Neruda, Pablo

(1904–1973)

   Chilean poet and political activist. One of the major poets in any language of the 20th century, he was born into a working-class family—his father was a train conductor-in Parral, in the rural center of Chile, as Neftalí Ricardo Reyes Basoalto. He spent his childhood in southern Chile, in Temuco, amid railroad workers and miners, an experience he would movingly recount in his memoirs, Confieso que he vivido—published posthumously in 1974—and which would fuel his political activism. In Temuco he also established a lifelong friendship with his teacher Gabriela Mistral (nee Lucila Godoy Alcayaga, a poet and the winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1945).

   While still in his teens, Neruda was awarded a government scholarship to study French in Santiago, Chile, with the object of becoming a provincial teacher. Instead, the publication of his second book of poetry, Veinte poemas de amor y una canción desesperada (1924, translated as Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair in 1969) anointed him one of Latin America’s most famous young poets. He was appointed to the Chilean consular service and served in several Asian capitals from 1927 to 1932. The neoromanticism of his early poetry was abandoned in favor of surrealist verse of startling imagery and political content. To this period correspond two volumes of Residencia en la tierra (1933 and 1935). In 1934 he arrived in Spain as Chilean consul, first in Barcelona and then in Madrid. In Spain he was hailed as one of the most important voices of poetry in Spanish by the most important voices of the Generación del 27, led by Federico García Lorca. With the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War (1936–1939), Neruda identified with the cause of the Spanish Republic. With the publication of España en mi corazón (1937), the earlier hermetic verse of his surrealist stage was abandoned in favor of a direct language that identified itself with the politically dispossessed. Neruda abandoned the diplomatic service in 1944, and in 1945 joined the Partido Comunista de Chile (PC, Communist Party of Chile). He served in the Chilean Senate from 1945 to 1948. In 1948 the Communist Party was outlawed in Chile, and Neruda went into exile, first in the Soviet Union, then in Europe and Mexico. During this period he published his ambitious—and politically controversial—Canto general (1950, translated as Canto General in 1991). In a monumental style and with a sonorous voice, Neruda portrayed the history and geography of Latin America in an epic mosaic that extends for a thousand pages and 15 cantos. The publication of Odas elementales (1954, translated as Elementary Odes in 1961) and Nuevas odas elementales (1955) marked yet another stage in the literary trajectory of the poet. Written in direct, lyrical language—bereft of political overtones—the poems hailed the simplicity of such everyday objects as an onion, a dictionary, a tomato, and a pair of socks. Published in the columns of a daily in order to reach a wider readership, the Odas elementales won another set of admirers for the poet who was already hailed as “the poet of America.”

   In 1952, the ban on the Communist Party having ended, Neruda returned to his native Chile. In this final stage of his career, he returned to the love poetry of his youth and adopted an intimate, introspective voice that sometimes gently mocked his public persona. The period saw the publication of Estravagario (1958); the love poetry of Los versos del capitán (1952) and Cien sonetos de amor (1959); and the five volumes of Memorial de Isla Negra (1964), a melancholy return to the places, travels, and political commitment of his youth.

   In 1970 Neruda was the Communist Party’s candidate for president during the Unidad Popular campaign. The resulting election saw the triumph of Salvador Allende Gossens as president of Chile. Neruda was appointed ambassador to France from 1970 to 1972. In 1971 he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature, the capstone to a distinguished career that saw him receive, among other honors, Chile’s National Literature Prize in 1945 and the Stalin Prize for Peace in 1953. In 1973, just a week after the military coup that ended the Allende Gossens presidency, Neruda died at his house in Isla Negra, Chile.