Pablo Neruda: Poems

Legacy

Neruda owned three houses in Chile; today, they are all open to the public as museums: La Chascona in Santiago, La Sebastiana in Valparaíso, and Casa de Isla Negra in Isla Negra, where he and Matilde Urrutia are buried.

A bust of Neruda stands on the grounds of the Organization of American States building in Washington, D.C.[93]

In popular culture

Music

  • American composer Tobias Picker set to music Tres Sonetos de Amor for baritone and orchestra.
  • American composer Tobias Picker set to music Cuatro Sonetos de Amor for voice and piano.
  • American singer/songwriter Taylor Swift referenced Neruda's line "love is so short, forgetting is so long" in the prologue for her 2012 album, Red.[94]
  • Greek composer Mikis Theodorakis set to music the Canto general.
  • Greek composer and singer Nikos Xilouris composed Οι Νεκρoί της Πλατείας (The dead of the Square) based on Los muertos de la plaza.
  • American composer Samuel Barber used Neruda's poems for his cantata The Lovers in 1971.
  • Alternative rock musician Lynda Thomas released as a single the flamenco song "Ay, Ay, Ay" (2001), which is based on the book Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair.
  • Austrian avant-garde composer Michael Gielen set to music Un día sobresale (Ein Tag Tritt Hervor. Pentaphonie für obligates Klavier, fünf Soloinstrumente und fünf Gruppen zu je fünf Musikern mit Worten von Pablo Neruda. 1960–63).
  • Native American composer Ron Warren set to music Quatro Sonetos de Amor for coloratura soprano, flute, and piano (1999), 1 from each group of sonnets in Cien Sonetos de Amor. Recorded on Circle All Around Me Blue Heron Music BHM101.
  • Puerto Rican composer Awilda Villarini used Neruda's text for her composition "Two Love Songs".[95]
  • Mexican composer Daniel Catán wrote an opera Il Postino (2010), whose premiere production featured Spanish tenor Plácido Domingo portraying Pablo Neruda.
  • The Dutch composer Peter Schat used twelve poems from the Canto General for his cantata Canto General for mezzo-soprano, violin, and piano (1974), which he dedicated to the memory of the late president Salvador Allende.
  • The Dutch composer Annette Kruisbrink set to music La Canción Desesperada (2000), the last poem of Veinte poemas de amor y una canción desesperada. Instrumentation: guitar and mixed choir (+ 4 soloists S/A/T/B).
  • Folk rock / progressive rock group Los Jaivas, famous in Chile, used Las alturas de Macchu Picchu as the text for their album of the same name.
  • Chilean composer Sergio Ortega worked closely with the poet in the musical play Fulgor y muerte de Joaquín Murieta (1967). Three decades later, Ortega expanded the piece into an opera, leaving Neruda's text intact.
  • Argentine composer Julia Stilman-Lasansky (1935-2007) based her Cantata No. 3 on text by Neruda.[96]
  • Peter Lieberson composed Neruda Songs (2005) and Songs of Love and Sorrow (2010) based on Cien Sonetos de Amor.[97]
  • Jazz vocalist Luciana Souza released an album called "Neruda" (2004) featuring 10 of Neruda's poems set to the music of Federico Mompou.
  • The South African musician Johnny Clegg drew heavily on Neruda in his early work with the band Juluka.
  • On the back of Jackson Browne's album The Pretender, there is a poem by Neruda.
  • Canadian rock group Red Rider named their 1983 LP/CD release Neruda.
  • Chilean composer Leon Schidlowsky has composed a good number of pieces using poems by Neruda. Among them, Carrera, Caupolicán, and Lautaro.
  • Pop band Sixpence None the Richer set his poem "Puedo escribir" to music on their platinum-selling self-titled album (1997).
  • The group Brazilian Girls turned "Poema 15" ("Poem 15") from Veinte poemas de amor y una canción desesperada (20 love poems and a song of despair) into their song "Me gusta cuando callas" from their self-titled album.
  • With permission from the Fundación Neruda, Marco Katz composed a song cycle based on the volume Piedras del cielo for voice and piano.[98] Centaur Records CRC 3232, 2012.
  • The Occitan singer Joanda composed the song Pablo Neruda[99]
  • American contemporary composer Morten Lauridsen set Neruda's poem "Soneto de la noche" to music as part of his cycle "Nocturnes" from 2005.
  • The opening lines of the song "Bachata Rosa" by Juan Luis Guerra were inspired by Neruda's The Book of Questions.[100]
  • Ezequiel Vinao composed "Sonetos de amor" (2011) a song cycle based on Neruda's love poems.
  • Ute Lemper co-composed the songs of "Forever" (2013), an album of the Love poems of Pablo Neruda
  • American composer Daniel Welcher composed Abeja Blanca, for Mezzo-Soprano, English Horn, and Piano using the Abeja Blanca text from Neruda's Twenty Love Songs and a Song of Despair.
  • Canadian rock band The Tragically Hip, on their album Now for Plan A (Universal, 2012), the sixth track of the album is a song titled "Now for Plan A" which includes a reading by guest vocalist Sarah Harmer of the first two stanzas of the Pablo Neruda poem, "Ode To Age" ("Odă Bătrâneţii").
  • Name dropped in the song La Vie Boheme from the 1996 musical Rent written and composed by Jonathan Larson: "To the stage, To Uta, To Buddha, Pablo Neruda too."[101]

Literature

  • Neruda's 1952 stay in a villa on the island of Capri was fictionalized in Chilean author Antonio Skarmeta's 1985 novel Ardiente Paciencia (published as Burning Patience, later known as El cartero de Neruda, or Neruda's Postman).[102]
  • In 2008, the writer Roberto Ampuero published a novel El caso Neruda, about his private eye Cayetano Brulé where Pablo Neruda is one of the protagonists.
  • The Dreamer (2010) is a children's fictional biography of Neruda, "a shy Chilean boy whose spirit develops and thrives despite his father's relentless negativity." Written by Pam Muñoz Ryan and illustrated by Peter Sís, the text and illustrations are printed in Neruda's signature green ink.[103]
  • The character of The Poet in Isabel Allende's debut novel The House of the Spirits is likely an allusion to Neruda.
  • In the 2007 novel The Reluctant Fundamentalist by Pakistani author Mohsin Hamid, a key time in the political radicalization of the protagonist – a young Pakistani intellectual – is his short stay in Chile, in the course of which he visits the preserved home of Pablo Neruda.
  • The newest novel of Isabel Allende, "a long petal of the sea," has numerous important key figures in Chilean history in its narrative. She writes about the life of Pablo Neruda and his involvement in the transportation of numerous fugitives from the Franco regime to Chile.

Film

  • The Italian film Il Postino, inspired by Antonio Skármeta's 1985 novel Ardiente paciencia (Ardent Patience, later known as El cartero de Neruda or Neruda's Postman), centers on the story of a local postman, a humble soul, living on Salina Island near Sicily during the 1950s, who is puzzled by the amount of mail received by a foreign gentleman who has recently moved in. Pablo Neruda (played by Philippe Noiret), who spent some time in exile there, befriends and inspires in him a love of poetry.
  • Neruda is a 120-minute documentary about his life and poetry, including interviews with his friends like Volodia Teitelboim, Jose Balmes, Jorge Edwards, Andrej Wosnessenski, and Mikis Theodorakis. This film was directed by the German filmmaker Ebbo Demant and broadcast in 2004 on the European culture TV channel ARTE and the German public-service broadcaster ARD.
  • Neruda, a 2016 Chilean film.
  • The English film Truly, Madly, Deeply, written and directed by Anthony Minghella, uses Neruda's poem "The Dead Woman" as a pivotal device in the plot when Nina (Juliet Stevenson) understands she must let go of her dead lover Jamie (Alan Rickman).
  • The 1998 film Patch Adams features Love Sonnet XVII.
  • In the film Barbershop (2002), the character Dinka (Leonard Earl Howze) gives flowers to the character Terri (Eve) with a poem by Pablo Neruda.
  • The Sri Lankan film Alborada, otherwise known as Dawning of the Day, shows Neruda's stay in Ceylon as Chilean Consul in Ceylon.[104]
  • In the 2020 film Chemical Hearts, Grace Town (Lili Reinhart) and Henry Page (Austin Abrams) are shown reading the poems from Love Sonnet XVII and understanding the depths of it while Henry falls for Grace.
  • All Too Well: The Short Film (2021), directed by Taylor Swift, opens with the quote "Love is so short, forgetting is so long."[105]
  • In the 2023 film Happiness for Beginners, Helen learns Jake has feelings for her by reading the poem he gave her, Neruda's sonnet "I do not love you."
  • In the 1990 film Mindwalk, a day long conversation between a physicist, a politician and a poet on the island of Mont Saint-Michel, concludes with a recitation of the poem "Enigmas" by Pablo Neruda (based on the translation by Robert Bly). The film is scored by Philip Glass.

Television

  • In the U.S. sitcom How I Met Your Mother, both Ted Mosby and the Mother's favorite poem is revealed to be Pablo Neruda's "Mañana XXVII."[106]
  • In The Simpsons episode "Bart Sells His Soul", Lisa mentions and quotes Pablo Neruda ("Laughter is the language of the soul") and Bart snidely replies that he is familiar with Neruda's work.[107]
  • In the Arthur episode "Mr. Ratburn and the Special Someone," Mr. Ratburn is seen reading a fictional collection of Neruda's works entitled Love Poems in the teacher's lounge.[108]

Science

  • For most of his life, Neruda was fascinated by butterflies. In 1976, a sub-group of the South American genus Heliconius was named after him (see Neruda (genus)) though not currently in use in the primary scientific literature.[109][110]
  • A crater on Mercury was formerly named Neruda in his honor. (As of 2023, it is still named Neruda, but has been reattributed to be named after two Czechs, 19th century poet and writer Jan Neruda, and 18th century composer Johann Baptist Georg Neruda.)[111]

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