Neruda, Pablo, 1904-1973

"Pablo Neruda, seudónimo de Ricardo Eliécer Neftalí Reyes Basoalto (Parral, 12 de julio de 1904-Santiago de Chile, 23 de septiembre de 1973), fue un poeta chileno, considerado entre los más destacados e influyentes artistas de su siglo; «el más grande poeta del siglo XX en cualquier idioma», según Gabriel García Márquez. Entre sus múltiples reconocimientos, destacan el Premio Nobel de Literatura en 1971 y un Doctorado Honoris Causa por la Universidad de Oxford. «Ningún poeta del hemisferio occidental de nuestro siglo admite comparación con él», ha escrito el crítico literario Harold Bloom, quien lo considera uno de los veintiséis autores centrales del canon de la literatura occidental de todos los tiempos. Además, fue un destacado activista político, senador, miembro del Comité Central del Partido Comunista, precandidato a la presidencia de su país y embajador en Francia."

"Pablo Neruda (/nəˈruːdə/; Spanish: [ˈpaβlo neˈɾuða]) was the pen name and, later, legal name of the Chilean poet-diplomat and politician Ricardo Eliécer Neftalí Reyes Basoalto (July 12, 1904 - September 23, 1973). He derived his pen name from the Czech poet Jan Neruda. Neruda won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1971. Neruda became known as a poet when he was 10 years old. He wrote in a variety of styles, including surrealist poems, historical epics, overtly political manifestos, a prose autobiography, and passionate love poems such as the ones in his collection Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair (1924). He often wrote in green ink, which was his personal symbol for desire and hope. The Colombian novelist Gabriel García Márquez once called Neruda "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. On July 15, 1945, at Pacaembu Stadium in São Paulo, Brazil, Neruda read to 100,000 people in honor of the Communist revolutionary leader Luís Carlos Prestes. During his lifetime, Neruda occupied many diplomatic positions and served a term as a Senator for the Chilean Communist Party. When President González Videla outlawed communism in Chile in 1948, a warrant was issued for Neruda's arrest. Friends hid him for months in the basement of a house in the port city of Valparaíso. Later, Neruda escaped through a mountain pass near Maihue Lake into Argentina. Years later, Neruda was a close advisor to Chile's 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. Neruda was hospitalised with cancer at the time of the coup d'état led by Augusto Pinochet but returned home after 5 days when he suspected a doctor of injecting him in the stomach with an unknown substance for the purpose of murdering him at the order of Pinochet. Neruda died in his house in Isla Negra on 23 September 1973 six and a half hours after that injection. Although it has always been reported that he died of prostate cancer/heart failure, on November 5, 2015 the Interior Ministry of the Chilean government issued a statement acknowledging a Ministry document from March of that year indicating the government's official position that "it was clearly possible and highly likely" that he was killed as a result of "the intervention of third parties". Pinochet, backed by elements of the armed forces, denied permission for Neruda's funeral to be made a public event. However, thousands of grieving Chileans disobeyed the curfew and crowded the streets."