Between poetry and politics
Neruda was born on July 12, 1904 in the province of Linares under the name Ricardo Neftalí Reyes Basoalto. His mother, a teacher and poetry reader, died two months after his birth. He grew up in Temuco, the land of his childhood and his first inspirations. Here, the Mapuches held a great fascination for him. He also met Gabriela Mistral there: a poetess and high school principal, she received the shy teenager who knocked on her door to show her his texts. Dazzled by the quality of his writing, she made him her protégé and made him more aware of literature. He published his first book Crepuscular at the age of 19, and at 20, Twenty Love Poems and a Desperate Song; these collections have sold millions of copies. A poet, but also a diplomat, he became involved in politics at an early age: from the age of 23, he was consul in several Asian countries (Rangoon, Colombo, Calcutta) and in Buenos Aires. In December 1930 he married Maryka Hagenaar and in 1935 he returned to Spain as a consul, where he continued his literary projects and his political commitments. After many trips to South America, he returned to Chile in 1945 and joined the Chilean Communist Party. In 1947, Gonzalez Videla, then president of Chile, organized a crackdown on communists, and Neruda was forced into exile. In 1949, he became a member of the World Peace Council and met the soprano Matilde Urrutia, who inspired him to write La centaine d'amour and who was to become his third wife. Appointed Chilean ambassador in Paris, in 1971 he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature the following year.
A committed work on the world
"I always say that I have not invented anything, that things are like that, the poet naturally has an experimental duty towards language, but starting from the personal experience of his own life, his knowledge of the world, his relationship with human beings and with nature. Beyond his lyrical and political poetry, Neruda was a committed man, a witness to the violence that the world suffered during the 20th century. Consul in Asia, he was an attentive witness to the first struggles of the colonized peoples for their independence in India. When he was consul in Spain, he became more radical after the military coup led by Franco: he joined the fight and made his poetry a weapon against dictatorships. "Ah, if only with a drop of poetry or love we could appease the hatred of the world! Neruda lost many friends who were assassinated by Franco's regime: his poetry was deeply marked by this and he never stopped expressing his revolt. In 1948, under pressure from the United States, President Videla excluded the communists from his government. Neruda, then a senator, gave a protest speech " Yo Acuso ". A warrant was issued for his arrest and he began a period of clandestinity lasting more than a year. Hidden by the population, he tried to escape the soldiers who were looking for him. During this flight, Neruda wrote most of the Canto General that he had begun several years earlier. A tribute to his land and his people, Neruda raises his South American continent, mistreated and despised by the rest of the world, to the rank of a land of epic and greatness.
The dream houses of Neruda
When he wasn't shaking up the world of poetry and politics, Neruda took refuge in his three houses, now transformed into museums. An enlightened collector, the writer accumulated encyclopedias, poetry collections, manuscripts, first editions, old photos, antique maps, marine paintings and numerous knick-knacks. Santiago's Bellavista district is home to La Chascona and its singular boat-shaped architecture. Neruda began building this house in 1953, as a tribute to his last and greatest love, Matilde Urrutia. That same year, he also wrote one of his greatest masterpieces, Les vers du Capitaine, a collection of 5 poems of love and passion dedicated to Matilde. Recognizable by its blue and yellow colors, the Chascona celebrates the poet's love of the sun and the ocean. A little closer to the ocean, on the heights of Valparaiso, he also occupied La Sebastiana, an abandoned house belonging to the Spaniard Sebastian Collao. Like a boat on the hills, it offers a breathtaking view of the port of Valparaiso, a unique setting between city and ocean. In his house on Isla Negra, the most secluded south of Valparaiso, he used to get up very early to listen to the birdsong, retreating there to write, listen and observe nature. When he was away from home for several months at a time, he would have sound recordings sent to him from the place he loved so much. Upstairs, the bedroom overlooks the ocean and the garden where the graves of Pablo Neruda and Matilde now stand. It was in his home on Isla Negra, confined to his bed by illness, that Neruda followed Pinochet's coup d'état live on television, where he also learned that his homes on La Chascona and La Sebastiana had been ransacked...
The mysterious death of Neruda
One last time, in 1970, Neruda became politically involved when the Communist Party nominated him as a candidate for the presidential elections. The Communist Party's candidate for the presidential elections, he withdrew in favor of Popular Unity and its candidate Salvador Allende, who was elected. Reassured about the fate of his country, Neruda asked to be appointed ambassador to France and was immediately awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature: the consecration of both his political and literary work. But the US blockade soon strangled Chilean democracy. Stricken with cancer, Neruda returned to Chile and, in less than three days, wrote a virulent poem Incitation au nixonicide et éloge de la révolution chilienne: with poetry as his weapon, Neruda began a kind of revolutionary song. On September 11, 1973, the coup d'état broke out: Neruda died 12 days later in a Santiago hospital, on the eve of his departure into exile. Coincidence? Almost 50 years after his disappearance, the causes of his death remain controversial. In 2017, 16 experts commissioned by the Chilean justice system were able to exhume the poet's body: one thing is certain, he did not die of cancer as indicated on his death certificate. Since his death, Neruda's family has suspected the dictatorship of having poisoned him, but neither international scientific experts nor the Chilean justice system can today confirm this hypothesis. On February 13, 2023, experts were able to detect a bacterium in the poet's bones, Clostridium botulinum, the source of a deadly toxin. While the Neruda family's lawyers see this discovery as unequivocal proof of poisoning, some of the scientists in charge of the case claim that the bacterium was not present in Pablo Neruda's body the day after his death. So the mystery remains...
