Pablo Neruda

Ricardo Eliécer Neftalí Reyes Basoalto (Spanish: Ricardo Eliécer Neftalí Reyes Basoalto; July 12, 1904 - September 23, 1973), pen name Pablo Neruda, was a Chilean poet, diplomat, winner of the 1971 Nobel Prize for Literature, and a Chilean Communist Party politician. Neruda became famous as a poet at the age of 13. His creations cover a wide range of works, including surrealist poetry, historical epics, political manifestos, a prose autobiography, and widely circulated love poems, such as the collection of poems "Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair". Neruda served as a diplomat in many countries and served as a senator on behalf of the Communist Party of Chile. In 1948, the anti-communist Chilean President Gabriel González Videla signed an arrest warrant against Neruda. Neruda had to hide in the basement of a friend's house in Valparaiso for several months, and then fled Argentina via the Andes Mountains the following year, and did not return to the country until three years later. Neruda was a close advisor to pro-communist President Salvador Allende. After winning the Nobel Prize for Literature, he was invited by Allende to recite poetry in front of 70,000 people at the National Stadium. In 1973, Neruda was diagnosed with cancer. At the same time, Augusto Pinochet staged a coup with US support to overthrow the pro-communist Chilean government. Neruda died on September 23, 1973. Although Neruda was long thought to have died of heart failure, recent evidence has cast doubt on this theory. Neruda is often considered Chile's national poet, and his works are read and loved by people around the world. Colombian writer García Márquez called him "the greatest poet of the 20th century", and literary critic Harold Bloom included Neruda among the core writers of the Western tradition in his work "The Western Canon".