Famous Poem Of Pablo Neruda

[Athina Dollison]

The latest controversy over Neruda, who in 1971 became the second Chilean awarded the Nobel Prize for literature, sprang up in 2018 with the rise of Chile's #MeToo movement against sexual abuse. Activists singled out some of Neruda's verses as sexist and focused new attention on several disturbing episodes from the poet's past.

"I decided to go all the way. I got a strong grip on her wrist. ... The encounter was of a man with a statue," Neruda wrote in his memoir, published in 1974, a year after his death from cancer. "She was right to despise me."

Salvador Young, who buys online books for Chile's National Digital Library, says that for the past several years, he was instructed by his supervisors not to purchase Neruda's books. Otherwise, he says, "Readers would demand to know: 'Why are you promoting a rapist?'"

A message in graffiti reads, "Let's not forget that Neruda with his love poems confesses to us that 'anecdote' of rape with impunity" at one of Pablo Neruda's homes, now a museum, in Isla Negra, Chile, on Aug. 31. The museum is enclosed by a fence where visitors write their names and leave messages and poems. Paz Olivares Droguett for NPR hide caption

Some Chilean universities and high schools are steering clear of Neruda. One high school teacher, who asked to remain anonymous because he was not authorized by his school to speak to NPR, says many of his female students despise Neruda. He now teaches him less than he did a few years ago.

Among them, he says, is "From the Heights of Machu Picchu," which Neruda wrote following an inspirational trip to the ancient Incan mountaintop site. The poem has been put to music by the Chilean group Los Jaivas.

Rejection of the poet by feminists is so strong that in 2018, Chile's Congress scrapped a proposal to rename the country's main international airport after Neruda. Meanwhile, anti-Neruda slogans were spray-painted on several walls during #MeToo marches in Santiago, Chile's capital.

It's easy to misread Neruda's works, warns Kemy Oyarzun, a poet and professor of gender studies at the University of Chile. Yet even she is less enthusiastic about Neruda these days. Paz Olivares Droguett for NPR hide caption

At a #MeToo demonstration in Santiago in August, high school student Laura Brodsky, 18, said her instructors are not teaching Neruda. Referring to the rape confession in his memoir, Brodsky emphasized that she and her fellow students "have no interest in learning about him."

All this is a startling reversal for one of the world's most famous, prolific and bestselling poets, who has often been compared to Walt Whitman. Neruda's masterwork, Canto General (General Song), is an epic history of Latin America, recounted by way of 231 poems.

In a country where poetry had long been composed by and for the well-to-do, Neruda was known as the poet of the people, often writing about the working class and Indigenous groups, as well as Chile's natural wonders.

Neruda eventually returned. But in 1973, Gen. Augusto Pinochet seized power and his right-wing military regime burned Neruda's books while promoting poet Gabriela Mistral, another Nobel Prize winner, who was viewed at the time as apolitical.

Fernando Saez, executive director of the Pablo Neruda Foundation that oversees the late poet's estate, points out that many writers, painters and musicians have had stormy personal lives, and says reproachable behavior should not negate their artistic contributions.

Author Isabel Allende has also defended Neruda's literary legacy. "Like many young feminists in Chile I am disgusted by some aspects of Neruda's life and personality," she told the Guardian in 2018. "Unfortunately, Neruda was a flawed person, as we all are in one way or another, and Canto General is still a masterpiece."

Yet even Oyarzun is less enthusiastic about Neruda these days. She says so much fuss over Neruda for so long has ended up overshadowing the work of female poets in Chile, where many of them remain largely unknown.

A visitor and staff member at the Neruda museum in Isla Negra on Aug. 31. Many of Neruda's collections in the house are nautical-themed, including ships in bottles, seashells and a narwhal tusk. Paz Olivares Droguett for NPR hide caption

This poem begins with the speaker declaring to his beloved that he depends on her laughter more than food and even the air he breathes. He goes on to describe the troubles he has had to face in his life and how the laughter of his beloved has helped him get through the difficult times. Your Laughter is seen as poem regarding an adverse situation and about the one thing which helps one endure it. The laughter is the main focus of the poem and it can be seen as a metaphor for the thing that keeps the speaker going. The poem is rich in metaphors and symbolism.

Pablo Neruda aimed at taking elitism out of poetry and reaching a wider audience through his Elementary Odes, which celebrate the beauty of the unappreciated common things; and his odes did receive immediate and universal praise. In this poem, Neruda receives a pair of woolen socks from Maru Mori, the wife of his friend, the Chilean painter Camilo Mori. He then elevates the status of these socks to such an extent that he is tempted not to wear them. However, despite all his admiration for the socks, he ultimately sticks his feet out and pulls them on. The Elementary Odes of Neruda are among his most acclaimed works and Ode to My Socks is the most famous of his Elementary Odes.

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There is no doubt that the Nobel-prize winner poet Pablo Neruda is one of the most renowned and world-famous Chileans in history, but the eccentricity and vision of this artist goes way beyond poems and politics, reaching its houses and neighborhoods.

Since the poet loved both boats and trains, this house is exactly that: tight wooden corridors with sitting areas and windows along the walls, in addition to tons of collections and ornaments. Nowadays this museum-house is where Pablo Neruda and Matilde Urrutia are buried.

Pablo Neruda was born July 12, 1904, in Parral, Chile. His given name at birth was Ricardo Eliecer Neftal Reyes Basoaltoa. His father worked for the railroads. His, mother, a teacher, died from tuberculosis when he was only a few months old.

Ricardo started writing at a young age, which displeased his father, so be began writing under the name Pablo Neruda at 17 years old. He also moved to Santiago to study at the University of Chile, and published his first collection of poetry in 1923.

The earnings from writing were small, so he sought a position as poet-diplomat in 1927. This initiated his time of trave, and during his travels to Europe, he met and married his first wife, Maryka Antonieta Hagenaar Vogelzang. They had one daughter, who had hydrocephaly and died at 8 years old.

He joined his lover Delia Del Caril in 1936, though Chile did not recognize their later marriage nor his divorce and abandonment of Maryka. He spent time in Southeast Asia, witnessing oppression and poverty. This inspired his famous and dark work, Residencia en la tierra, first published in 1933.

When Neruda became outspoken on his communist views as Civil War broke out in Spain, he was removed as diplomat. He was reinstated in 1939 as consul to Mexico, however. He joined the Chilean senate in 1944 as a communist, retiring several years later to write.

Neruda published Canto general (General Song) in 1950, an epic poem exploring the history of exploitation in Latin America. His acceptance of the Stalin Prize 1950 from the Soviet Union drew sharp criticism, as did his Lenin Peace Prize in 1953.

Though Pablo Neruda was nominated for Nobel Prizes many times, his entanglements with the Soviet Union may have prevented him from winning. Finally, in 1971, he won the Nobel Prize for literature. Even then he had detractors.

Neruda had cancer and reportedly died of it, in 1973. However, he died only two weeks after his friend Salvador Allende was ousted and the government overthrown. Through the Chilean government denies any foul play, it is possible he was instead assassinated.

Te amo como la planta que no florece y lleva
dentro de s, escondida, la luz de aquellas flores,
y gracias a tu amor vive oscuro en mi cuerpo
el apretado aroma que ascendi de la tierra.

Tal vez te vi, te supuse al pasar levantando una copa
en Angol, a la luz de la luna de Junio,
o eras t la cintura de aquella guitarra
que toqu en las tinieblas y son como el mar desmedido.

Mis palabras llovieron sobre ti acaricindote.
Am desde hace tiempo tu cuerpo de ncar soleado.
Hasta te creo duea del universo.
Te traer de las montaas flores alegres, copihues,
avellanas oscuras, y cestas silvestres de besos.

Mujer, yo hubiera sido tu hijo, por beberte
la leche de los senos como de un manantial,
por mirarte y sentirte a mi lado y tenerte
en la risa de oro y la voz de cristal.
Por sentirte en mis venas como Dios en los ros
y adorarte en los tristes huesos de polvo y cal,
porque tu ser pasara sin pena al lado mo
y saliera en la estrofa -limpio de todo mal-.