pablo neruda

pablo neruda

PABLO NERUDA

Pablo Neruda was born on July 12, 1904 in Parral, a city in the Linares Province in the Maule Region, about 400 km south of Santiago.   Neruda’s father was Jose del Carmen Reyes Morales and was a railway employee; his mother, Rosa Basoalto, was a school teacher who died two months after Neruda was born.   Shortly after her death Neruda and his father moved to Temuco, where his father married Trinidad Canidia Marverde, a woman with whom he had previously had a child with about nine years earlier.   Neruda grew up with this child, a boy was named Rodolfo; he also grew up with his half-sister Laura, which was one of his father’s children by another woman.   As Neruda grew older he developed a great interest in literature and writing which his father opposed very much.   Despite that he received encouragement from other, including future Nobel Prize winner Gabriela Mistral, who attended the local girls’ school.   His first published work was an essay he wrote for the local daily newspaper La Manana named Entusiasmo y perseverancia.   By 1920, when he adopted the pseudonym of Pablo Neruda, he was a published author of poetry, rose, and journalism.

In 1921 Pablo moved to Santiago to study French at the Universidad de Chile with the intention of becoming a teacher, but soon Neruda was devoting himself full time to poetry.   In 1923 his first volume of verse called Crepusculario (“Book of Twilights”) was published followed the next year by Veinte poemas de amor y una cancion desesperada (“Twenty Love Poems and a Desperate Song”), which was a collection of love poems that was controversial for its eroticism, especially considering its author’s young age.   Both of these works were critically acclaimed and were translated to many languages.   Veinte poemas became Neruda’s best-known work which sold millions of copies.

After returning to Chile, Neruda was given diplomatic posts in Buenos Aires and the Barcelona, Spain.   He later replaced...