50 Fun Facts About Pablo Neruda

Pablo Neruda was a poet and diplomat from which country?

He is often called Chile's national poet, and three of his houses there are now museums.

In which year did Neruda win the Nobel Prize in Literature?

Gabriela Mistral, who had encouraged him as a schoolboy, had won Chile's first in 1945.

Neruda's 1924 collection of love poems is titled Twenty Love Poems and a Song of what?

It launched him at 19 and remains the best-selling poetry book in the Spanish language.

Neruda's surname at birth was what?

He was born Ricardo Eliécer Neftalí Reyes Basoalto and adopted the pen name around 1920.

Neruda is thought to have taken his pen name from a poet of which nationality?

Jan Neruda is the usual candidate, though the violinist Wilma Neruda, mentioned in A Study in Scarlet, is another theory.

In which Chilean town was Neruda born in 1904?

His mother, a schoolteacher, died two months after his birth and the family moved south to Temuco.

What was the occupation of Neruda's father?

He opposed his son's writing; the local school head Gabriela Mistral encouraged it instead.

Which future Nobel laureate headed the local school and encouraged the young Neruda?

Mistral had read his work since he was a teenager and later preceded him as consul in Madrid.

How old was Neruda when he published his first work, an essay, in 1917?

'Entusiasmo y perseverancia' ran in the Temuco daily La Mañana under his real name, Neftalí Reyes.

What was the title of Neruda's first volume of verse, published in 1923?

The title translates as Book of Twilights; Twenty Love Poems followed from the same publisher a year later.

Neruda moved to the capital in 1921 intending to become a teacher of which language?

He soon abandoned the course for poetry and, through Eduardo Barrios, met the publisher Carlos Nascimento.

Neruda's first diplomatic post in 1927 was an honorary consulship in which city?

He took the Burma posting out of financial desperation and later served in Colombo, Batavia and Singapore.

Neruda's first wife, known as Maruca, was a bank employee of which nationality?

He met María Antonia Hagenaar Vogelzang in Batavia; their only child, Malva Marina, died aged eight in the occupied Netherlands.

Which Spanish poet's execution was the main catalyst for Neruda's turn to communism?

Neruda had befriended him in Madrid alongside Alberti and the Peruvian César Vallejo.

Neruda's 1938 collection supporting the Spanish Republic was titled what in English?

España en el corazón cost him his consular post because of its political militancy.

What was the name of the ship Neruda used to carry Spanish refugees to Chile in 1939?

He called the mission the noblest he ever undertook; the old cargo ship was adapted to carry 2,200 people.

Which Chilean port did Neruda's refugee ship reach on 3 September 1939?

The refugees hung a canvas of President Aguirre Cerda's face from the mast in thanks.

Where did Neruda serve as Consul General from 1940 to 1943?

There he arranged a visa for the muralist Siqueiros, accused of plotting against Trotsky.

A 1943 visit to which ancient site inspired a twelve-part Neruda poem, later Canto II?

The poem later became Canto II of Canto General and condemned the slavery behind the stonework.

In 1945 Neruda was elected senator for Antofagasta and Tarapacá, provinces in which desert?

He represented the Communist Party and formally joined it four months after the election.

Which Chilean president, whose campaign Neruda managed, later outlawed the Communist Party?

Neruda's January 1948 Senate speech 'Yo acuso' read out the names of imprisoned miners.

What title did Neruda's dramatic 6 January 1948 Senate speech become known by?

The name echoes Zola's 'J'accuse'; weeks later a warrant was out and Neruda went into hiding.

For roughly how many months was Neruda hidden by supporters before fleeing Chile?

He was moved from house to house, then to Valdivia and a forestry estate near Huishue Lake.

In March 1949 Neruda escaped over the Andes into Argentina by what means?

He crossed the Lilpela Pass and later recounted the escape in his Nobel lecture.

Whose passport did Neruda use to travel from Buenos Aires to Europe after his escape?

The Guatemalan novelist, a future Nobel winner, bore a slight resemblance to him.

Which artist arranged Neruda's entrance into Paris in 1949?

He surprised the World Congress of Peace Forces while Chile's government was denying he had escaped.

Canto General was first published in 1950 in which country?

A month later the outlawed Chilean Communist Party boldly printed 5,000 copies from a manuscript he had left behind.

How many sections, or cantos, make up Canto General?

The epic runs to 231 poems and over 15,000 lines, a history of the whole Western Hemisphere.

Which Greek composer turned Canto General into an oratorio in 1975?

Chilean composer Sergio Ortega had earlier worked with Neruda on the musical play about Joaquín Murieta.

Matilde Urrutia, Neruda's third wife, was hired in 1949 to nurse him through which illness?

The affair began in Mexico; she became the muse of Los versos del capitán, published anonymously in 1952.

Neruda built La Chascona for Urrutia; the house's name refers to her what?

'Chascona' is Chilean Spanish of Quechua origin for tangled or dishevelled hair.

Which Mexican artist painted the two-faced portrait of Urrutia that hangs in La Chascona?

One face is the public singer, the other the secret lover, and Neruda's profile is hidden in her hair.

Neruda's second wife, Delia del Carril, was an artist of which nationality?

She was twenty years his senior, and Chile refused to recognise the marriage because his divorce was deemed illegal.

Neruda's Italian exile inspired a 1985 novel by which Chilean author?

Ardiente Paciencia, later called El cartero de Neruda, became the film Il Postino.

In the 1994 film Il Postino, which actor played Pablo Neruda?

Troisi played the postman and died of a heart attack the day after principal photography ended.

Il Postino's composer won an Academy Award for its score; who was he?

The film was also nominated for Best Picture, Director, Actor and Adapted Screenplay.

Who directed the 2016 biographical drama Neruda?

It premiered at Cannes and follows a fictional policeman, Peluchonneau, hunting the poet in 1948.

Which Mexican poet's friendship with Neruda broke down over Stalinism?

They nearly came to blows after the 1939 Nazi-Soviet pact, yet Paz still called him the greatest poet of his generation.

Which playwright secured Neruda a US visa for the 1966 PEN conference in New York?

Neruda was officially barred as a communist; he ended up recording poems for the Library of Congress.

Under President Allende, Neruda served as Chile's ambassador to which country?

In Paris he helped renegotiate Chile's foreign debt before ill health forced him home.

Which Swedish translator worked to secure Neruda the 1971 Nobel Prize?

Academy archives opened in 2022 showed he was nearly denied the prize over his odes to Stalin.

Neruda died on 23 September 1973 at a clinic in which city?

It was the day before he planned to leave for Mexico, twelve days after the coup that toppled Allende.

Which bacterium did a 2023 toxicology report find in Neruda's teeth?

Earlier tests had found Staphylococcus; experts still disagree on whether either caused his death.

Neruda's former driver, whose 2011 claims triggered the murder inquiry, was named what?

He said Neruda phoned from the clinic to say a doctor had injected him in the stomach.

Neruda's memoirs, published in 1974, carry which English title?

Matilde Urrutia edited them and her own memoir, My Life with Pablo Neruda, appeared in 1986.

Neruda and Matilde Urrutia are buried at which of his three houses?

La Chascona is in Santiago and La Sebastiana in Valparaíso; all three are now museums.

Who made the 1969 English translation of Neruda's Twenty Love Poems?

Reid and Tarn translated other Neruda volumes; Merwin's version remains the standard one.

Which Colombian novelist called Neruda the greatest poet of the 20th century in any language?

Harold Bloom also placed him among the writers central to The Western Canon.

Residence on Earth first appeared in 1933 in an edition of how many copies?

Neruda told a friend it was a luxury edition and he could spare just one copy for Argentina.

Which 1990 Anthony Minghella film uses Neruda's poem 'The Dead Woman' as a plot device?

Juliet Stevenson's character realises she must let go of Alan Rickman's ghost.