Poems made Neruda a celebrity, and he thereafter devoted himself to his poetry.

In 1927, Neruda began his long diplomatic career (in the Latin American tradition of honoring poets with diplomatic posts), and he moved frequently around the world. In 1935, the Spanish Civil War began, and Neruda chronicled the atrocities, including the execution of his friend Federico García Lorca, in his España en el corazón (Spain in Our Hearts).

Over the next 10 years, Neruda would leave and return to Chile several times. Along the way, he was named Chile’s consul to Mexico and won election to the Chilean Senate. He would also begin to attract controversy, first with his praise of Joseph Stalin (in poems such as "Canto a Stalingrado" and "Nuevo canto de amor a Stalingrado”) and later for his poetry honoring Fulgencio Batista ("Saludo a Batista") and Fidel Castro. Always left-leaning, Neruda joined the Communist Party of Chile in 1945, but by 1948 the Communist Party was under siege, and Neruda fled the country with his family. In 1952, the Chilean government withdrew its order to seize leftist writers and political figures, and Neruda returned to Chile once again.

For the next 21 years, Pablo Neruda continued to write prodigiously (the collection of his complete works, which is continually being republished, filled 459 pages in 1951; by 1968 it amounted to 3,237 pages, in two volumes), rising in the ranks of 20th-century poets. He also received numerous prestigious awards, including the International Peace Prize in 1950, the Lenin Peace Prize and the Stalin Peace Prize in 1953, and the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1971.

There is a movie with a slice of his life (some fiction involved with this movie) its called Il Postino: The Postman(its an Italian movie with subtitles) I recommend this movie very much, its beautiful!!!

 

My favourite Neruda poem is called “love” and it goes like this…

“Because of you, in gardens of blossoming flowers

I ache from the perfumes of spring.

I have forgotten your face,

I no longer remember your hands;

how did your lips feel on mine?

Because of you, I love the white statues drowsing in the parks

the white statues that have neither voice nor sight.

I have forgotten your voice, your happy voice;

I have forgotten your eyes.

Like a flower to its perfume,

I am bound to my vague memory of you.

I live with pain that is like a wound;

if you touch me, you will do me irreparable harm.

Your caresses enfold me,

like climbing vines on melancholy walls.

I have forgotten your love,

yet I seem to glimpse you in every window.

Because of you, the heady perfumes of summer pain me;

because of you, I again seek out the signs that precipitates desires:

shooting stars and falling objects. “