Pablo Neruda


Pablo Neruda (July 12, 1904 – September 23, 1973) was the pen name and, later, legal name of the Chilean Neftali Ricardo Reyes Basoalto. He is thought to have named himself "Neruda" after the Czech poet Jan Neruda. The author´s intention in publishing under a pseudonym was to avoid his father's disapproval of his poetry. This famous poet was also a diplomatic and politician admired forthe biggest poets in literature.

Neftalí Ricardo Reyes Basoalto was born on July 12, 1904, in Parral, Chile, to José del Carmen Reyes Morales, a railway employee, and Rosa Basoalto, a school teacher who died two months after he was born. Neruda and his father soon moved to Temuco, where his father married Trinidad Candia Marverde. On 1904, Neruda was christened "Neftalí", his late mother'smiddle name. His father opposed his son's interest in writing and literature, but Neruda received encouragement from others, including the future Nobel Prize winner Gabriela Mistral, who headed the local girls' school.

On July 18, 1917, at the age of thirteen, he published his first work, an essay entitled Entusiasmo y perseverancia (Enthusiasm and Perseverance) in the local dailynewspaper, La Mañana, signed Neftalí Reyes. From 1918 to mid-1920 he published numerous poems, such as "Mis ojos" ("My eyes"), and essays in local magazines as Neftalí Reyes. By mid-1920, when he adopted the pseudonym Pablo Neruda, he was a published author of poetry, prose, and journalism. In 1921, at the age of 16, Neruda moved to SantiagoHYPERLINK "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pablo_Neruda" \l"cite_note-Tarn14-7"  to study French at the Universidad de Chile with the intention of becoming a teacher, but soon he was devoting all his time to poetry. In 1923, his first volume of verse, Crepusculario (Book of Twilights), was published, followed the next year by Veinte poemas de amor y una canción desesperada (Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair), a collection of love poems thatwas controversial for its eroticism, especially considering its author's young age. Both works were critically acclaimed and were translated into many languages. Over the decades, Veinte poemas would sell millions of copies and become Neruda's best-known work, though it did not go to a second edition until 1932.

In 1927, Neruda began his long diplomatic career and he moved frequentlyaround the world. In 1935, the Spanish Civil War began, and Neruda chronicled the atrocities, including the execution of his friend Federico García Lorca, in his España en el corazón (Spain in Our Hearts).Over the next 10 years, Neruda would leave and return to Chile several times. Along the way, he was named Chile's consul to Mexico and won election to the Chilean Senate. He would also begin toattract controversy, first with his praise of Joseph Stalin (in poems such as "Canto a Stalingrado" and "Nuevo canto de amor a Stalingrado") and later for his poetry honoring Fulgencio Batista ("Saludo a Batista") and Fidel Castro. He joined the Communist Party of Chile in 1945, but by 1948 the Communist Party was under siege, and Neruda fled the country with his family. In 1952, the Chileangovernment withdrew its order to seize leftist writers and political figures, and Neruda returned to Chile once again. For the next 21 years, Pablo Neruda continued to write prodigiously rising in the ranks of 20th century poets.
In 1971, Neruda was awarded the Nobel Prize. The following year Neruda was awarded the prestigious Golden Wreath Award at the Struga Poetry Evenings. In 1973 hewas diagnosed with prostate cancer and died of heart failure on the evening of September 23, 1973.


Although Pablo Neruda stirred controversy with his affiliation with the Communist Party and his outspoken support of Joseph Stalin, Fulgencio Batista and Fidel Castro, his poetic mastery was never in doubt; he was once called "the greatest poet of the 20th century in any language."...