Pablo Neruda - July 12, 1904 – September 23, 1973. Nobel Prize for Literature in 1971.
His original name is Neftalí Ricardo Reyes Basoalto. Pablo Neruda is his pen name, he chose this name in honor of the famous Czech poet Jan Neruda. He was a Chilean communist writer and politician and had occupied many diplomatic posts and served as a senator for the Chilean communist party during his lifetime. But he reflects very different persona through his poetry.
Neruda was accomplished in a variety of styles ranging from erotically charged love poems like his collection Twenty Poems of Love and a Song of Despair, surrealist poems, historical epics, and overtly political manifestos.
Neruda always wrote in green ink as it was the color of "esperanza" (hope). It was mentioned on so much occasions, Neruda was influenced by Rabindranath Tagore's work.
No great man can become great without surviving tough times. I told this because I love this story of Neruda - When Conservative Chilean President González Videla outlawed communism in Chile in 1948, a warrant was issued for Neruda's arrest. Friends hid him for months in a house basement in the Chilean port of Valparaíso. Later, Neruda escaped into exile through a mountain pass near Maihue Lake into Argentina. Years later, Neruda was a close collaborator to socialist President Salvador Allende. When Neruda returned to Chile after his Nobel Prize acceptance speech, Allende invited him to read at the Estadio Nacional before 70,000 people.
After going through many of his poems this one became my favorite.
In the wave-strike over unquite stones
In the wave-strike over unquiet stones
the brightness bursts and bears the rose
the brightness bursts and bears the rose
and the ring of water contracts to a cluster
to one drop of azure brine that falls.
to one drop of azure brine that falls.
O magnolia radiance breaking in spume,
magnetic voyager whose death flowers
and returns, eternal, to being and nothingness:
shattered brine, dazzling leap of the ocean.
magnetic voyager whose death flowers
and returns, eternal, to being and nothingness:
shattered brine, dazzling leap of the ocean.
Merged, you and I, my love, seal the silence
while the sea destroys its continual forms,
collapses its turrets of wildness and whiteness,
because in the weft of those unseen garments
of headlong water, and perpetual sand,
we bear the sole, relentless tenderness.
while the sea destroys its continual forms,
collapses its turrets of wildness and whiteness,
because in the weft of those unseen garments
of headlong water, and perpetual sand,
we bear the sole, relentless tenderness.
Also, The Song of Dispair is a spellbound creation. Along with Neruda, Nicolas Guillen and Ernesto Cardenal are Latin America's feathers in hat.
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