
Although it was long reported that he died of heart failure, the Interior Ministry of the Chilean government issued a statement in 2015 acknowledging a Ministry document indicating the government's official position that "it was clearly possible and highly likely" that Neruda was killed as a result of "the intervention of third parties". Neruda died at his home in Isla Negra on 23 September 1973, just hours after leaving the hospital. Neruda was hospitalized with cancer in September 1973, at the time of the coup d'état led by Augusto Pinochet that overthrew Allende's government, but returned home after a few days when he suspected a doctor of injecting him with an unknown substance for the purpose of murdering him on Pinochet's orders. He was a close advisor to Chile's socialist President Salvador Allende, and, when he got back to Chile after accepting his Nobel Prize in Stockholm, Allende invited him to read at the Estadio Nacional before 70,000 people.

Friends hid him for months in the basement of a house in the port city of Valparaíso, and in 1949 he escaped through a mountain pass near Maihue Lake into Argentina he would not return to Chile for more than three years. When President Gabriel González Videla outlawed communism in Chile in 1948, a warrant was issued for Neruda's arrest.

Neruda occupied many diplomatic positions in various countries during his lifetime and served a term as a Senator for the Chilean Communist Party. Neruda became known as a poet when he was 13 years old, and wrote in a variety of styles, including surrealist poems, historical epics, political manifestos, a prose autobiography, and passionate love poems such as the ones in his collection Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair (1924). Whoever goes to Santiago can navigate through a piece of Neruda’s soul and his loves.Pablo Neruda ( / n ə ˈ r uː d ə/ Spanish: ( listen))(born Ricardo Eliécer Neftalí Reyes Basoalto 12 July 1904 – 23 September 1973) was a Chilean poet-diplomat and politician who won the 1971 Nobel Prize in Literature. Today, the Pablo Neruda Foundation maintains La Chascona as a museum – just like the other two houses. The house was restored and Matilde lived in it until her death in 1985. The house was victim of vandalism after the fall of the government because the writer was a notorious communist.Įven with a flood caused by a destroyed canal and all the adverse situations did not stop Matilde from holding Neruda’s wake at La Chascona as an act of resistance to the political situation in Chile. Neruda died on September 23, 1973, days after the military coup that overthrew Salvador Allende and ushered in the Pinochet dictatorship. The library with more than 9 thousand books, or the paintings by Diego Rivera, Frida Kahlo, Carybé, Miró, and master Picasso. The visit is made easier by audio guides, who indicate the details and stories of each corner and each object, such as the little bar brought from a Parisian bistro. The ceiling is low and the feeling is that of being inside a boat, with hatches and furniture taken from boats scattered throughout the rooms.
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In the waves of Matilde’s hair, Neruda’s profile appears.īuilt without a single design for all rooms and located on steep terrain, it is divided into three parts, full of staircases and recessed, rounded spaces. Portrait of Matilde Urrutia by Diego Rivera. He moved there 1955, upon separating from his second wife, and lived with Matilde until 1973, when he passed away. This name is a homage to the nickname that the poet gave to his beloved due to her abundant, unkempt red hair. La Chascona is in Santiago and was built in 1953 for Neruda’s third wife, Matilde Urrutia.

Throughout his life, Neruda built three houses in Chile: in Valparaiso, in Isla Negra, and in Santiago. The fact is that Neruda was a man of passions, from the sea to women and love, properly speaking.Īnd the writer overflowed his affections, whether in his works, making them universal, or in his homes. The origin of the choice of the new name is not certain. Therefore, at the age of 17, young Ricardo took on the pseudonym that would make him known throughout the world.Īnd with which he would be consecrated with the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1971: Pablo Neruda. Ricardo Neftalí Reyes Basoalto was born on July 12, 1904, the son of a railroad worker who did not want an artist in the family. Ironically, it would be from one of the descendants of the province of Linares, in Chile, the title of “The Poet of the Sea”. He moved there in 1955 and lived there with Matilde until 1973, when he passed away. La Chascona is in Santiago and was made, in 1953, for Pablo Neruda’s third wife.
