On July 12, 1904, Pablo Neruda, one of the most important poets in the history of literature, was born in Chile. It is 111 years since his birth and that is why we readers and writers remember him.
111 years since the birth of Pablo Neruda
It was in Parral Chile where on July 12, 1904 Ricardo Eliécer Neftalí Reyes Basoalto was born what would happen to be popularly known as Pablo Neruda becoming one of the most illustrious poets of the 20th century and of the history of literature in general.
His “stage” name was a tribute to the Czech writer Jan Neruda, and at the same time it served to hide his literary inclinations from his father. The future poet loved the letters and poetry of his childhood in Termuco where as a child he already wrote verses dedicated to nature and especially to the rain, which he continued to write about throughout his career.
The love that Neruda feels for nature is reflected in many of his texts, including those dedicated to love in his adolescence or those with a deeper and more ideological content.
His influence on other contemporary writers and of course his past as a diplomat, political activist, militant and even exiled make him one of the most highly regarded artistic figures of the time. Gabriel Mistral admired him, Lorca considered him his “brother” as well as Rafael Alberti and he was a great friend of Jorge Luis Borges despite the conflicting ideologies of each of them. Being Neruda «anarchist of the left» and Borges «anarchist of the right».
Neruda’s commitment to his time
He lived in Spain during the 1930s as Chilean consul in Madrid. and where he reinforced his commitment to his ideology for freedom. The outbreak of the Civil War and the murder of his «brother» Federico García Lorca at the hands of the Falangists caused him to start writing more committed texts such as his book «Spain in the Heart»later included in the book “Tercera Residencia”, which includes various poems dedicated to revolutionary causes, such as “Canto a Stalingrado”, “New canto a Stalingrado” and “Un canto a Bolívar”.
The convulsive situation after the Spanish Civil War led him to join the communist party in Chile becoming a senator of this. In this period of the mid-40s, he writes his great work of love towards the Latin American continent, entitled “Canto General”, where the poem “Alturas de Machu Pichu” stands out. On May 5, 1948, after a strong speech against the “tyrannical” government of Gabriel González Videla, his arrest was ordered, for which he had to go into exile.
In the year 1952, shortly before returning to his “homeland”, he wrote on the Island of Capri (Italy), “The Captain’s Verses”, anonymously, dedicated to his romance with Matilde Urrutia. After this publication would come the three books of “elementary odes”: to the air, to joy, to love, to sadness, to wine, to popular poets, to the book, to poverty, to hope, to restlessness, to the rain, to the sea; to everything that inspired him, including the communist figure of Lenin.
The decade of the 50’s is quite busy for the writer who in 1957 he is arrested in Buenos Aires (Argentina) by the Aramburu dictatorship as a result of his communist militancy. In 1959 he gave Fidel Castro in Caracas (Venezuela); giving rise to the news agency “Prensa Latina”. Then he would travel to Havana (Cuba) and I would meet Che Guevara. This experience inspired him to write the book “Canción de Gesta”.
In 1971 and coinciding with the fact that he was appointed to France as ambassador, he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature. Two years later, and shortly after the military coup against the government of Salvador Allende, On September 23, 1973, Neruda died. His last legacy was the beautiful autobiography, “I confess that I have lived.”