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Pablo Neruda
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Pablo Neruda (July 12, 1904–September 23, 1973) was the pen name and, later, legal name of the Chilean writer and politician Neftalí Ricardo Reyes Basoalto.
With his works translated into many languages, Pablo Neruda is considered one of the greatest and most influential poets of the 20th century. Neruda was accomplished in a variety of styles ranging from erotically charged love poems like his collection Twenty Poems of Love and a Song of Despair, surrealist poems, historical epics, and overtly political manifestos. In 1971 Neruda won the Nobel Prize for Literature, a controversial award because of his political activism. Colombian novelist Gabriel García Márquez once called him "the greatest poet of the 20th century in any language".[1]
On July 15, 1945 at Pacaembu Stadium in São Paulo, Brazil, he read to 100,000 people at a reading in honor of Communist revolutionary Luís Carlos Prestes.[2] Upon returning to Chile after his Nobel Prize acceptance speech, Salvador Allende invited Neruda to read at the Estadio Nacional before 70,000 people.[3]
During his lifetime, Neruda occupied many diplomatic posts and served a stint as senator for the Chilean Communist Party. When Conservative Chilean President González Videla outlawed communism in Chile, a warrant was issued for Neruda's arrest. Friends hid him for months in a basement of a home in the Chilean port of Valparaíso. Neruda then escaped into exile through a mountain pass near Maihue Lake into Argentina. Years later, Neruda was a close collaborator to socialist President Salvador Allende.
Hospitalized with cancer at the time of the Chilean coup d'état led by Augusto Pinochet, Neruda died of heart failure twelve days later. Already a legend in life, Neruda's death became charged with an intense symbolism that reverberated around the world. Pinochet had denied permission to transform Neruda's funeral into a public event, but thousands of grieving Chileans disobeyed the curfew, flooding the streets in tribute[4][citation needed]. Neruda's funeral became the first public protest against the Chilean military dictatorship.
Neruda assumed his pen name as a teenager, partly because it was in vogue, partly to hide his poetry from his father, a rigid man who wanted his son to have a "practical" occupation. Neruda's pen name was derived from Czech writer and poet Jan Neruda; Pablo is thought to be from Paul Verlaine. It later became his legal name.
Contents
- 1 Early years
- 2 Veinte poemas
- 3 Spanish Civil War
- 4 Mexico
- 5 Return to Chile
- 6 Neruda and Stalinism
- 7 Senator
- 8 Exile
- 9 Return to Chile
- 10 Final years
- 11 Legacy
- 12 See also
- 13 Further reading
- 14 Notes
- 15 References
- 16 External links
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