Q 01/05

Neruda died in 1973, twelve days after a military coup led by which general?

A) Juan Perón

B) Alfredo Stroessner

C) Augusto Pinochet

D) Manuel Noriega

Answer · why

C) Augusto Pinochet

Augusto Pinochet's coup overthrew the government of Salvador Allende, Neruda's friend, and began 17 years of military rule.

Q 02/05

Neruda's Nobel Prize citation praised poetry that brings alive the destiny and dreams of what?

A) People

B) Continent

C) Nation

D) Generation

Answer · why

B) Continent

Continent: Canto General had grown from a poem about Chile alone into an epic of the whole South American continent.

Q 03/05

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

A) Dawn

B) Longing

C) Farewell

D) Despair

Answer · why

D) Despair

Despair: the book's frank eroticism brought him notoriety, and publishing it at 19 made his name in Chile.

Q 04/05

Neruda's surname at birth was what?

A) Rojas

B) Allende

C) Urrutia

D) Reyes

Answer · why

D) 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 05/05

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

A) Russian

B) Polish

C) Hungarian

D) Czech

Answer · why

D) Czech

Czech: Jan Neruda is the usual candidate, and the teenager probably took a pen name because his father disapproved of his poetry.