Pablo Neruda

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Pablo Neruda

Neruda in 1963
Ricardo Eliécer Neftalí Reyes Basoalto
Born
12 July 1904
Parral, Maule Region, Chile
23 September 1973 (aged 69)
Died
Santiago, Chile
Occupation Poet, diplomat, senator
Political
Communist
party
Marijke Antonieta Hagenaar Vogelzang (1930–1943 or 1930–1965) (d.
Mar 27 1965)

Spouse(s) Delia del Carril (1943–1965) marriage valid in Mexico (d. July 26, 1989)

Matilde Urrutia Cerda (also called Matilde Rosario Urrutia Cerda) (1965–
1973) (d. Jan 5 1985)
Children 1
• International Peace Prize (1950)
• Lenin Peace Prize (1953)
Awards
• Nobel Prize in Literature (1971)

Signature
Ricardo Eliécer Neftalí Reyes Basoalto (12 July 1904 – 23 September 1973), better
known by his pen name and, later, legal name Pablo Neruda (/nəˈruːdə/;[1] Spanish: [ˈpaβlo
neˈɾuða]), was a Chilean poet-diplomat and politician who won the Nobel Prize for
Literature in 1971. Neruda became known as a poet when he was 13 years old, and 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).

Neruda occupied many diplomatic positions in various countries during his lifetime and
served a term as a Senator for the Chilean Communist Party. When President Gabriel
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,
and in 1949 he escaped through a mountain pass near Maihue Lake into Argentina; he
would not return to Chile for more than three years. He was a close advisor to Chile's
socialist President Salvador Allende, and, when he got back to Chile after accepting his
Nobel Prize in Stockholm, Allende invited him to read at the Estadio Nacional before
70,000 people.[2]