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.
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| Pablo Neruda |
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.
Early Life and Education
Pablo Neruda was born in the tiny
village of Parral, Chile, on July 12, 1904, under the name Ricardo Eliécer
Neftalí Reyes Basoalto. His father, José Reyes Morales, was a railway worker,
and his mother, Rosa Basoalto, was a teacher. Rosa died of tuberculosis on
September 14, 1904, when Neruda was just a couple of months old.
In 1906, Neruda’s father remarried
Trinidad Candia Malverde and settled down in a small house in Temuco, Chile,
with Neruda and his illegitimate older half-brother Rodolfo. José had another
affair that resulted in the birth of Neruda’s beloved half-sister, Laurita,
whom José and Trinidad raised. Neruda also loved his stepmother dearly.
Neruda entered the Boys’ Lyceum in
Temuco in 1910. As a young boy, he was very skinny and terrible at sports, so
he often went for walks and read Jules Verne. In the summers, the family would
head to Puerto Saavedra on the cooler coast, where he developed a love for the
ocean. The library in Puerto Saavedra was run by the liberal poet Augusto
Winter, who introduced Neruda to Ibsen, Cervantes, and Baudelaire before he
turned ten.
In 1969, the Communist Party
nominated him as a candidate for President of the Republic. He himself withdrew
his candidacy in favor of his friend, the socialist doctor Salvador Allende,
who came to power in 1970. Neruda was then appointed ambassador to France. He
is in Paris, exercising that position, when he receives the news of the
awarding of the Nobel Prize for Literature, in 1971.
On September 11, 1973, the government
of President Allende was overthrown. Neruda, seriously ill, is transferred from
his home on the coast, in Isla Negra, to a clinic in Santiago, where he dies on
September 23. He is buried in the mausoleum provided by a family, from where he
is later transferred to a modest niche in the General Cemetery of Santiago.
Only after the recovery of democracy, in December 1992, his last will was
fulfilled when, with great honors, he was buried in Isla Negra, where he rested
next to Matilde Urrutia.
Neruda’s work, which includes 45
books, plus various collections and anthologies, has been translated into more
than 35 languages, is known in all countries of the world, and has been studied
at the main universities and literary research centers. Its popularity and
validity are permanent and its readers number in the millions throughout the
world.
