Pablo Neruda
Pablo Neruda was the pen name and, later, legal name of the Chilean writer and politician Neftalí Ricardo Reyes Basoalto. Neruda assumed his pen name as a teenager, partly because it was in vogue, partly to hide his poetry from his father, a rigid man who wanted his son to have a "practical" occupation. Neruda's pen name was derived from Czech writer and poet Jan Neruda; Pablo is thought to be from Paul Verlaine. With his works translated into many languages, Pablo Neruda is considered one of the greatest and most influential poets of the 20th century.
Neruda was accomplished in a variety of styles, ranging from erotically charged love poems like his collection Twenty Poems of Love and a Song of Despair, surrealist poems, historical epics, and overtly political manifestos. In 1971 Neruda won the Nobel Prize for Literature, a controversial award because of his political activism. Colombian novelist Gabriel García Márquez once called him "the greatest poet of the 20th century in any language."
On July 15, 1945, at Pacaembu Stadium in São Paulo, Brazil, he read to 100,000 people in honor of Communist revolutionary leader Luís Carlos Prestes. When Neruda returned to Chile after his Nobel Prize acceptance speech, Salvador Allende invited him to read at the Estadio Nacional before 70,000 people.
During his lifetime, Neruda occupied many diplomatic posts and served a stint as a senator for the Chilean Communist Party. When Conservative Chilean President González Videla outlawed communism in Chile, a warrant was issued for Neruda's arrest. Friends hid him for months in a house basement in the Chilean port of Valparaíso. Later, Neruda escaped into exile through a mountain pass near Maihue Lake into Argentina. Years later, Neruda was a close collaborator to socialist President Salvador Allende.
Neruda was hospitalized with cancer at the time of the Chilean coup d'état led by Augusto Pinochet. Three days after being hospitalized, Neruda died of heart failure. Already a legend in life, Neruda's death reverberated around the world. Pinochet had denied permission to transform Neruda's funeral into a public event. However, thousands of grieving Chileans disobeyed the curfew and crowded the streets to pay their respects. Neruda's funeral became the first public protest against the Chilean military dictatorship.
“Give me, for my life,all lives,give me all the painof everyone, I'm going to turn it into hope.Give me all the joys,even the most secret,because otherwisehow will these things be known?I have to tell them,give methe laborsof everyday,for that's what I sing.”
“Love is so short, forgetting is so long.”
“I don't want to go on being a root in the dark,vacillating, stretched out, shivering with sleep,downward, in the soaked guts of the earth,absorbing and thinking, eating each day.”
“And the verse falls to the soul like dew to the pasture.”
“Girl lithe and tawny, the sun that formsthe fruits, that plumps the grains, that curls seaweedsfilled your body with joy, and your luminous eyesand your mouth that has the smile of the water.A black yearning sun is braided into the strandsof your black mane, when you stretch your arms.You play with the sun as with a little brookand it leaves two dark pools in your eyes.”
“Walking AroundSucede que me canso de ser hombre.Sucede que entro en las sastrerías y en los cinesmarchito, impenetrable, como un cisne de fieltronavegando en un agua de origen y ceniza.El olor de las pelquerías me hace llorar a gritos.Sólo quiero un descanso de piedras o de lana,sólo quiero no ver establecimientos ni jardines,ni mercaderías, ni anteojos, ni ascensores.Sucede que me canso de mis pies y mis uñasy mi pelo y mi sombra.Sucede que me canso de ser hombre.Sin embargo sería delicioso asustar a un notario con un lirio cortadoo dar muerte a une monja con un golpe de oreja.Sería belloir por las calles con un cuchillo verdey dando gritos hasta morir de frío.No quiero seguir siendo raíz en las tinieblas,vacilante, extendido, tiritando de sueño,hacia abajo, en las tripas mojadas de la tierra,absorbiendo y pensando, comiendo cada día.No quiero para mí tantas desgracias.No quiero continuar de raíz y de tumba,de subterráneo solo, de bodega con muertosateridos, muriéndome de pena.Por eso el día lunes arde como el petróleocuando me ve llegar con mi cara de cárcel,y aúlla en su transcurso como una rueda herida,y da pasos de sangre caliente hacia la noche.Y me empuja a ciertos rincones, a ciertas casas húmedas,a hospitales donde los huesos salen por la ventana,a ciertas zapaterías con olor a vinagre,a calles espantosas como grietas.Hay pájaros de color de azufre y horribles intestinoscolgando de las puertas de las casas que odio,hay dentaduras olvidadas en una cafetera,hay espejosque debieran haber llorado de vergüenza y espanto,hay paraguas en todas partes, y venenos, y ombligos.Yo paseo con calma, con ojos, con zapatos,con furia, con olvido,paso, cruzo oficinas y tiendas de ortopedia,y patios donde hay ropas colgadas de un alambre:calzoncillos, toallas y camisas que lloranlentas lágrimas sucias.”
“Entre los labios y la voz, algo se va muriendo.Algo con alas de pájaro, algo de angustia y de olvido”
“Laughter is the language of the soul.”
“La heradera del dia destruida.(The heiress of the destroyed day.)”
“Do tears not yet spilled wait in small lakes?”
“I got lost in the night, without the lightof your eyelids, and when the night surrounded meI was born again: I was the owner of my own darkness.”
“I grew up in this town, my poetry was born between the hill and the river, it took its voice from the rain, and like the timber, it steeped itself in the forests.”
“And what importance do I have in the courtroom of oblivion?”
“Todo te lo tragaste, como la lejania, como el mar, como el tiempo... Ese fue mi destino y en el viajo mi anhelo, y en el mi anhelo, todo en ti fue naufragio! (You swallowed everything, like distance, like the sea, like time. This was my destiny and it was the voyage of my longing, in it my longing fell, in you everything sank.)”
“Quiero que sepasuna cosa.Si de prontome olvidasno me busques,que ya te habré olvidado.”
“Não te amo como se fosse rosa de sal,topázioou flecha de cravos quepropagam o fogo:te amo como se amam certas coisas obscuras,secretamente,entre a sombra e a alma.Te amo como a planta que nãofloresce e levadentro de si,oculta, a luz daquelas flores,e graças ateu amor vive escuro em meu corpoo apertado aroma que ascendeu da terra.Te amo sem saber como,nem quando,nem onde,te amo diretamente semproblemas nem orgulho:assim te amo porque não sei amar de outra maneira,senão assim deste modo em que eu não sou nem éstão perto que tuamão sobre meu peito é minhatão perto que se fecham meus olhos com meusonho.”
“Here I came to the very edge where nothing at all needs saying...and every day on the balcony of the sea wings open fire is born and everything is blue again like morning.”
“I can write the saddest poem of all tonight. I loved her, and sometimes she loved me too.”
“Nobody can claim the name of Pedro,nobody is Rosa or María,all of us are dust or sand,all of us are rain under rain.They have spoken to me of Venezuelas,of Chiles and Paraguays;I have no idea what they are saying.I know only the skin of the earthand I know it has no name.”
“Sucede que me canso de ser hombre.”
“I love you as certain dark things are to be loved, in secret, between the shadow and the soul.”
“I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where. I love you simply, without problems or pride: I love you in this way because I do not know any other way of loving but this, in which there is no I or you, so intimate that your hand upon my chest is my hand, so intimate that when I fall asleep your eyes close.”
“And one by one the nights between our separated cities are joined to the night that unites us.”
“I crave your mouth, your voice, your hair.Silent and starving, I prowl through the streets. Bread does not nourish me, dawn disrupts me, all day I hunt for the liquid measure of your steps.”
“We the mortals touch the metals,the wind, the ocean shores, the stones,knowing they will go on, inert or burning,and I was discovering, naming all the these things:it was my destiny to love and say goodbye.”
“The days aren't discarded or collected, they are beesthat burned with sweetness or maddenedthe sting: the struggle continues,the journeys go and come between honey and pain.No, the net of years doesn't unweave: there is no net.They don't fall drop by drop from a river: there is no river.Sleep doesn't divide life into halves,or action, or silence, or honor:life is like a stone, a single motion,a lonesome bonfire reflected on the leaves,an arrow, only one, slow or swift, a metalthat climbs or descends burning in your bones.”
“Each in the most hidden sack keptthe lost jewels of memory,intense love, secret nights and permanent kisses,the fragment of public or private happiness.A few, the wolves, collected thighs,other men loved the dawn scratchingmountain ranges or ice floes, locomotives, numbers.For me happiness was to share singing,praising, cursing, crying with a thousand eyes.I ask forgiveness for my bad ways:my life had no use on earth.”
“It was at that agethat poetry came in search of me.”
“Poetry is an act of peace. Peace goes into the making of a poet as flour goes into the making of bread.”