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Pablo Neruda

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Pablo Neruda

Pablo Neruda (; July 12, 1904 - September 23, 1973) was the pen name and, later, legal name of the Chilean poet-diplomat and politician Neftali Ricardo Reyes Basoalto. He chose his pen name after the Czech poet Jan Neruda. In 1971 Neruda won the Nobel Prize for Literature.

Neruda became known as a poet while still a teenager. He wrote in a variety of styles including surrealist poems, historical epics, overtly political manifestos, a prose autobiography, and erotically-charged love poems such as the ones in his 1924 collection Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair. He often wrote in green ink, which was his personal symbol for desire and hope.

The Colombian novelist Gabriel García Márquez once called him "the greatest poet of the 20th century in any language." Harold Bloom included Neruda as one of the 26 writers central to the Western tradition in his book The Western Canon.

Neruda was hospitalised with cancer at the time of the Chilean coup d'état led by Augusto Pinochet. On 23 September 1973, Neruda died of prostate cancer in his house in 'Isla Negra'. Neruda's death reverberated around the world. Pinochet, backed by elements of the armed forces loyal to him in the military, denied permission to make Neruda's funeral a public event. However, thousands of grieving Chileans disobeyed the curfew and crowded the streets.

Monday Feb 20, 2023

Pablo Neruda: Books that help

The books that help you most are those which make you think that most. The hardest way of learning is that of easy reading; but a great book that comes from a great thinker is a ship of thought, deep freighted with truth and beauty.