Pablo Neruda
(1904–1973)
Pablo Neruda was born Neftalí Ricardo Reyes Basoalto in a frontier town in Chile. He changed his name when he began his writing career. Throughout his career, Neruda believed in combining his talent for poetry with his interest in politics.
Neruda believed he could be a voice for the Chilean people. He spoke out against his country's oppressive and dishonest government. In 1945, he became a senator, but he was declared a traitor and forced into hiding. In 1970, he supported his friend Salvador Allende Gossens in his successful run for the presidency of Chile. Allende, however, was forced out and died in a violent coup in 1973, the same year that Neruda himself died.
Despite his strong political beliefs, Neruda is best known for his love poems. He won the Nobel Prize in literature in 1971. Neruda said he was very influenced by Walt Whitman, the American poet, in whose poetry everyone was included and no one mocked. Like Whitman, Neruda believed that the personal and the political are two sides of the same coin. Love is at the heart of the political justice that both writers spoke of in their poetry.
