Pablo Neruda (Ricardo Eliecer Neftalí Reyes Basoalto) was born on July 12, 1904, in Parral, Chile, but lived his childhood and adolescence in Temuco. He then moved to Santiago to study French at the University of Chile. In 1923 he published his first book of poetry — twilight.
The author, who died on September 23, 1973, in Santiago do Chile, was a diplomat, visited several countries and wrote poems characterized by sentimentality, socio-political criticism and thematic of everyday life. Thus, Neruda became one of the most read and translated Spanish-language poets in the world.
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Biography of Pablo Neruda
Pablo Neruda (Ricardo Eliecer Neftalí Reyes Basoalto) was born on July 12, 1904, in Parral, Chile.. When he was just two months old, he lost his mother. So, two years later, his father moved to Temuco and remarried. In that city, from 1910 to 1920, Neruda studied at the Liceu de Homens.
His first publication was the article “Enthusiasm and perseverance”
, signed as Neftalí Reyes, in 1917, in the newspaper La Manana. From then on, started to publish poetry in periodicals like Run-Vuela and southern jungle. In 1919, he took third place in Maule's floral games, with the poem “Ideal night time”.He started to sign his poems under the pseudonym of Pablo Neruda from 1920. As early as 1921, he moved to Santiago, where he joined the Pedagogical Institute of the University of Chile to study French. That same year, he took first place in the contest of the Federation of Students of Chile, with his poem “A song of the party”.
While studying, he continued to publish in journals such as clarity, Los Tiempos and Dionysians. In 1923, he published his first book of poetry: twilight. Two years later, he became director of the magazine Horse of Bastos, in addition to writing for other periodicals.
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In the year 1927, Pablo Neruda traveled to the Europe and met Portugal, Spain and France. In Yangon, Burma, where he served as consul, he had a loving relationship with a woman named Josie Bliss, which lasted until the following year. In 1930, when he was consul in Batavia, he married María Antonieta Hagenaar Vogelzang.
He returned to Chile in 1932. The following year, he went to Buenos Aires, in Argentina, and continued to carry out his work as consul. As early as 1934, he was appointed consul in Spain, where he met Delia del Carril (1884-1989). With the beginning of Spanish Civil War, in 1936, Neruda went to France, and returned to Chile the following year.
In 1939, the poet resumed his work as a diplomat and returned to live in Paris, where he worked on behalf of Spanish refugees. In 1940, he left for Mexico City as consul general. Five years later, in 1945, Neruda he was elected senator in Chile, won the National Prize for Literature, and joined the Communist Party.
He was decorated by the Mexican government, in 1946, with the Order of the Aztec Eagle. Two years later, due to the political persecution carried out by Chilean President Gabriel González Videla (1898-1980), his arrest was decreed. Despite this, the poet remained in Chile, but hidden. Until, in 1949, he he managed to flee the country.
From then on, he traveled to several countries, where he participated in political, artistic and literary events. In 1950 he received the International Peace Prize. When he was living in Italy in 1952, his arrest warrant in Chile was revoked, and so the poet returned to his homeland.
Next year, received the Stalin Peace Prize. In 1955, he separated from Delia de Carril and moved in with his new partner, Matilde Urrutia (1912-1985). That same year, he founded the magazine Chile gaceta. Two years later, became president of the Society of Writers of Chile.
By this time, he was one of the most read, translated, and celebrated Spanish-language poets in the world. Thus, in 1961, he received the honorary title of corresponding member of the Institute of Romance Languages at Yale University in the United States. In 1962, he was named an honorary academic member of the Faculty of Philosophy and Education at the University of Chile.
His travels to other countries were constant, but the poet always returned to his native country. In 1965, received the title of doctor honoris causa by Oxford University. The following year, he received the Peruvian decoration Sol do Peru, in addition to the Atenea Prize, from the University of Concepción, and, in 1967, the International Literary Prize from Viareggio, Italy.
As early as 1968, he received the Joliot Curie medal and became an honorary member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters. The following year, he was named an honorary member of the Chilean Language Academy and received the title of doctor honoris causa by the Pontifical Catholic University of Chile, in addition to the Silver Medal of the Chilean Senate.
In 1971, Neruda became Chile's ambassador to France and won the Nobel Prize of Literature. As early as 1972, he was appointed a member of the Unesco Advisory Board. The following year, he resigned from his post at the embassy. He died on September 23, 1973, in Santiago, Chile, days after the military coup that implemented the dictatorship in the country.
See too: Gabriel García Márquez – Nobel Prize-winning Colombian author in Literature
Characteristics of the work of Pablo Neruda
Pablo Neruda was part of 1920s generation of Chilean literature. Therefore, and due to the author's peculiarities, his works have the following characteristics:
Insight
nostalgia
Melancholy
Eroticism
sociopolitical criticism
love theme
everyday elements
Valorization of the Latin American identity
Works by Pablo Neruda
![Cover of the book “Antologia poética”, by Pablo Neruda, published by the publisher José Olympio.[1]](/f/c25ee951ad5525fb1a20873ffccc2529.jpeg)
twilight (1923)
Twenty love poems and one desperate song (1924)
Infinite man's attempt (1926)
the inhabitant and his hope (1926)
residence on earth (1933)
Spain in the heart: an hymn to the glories of the people at war (1937)
third residence (1947)
general corner (1950)
the captain's verses (1952)
All the love (1953)
elemental odes (1954)
the grapes and the wind (1954)
new elemental odes (1955)
third book of odes (1957)
Straggler (1958)
a hundred love sonnets (1959)
Navigations and returns (1959)
the stones of chile (1960)
ceremonial corners (1961)
Black Island Memorial (1964)
bird art (1966)
Joaquín Murieta's Glow and Death (1967)
the barcarola (1967)
the hands of the day (1968)
End of the world (1969)
Seaquake (1970)
the lit sword (1970)
Stockholm speech (1972)
Incitement to Nixonicide and Praise of the Chilean Revolution (1973)
book of questions (1974)
Winter Garden (1974)
I confess that I lived (1974)
to be born i was born (1977)
Poems by Pablo Neruda
The poem "Amazons" is part of the work general corner|1|, one of the best known books by Pablo Neruda due to its political content, since was written in praise of the America. This poem is composed of free verses and talks about the Amazon river, characterized as "capital of the syllables of water", "patriarchal father" and "secret eternity of fertilizations":
Amazons,
capital of the syllables of water,
father patriarch are you
the secret eternity
of fertilizations,
The rivers fall like birds, they cover you
the fire-colored pistils,
the great dead trunks fill you with perfume,
the moon cannot watch or measure you.
you are loaded with green sperm
like bridal tree, you are silver
for the wild spring,
you are reddish with wood,
blue among the moon of stones,
dressed in rusty steam,
slow as a planet path.
Already in "I remember the sea", also a member of general corner, O I lyric wants to know if the Chilean people has gone overboard. From there, apparently away from the Chilean coast, the poetic voice, in a nostalgic tone, speaks of his affective relationship with the Chilean sea:
Chilean, have you been going overboard in this time?
Go in my name, wet your hands and lift them up
and I from other lands will love these drops
that fall from the infinite water on your face.
I know, I lived all my coast,
the thick north sea, from the moors, to
the stormy weight of the foam on the islands.
I remember the sea, the cracked and iron coasts
from Coquimbo, the towering waters of Tralca,
the lonely southern waves that created me.
I remember in Puerto Montt and on the islands, at night,
when returning by the beach, the waiting vessel,
and our feet left in their marks the fire,
the mysterious flames of a phosphorescent god.
Each step was a match stream.
We were writing the earth with stars.
And in the sea, the boat shook
a branch of marine fire, of fireflies,
an innumerable wave of awakening eyes
once and they went back to sleep in its abyss.
Read too: 5 poems by Paulo Leminski
Phrases by Pablo Neruda
Next, we are going to read some sentences by Pablo Neruda, taken from his book general corner. Therefore, we transform their verses into prose, in order to form these sentences:
"In fertility, time grew."
"Like dazzling pheasants, the priests descended from the Aztec stairs."
"Everything is silence of water and wind."
"Being like corn thrashes in the inexhaustible granary of lost deeds."
"The mighty death has invited me many times."
"No bread, no stone, no silence, alone, I rolled over dying of my own death."
"Today the empty air no longer cries."
"The dead realm still lives."
"I see only night and night under the starry lands."
Note
|1| Translation by Paulo Mendes Campos.
Image credit
[1] Editorial Record (reproduction)
by Warley Souza
Literature teacher
