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Pablo Neruda [1904-1973] CHL
Ranked #6 in the top 380 poets
Votes 70%: 9234 up, 4009 down

Poet-diplomat. He wrote in a variety of styles, including surrealist poems, historical epics, overtly political manifestos, a prose autobiography, and passionate love poems.

Pablo Neruda  was born Neftali Ricardo Reyes Basoalto, but adopted his pen name legally in 1946. Under that name he has become one one of the most famous poets of all time. From the 1940s on, his works reflected the political struggle of the left and the socio-historical developments in South America. He was also very famous for his love poems.  Neruda`s Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair (1924) have sold over a million copies since it first appeared.Ricardo Reyes Basoalto was born in Parral, a small town in central Chile. His father, don José del Carmen Reyes Morales, was a poor railway worker and his mother, Rosa Basoalto de Reyes, was a schoolteacher who died of tuberculosis when Neruda was an infant. Don José Carmen moved with his sons in 1906 to Temuco, and married Trinidad Candia Marvedre. 

Neruda started to write poetry when he was ten years old. At the age of twelve, he met the Chilean poet Gabriela Mistral, who encouraged his literary efforts. Neruda`s first literary work, an article, appeared in 1917 in the magazine La Manana. It was followed by the poem,       Misojos, which appeared in 1918 in Corre-Vuela. In 1920 he published poems in the magazine, Selva Austral, using the pen name Pablo Neruda to avoid conflict with his family, who disapproved his literary ambitions. From 1921 he studied French at the Instituto Pedagógico in Santiago. In 1924 Neruda gained international fame as an writer with VEINTE POEMAS DE AMOR Y UNA CANCÍON, which is his most widely read work.

	At the age of only 23 Neruda was appointed by the Chilean government as consul to Burma (now Myanmar). He held diplomatic posts in various East Asian and European Countries, befriending among others, the Spanish poet Federico García Lorca. Neruda continued to write for several literary and other magazines, among them La Nación, El Sol, and Revista de Occidente. He also started to edit in 1935 a literary magazine, Caballo Verde para la Poesía.

	After Neruda ended his affair with the possessive and violently jealous Josie Bliss, he married María Antonieta Hagenaar  in 1930, a Dutch woman who couldn`t speak Spanish,  they separated in 1936. At that time Neruda lived in Paris, where he published with Nancy Cunard, the journal Los Poetas del Mundo Defiende al Pueblo Español. Nancy Cunard was the sole inheritor of the famous Cunard shipping company.  She later followed Neruda to Chile. In the 1930s and 1940s Neruda lived with the Argentine painter Delia del Carril, who encouraged Neruda to participate in politics. Neruda and Delia del Carril married in 1943, but the marriage was not recognized in Chile; they separated in 1955. Neruda married again in 1966 to the Chilean singer, Matilde Urrutia. She was the inspiration of much of Neruda`s later poetry, among others One Hundred Love Sonnets (1960).

	Neruda`s, Residence on Earth (1933), was a visionary work, emerging from the birth of fascism. In 1935-36 he was in Spain but he resigned from his post because he sided with the Spanish Republicans. After the leftist candidate don Pedro Aguirre Cerda won the presidential election, Neruda again was appointed consul, this time to Paris, where he helped Spanish refugees by re-settling them in Chile.

	In 1942 Neruda visited Cuba and read for the first time his poem, Canto de amor para Stalingrado, which praised the Red Army fighting in Stalingrad. His daughter, Malva Marina, died in the same year in Europe. Neruda joined the Communist Party, and in 1945 he was elected to the Chilean Senate. He attacked President González Videla in print and when the government was taken by right-wing extremists, he fled to Mexico. He traveled to the Soviet Union, where he was warmly received, and to other Eastern European countries. Neruda was especially impressed by the vastness of Russia: its birch forests, and rivers. He met Ilya Ehrenburg, whose home was full of works by Picasso; and the Turkish poet, Nazim Hikmet, who lived in exile in Moscow. The Soviet Union was for Neruda a country where libraries, universities, and theaters were open for all. He referred to dogmatic views in the Soviet art, but optimistically believed that the views had been condemned. Neruda`s colleagues also read him Boris Pasternak`s poems, but they did not forget to mention that Pasternak was considered as a political reactionary.

	In exile Neruda produced CANTO GENERAL (1950), a monumental work of 340 poems. In this work Neruda examined Latin American history from a Marxist point of view, and showed his deep knowledge about the history, geography and politics of the continent. The central theme is the struggle for social justice. Canto general includes Neruda`s famous poem Alturas de Macchu Picchu, which was born after he visited the Incan ruins of Macchu Picchu in 1943. In it Neruda aspires to become the voice of the dead people who once lived in the city.

	While in exile, Neruda traveled in Italy, where he lived for a while. After the victory of the anti-Videla forces and the order to arrest leftist was rescinded, Neruda returned to Chile. In 1953 Neruda was awarded the Stalin Prize. He remained faithful to "el partido" when other intellectual had rejected Moscow`s leash. However, Neruda`s faith was deeply shaken in 1956 by Khrushchev`s revelation at the Twentieth Party Congress of the crimes committed during the Stalin regime.His collection EXTRAVAGARIO (1958) reflects this change in his works. In it Neruda turned to his youth. He presents the reader with his daily life and examines critically his Marxist beliefs. During a visit to Buenos Aires in 1957 Neruda was arrested and spent a restless night in jail. Just before he was released, a policeman gave him a poem, devoted to the famous author.

	Establishing a permanent home on the Isla Negra, Neruda continued to travel extensively, visiting Cuba in 1960 and the United States in 1966. When Salvador Allende was elected president, he appointed Neruda as Chile`s ambassador to France (1970-72). Neruda died of leukemia in Santiago on 23 September in 1973. His death was probably accelerated by the murder of Allende and tragedies caused by Pinochet coup. After Neruda`s death his homes in Valparaiso and Santioago were robbed.

During his long literary career, Neruda produced more than forty volumes of poetry, translations, and verse drama.

Thanks to kirjasto.sci.fi for the extended biography.

Atheism, Modernism, National, Sonnet, Surrealism

YearsCountryPoetInteraction
1889-1957
CHL
Gabriela Mistral
→ influenced Pablo Neruda
1893-1930
RUS
Vladimir Mayakovsky
→ influenced Pablo Neruda
1898-1936
SPA
Federico Garcia Lorca
→ influenced Pablo Neruda
1902-1963
TUR
Nazim Hikmet
→ compared Pablo Neruda
1911-2004
POL
Czeslaw Milosz
← (The Man Who Ran Away) disliked by Pablo Neruda


WorkLangRating
If You Forget Me
eng
281
Tonight I Can Write (The Saddest Lines)
eng
159
Sonnet XVII: I do not love you as if you were brine-rose, topaz
eng
129
Love
eng
108
Here I Love You
eng
72
Sonnet LXVI: I Do Not Love You Except Because I Love You
eng
65
Soneto XVII
spa
38
I Remember You As You Were
eng
37
Your Laughter
eng
35
Tie Your Heart At Night To Mine, Love,
eng
31
The Dead Woman
eng
30
A Dog Has Died
eng
22
Puedo Escribir
spa
19
Your Feet
eng
17
Ode To A Naked Beauty
eng
15
Poetry
eng
14
Enigmas
eng
12
Song Of Despair
eng
12
Cat`s Dream
eng
9
La Muerta
spa
9
The Queen
eng
9
Lovely One
eng
8
Walking Around
eng
8
Bird
eng
7
Death Alone
eng
7
Ode To The Artichoke
eng
7
Sonnet XI
eng
7
The Light Wraps You
eng
7
Clenched Soul
eng
6
The Old Women Of The Ocean
eng
6
Your Hands
eng
6
Gautama Christ
eng
5
Gentleman Alone
eng
5
Ode To The Book
eng
5
Tell Me, Is The Rose Naked?
eng
5
The Question
eng
5
The Song Of Despair
eng
5
We Are Many
eng
5
‘Perhaps not to be is to be without your being.’
eng
5
Absence
eng
4
Ode To Bird Watching
eng
4
Sonnet LXXXI: Rest with your dream inside my dream
eng
4
The Fickle One
eng
4
Triangles
eng
4
Algunas Bestias
spa
3
Always
eng
3
I Explain A Few Things
eng
3
In My Sky At Twilight
eng
3
It’s good to feel you are close to me
eng
3
Ode To Sadness
eng
3
Sonnet XLII: I Hunt For A Sign Of You
eng
3
The Dictators
eng
3
The Night In Isla Negra
eng
3
Walking Around (Original Spanish)
eng
3
A Lemon
eng
2
Castro Alves From Brazil
eng
2
Enigma with Flower
eng
2
Leaning Into The Afternoons
eng
2
Love, We`re Going Home Now
eng
2
Nothing But Death
eng
2
Oda al Tomate
spa
2
Ode To Broken Things
eng
2
Ode To Maize
eng
2
So that you will hear me
eng
2
Sonnet VIII: If your eyes were not the color of the moon
eng
2
Sonnet XXVII: Naked You Are As Simple as one of your Hands
eng
2
The Eighth of September
eng
2
The Tree Is Here, Still, In Pure Stone
eng
2
The White Mans Burden
eng
2
Waltz
eng
2
Water
eng
2
What Spain Was Like
eng
2
Brown And Agile Child
eng
1
Drunk As Drunk On Turpentine
eng
1
Entrance Of The Rivers
eng
1
Fable of the Mermaid and the Drunks
eng
1
Finale
eng
1
Fleas Interest Me So Much
eng
1
I like you calm, as if you were absent
eng
1
In You The Earth
eng
1
La Reina (and translation)
eng
1
Leave Me A Place Underground
eng
1
LXXXIV From: ‘Cien sonetos de amor’
eng
1
Ode To Wine
eng
1
Sonnet IX: There where the waves shatter
eng
1
Sonnet LXXIII: Maybe you`ll remember
eng
1
Sonnet XCV:Who ever desired each other as we do
eng
1
Sonnet XXXIV
eng
1
The Fear
eng
1
The House of Odes
eng
1
The People
eng
1
The United Fruit Co.
eng
1
The Weary One
eng
1
‘In the wave-strike over unquiet stones’
eng
1
From The Heights Of Maccho Picchu
eng
0
Lone Gentleman
eng
0
Lost In The Forest
eng
0
Luminous mind, bright devil
eng
0
Magellanic Penguin
eng
0
Ode To A Large Tuna In The Market
eng
0
Ode to Clothes
eng
0
Ode to My Socks
eng
0
Ode to Tomatoes
eng
0
Poesia
spa
0
Poet`s Obligation
eng
0
Poor Creatures
eng
0
Potter
eng
0
Some Beasts
eng
0
Sonata
eng
0
Sonnet XIII:The light that rises from your feet to your hair
eng
0
The Insect
eng
0
The Men
eng
0
The Portrait In The Rock
eng
0
The Wide Ocean
eng
0
Tower Of Light
eng
0
‘Carnal apple, Woman filled, burning moon,’
eng
0
‘March days return with their covert light’
eng
0

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