Neftal Ricardo Reyes Basoalto

(July 1904 September 1973)

What is in a name?
The Chilean writer and politician Neftal

Ricardo Reyes Basoalto assumed the pen

name Pablo Neruda and, later made it his
legal name.
Neruda assumed his pen name as a teenager,

partly because it was in vogue, partly to hide

his poetry from his father, a rigid man who
wanted his son to have a "practical"
occupation.

Highlights of his Life

Came from a modest working class background
Father disliked his writing poetry
Influenced by Gabriela Mistral- a future Nobel winner
By the 1920s a formidable poet; but besieged by

poverty
Became an ardent communist after the Spanish Civil
war
Held various diplomatic positions
Travelled widely
1971- received the Nobel Prize "for a poetry that
with the action of an elemental force brings alive a
continent's destiny and dreams"

His writings
If you ask me what my poetry is, I must
answer :
I dont know
but if you ask my poetry, it will tell you
who I am
Pablo Neruda

Poetry as a meditation
on life
Neruda's body of poetry is rich and varied .
It developed along four main directions:

His love poetry, such as the youthful Twenty Love Poems and the mature Los

versos del Capitn (1952; The Captain's Verses), is tender, melancholy,

sensuous, and passionate.
In material poetry, such as Residencia en la tierra, loneliness and depression
immerse the author in a subterranean world of dark, demonic forces.
His epic poetry is best represented by Canto general, which is a
Whitmanesque attempt at reinterpreting the past and present of Latin America
and the struggle of its oppressed and downtrodden masses toward freedom.
And finally there is Neruda's poetry of common, everyday objects, animals,
and plants, as in Odas elementales.
These four trends correspond to four aspects of Neruda's personality: his passionate
love life; the nightmares and depression he experienced while serving as a consul in
Asia; his commitment to a political cause; and his ever-present attention to details
of
daily life, his love of things made or grown by human hands.

Keeping Quiet

the necessity of quiet introspection and creating a feeling

of mutual understanding among human beings

Theme : a plea to
mankind
To Question the way we move through our lives
without pausing or caring for
the world around us
the suffering of nature, the world and other people

To Criticize the divisive tendency of manspeak in any language;

strangeness

let us not
we would all be together in a sudden

To Chastise mankind for murder of animals and

other men and reminds them of -

victory with no

survivors

To Cleanse oneself of all guilt and hatred clean clothes and walk about with their brothers

put on

To Identify with
QUIETNESS
The Silence
That will teach us
The meaning of sadness in our lives
The death threat we constantly live under

And help us understand ourselves

And adopt Earth as our teacher

Language
Simple, common words
Straightforward sentence constructions
Ironically sensitizes the reader to the power of SILENCE

Intensify the magnitude of the issues that

threaten mankind and propel him to extinction

Awaken in him the necessity to take urgent
steps
to stop the imminent annihilation