Fun Facts Friday: Pablo Neruda

Pablo Neruda (12 July, 1904 – 23 September, 1973) was a Nobel Prize winning poet from Chile.

Books by Pablo Neruda*

1. Born as Ricardo Eliécer Neftalí Reyes Basoalto in Parral, Chile he was the son of a railway employee and a school teacher. Sadly his mother, the school teacher, died two months after he was born.
2. Mr. Neruda first started writing poems at age 13.
3. At first he used Pablo Neruda as his nom de plume, but later changed it legally.
4. Mr. Neruda served in several diplomatic positions during his lifetime, mostly as a member of the Chilean Communist Party.
5. In 1970 Mr. Neruda was nominated for the Chilean presidency, but dropped out and supported Salvador Allende, who later won (famous Chilean author Isabel Allende is his first cousin, once removed).
6. President Allende appointed Mr. Neruda to be the Chilean ambassador to France, until 1972.
7. It was rumored that Mr. Neruda has been killed by the regime of Augusto Pinochet. Mr. Neruda was at the hospital when he called his wife and told her he believed Mr. Pinochet ordered a doctor to kill him. He received an injection into his stomach and died six and a half hours later.
8. Mr. Neruda is considered the national poet of Chile. There are no evidence to support this.
9. Gabriel García Márquez, the famed Colombian novelist, called Mr. Neruda “the greatest poet of the 20th century in any language”.
10. Mr. Neruda’s three houses which he owned in Chile are today open to the public as museums. They are:  La Chascona in Santiago, La Sebastiana in Valparaíso, and Casa de Isla Negra in Isla Negra.

Books by Pablo Neruda*

Zohar — Man of la Book
*Ama­zon links point to an affil­i­ate account