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Poets'
A-Z » Pablo Neruda
Pablo Neruda (1904-1973) was born Neftalí Ricardo
Reyes Basoalto in 1904, in Parral, Chile. His Twenty Poems
of Love and a Song of Despair (1924) are, as the translator
Alastair Reid describes them, ‘a kind of touchstone
for first love, learned by heart everywhere in the Spanish-speaking
world’. After studying at the University of Chile, Neruda
was appointed as a diplomat and his postings included Burma
and India, Buenos Aires, Barcelona and Mexico. While he was
in Barcelona the Civil War broke out; his experiences and
the death of his friend García Lorca made a deep impact
on his politics and his poetry.
On his return to Chile he was elected to the Chilean Senate,
but was accused of sedition and forced into hiding and then
exile in 1949. He wrote about public and political subjects,
as in his protest against the destruction of Incan civilization,
The Heights of Macchu Picchu, and the Canto General
de Chile. Neruda returned to Chile in 1953 and in his
last twenty years explored more personal and reflective themes,
in the volumes Odas elementales (1954), Extravagaria
(1958) and the autobiographical Memorial de Isla Negra
(1964). He was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1971.
  
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