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Pablo Neruda (1904 - 1973)
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 the same year in Mexico, 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.
Biography by: Nobel Lectures, Literature 1968-1980.
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Copyright © 2003-2008 Gunnar Bengtsson, Poetry Connection. All Rights Reserved.
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