Pablo Neruda

An imaginative awareness of experience expressed through meaning, sound, and rhythmic language choices so as to evoke an emotional response.

Born in Chile on July 12, 1904 Pablo Neruda led a life charged with poetic and political activity. In 1923 he sold all of his possessions to finance the publication of his first book, Crepusculario ("Twilight"). Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair made a celebrity of Neruda, who gave up his studies at the age of twenty. In 1927, Neruda began his long career as a diplomat in the Latin American tradition of honoring poets with diplomatic assignments. Neruda was named Chilean consul in Buenos Aires, Argentina, in While there, he began a friendship with the Spanish poet Federico Garcia Lorca. After transferred to Madrid later that year, Neruda also met the Spanish writer Manuel Altolaguirre. The outbreak of the Spanish Civil War in 1936 interrupted Neruda's poetic and political development. Neruda's outspoken sympathy for the loyalist cause during the Spanish Civil War led to his recall from Madrid in He then returned to Europe to help settle republican refugees in the United States.

Neruda returned to Chile in 1938 where he renewed his political activity and wrote prolifically. In 1939 he served as Chilean Consul to Mexico, upon his returning to Chile in 1943, he joined the Senate and the Communist Party. When the Chilean government moved to the right, they declared communism illegal and expelled Neruda from the Senate. He went into hiding. During those years he wrote and published Canto General (1950). In 1952 the government withdrew the order to arrest leftist writers and political figures, and Neruda returned to Chile and married Matilde Urrutia, his third wife (his first two marriages ended in divorce). For the next twenty-one years, he continued a career that integrated private and public concerns and became known as the people's poet. During this time, Neruda received numerous prestigious awards, including the International Peace Prize in 1950, the Lenin Peace Prize and the Stalin Peace Prize in 1953, and the Nobel Prize for Literature in Diagnosed with cancer while serving a two-year term as ambassador to France, Neruda resigned his position thus ending his diplomatic career. On September 23, 1973 died of leukemia in Santiago, Chile.

- 100 Love Sonnets (1986) - A New Decade: Poems, (1969) - Five Decades: A Selection (Poems ) (1974) - Full Woman, Fleshly Apple, Hot Moon : Selected Poems of Pablo Neruda (1998) - Fully Empowered: Plenos poderes (1975) - Isla Negra: A Notebook (1980) - Late and Posthumous Poems, (1989) - Pablo Neruda: An Anthology of Odes (1994) - Pablo Neruda: The Early Poems (1969) - Selected Poems (1970) - Stones of the Sky (1970) - Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair (1969) - Twenty Poems (1967)

I want you to know one thing. You know how this is: if I look at the crystal moon, at the red branch, of the slow autumn at my window, if I touch near the fire, the impalpable ash or the wrinkled body of the log, everything carries me to you, as if everything that exists, aromas, light, metals, were little boats, that sail toward those isles of yours that wait for me. Well, now, if little by little you stop loving me I shall stop loving you little by little. If suddenly, you forget me, do not look for me, for I shall already have forgotten you. If you think it long and mad, the wind of banners, that passes through my life, and you decide, to leave me at the shore of the heart where I have roots, remember, that on that day, at that hour, I shall lift my arms and my roots will set off to seek another land. But, if each day, each hour, you feel that you are destined for me with implacable sweetness, if each day a flower climbs up to your lips to seek me, ah my love, ah my own, in me all that fire is repeated, in me nothing is extinguished or forgotten, my love feeds on your love beloved, and as long as you live, it will be in your arms without leaving mine. Pablo Neruda

The poem illustrates the effort to keep passion in a relationship alive. It also emphasizes that love feed on love and underlines that passion stimulate love. Autumn marks the transition from summer to winter and represents the fine lines of willingness to accept and embrace each others differences and compromising with their offerings. The spiritual symbol of fire embodies transformation and enlightenment between lovers. In a very light interpretation ash reminds mortality and flowers act as gestures and symbols to communicate sympathy, love and passion. The reference to the autumn, the ash, the wind of banners and boats provide the impression that love will end, if the lovers do not share the good and bad times together. With underlying melancholy and all his passion, Neruda brought out beautifully a hurting love open to being love again. Love means both effortless and laborious.

“ Poetry is the rhythmical creation of beauty in words. With me poetry has not been a purpose, but a passion.” Pablo Neruda

Neruda, Pablo. "Poems by Pablo Neruda." 18 Jan 2009 Web.17 Jul Neruda, Pablo. "Pablo Neruda." Mother Bird Books Web.16 Jul Neruda, Pablo. "If you Forget Me." 2007 Web.17 Jul Neruda, Pablo. "Google Images." Web.17 Jul Neruda, Pablo. "Poetry." Web.15 Jul Neruda, Pablo. "Wikipedia the Free Encyclopedia." 15 Jul 2009 Web.17 Jul Neruda, Pablo. "If You Forget Me." You Tube 2009 Web.20 Jul

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