{"id":26534,"date":"2023-04-20T10:32:38","date_gmt":"2023-04-20T14:32:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/redphoenixnews.com\/?p=26534"},"modified":"2026-04-23T23:51:42","modified_gmt":"2026-04-24T04:51:42","slug":"national-poetry-month-pablo-neruda-1904-1973","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/redphoenix.news\/es\/2023\/04\/national-poetry-month-pablo-neruda-1904-1973\/","title":{"rendered":"Mes Nacional de la Poes\u00eda: Pablo Neruda (1904\u20131973)"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u201cI have always wanted the hands of people to be seen in poetry.\u201d<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
\"\"<\/a>
Salvador Allende and Pablo Neruda. (Photo: Library of the National Congress of Chile)<\/sup><\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

By Hari Kumar, Red Phoenix international correspondent.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Introduction and short precis of Neruda\u2019s life<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Recent reports about Neruda\u2019s death have re-sparked interest in this great Chilean poet. A short precis of his life is followed with details of his death and legacy. The latter contrasts his apparent present standing in Chilean youth with that of Gabriela Mistral.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Pablo Neruda was born in a village in southern Chile in 1904. He sold his possessions to finance his first volume, \u201cCrepusculario\u201d (\u201cTwilight\u201d) in 1923. In 1924, \u201cVeinte poemas de amor y una canci\u00f3n desesperada<\/em>\u201d (\u201cTwenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair\u201d) made him famous. During this time he disdained any political connections in his poetry.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

By 1927 his poetry was rewarded by Chile in diplomatic posts, first as consul in Burma. Most famously he was posted to Madrid in 1933. During the Spanish Civil War he became friends with Federico Garc\u00eda Lorca, who was later murdered by the fascists. He steadily grew closer to the communists. Chile\u2019s government recalled him because of his open partisanship of the Republican side. He had written \u201cEspa\u00f1a en el coraz\u00f3n\u201d (\u201cSpain in the Heart,\u201d 1937) on the war front. His passage leftwards continued. During the Second World War he wrote \u201cCanto a Stalingrado\u201d (\u201cSong to Stalingrad,\u201d 1943):<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n

\u201cAt night the peasant sleeps, awakes and sinks<\/p>\n\n\n\n

His hand into the darkness asking the dawn\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Tell me if the purest hands of men still<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Defend the castle of honor, tell me dawn,<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If the steel on your brow breaks its might,<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If man is in his place\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Tell me if gunpowder still sounds in Stalingrad\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And the Spaniard remembers Madrid and says:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sister, resist, capital of glory, resist.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Neruda joined the Communist Party of Chile in 1945, but did so only after he was elected to the Senate. To be elected, he had campaigned for the party by reading his poetry. Later he joined the party at a public ceremony in Santiago, where he read from an early version of the \u201cCanto General\u201d – the fragment \u201cA mi Partido\u201d (\u201cTo my Party\u201d). He recited publicly:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n

\u201cYou have given me brotherhood towards the man I do not know\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n

You have taught me to kindle kindness like a fire\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n

You gave me the straightness which a tree requires..<\/p>\n\n\n\n

You taught me to see the unity and yet diversity of man.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

But under the right-wing Gonz\u00e1lez Videla government, a military rule of brutality against progressives began. The Communists in parliament were dismissed. A miners\u2019 strike at Lota broke out leading to fierce repression. It was now that the name Augusto Pinochet first entered into Chile\u2019s history, as he began arresting militants and ran a concentration camp. Meanwhile, President Videla made a secret alliance with US President Truman and emissary Admiral William Leahy to declare communism illegal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Nonetheless Neruda published an open denunciation of Videla. Shortly after, in 1947, he delivered an impassioned speech in the Senate condemning Videla. Now he was in complete danger and a price was on his head. Neruda went into hiding, and completed \u201cCanto General\u201d including the anthem to Stalin. Neruda, hunted as he was, escaped by crossing the mountains into Argentina in 1949. Still in danger of arrest there, he went onto Paris to the World Peace Congress. He was introduced by Pablo Picasso.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But by 1952 the Chilean government\u2019s order to arrest leftists was rescinded, upon which Neruda returned to Chile. He received the International Peace Prize in 1950, the Lenin Peace Prize and the Stalin Peace Prize in 1953, and the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1971. It is remarkable that he was awarded the Nobel after penning his various \u201cOdes to Stalin,\u201d as members of the judging committee voiced major reservations<\/a> on them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Under the social-democratic President Salvador Allende, Neruda resumed his diplomatic career as ambassador to France in 1971, but resigned after developing prostate cancer. Now the army led by General Augusto Pinochet was fueled by US imperialism to revolt. The fascist dictatorship coup of Pinochet in 1973, sponsored by the USA, violently displaced the elected democratic President Salvador Allende. Allende had led the Socialist Party, and the Popular Unity Front. The latter included the Communist Party of Chile which was foremost in spreading the revisionism of a \u201cpeaceful road to socialism.\u201d Naturally this led to illusions that facilitated the path for the Pinochet Junta. These events are well known and were reviewed by W. B. Bland for the MLOB<\/a>. Fascists killed both Allende and any residual hopes of \u2018the parliamentary road to socialism.\u2019 In short order, after first massacring progressive and communist resisters, Pinochet installed a neo-liberal experiment inspired by the Chicagoite Milton Friedman.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/a>
Pablo Neruda during the public recognition ceremony that took place at the national stadium in 1972, after returning to the country from Europe. He appears together with General Carlos Prats, vice president of Chile, and other civil authorities. In the background on the left appears the defense minister Mr. Jos\u00e9 Toha.<\/sup><\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

How did Neruda die?<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

On September 23, 1973, just twelve days after the defeat of Allende, Neruda died in Santiago, Chile. Of course Neruda\u2019s death was rather convenient for Pinochet, since Neruda was so beloved by the Chilean people. Victor Jarra \u2013 also a popular singer and poet \u2013 was simply tortured and executed. But Neruda\u2019s death had to be more quietly staged. The Mexican ambassador visited Neruda in hospital one day before his death assuring him a plane to take him to a hospital in Mexico. Tragically, Neruda wanted to wait. He died the next day. The plausible pretense was that he died of his cancer.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Rumblings of sinister causes were long voiced, but they became loud after the eventual side-lining of Pinochet. In 2013, Neruda\u2019s chauffeur, Manuel Araya, \u201ctold the Mexican magazine Proceso<\/em> that the poet had called him in desperation from the hospital to say that he had been injected in the stomach<\/a> while he was asleep.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Chilean judge Mario Carroza ordered Neruda\u2019s body to be exhumed for forensic testing. After testing, a panel of sixteen international experts<\/a> concluded that the death certificate declaring Neruda\u2019s death was from cancer cachexia (wasting) was false. But, \u201cThat cannot be correct,\u201d said Dr. Niels Morling of the University of Copenhagen\u2019s department of forensic medicine. \u201cThere was no indication of cachexia. He was an obese man at the time of death.\u201d Mysteriously, various bacteria were also found in Neruda\u2019s body. In 2015 the Chilean government said that it was \u201chighly probable that a third party\u201d was responsible for his death. Researchers were commissioned to investigate further.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In March 2023 Canadian researchers of ancient DNA genomes, Debi Poinar and Hendrik Poinar, gave their analysis to a Chilean tribunal. After five years of detailed genetic analysis of bone and tooth samples, they found the bacterium Clostridium botulinum (C. botulinum) in Neruda\u2019s body. This produces botulinum, a deadly toxin used in warfare. Moreover it is known to have been used to kill political prisoners in Chile in 1981. However only fragmentary pieces of DNA were available to identify with certainty the bacteria in Neruda\u2019s body at death. Nonetheless they had been producing toxin. Importantly the scientists also determined that it was not an environmental contaminant<\/a> from the soil in his burial.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The muted popularity of Pablo Neruda in Chile today<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Poetry, as many art forms, becomes wrapped in very personal tastes. How do we interpret that currently a strong move in Chile appears to favor the resurgence of the Nobel Prize winner Gabriela Mistral (1889\u20131957)? The popularity of Neruda today in Chile has been apparently eclipsed by that of Mistral.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Yet the two poets were life-long friends. Initially Mistral was his \u201cschool director\u201d in Temuco, and encouraged his poetry. Then they were both consuls for Chile<\/a> in Madrid and Barcelona. While Mistral also sang of the common people, she is far less well known for this than was Neruda. In 1945 Mistral became the first Latin American to win the Nobel Prize for literature. Mistral was long known as a pioneer for women\u2019s education and rights. While during her lifetime she was ignored by Chilean intelligentsia, she accepted the Mexican Government\u2019s offer to lead educational reforms in Mexico<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

However she had an equivocal relationship to Chile. Part of this seems to have been a reaction to attempts to label her<\/a> as a lesbian. \u201cAbout Chile, the less said the better,” she wrote. “I’ve even been hung up on this silly lesbianism, which hurts me in a way I can’t even put into words. Is it possible to see a bigger fake?” It is uncertain what her real feelings of sexuality were, and are in any case quite irrelevant to the strength of her poetry.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It is interesting that when the fascist Pinochet government came to power, they used her as an icon<\/a>: \u201cSince her death, Mistral’s image has been reinvented and manipulated, particularly during the military dictatorship of General Augusto Pinochet. In the 1970s and 1980s, she was manipulated as the symbol of social order and submission to authority.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Also in today\u2019s Chile, she seems to be favored in the movement of the new President Gabriel Boric. <\/em>That the Pinochet dictatorship promoted Mistral has not affected her current popularity amongst today\u2019s youth.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Perhaps some explanation stems from some unsavory aspects of Neruda\u2019s life. At times a personal selfishness and womanizing was apparent. As Lankes remarks<\/a>:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cFeminists point to a passage in his memoirs, published in 1974, in which he described raping a maid when he was a diplomat in what is now Sri Lanka\u2026 The passage has recently caused outrage, and in 2018 Congress dropped a proposal to rename Santiago\u2019s airport after Neruda.\u201d Neruda\u2019s rape of a Tamil cleaning woman is completely indefensible. His own note that \u201cshe was right to despise me\u201d is no adequate response.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

However Neruda\u2019s poetry stands for itself. Such endorsement does not equate to condoning the reprehensible personal behavior he himself describes in his memoir. For another rather better example of his attitude to women, see \u201cTo the Women of the World,\u201d illustrated by Maureen Scott of the League of Socialist Artists<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

No doubt Mistral\u2019s humanity is coupled to less overt communist partisanship \u2013 in contrast to those of Neruda. This surely influences how capitalist governments promote her. This applies whether we are discussing Pinochet or Boric, even though these two radically differ.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

To conclude:<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Neruda\u2019s poetry needs no apology, and his espousal of the workers\u2019 cause and its political allegiances to the USSR are to his credit. The people of Chile had a great daughter-poet in Mistral. But they also had a great son-poet in Neruda.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

See also:<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Adam Feinstein; \u201cPablo Neruda \u2013 A Passion for Life\u201d; New York; 2004.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ilan Stavans; \u201cIntroduction\u201d to \u201cThe Poetry of Pablo Neruda\u201d; New York; 2003.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cPablo Neruda\u201d at poets.org<\/a><\/em><\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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