Pablo Neruda
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49 free Pablo Neruda trivia questions with answers — literature quiz, new questions added Sep 2026.
Pablo Neruda was a pen name, a senator, a consul in Rangoon and Madrid, a fugitive on horseback over the Andes, an ambassador in Paris and the 1971 Nobel laureate, and he was all of those things while writing the best-selling poetry book in the Spanish language. Gabriel García Márquez called him the greatest poet of the twentieth century in any language; Jorge Luis Borges called him a very fine poet and a very mean man. These 49 questions follow the whole arc: the railway worker's son from Parral who published at 13, the Czech poet he probably borrowed his name from, Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair at 19, the lonely consular years that produced Residence on Earth, the Spanish Civil War, the Winnipeg and its 2,200 refugees, the 'Yo acuso' speech, thirteen months in hiding, Canto General, Matilde Urrutia and La Chascona, Il Postino, the Nobel and the exhumations that followed his death twelve days after the Pinochet coup. The hard tier asks which passport got him to Europe and what grew in one of his molars. Every answer is cited to a page we checked, with a short explanation so you learn something even when you miss.
30 of 49 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Neruda died in 1973, twelve days after a military coup led by which general?
Augusto Pinochet
Augusto Pinochet's coup overthrew the government of Salvador Allende, Neruda's friend, and began 17 years of military rule.
Q 02Neruda's Nobel Prize citation praised poetry that brings alive the destiny and dreams of what?
Continent
Continent: Canto General had grown from a poem about Chile alone into an epic of the whole South American continent.
Q 03Neruda's 1924 collection of love poems is titled Twenty Love Poems and a Song of what?
Despair
Despair: the book's frank eroticism brought him notoriety, and publishing it at 19 made his name in Chile.
Q 04Neruda's surname at birth was what?
Reyes
Reyes: he stayed legally Reyes until 1946, when a judge ruled he could take his pen name, Pablo Neruda, as his legal name.
Q 05Neruda is thought to have taken his pen name from a poet of which nationality?
Czech
Czech: Jan Neruda is the usual candidate, and the teenager probably took a pen name because his father disapproved of his poetry.
Q 06In which southern Chilean town did Neruda grow up?
Temuco
Temuco: his father moved there and remarried, and Neruda went to school in the town until 1920.
Q 07What was the occupation of Neruda's father?
Railway employee
Railway employee: a railway museum in southern Chile is now named after his son, the poet.
Q 08Which future Nobel laureate headed the local school and encouraged the young Neruda?
Gabriela Mistral
Gabriela Mistral gave the boy books to read and the encouragement he lacked at home.
Q 09What was the title of Neruda's first volume of verse, published in 1923?
Crepusculario
Crepusculario gathered poems he wrote as a teenager, and the critic Raúl Silva Castro praised it on release.
Q 10Neruda moved to the capital in 1921 intending to become a teacher of which language?
French
French: he was an indifferent student, and he soon abandoned his French studies to devote himself entirely to poetry.
Q 11Neruda's first diplomatic post in 1927 was an honorary consulship in which city?
Rangoon
Rangoon: with no steady job at home, he got himself this honorary Burma posting, and later served in Colombo, Batavia and Singapore.
Q 12Neruda's first wife, known as Maruca, was of which nationality?
Dutch
Dutch: he met María Antonia Hagenaar in Batavia, then capital of the Dutch East Indies, where he was serving as consul.
Q 13Which Spanish poet's execution in 1936 helped draw Neruda into the Republican cause?
Federico García Lorca
Federico García Lorca had met Neruda in Buenos Aires in 1933 and became a close friend and enthusiastic champion of his poetry.
Q 21What title did Neruda's dramatic 6 January 1948 Senate speech become known by?
Yo acuso
Yo acuso: within a month a court had ordered Neruda's arrest, sending him into hiding.
Q 22Neruda was already ill with which disease when he won the 1971 Nobel Prize?
Prostate cancer
Prostate cancer: his death certificate blamed the disease, but later studies of his remains largely rejected that cause.
Q 23After more than a year in hiding, Neruda escaped Chile over the Andes by what means?
On horseback
On horseback: his horse nearly drowned fording a river, a moment he later retold in his Nobel lecture.
Q 14Neruda's collection supporting the Spanish Republic during the civil war was titled what in English?
Spain in Our Hearts
Spain in Our Hearts was printed by Republican soldiers on the front lines, in the middle of the war.
Q 15What was the name of the ship Neruda used to carry Spanish refugees to Chile in 1939?
Winnipeg
Winnipeg: Neruda gathered Spanish Republicans from internment camps, and about 2,000 sailed on it.
Q 16Which Chilean port did Neruda's refugee ship reach on 3 September 1939?
Valparaíso
Valparaíso: some of the refugees went on to shape Chilean art and culture, among them the painters José Balmes and Roser Bru.
Q 17Neruda was serving as Chile's consul in which city when the Spanish Civil War broke out in 1936?
Madrid
Madrid: when the war came, he openly took up the Republican cause, travelling in and out of Spain to rally support.
Q 18A 1943 visit to which ancient site inspired a long Neruda poem later included in Canto General?
Machu Picchu
Machu Picchu: Neruda's poem gives voice to the nameless workers who built the Inca city and the slavery behind it.
Q 19In 1945 Neruda was elected senator for Antofagasta and Tarapacá, provinces in which desert?
Atacama
Atacama: he won the seat as the Communist Party's candidate and formally joined the party four months later.
Q 20Which Chilean president, elected in 1946 with Communist support, later outlawed the party and drove Neruda into hiding?
Gabriel González Videla
Gabriel González Videla had Neruda as his campaign's propaganda chief, and the poet's open letter attacking him later cost Neruda his Senate seat.
Q 24To reach Europe in 1949, Neruda travelled on the borrowed passport of which fellow writer, a future Nobel laureate?
Miguel Ángel Asturias
Miguel Ángel Asturias was then a Guatemalan diplomat in Buenos Aires, and the two writers looked vaguely alike.
Q 25Which artist was among the friends who protected the fugitive Neruda when he reached Paris in 1949?
Pablo Picasso
Pablo Picasso helped him settle his papers, and Neruda soon made a surprise appearance at the World Peace Congress in Paris.
Q 26In 1965 Neruda received an honorary doctorate from which English university?
Oxford
Oxford: Neruda had just translated Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet into Spanish, and a Chilean university theatre had staged it.
Q 27Critics liken Canto General to the work of which American poet?
Whitman
Whitman: like Leaves of Grass, Canto General catalogues a vast land's history, geography, plants, animals and people.
Q 28Which Greek composer set Neruda's Canto General as an oratorio for soloists, choir and orchestra?
Mikis Theodorakis
Mikis Theodorakis was inspired after hearing young Chilean musicians perform the poems, and Neruda attended rehearsals.
Q 29Which book inspired by Matilde Urrutia did Neruda first publish anonymously?
The Captain's Verses
The Captain's Verses first appeared in a small private edition in Naples, while Neruda's affair with Matilde was still a secret.
Q 30Neruda built La Chascona for Urrutia; the house's name refers to her what?
Curly red hair
Curly red hair: the house was damaged amid the 1973 coup, and Matilde later took charge of restoring it.