James Krause and Dr. Ted Lyon, Spanish and Portuguese
Neftalí Ricardo Reyes Basoalto, whose pseudonym was to be Pablo Neruda, was born in the small Chilean town, Parral. His mother died two months after she gave birth to her son and two years later, Neruda’s father moved his small family to Temuco. After the Chilean military defeated the local Mapuche Indians, Temuco and the entire Araucano region was opened to settlers. With the extension of the railroad, Temuco soon became a bustling pioneer town. Many historians and literary experts have compared early 20th century Temuco to Frontier Oregon. Although Temuco was considered to be the “Far West” of Chile and was sometimes a dangerous place to raise a family, it proved to be the perfect environment to foster the poetic talent of Chile’s greatest literary export to the world—Pablo Neruda.
As I have studied the early works of Pablo Neruda during this last year I have asked myself many questions: What was it about frontier Temuco that inspired Pablo Neruda? What experiences in Neruda’s boyhood influenced his poetry? Who were the people that encouraged him to develop his talent? Above all I wondered how the area of Temuco, in particular, inspired Pablo Neruda and how his experiences in a frontier town were portrayed in his early poetry.
In January 2002 I traveled to southern Chile and spent over a week in Temuco and its surrounding areas. I visited Lautaro, Loncoche, Curacautín, Puerto Saavedra—places that were either mentioned in Pablo Neruda’s early poetry or documented places he frequented to receive inspiration. I also visited and interviewed Bernardo Reyes, Pablo Neruda’s great-nephew. Reyes recently published “Neruda: Retrato de Familia,” a book that outlines many facts about Neruda’s family history that were formerly unknown. Reyes’ candor and openness were crucial to understanding the inspirational sources of Neruda’s early poetry.
Pablo Neruda’s success as a poet is directly related to his experiences as a youth in Temuco. Neruda was a quiet and shy young man that preferred the natural beauty of Ñielol Hill to the camaraderie of his classmates. The natural surroundings of Temuco were the foundation of the metaphors in his poetry. The spirit and image of frontier Temuco is embodied in the early poems of Pablo Neruda.
Although young Ricardo Reyes was a solitary young man he still managed to impress the girls. According to Neruda, his “tormented adolescent passions” were the basis of the characters of Marisol and Marisombra in Veinte Peomas de amor y una canción desesperada (Neruda, Memoirs 51). In addition to the sexual tension in these “pastoral poems”, Neruda attributes the somber and intense mood to the “devastating nature of the southern part of [his] country” (Neruda, Memoirs 51).
Young Ricardo Reyes first began to write poetry at age eight and by the time he was fifteen he was publishing his poems in local and national magazines. There were several key figures in Neruda’s childhood that encouraged his poetry. According to Volodia Teitelboim, Pablo Neruda’s close friend and biographer, Juvencio Valle was an older student at the Temuco Boy’s Lyceum who acted as an older brother to Neruda (Teitelboim 21). Valle encouraged young Neruda to write and publish his poetry (Teitelboim 21). Orlando Mason, Neruda’s older cousin, was a poet, a rebel and an intellectual. He encouraged young Neruda to explore poetry, love, nature and life. When I spoke with Bernardo Reyes, he explained that Mason was, in fact, not Neruda’s cousin rather his stepbrother (Reyes 82-83). Orlando was the result of an affair Neruda’s stepmother had when she was younger, but was raised by his aunt and uncle, thinking they were his parents.
As a teenager Neruda visited with Gabriela Mistral, the director of the Girls School. At that time she was already a famous poet and would later win the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1945—an honor Neruda would share in 1971. She encouraged him to write and he entered his poetry in dozens of literary magazines and competitions (Teitelboim 30). In 1920 he moved to Santiago and published his first collection of poems, La canción de la fiesta (Song of Celebration). A second collection, Crepusculario (Twilight), brought him critical recognition. In 1924 he published the hugely successful Veinte poemas de amor y una canción desesperada (Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair). By the age of twenty, Pablo Neruda was an internationally renowned poet.
In summary, Pablo Neruda’s successful career as a poet is directly related to his boyhood in frontier Temuco. The natural beauty of the primitive surroundings, the adolescent sexual encounters and the people that encouraged young Neruda to write all played an important role in the discovery and development of his talent. Truly, Pablo Neruda’s early poetry reflects the spirit and image of frontier Temuco.
References
- Teitelboim, Volodia. Neruda: An Intimate Biography. (Beverly J. Delong-Tonelli, Trans.). Austin: University of Texas Press, 1991.
- Reyes, Bernardo. Neruda: Retrato de familia. San Juan, PR: Editorial de la Universidad de Puerto Rico, 1997.
- Neruda, Pablo. Memoirs. (Hardie St. Martin, Trans.). New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1974.
- Neruda, Pablo. Cuadernos de Temuco. España: Seix Barral, 1996.
- Neruda, Pablo. Crepusculario. Buenos Aires, Argentina: Editorial Losada, 10th edition, 1996.
- Neruda, Pablo. Veinte poemas de amor y una canción desesperada. Santiago de Chile, Editorial Andrés Bello, 6th edition, 2000.