Education: Pablo Neruda

My favorite poet, Pablo Neruda.

The poetry of Pablo Neruda passionately describe everything from common objects like dishes and chairs, to emotions like solidarity and love. He led an extremely vocal life, not only with poetry beginning his career as a teenager, but as a diplomat and politician for his native country of Chile.



Neruda occupied many diplomatic positions including a stint as a senator for the Chilean Communist Party which led to a warrant for his arrest when communism was outlawed in 1948. He became a refugee of sorts when friends hid him in a basement in the port of Valparaiso.

A month later, Neruda escaped into the mountains of Argentina and was an outlaw. He would use a friends passport (who looked much like he did) to travel into parts of Europe while in exile. He associated with the likes of Pablo Picasso and Gabriela Mistral. He likely romanced his way around the world as well, falling in love in Mexico with a Chilean singer who he later married. And he only returned to Chile after winning a Nobel Prize in Literature.

The extensive life of Neruda led to passionate expression through words in green ink (his personal symbol for desire and hope). Despite all of the controversy surrounding his life he remained politically active until his death in 1973 of heart failure at the age of 69. Though it was rumored there was organized crime involved.

Neruda wrote in a variety of styles including surrealist poems, historical epics, overly political manifestos, a prose autobiography, and erotically charged love poems. One of my many favorites:

Always

Facing you
I am not jealous.

Come with a man
at your back,
come with a hundred men in your hair,
come with a thousand men between your bosom
      and your feet,
come like a river
filled with drowned men
that meets the furious sea,
the eternal foam, the weather.

Bring them all
where I wait for you:
we shall always be alone,
we shall always be, you and I,
alone upon the earth
to begin life.

Researching his life I have learned that all three of the houses Neruda owned in Chile are now open to the public as museums. Including Casa de Isla Negra in Isla Negra, where both he and his wife are buried. I've officially added something to my bucket list.

I encourage you to take the time to lose yourself in the works of Pablo Neruda.