Biography of Pablo Key | Figure of Spanish poetry of the 20th century

Key figure of Spanish poetry of the 20th century, the Chilean Nobel Prize joined in his work creative innovation and political commitment.

Disseminated in thousands of verses has been for posterity biography, intimate and public, secret and militant, of the Great Chilean poet Pablo Neruda. It gave us also the Chronicle of their hectic days and travelers in a few lyrics memoirs titled I confess that I have lived, and her figure written by numerous friends of the writer, his passionate widow Matilde Urrutia and hundreds of critics and historians.

The overwhelming personality of this man of Communist creed, determined and stubborn to sacrifice everything for what he believed, bursts into his work with a vital breath which barely glimpsed many tribulations and the bleak hours that there was cross. For some who knew him, especially for those who shared with him the fight against misery and oppression of peoples, Pablo Neruda enjoyed charisma exceptional of those elect who fits like a glove in the word exemplary; but for the majority of readers who enjoyed no fortune of his embrace, the poet is always that squat, invisible and shy character who was hiding behind wispy and horizontal bars of his beautiful love songs.

Pablo Neruda

Born in Parral in 1904 with the name of Ricardo Eliecer Neftalí Reyes Basoalto, Neruda was felt throughout his life deeply rooted in his Chilean homeland despite have led a tireless traveler existence. His mother, Rosa Basoalto, died of tuberculosis shortly after giving birth, and his father, conductor of a train that was carrying stone, José de el Carmen Reyes Morales, married two years after Trinidad changes Marverde, whom Neruda would write: "She was a sweet and caring woman, it made sense of the peasant humor and an active and tireless goodness". For the small Naphtali was his new mother as the good fairy; He he supervised undertaken the boy with a request even greater than his real father, with whom, in his teens, would soon hold serious disputes.

Residing in Temuco, he joined the high school in the city in 1910, and when still out of this institution, on July 18, 1917, could read excitedly in a local newspaper, the morning, the first of his published articles, that he titled "Enthusiasm and perseverance". By then had been fortunate to meet a stunning Lady, "high, with very long dresses", that it was not another but the famous poet Gabriela Mistral, who had given him some books of Tolstoy, Dostoevsky and Chekhov, decisive in his first literary education.

However, his father was openly opposed to follow this vocation, so that when on November 28, 1920 he won the prize for the feast of spring of Temuco, the young poet already signed his poems under pseudonym, a ruse to mislead his father. The chosen name, Neruda, had found him by chance in a magazine and was of Czech origin; did not know that it was you stealing a colleague, a distant writer who composed melodious ballads and has a monument erected in the District of Mala Strana in Prague.

When concludes her studies at the Liceo goes to Santiago to follow the career of French teacher at the Pedagogical Institute, but it continues to prepare books of verses. Soon it is linked to the magazine youth from the Federation of students, which makes contact with the anarchist movement and, in particular, one of the leaders of the group, formidable and courageous, called Juan Gandulfo. In 1922, having locked a good friendship, which would turn out to it fertile and durable, with the editor of the magazine clarity, joins their wording, and thus begins to write up to five daily poems like a madman. The following year his first book of poems, Crepusculario edit at their expense.

To be able to pay for this publication, Pablo Neruda, by then a young avid reading and life, extravagant and slim, dress to the Bohemian poet of the 19th century with a black suit, must sell your furniture, pawning the watch his father has given him and receive support in extremis from a generous critic. The latter, a such Allone, was provided to pay off the debt when the editor refused to deliver a single copy before Bill was fully satisfied.

Neruda and Nicolás Guillén in the Aula Magna
the University of Havana (1960)

Crepusculario was actually a miscellany of other projects, a hasty reordering of poems that immediately left dissatisfied to the author. Thereafter Neruda was delivered, more if possible, to the preparation of another book, this Yes, organic and beyond, ending published in 1924 under the title twenty love poems and a song of despair.

Diplomat for Asia

From this time the politicization of Neruda's poetry will be progressively increased and, at the same time, your life will be faced with adverse economic circumstances. For the moment, to abandon his studies, his father removed you all material help, for which embraces hope to get any diplomatic office. However, all obtained in 1927 what a dark and remote destiny consular in Rangoon, Burma.

There, in those fantastic lands, "between men who worship the cobra and the cow", met Pablo Neruda to the so beautiful as dangerous Josie Bliss, a native who nevertheless wore the English way. After visiting in your company the most exotic corners of those lands, moved to live at home, but soon the girl changed its sweetness in jealousy, and the life of the couple became intolerable. "I felt tenderness toward his bare feet", wrote the writer, but he also told how Josie hiding her letters and how, on one occasion, woke up startled and found her dressed in white, to the other side of the mosquito net, dark, wielding a deadly knife and not determined to strike the fatal blow: "you die when my fears will end", babbled with bitterness the sick woman.

Startled, Pablo Neruda did not hesitate to flee that situation increasingly became more threatening, and when she received a telegram in which communicated you his transfer to Ceylon, he prepared the trip in the most absolute secrecy and left without saying goodbye, leaving in the desolate home to Josie his clothes and his books.

He worked for a year of consul in Colombo (Ceylon, present Sri Lanka) and in 1929 he was transferred to Singapore. His interest in indostanies cultures and politics led him to attend the Panhindu Conference, held in Calcutta in 1929. In 1930, Pablo Neruda married María Antonieta Hagenaar, a young Dutch woman returned to Chile two years later and who gave him a daughter, Malva Marina, on October 4, 1934. That same year, and after having met Federico García Lorca in Buenos Aires, he moved to Spain to take charge of the Chilean consulate in Barcelona. In Spain he developed an intense cultural activity and the generation of 27 poets like Miguel Hernández, Luis Cernuda, Vicente Aleixandre and Manuel Altolaguirre met.

Neruda in Spain

Their integration in that eventful Madrid's political passions grew the following year, then in February 1935 took charge of the Consulate of Chile in the Spanish capital. The literary magazine horse green for poetry, directed by the poet appeared that year in Madrid. Also there gave to press one of his most famous works, residence on Earth, and he met his second wife, Delia del Carril.

The Spanish history of Neruda took dramatic dyes when on July 18, 1936 was the terrible civil war that pitted "the two Spains". One of the first bloody events of that battle was the execution of Federico García Lorca. He left the Iberian peninsula in the conflict and went to Paris, where he actively participated in acts of solidarity with the Spanish people and the Republic. After his return to Chile, in 1937, he continued his combative activity with the publication of Spain in the heart.

In 1938, Ediciones Ercilla gave to light a collection of his works. That year died his father in Temuco and shortly afterwards, his stepmother. In October it triumphed in Chilean general elections the Popular Front. Meanwhile, in Catalonia, Spain in the heart is edited.

The Spanish Civil war ended in 1939 with the defeat of the Republicans. Neruda requested, and obtained, the appointment of consul for Spanish immigration. With the idea of helping as much as possible to the defeated, he traveled to Paris and from there he organized an expedition of Spaniards on board the steamer Winnipeg who arrived to Valparaíso at the end of the year. The poet returned to Chile in 1940, when he had already begun the second world war, but remained little time in his country, as he joined a new diplomatic target, the Consulate general of Chile in Mexico in August. From there he travelled to Cuba. In 1942 he published America, not invoke your name in vain, that was later incorporated into the Canto general; that year he suffered the loss of his daughter, Malva Marina, who died in Europe.

Policy, exile and recognition

From 1946, his political activity was developed in their own homeland, where he was elected Senator of the Republic by the provinces of Tarapacá and Antofagasta. That same year also won in Chile the national prize for literature, but it would not take complicated you things when made public his strong protest the persecution unleashed against the trade unions by the President González Videla. Reading before the Senate of his allegation I accuse motivated is to order his arrest and only thanks to the refuge offered by their relatives managed to Neruda avoid it and leaving the country on 24 February 1949.

During the time in which it was hidden, he prepared another of his major works, Canto general, which, apart from distributed clandestinely in Chile, will be published in Mexico in 1950 with illustrations by the great muralists Diego Rivera and Siqueiros, shortly before that was granted, along with Picasso and the Turkish poet Nazim Hikmet, the international peace prize. It then starts a painful exile, whose sadness can hardly be enjugada by the numerous tributes, warm receptions and important awards that recognize his merits as a poet and as a man of integrity. In 1951 he began a journey through Italy, country in which settled the following year. In Capri, he wrote the grapes and the wind. After a trip through Europe, to be revoked its order of detention in Chile, he was able to return home in August of 1952. His return was the subject of multiple public tributes. In this difficult period in exile had come to their support a woman who would be his companion until his death: Matilde Urrutia.

In Italy with Matilde Urrutia

The following years were spent in Chile. Organized in Santiago the Continental Congress of culture, attended by notable figures such as Diego Rivera, Jorge Amado and Nicolás Guillén. He lectured at the University of Chile, which made donation of his personal library. This relationship with the University gave rise to the creation of the Neruda Foundation for the development of poetry. In their private lives were unsettled times, then broke in 1956 of Delia del Carril to join sentimentally with Matilde Urrutia, was moved to its new home, La Chascona. His works were appearing at a good pace, with intermittent publications, in Buenos Aires by Losada and Santiago by Nascimento: traveland new elemental Odes Ode to typography, among others. In 1957 Losada published his complete works in Bible paper and, in subsequent years, one hundred love sonnets, third book of Odes and navigations and returns. One of his most notable works, a favorite poet, "estravagario"is edited in 1958. "By his irreverence (Neruda wrote) is my most intimate book".

The tireless traveller again felt the call of Europe and moved to the continent, where it received new honours in 1965. Oxford University appointed him doctor honoris causa, in philosophy and letters. In Hungary met with Miguel Ángel Asturias. In 1966 he travelled to United States invited to the meeting of the Pen Club. That year he made an interesting incursion in the dramatic arts with his work brilliance and death of Joaquín Murieta, which was released in Santiago in 1967 by the Theatre Institute of the University of Chile.

Neruda linking policy had its climax in the year 1970, when the Communist Party appointed him candidate for the Presidency of Chile, but the poet did not hesitate to give to give their full support to Salvador Allende, who strongly supported in his election campaign. Come to power the Popular unity Government in 1970, he received the appointment of Ambassador in Paris.

Neruda Salvador Allende and its
biographer, Volodia Teitelboim

In 1971, Pablo Neruda became the third Latin American writer and in the second Chilean who obtained the Nobel Prize in literature, but his literary rise didn't stop him actively continue in the defense of the Chilean interests. In New York, taking advantage of the Pen Club meeting, he denounced the U.S. blockade against Chile. After relinquishing his post as Ambassador to France, he returned to Santiago, where he was public and given Honoree at the National Stadium.

On the cusp of Fame and recognition also waiting for him bitter hours. In 1973, on 11 September, was surprised by the coup military against President Salvador Allende. Deeply affected by the new situation, he could not resist the tragedy and died on 23 September in Santiago. The world soon learned, between stupor, indignation and impotence, that their homes in Valparaiso and Santiago had been brutally looted and destroyed. Their funerals were developed in the midst of great political tension. After his death the poems he had written before his death saw the light: winter garden, 2000, yellow heart, book of questions, Elegy , and selected defects, all of them published by Losada in Buenos Aires in 1974. Barcelona appeared his last work, the autobiography I confess that I have lived.

Pablo Neruda

1904	Born in Parral.
1910-20	He studied at the Lycée de Temuco.
1921	He moved to Santiago, where he studied for French teacher at the Pedagogical Institute.
1923	He published his first volume of verse, Crepusculario.
1924	Published his most famous collection of poems, twenty love poems and a song of despair.
1927	He began his diplomatic career in Rangoon (Burma). Meet Josie Bliss.
1928	He was appointed consul in Colombo (Sri Lanka).
1930	María Antonieta Hagenaar he marries.
1932	Return to Chile.
1934	He moved to Spain to take charge of the Chilean consulate, first in Barcelona and then in Madrid. Friendship with Federico García Lorca and Spanish poets of the generation of 27.
1935	It manages the Green Horse magazine for poetry. It publishes residence on Earth. He meets Delia del Carril.
1936	The Spanish Civil War broke out. Murder of Lorca. Neruda, ardent defender of the Republic, moved to Paris. After the defeat, he collaborates in the transfer of Spanish exiles to Chile.
1940	He was appointed consul of Chile in Mexico.
1946	He received the national prize for literature. He actively participates in Chilean politics and was elected Senator.
1949	He is forced into exile for his opposition to the policy of the President González Videla, who had ordered his arrest.
1950	Published Canto General.
1952	Return to Chile.
1956	It is separated from Delia del Carril joined Matilde Urrutia, his partner until the end of his days.
1957	His complete works are published for the first time.
1967	His brilliance and death of Joaquín Murieta play debuts in Santiago.
1970	The Communist Party nominated him as candidate for the Presidency, but Neruda resigns and supported Salvador Allende. Allende wins the elections. Neruda is appointed Ambassador to Paris.
1971	He received the Nobel Prize for literature.
1973	He died on September 23, twelve days after the coup that overthrew Salvador Allende.

Works by Pablo Neruda

Any that are the objections that may arise from its political position and the effect on his work, Neruda is, undoubtedly, the poet's most prestigious in Latin America and one of the outstanding values of the continental American poetry. His poetry exerted an enormous influence that has been particularly noticeable in the modern Chilean poetry, already in its social aspect (Efraín Barquero, Gonzalo Rojas) for now delve into the poetic places discovered by Neruda (Juvencio Valle and Miguel Arteche). But the importance of Neruda in the American poetry is similar to which in its time was Rubén Dario; as the Nicaraguan, Neruda has also influenced deeply all the Hispanic sphere, including the contemporary Spanish poetry.

The beginnings

As a feature of set, the work of Pablo Neruda is characterized from a stylistic point of view by verbal audacity and originality. The book, Crepusculario (1923) represents the Symbolist and modernist forms primarily. But soon his poetry began to be of exceptional value and emerging forms which must be genuine in works such as the enthusiastic Slinger (written around 1923, but not published until 1933), attempt of the infinite man (1925) and twenty love poems and a song of despair (1924). There is a sentimental attitude in these poems. The poet exalts women, anguish, sadness, absence and memory.

Pablo Neruda

They are still autobiographical poems and invaded by a great melancholy: "I can write the saddest verses tonight"; the poet sings solitude accompanied only by his words, until filled it the memory of the beloved: "rather than the solitude that you occupy you populated / and are used more than you to my sorrow"; despair: "I'm desperate, the word without echoes, / that lost everything and that everything had it"; sadness: "I have said that you have to sing in the wind / as pine trees and masts." / As they are high and sullen. "/ And grieve suddenly, like a journey".

But in addition to that accent of infinite melancholy, in these works Neruda give a dimension cosmic, excessive, to the terms of comparison: "body woman, white hills, white thighs, / you look like the world in your attitude of delivery". Any feeling is always linked to an element, to a cosmic event. Swept away by his impetuosity, the poet will seek comparison with everything that is big: mountains, rivers, wind, sea, fire, night. The friend found in Twilight will retain the fire of the day who just fenecer ("full of the lives of fire, / pure heir to the destroyed day"), or the roots of the night will suddenly grow from his soul.

Next to these great images we find others with concrete elements and materials, as if the poet should at all costs avoid the idealization in an effort to stay within the elementary: "to survive me you forged as a weapon, / like an arrow in my bow, like a stone in my sling", "body of skin, of MOSS", "arms of stone", etc. This elementary and cosmic force is what provides interest to this poetry. Beloved becomes confused, in the passion of the poet, with the Earth: "my body of wild labriego undermines you / and blows to the son of the depths of the Earth", "ti rivers sing and my soul flees". Thus, Neruda always looks for the materialization of their feelings, either in very concrete things, either in giant images: the beloved will have ocean eyes; play with the light of the universe; love will take place under the wind ("Innumerable wind heart / beating about our silence in love"). But at the same time the words will be like the Ivy, kisses like a dress, head a cluster, etc.

And with all this, the sparkling image, clear modernist origin: "arrows beating the birds", the adelgazadas words "as traces of seagulls on beaches", night "blue Shanks" which spread over the field, comparing the beloved with a white "Bee", the joy of the song as "a Bell Tower in the hands of a madman" , the Twilights as "Giant fans", "Blue Cross", "trees of light", "smile of the water". All this poetry romantic root is characterized by its depth and desperation. Anything in it already announced to the poet's residence on Earth: anguish constant, violence, a concept jumps to another, the lack of transition between the situations. Also what has been called "uglyism" is already announced in these poems.

Residence on Earth

With the emergence of residence on Earth completely changes the picture of Pablo Neruda's poetry: becomes hard and tight. The philologist Amado Alonso made clear the problems of residence on Earth in his work poetry and style of Pablo Neruda. Interpretation of a hermetic poetry (1940). According to Amado Alonso, and contrary to the above, residence on Earth is a book of poetry objective, in the sense that, although the poet offers us his own vision of the world, does so without mixture of personal situations, without making any autobiography.

Loneliness, despair, anguish, they emphasize in these poems; the author sees the world as a total wreck, as a constant destruction, as an unstoppable disintegration. The retina of the poet ("as an atrociously raised force eyelid") sees how everything flows ("fierce biting and sounding water") towards death and decomposition: do the most heterogeneous things, in their same heterogeneity, but represent the universe: "like ashes, like populating, seas / in submerged slow, in formless, / or how can be heard from the top of the roads / cross the chimes on cross" ", /... and the perfume of the plums rolling to Earth / green rot in time, infinitely".

"There is no residence on Earth page (says Amado Alonso) are missing where this terrible vision of what melts away..." Pablo Neruda eyes are the only ones in the world made to perceive the invisible and unceasing work of autodesintegracion with as much specificity that are delivered to all living beings and all things inert, underneath and inside of his movement or his stillness. "They are condemned to see the drama alone"from the river that lasting is destroyed", splendid verse which is enclosed the final image of this painful vision of reality".

Things push themselves and the poet tries to express and describe this chaos; Hence this multiple image constantly found in his compositions. Poetry sinks on the same subject and is left to snatch for her: "or dreams that come out of my heart gushes, / dusty dreams that run as black riders, / dreams full of atrocities and misfortunes". Thus arises this tumultuous poetry, hallucination, urgency and alluvium. These materials, moreover, are already broken, dusty, dirty, rickety. For this reason it described as "luminous" to this poetry.

Residence on Earth is a view of reality and the world very similar to certain forms of avant-garde painting. Amado Alonso rightly note that in this period of Pablo Neruda's poetry there is a predominance of sentiment about the reality, i.e., that the feeling of the poet struggle to find an image or comparison in the real world, a comparison that often get fragmented, barajada or chaotic. For this reason his poetry is full of inconsistencies "rational and objective".

The poet is forced to repeat, to clarify, because he is aware that the representation of sentiment is not as it should be: see how tries to express a feeling based on two, three and up to four images, looking for a precision, always adequate representation. His poems are both drafts and final lessons that illustrate us about his poetic work and how the word is penetrating into reality. The same poet says: "but in a different way", "I don't know if I understood", "but it is not that," when he realizes that is not correct. Now, this inconsistency, these "tested images" (as called Amado Alonso) constitute the vision that the world is Neruda, constitute the essence of his poetry. The poet could not be expressed otherwise: have to cater to the chaotic tumult of things, to the simultaneous sensations.

The technical style of Pablo Neruda has its origins in Surrealism: illogical images, dark symbols, chaotic enumeration, free associations. All of this combined with his peculiar vision of the world and its syntax makes this work a case worthy of greater attention. They can stand out from residence on Earth poems "Dead Gallop", "Poetic art", "Burial in the East", "The ghost of the cargo ship", "Barcarola", "Diseases in my house", "Oda with a lament", "Entrance to the wood", "Heyday of celery", "Statute of wine", "Ode to Federico Garcia Lorca" and "Watch stock in the sea". Residence on Earth is a book essentially materialistic (as the title implies). The poet, as it did in previous works, prevents always romanticize and their comparisons or have a huge, huge and monstrous character or refer to things everyday, vulgar, that within the momentum that carries this poetry acquires a strange symbolic value and immerse us in a distressing atmosphere. Many of the poems of residence on Earth have an eminently social nature, and its preference for the ordinary, everyday things already prefigured the poet of the elemental Odes. We could say that Neruda singing, in this book, the vulgar things with epic tone.

Canto General

This feature will continue in the first poems of the volume entitled Third residence. But in the poems "the Furies and penalties", "Meeting under new flags", in Spain in the heart and alluding to the World War II poems included in Third residence, Neruda finds the matter for his epic song: from this moment on, the poet will be the singer of the Communist movement. Their songs have the greatness of the fight, fire and the unconditional fervor. This committed poetry flows directly, without the hesitations of residence on Earth, full of exclamations and dazzling images. The universe of Pablo Neruda already has a sense, his poetry offers an ideal.

But where Pablo Neruda reach the total possession of the target in the form of an ideal is the long poem Canto General, finished writing in 1949. The poem is divided into fifteen parts. In the first, "Lamp on Earth", sings the birth of American land vegetation: the jacaranda, the araucaria, larches, the ceibo, tobacco ("wild tobacco rose / your imaginary air rose"), corn ("as a spear ended in fire, / appeared corn"); the emergence of the beasts, birds; the formation of rivers ("beloved of the rivers, fought / transparent drops, and blue water / were tattooed by rivers"), minerals and men.

This first part is the song of the formation of America, and has all the greatness that is the issue. The epic tone appears constantly traveled by ways of an exquisite lyricism. Making such development the second part, "Heights of Macchu Picchu", exaltation of the already formed, but still virgin nature of America loved by the poet: "below, in geology, gold / like a sword wrapped in Meteor / plunged the troubled hand and sweet / in the most genital of the terrestrial". These heights are a symbol of the lost purity, are the most representative of the continent: "put the front between the deep waves, / went down as a drop between sulfuric peace, / and, like a blind man, returned to the jasmine / worn human spring". The theme of the Virgin and intact America will be repeated in elementary Odes.

The third part is entitled "Los Conquistadores": this pure and intact America is destroyed by the conquistadors. The poet accuses them harshly and insults them: Cortés, Alvarado, Ximenez de Quesada or Valdivia, because in his view they dipped the American lands in a deep agony. Then comes the exaltation of "The liberators", title of the fourth part. Neruda ponders the action of the first (Cuauthémoc, Caupolicán and Lautaro), Indians of the insurgents of the 19th century (O'Higgins, San Martin, Sucre, Marti) and the leaders of the Communist Party. "The sand betrayed" fifth, is an allegation against all those who, in the opinion of the poet, have attempted to corrupt America: dictators, poets, writers, diplomats, explorers or anonymous companies. The sixth, titled "America, not invoke your name in vain" develops the previous song-like themes.

"Canto general of Chile" is the title of seventh and constitutes an evocation of the homeland, friends and struggles, while it the eighth, "the land is called John", contains pieces dedicated to the revolutionaries, symbolizing the poet, in the final poem, in John, the anonymous employee. In the ninth, "which the woodcutter awaken", Neruda is pronounced against dictators and influence American mentor. The tenth, "The fugitive", occupies the banishment and the pilgrimage of the poet. "The flower of Punitaqui", eleventh part, treats problems focused from the social point of view; the twelfth, "Rivers of song", contains letters and memorials, and the thirteenth, "Coral's new year for the fatherland in darkness", is at the same time count of struggles and invitation to combat.

The fourteenth part, "Great ocean", the poet takes the song to America, its greatness, its vegetation and geography, and in the fifteenth, 'I am', gives faith itself and its activities. Close this song and the book about Wills ("leave unions / copper, coal and nitrate / my house by the sea of Isla Negra"), arrangements ("companions, bury me in Isla Negra, / facing the sea I know"), and an "explicit" declares where the cause of the singing and the date on which it was completed.

Last stage

Canto general is a complex book, with all the pomp that has the poetry of Neruda, but simultaneously with all ballast always carrying committed poetry. From singing the work of Neruda looks out on a new course. From all the love (1953), poem purely loving, grapes and the wind (1954), which raised controversy (he wrote it in Capri and sings "freedom of the wind, the peace between the grapes", with absolute simplicity and without forgetting its fiery political allusions), seemed in search of a new tone that was stated in the elemental Odes (1954) and new elemental Odes (1955) , works that started a kind of third epoch in Neruda poetry, in a perfectly accessible language, Neruda becomes a simple and affable poet who celebrated the humble beings and everyday objects. As their titles indicate, the author sings the simple and basic things: the artichoke, the copper, the onion, the caldillo de congrio, thread, wood, poverty, tomato, costume, oil, socks, SOAP, the lizard, the Pope.

It seems as if the rickety, dusty things, in a State of disintegration, which appeared in residence on Earth, suddenly charged its full personality, asserted his being, his need to exist. Neruda comes in these Odes to the total conquest of the objective. The poet the sing depending on need to man them and, therefore, these Odes are true social poetry. Les is still something the third residence and Canto generalpoet Martial air. And next set forth issues developed find others that seemed unexpected: air, love, flower, clarity, the happy day, joy, hope, autumn, poetry, simplicity, tranquility, summer, life, stars, the moon.

One of the Odes that better explain this transformation of the poet is entitled "Ode to Joy": "despised you, joy. I was badly advised. / Moon / took me on their roads. / The ancient poets / lent me glasses / and next to each thing / a dark Nimbus / put /... was wrong my steps / and today I call you, joy. /... With you around the world! / With my song! / ... Nobody don't be surprised because I want / give men / the gifts of the Earth / because I learned to fight / is my land duty / spread the joy. "/ And fulfill my destiny with my song". Some of these Odes are pure games, others are exaltations of American nature (especially those devoted to the birds).

Neruda began narrating a tiny fact to ascend through a simple expression and a short metro, dazzling comparisons; Thus in "Ode to the book" (II): "book / beautiful, / book / minimum forest, / sheet / after sheet, / smells / your role / element, / you're / morning and night, / cereal, / Ocean...". Some of these Odes are devoted to poets: César Vallejo, Jorge Manrique, Rimbaud and Walt Whitman. Here's how plays Jorge Manrique: "later, I told him, / and entered the good Knight / of death." / Silver green era / armor / and your eyes / were / as water marina. / Your hands and your face / were wheat. /... your verses. "/ Of iron and shadow were, / diamond / dark / cut / were / the cold / towers / of Spain, / in stone, in the water, / in the language". And Neruda contrasts his style to the classic, who does say that if now sing again, "not to the death / would / my word"..."is the time / life". The attitude of residence on Earth, elemental Odes are an affirmation of life and hope and there are among the most valuable works of the Great Chilean poet. At the end of 1957 he appeared in Buenos Aires, the third book of elemental Odes, which continues the trend that characterized the previous.

With a tendency to overcome the secrecy of his first books and inclined to simplification, but shy away from political issues, his works continued being enriched with new titles: new residence on Earth (1956), "estravagario" (1959), navigations and returns (1959) and one hundred love sonnets (1959) devoted to Matilde Urrutia. Already in 1957 had been published in Santiago de Chile his complete works, in a luxurious volume of 1265 pages that, according to Homer Castle, "the publishing event of the year" was considered.

It was followed, in the next decade, Chanson de Geste (1960), Stones of Chile (1961), full power (1962), Memorial de Isla Negra (1964), arts of birds (1966), a House on the sand (1966) the hands of the day (1968) and La Barcarola (1967). 1967 is the theatrical brilliance and death of Joaquín Murieta. His last published volumes were end of the world (1971), the flaming sword (1971), the stones of the sky (1971) and incitement to the nixonicidio and praise for the Chilean revolution (1973). Among his posthumous works worth mentioning his memoirs, I confess that I've lived, which were published in 1974.

Extracted from the website: Biografías y Vidas