Pablo Neruda:
Biography
Pablo
Neruda (1904-1973) was perhaps the greatest Spanish poet of the 20th century. The
poet known as Pablo Neruda was named Neftalí Ricardo
Reyes Basoalto at his birth in 1904. He signed his
work "Pablo Neruda" (although he did not legally adopt that name
until 1946) because his father, a railroad worker, disapproved of the son's
poetic interests.
Neruda
grew up in southern Chile
and in 1921 moved to Santiago
and enrolled in college with the intention of preparing himself for a career as
an instructor of French. He left soon after, however, in order to devote more
time to poetry, which had already become his central interest. His first book, Crepusculario (Twilight Book), was published in 1923, and
the following year he published Veinte poemas de amor y una canción desesperada
(Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair), a book of intensely romantic and
erotic poems. This became his most popular work, more than a million and a half
copies of which were published in Spanish alone before his death.
Between
1927 and 1935 Neruda was a Chilean diplomat in, successively, Burma, Ceylon,
Java, Singapore,
Argentina, and Spain. In 1930
he married for the first time, but the marriage was unhappy, and a few years
later he left his wife to live with Delia del Carril, with whom he stayed until 1955. In the late 1920s
and early 1930s he completed the first two volumes of Residencia
en la tierra (Residence on Earth) (1933, 1935),
universally considered the finest surrealist poetry in Spanish. He claimed,
however, that when he wrote these works he knew nothing of surrealism; he had
simply responded to the same currents in the air which led to the formation of
the surrealist movement elsewhere.
Neruda's
horror at the civil and military barbarities (including the assassination of
his friend the poet Federico García Lorca) which
accompanied Franco's invasion of Spain transformed him into a deeply
committed political poet and led to his eventual alignment with the Communist
Party. The third volume of Residencia en la tierra (1947) and his subsequent poetry, particularly Canto
general (General Song, 1950), are marked by this commitment. In place of the
introspection and surrealist complexities of the first two volumes of Residencia, he produced a poetry that is open and direct,
written not for academics and other sophisticated readers of poetry but rather,
as Neruda repeatedly emphasized, workers and the politically oppressed.
Neruda
also insisted that he was specifically a Latin American poet. Canto General,
which he considered his principal work, celebrates his Latin American heritage.
That volume includes "Alturas de Macchu
Picchu" ("The Heights of Macchu
Picchu"), possibly Neruda's greatest poem.
Canto
General was written largely in the late 1940s while Neruda was in hiding in Chile to avoid
arrest for statements he had made against the government. He escaped from Chile in 1949
and did not return until 1952 when a new regime came to power. He married Matilde Urrutia three years later
and spent most of the rest of his life with her at his homes in Santiago and at Isla Negra on the Chilean coast. Isla Negra
provided him with the subject or inspiration for many later poems, including
his verse autobiography, Memorial de Isla Negra
(Black Island Memorial, 1964). During these years he also wrote his Odas Elementales (Elemental Odes,
1954-1957), in which he developed a clear, simple, and at times humorous poetic
style.
Neruda
was awarded the International Peace Prize in 1950, the Stalin Peace Prize in
1953, a Doctorate in Literature from Oxford
in 1965, and the Nobel Prize in 1971. In 1969 he was nominated by the Chilean
Communist Party for president, but he stepped aside in favor
of his friend Salvador Allende. When Allende was murdered four years later Neruda was very sick
from cancer, but that event undoubtedly hastened his own death a few days
later. At his death, he left 34 books of poems, essays, and drama in print as
well as eight more volumes of poetry and a memoir which he had hoped to publish
on his 70th birthday.
Neruda
was clearly a prolific writer. His major works include Veinte
poemas de amor y una canción desesperada,
the three volumes of Residencia en la tierra, Canto general, and Odas elementales, but there are few Neruda books which do not
contain works or passages of a high order.
Neruda
cannot be categorized by a single poetic style. No sooner had he mastered one
poetic form or mood than he moved to another. The sensual, erotic poems of Veinte poemas are quite distant
from the hermetic, surrealist poems of Residencia,
and the political, epical Canto general is entirely unlike the conversational,
colloquial, occasionally whimsical Odas elementales. His poems range from painfully intense
introspection to fiery political rhetoric, yet a clarity
of poetic vision and emotional conviction is found throughout his work. There
have been few poets as prolific as Neruda and few who have sought after, and
achieved, such high and diverse standards of excellence. The least that can be
said of Neruda is that he was the greatest Spanish poet of the century.
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