Pablo Neruda (1904-1973), whose real name is Neftalí Ricardo Reyes
Basoalto, was born on 12 July, 1904, in the town of Parral in Chile.
His father was a railway employee and his mother, who died shortly after
his birth, a teacher. Some years later his father, who had then moved
to the town of Temuco, remarried doña Trinidad Candia Malverde. The poet
spent his childhood and youth in Temuco, where he also got to know
Gabriela Mistral, head of the girls' secondary school, who took a liking
to him. At the early age of thirteen he began to contribute some
articles to the daily "La Mañana", among them, Entusiasmo y
Perseverancia - his first publication - and his first poem. In 1920, he
became a contributor to the literary journal "Selva Austral" under the
pen name of Pablo Neruda, which he adopted in memory of the Czechoslovak
poet Jan Neruda (1834-1891). Some of the poems Neruda wrote at that
time are to be found in his first published book: Crepusculario (1923).
The following year saw the publication of Veinte poemas de amor y una
cancion desesperada, one of his best-known and most translated works.
Alongside his literary activities, Neruda studied French and pedagogy at
the University of Chile in Santiago.
Between 1927 and 1935, the government put him in charge of a number
of honorary consulships, which took him to Burma, Ceylon, Java,
Singapore, Buenos Aires, Barcelona, and Madrid. His poetic production
during that difficult period included, among other works, the collection
of esoteric surrealistic poems, Residencia en la tierra (1933), which
marked his literary breakthrough.
The Spanish Civil War and the murder of García Lorca, whom Neruda
knew, affected him strongly and made him join the Republican movement,
first in Spain, and later in France, where he started working on his
collection of poems España en el Corazón (1937). The same year he
returned to his native country, to which he had been recalled, and his
poetry during the following period was characterised by an orientation
towards political and social matters. España en el Corazón had a great
impact by virtue of its being printed in the middle of the front during
the civil war.
In 1939, Neruda was appointed consul for the Spanish emigration,
residing in Paris, and, shortly afterwards, Consul General in Mexico,
where he rewrote his Canto General de Chile, transforming it into an
epic poem about the whole South American continent, its nature, its
people and its historical destiny. This work, entitled Canto General,
was published in Mexico 1950, and also underground in Chile. It consists
of approximately 250 poems brought together into fifteen literary
cycles and constitutes the central part of Neruda's production. Shortly
after its publication, Canto General was translated into some ten
languages. Nearly all these poems were created in a difficult situation,
when Neruda was living abroad.
In 1943, Neruda returned to Chile, and in 1945 he was elected
senator of the Republic, also joining the Communist Party of Chile. Due
to his protests against President González Videla's repressive policy
against striking miners in 1947, he had to live underground in his own
country for two years until he managed to leave in 1949. After living in
different European countries he returned home in 1952. A great deal of
what he published during that period bears the stamp of his political
activities; one example is Las Uvas y el Viento (1954), which can be
regarded as the diary of Neruda's exile. In Odas elementales (1954-
1959) his message is expanded into a more extensive description of the
world, where the objects of the hymns - things, events and relations -
are duly presented in alphabetic form.
Neruda's production is exceptionally extensive. For example, his
Obras Completas, constantly republished, comprised 459 pages in 1951; in
1962 the number of pages was 1,925, and in 1968 it amounted to 3,237,
in two volumes. Among his works of the last few years can be mentioned
Cien sonetos de amor (1959), which includes poems dedicated to his wife
Matilde Urrutia, Memorial de Isla Negra, a poetic work of an
autobiographic character in five volumes, published on the occasion of
his sixtieth birthday, Arte de pajáros (1966), La Barcarola (1967), the
play Fulgor y muerte de Joaquín Murieta (1967), Las manos del día
(1968), Fin del mundo (1969), Las piedras del cielo (1970), and La
espada encendida.
Always by Pablo Neruda
I am not jealous
of what came before me.
Come with a man
on your shoulders,
come with a hundred men in your hair,
come with a thousand men between your breasts and your feet,
come like a river
full of drowned men
which flows down to the wild sea,
to the eternal surf, to Time!
Bring them all
to where I am waiting for you;
we shall always be alone,
we shall always be you and I
alone on earth
to start our life!
