"Manmadhan" redirects here. For other uses see Manmadhan (disambiguation)."

Kamadeva
Hindu god of love
Devanagari	काम देव
Sanskrit Transliteration	kāmadeva
Affiliation	Pradyumna, Vasudeva
Abode	Ketumala-varsa
Mantra	काम गायत्री (kāma-gāyatrī)[1]
Weapon	Sugarcane Bow and Floral Arrow
Consort	Rati, Priti
Mount	Parrot

Kāmadeva (Sanskrit in Devanagari: कामदेव) is the Hindu god of human love^[2] or desire. Other names for him include; Atanu (one without a body), Ragavrinta (stalk of passion), Ananga (incorporeal), Kandarpa ("inflamer even of a god"),^[3][4] Manmadha (churner of hearts), Manasija (he who is born of mind, a contraction of the Sanskrit phrase Sah Manasah jāta), Madana (intoxicating), Ratikānta (lord of Rati), Pushpavān, Pushpadhanva (one with bow of flowers) or just Kāma ("longing"). Kamadeva, is son of Hindu goddess Sri and, additionally, Pradyumna, Krishna’s son is considered as incarnation of Kamadeva.^[2]

Etymology and usage[link]

The name Kama-deva (IAST kāma-deva) can be translated as 'god of love'. Deva means heavenly or divine. Kama (IAST kāma) meaning "desire" or "longing", especially as in sensual or sexual love. The name is used in Rig Veda (RV 9, 113. 11).^[4] Kamadeva is a name of Vishnu in Vishnu Purana and Bhagavata Purana (SB 5.18.15) and of Krishna as well as of Shiva. It is the name of author of Sanskrit work Prayaschita padyata. Kama is also a name used for Agni.

Iconography[link]

Kāmadeva is represented as a young, handsome winged man with green skin who wields a bow and arrows. His bow is made of sugarcane with a string of honeybees, and his arrows are decorated with five kinds of fragrant flowers.^[5][6] The five flowers are Ashoka tree flowers, white and blue lotus flowers, Mallika tree(Jasmine) and Mango tree flowers. A terracotta murti of Kamadeva of great antiquity is housed in the Mathura Museum, UP, India.^[7]

Mythology[link]

Kamadeva shooting his love-arrow at Shiva

Images and stories about Hindu god Kamadeva are traced to the verses of the Rig Veda and Atharva Veda although he is better known from prominent and lesser known stories of the Puranas.^[5]

The story of the birth of Kamadeva has several variants in different Puranas.^[8] In some Kamadeva arises from the mind of the creator god, Brahma:^[9] in others he is the son of Sri. Kamadeva is sometimes portrayed as being at the service of Indra:^[10] one of his names is "obedient to Indra". Kamadeva's consort Rati, whose very essence is desire, carries a discus and a lotus, her arms are compared with lotus-stalks.^[11] Rati is a minor character in many traditional dramas involving Kamadeva and in some ways represents an attribute.^[12] The goddess Vasanta, who also accompanies Kamadeva, emerges from a sigh of frustration.^[13] Kama often takes part in Puranic battles with his troops of soldiers.^[14]

[edit] The incineration of Kama: Madana-bhasma

One of the principal myths regarding Kama is that of his incineration by Shiva. It occurs in its most developed form in the Matsya Purana (verses 227-255)^[15] but is also repeated with variants in the Shaiva Purana and other Puranas.^[16]

Indra and the gods are suffering at the hands of the demon Tarakasur, who cannot be defeated except by Shiva's son. Brahma who advises that Parvati woo Shiva; their offspring will be able to defeat Taraka. Indra assigns Kamadeva to break Shiva's meditation. To create a congenial atmosphere, Kamadeva (Madana) creates an untimely spring (akAl vasanta). He evades Shiva's guard, Nandin, by taking the form of the fragrant southern breeze, and enters Shiva's abode.

Kama with his two wives Rati and Priti.

After he awakens Shiva with a flower arrow, Shiva, furious, opens his third eye, which incinerates Madana instantaneously and he is turned into ash. However Shiva observes Parvati and asks her how he can help her. She enjoins him to resuscitate Madana, and Shiva agrees to let Madana live but in a disembodied form, hence Kamadeva is also called 'Ananga' (an- = without; anga = body, "bodiless"), or 'Atanu' (a- = without; tan = body). The spirit of love embodied by Kama is now disseminated across the cosmos: it affects Shiva whose union with Parvati is consummated. Their son Kartikeya goes on to defeat Taraka.^[17]

This story is used in the Matsya Purana to underline a relationship between Krishna and Kamadeva.^[6] Later Kama is reincarnated in the womb of Krishna's wife Rukmini as Pradyumna. Vaishnavas believe he is not the Pradyumna (name of Vishnu) but belongs to the category of jiva-tattva, or conditioned souls and, due toting special power in the category of demigods, devas, he became a part of the prowess of Vishnu form Pradyumna. This is the view of the Six Gosvamis, who maintained that Kamadeva was burned to ashes by the anger of Shiva and later merged into the body of Vasudeva. And it is explained that in order to get his body again he was placed in the womb of Rukmini. Particularly in the Gaudiya tradition, Krishna is identified as Kamadeva, and in Gaudiya Vaishnavism, Kamadeva is directly a part of Vasudeva. It is believed that because he was begotten by Krishna himself, his qualities were similar to those of Krishna, such as his colour, appearance and attributes.^[18]

The attributes of demigod Kamadeva are as such: his companions are a cuckoo, a parrot, humming bees, the season of spring, and the gentle breeze. All of these are symbols of spring season, when his festival is celebrated as Holi, Holika or Vasanta.

According to the text Shiva Purana, Kamadeva is a son or a creation of Brahma, while according to other sources including the Skanda Purana, Kamadeva is a brother of Prasuti; they are both the children of Shatarupa, a creation of Brahma. Later interpolations consider him the son of Vishnu^[19] Kamadeva is wed to Ratī, the daughter of Daksha, created from his sweat.

Worship[link]

The deity of Kamadeva along with his consort Rati is included in the pantheon of Vedic-Brahmanical deities such as Shiva and Parvati.^[20] In Hindu traditions for the marriage ceremony itself, the bride's feet are often painted with pictures of Suka, the parrot vahana of Kamadeva.^[21] The religious rituals addressed to him offer a means of purification and reentry into the community. Devotion to Kamadeva keeps desire within the framework of the religious tradition.^[22] Kamadeva also appears in other stories and becomes the object of certain devotional rituals for those seeking health, physical beauty, husbands, wives, and sons. In one story Kamadeva himself succumbs to desire, and must then worship his lover in order to be released from this passion and its curse.

According to some traditions worshiping Radha Krishna, Radha is without equal in the universe for beauty, and her power constantly defeats the god of love, Kamadeva.^[23] when Krishna played his flute, as described Bhāgavata Purāṇa,the women from vraj came to Krishna but not because of the influence of kamadeva but because of love. It is a misconception that kama means love, kama literally means trishNa(sanskrit) ie desire or thirst. On that day all the gopis and krishna played 'Rasa' and the 5 chapters which describes this rasa-leela is known as rasa-panchadhyayi and it is called as kama-vijayi-granth(the book which conquers the cupid. kamadeva)

Kama (left) with Rati on a temple wall of Chennakesava Temple, Belur.

Holi as a Spring New Year Festival In southern India and many western regions. It is sometimes called Madana-Mahotsava in Sanskrit, or Kama-Mahotsava. Some have suggested that the replacement of Kamadeva by Krishna, had its germ in the early medieval period. Initially spring festival Holi was being held in reverence to celestial Vedic figure of Kamadeva, however it is presently dedicated to Krishna.^[24] This festival is mentioned in Jaiminis early writings such as Purvamimamsa-sutra, dated c.400 BC.^[25] According to Gaudiya Vaishnava theologians of medieval period, when in Bhāgavata Purāṇa, book X, Kamadeva is mentioned by the word smara he is not the deva who incites lusty feelings. Its believed that the gopis are liberated souls beyond the touch of material nature, therefore according to Gaudiya views it is not possible for them to be contaminated by the lust which is produced of the mode of passion.^[26]

According to the Matsya Purana, Visnu-Krishna and Kamadeva have a historical relationship.^[6] Krishna is sometimes worshiped as Kamadeva in Gaudiya traditions, and according to the Krishna-centric Gaudiya Vaishnavism, Kamadeva was directly a form of Vasudeva Krishna after this deva was burned down by Shiva. In this particular form Kamadeva is believed to be a demigod of the heavenly planets especially capable of inducing lusty desires. Some Vaishnavas distinguish a form of Kamadeva who is a deva, demigod in charge of inciting lusty desires, the cause of generation and referred to in the Bhagavad Gita with the words “prajanas casmi kandarpa.” It is this Kamadeva who tried distract Lord Siva from deep meditation with his passionate influence and feminine associates. He is distinguished from spiritual Kamadeva.^[26]

Krishna is believed by his bhaktas, devotees, to be the inciting power of Kamadeva and is known as the ever-fresh transcendental god of love of Vrindavana.^[27] He is believed by Gaudiyas to be the origin of all forms of Kamadeva, but is considered above mundane forms of love in the hierarchi of devotional rati, raga, kama, and prema.^[26][28]

The word smara in the tenth book of Bhagavata Purana refers to Krishna, who through the medium of his flute ever increases his influence on the devoted gopis. This, according to Vaishnavas, is the meaning of the word smarodayam in Bhagavata Purana (SB 10. 21. 3) The different symptoms of smarodayam as experienced by the gopis has been described by the commentator Vishvanatha Cakravarti Thakur in the following way:^[29] "First comes attraction expressed through the eyes, then intense attachment in the mind, then determination, loss of sleep, becoming emaciated, uninterested in external things, shamelessness, madness, becoming stunned and death. These are the ten stages of Cupid’s effects."^[26]

The Ashoka tree is often planted near temples. The tree is said to be a symbol of love and is dedicated to Kamadeva.^[30]

Kama Gayatri Mantra || om kaam devaay vidmahe pushpabaanaay dheemahi tanno ananga prachodayat || 108 Times in Pradosh Kaal(Evening Time or twilight) (Preferably From Basant Panchami till Holi)

Temples [link]

While there is common understanding that there are no temples to Kamadeva and no murtis (images) of Kamadeva sold for the home worship in the market place,^[31] some temples are dedicated or related to this deva:

• Kameshwara Temple, in Aragalur. The Sthala purana indicates that Kamadeva woke up Shiva at this place.
• Kameshvara Temple, in Kamyavan, one of the twelve forests of Vrindavana.^[32]
• Harsat-Mata Temple at Abhaneri has representation of Kamadeva.^[33]

See also[link]

• Cupid
• Kama sutra
• Smaradahana

Footnotes[link]

References[link]

• Benton, Catherine (2006). God of desire: tales of Kamadeva in Sanskrit story literature. Albany, N.Y: State University of New York Press. pp. 236. ISBN 0-7914-6565-9 

External links[link]

• About.com page
• http://www.webonautics.com/mythology/kamadeva.html
• Kamadeva's holy sacrifice
• God Of Desire: Tales Of Kamadeva In Sanskrit Story Literature (book)
• Theosophical dictionary on Kamadeva

v t e Hindu deities and texts Gods Deva Ganesha Brahma Vishnu Shiva Rama Krishna Murugan Hanuman Indra Surya more Goddesses Adi parashakti Devi Saraswati Lakshmi Sati Parvati Durga Shakti Kali Sita Radha Mahavidya Navadurga Matrikas more Texts Vedas Upanishads Puranas Ramayana Mahabharata Bhagavad Gita more Hinduism Hindu mythology

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Pablo Neruda
Born	Neftalí Ricardo Reyes Basoalto (1904-07-12)July 12, 1904 Parral, Chile
Died	September 23, 1973(1973-09-23) (aged 69) Santiago, Chile
Occupation	Poet, Diplomat
Nationality	Chilean
Notable award(s)	Nobel Prize in Literature 1971
Signature

Pablo Neruda (July 12, 1904 – September 23, 1973) was the pen name and, later, legal name of the Chilean poet, diplomat and politician Neftalí Ricardo Reyes Basoalto. He chose his pen name after Czech poet Jan Neruda.

Neruda became known as a poet while still a teenager. He wrote in a variety of styles including surrealist poems, historical epics, overtly political manifestos, a prose autobiography, and erotically-charged love poems such as the ones in his 1924 collection Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair. In 1971 Neruda won the Nobel Prize for Literature. Colombian novelist Gabriel García Márquez once called him "the greatest poet of the 20th century in any language."^[1] Neruda always wrote in green ink as it was his personal colour of hope.

On July 15, 1945, at Pacaembu Stadium in São Paulo, Brazil, he read to 100,000 people in honor of Communist revolutionary leader Luís Carlos Prestes.^[2] During his lifetime, Neruda occupied many diplomatic positions and served a stint as a senator for the Chilean Communist Party. When Chilean President González Videla outlawed communism in Chile in 1948, a warrant was issued for Neruda's arrest. Friends hid him for months in a house basement in the Chilean port of Valparaíso. Later, Neruda escaped into exile through a mountain pass near Maihue Lake into Argentina. Years later, Neruda was a close collaborator to socialist President Salvador Allende. When Neruda returned to Chile after his Nobel Prize acceptance speech, Allende invited him to read at the Estadio Nacional before 70,000 people.^[3]

Neruda was hospitalised with cancer at the time of the Chilean coup d'état led by Augusto Pinochet. Three days after being hospitalised, Neruda died of heart failure; however, there are doubts as to whether or not the junta had a hand in his death. Already a legend in life, Neruda's death reverberated around the world. Pinochet had denied permission to transform Neruda's funeral into a public event. However, thousands of grieving Chileans disobeyed the curfew and crowded the streets.

Life and career[link]

Early years[link]

Neftalí Reyes Basoalto was born on July 12, 1904 in Parral, Chile, a city in Linares Province in the Maule Region, some 350 km south of Santiago^[4] to José del Carmen Reyes Morales, a railway employee, and Rosa Basoalto, a school teacher who died two months after he was born. Neruda and his father soon moved to Temuco, where his father married Trinidad Candia Marverde, a woman with whom he had a child nine years earlier, a boy named Rodolfo.^[5] Neruda also grew up with his half-sister Laura, one of his father's children by another woman. On September 26, 1904 the young Neruda was christened "Neftalí", his late mother's middle name. In the winter of 1914, Neruda composed his first poems.

Early career[link]

Neruda's father opposed his son's interest in writing and literature, but Neruda received encouragement from others, including future Nobel Prize winner Gabriela Mistral, who headed the local girls' school. On July 18, 1917, at the age of thirteen, he published his first work, an essay entitled Entusiasmo y perseverancia (Enthusiasm and Perseverance) in the local daily newspaper, La Mañana, signed Neftalí Reyes.^[7] From 1918 to mid-1920 he published numerous poems such as "Mis ojos" ("My eyes") and essays in local magazines as Neftali Reyes. In 1919, he participated in the literary contest Juegos Florales del Maule where he won third place for his poem "Comunión ideal" or "Nocturno ideal". By mid-1920, when he adopted the pseudonym of Pablo Neruda, he was a published author of poetry, prose, and journalism. The young poet wanted to find a name that would mislead his father. "Neruda" originated from the Czech poet Jan Neruda. Years later, Pablo Neruda in recognition of the Czech poet, left a flower at the foot of his statue in Prague “Confieso que he vivido”. The first name Pablo is thought to be inspired by the French poet Paul Verlaine.

In 1921, at the age of 16, Neruda moved to Santiago^[6] to study French at the Universidad de Chile with the intention of becoming a teacher, but soon Neruda was devoting himself full time to poetry. In 1923, his first volume of verse, Crepusculario (Book of Twilights), was published, followed the next year by Veinte poemas de amor y una canción desesperada (Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair),^[6] a collection of love poems that was controversial for its eroticism, especially considering its author's young age. Both works were critically acclaimed and were translated into many languages. Over the decades, Veinte poemas would sell millions of copies and become Neruda's best-known work, though it did not go to a second edition until 1932.^[6] By the age of 20, Neruda had established an international reputation as a poet, but was facing poverty.^[6] In 1926, he published the collection Tentativa del hombre infinito (The trying of infinite man) and the novel Tentativa y su esperanza (The inhabitant and his hope).^[8] In 1927, out of financial desperation, he took an honorary consulship in Rangoon, then a part of colonial Burma and a place of which he had never heard before.^[8] Later, mired in isolation and loneliness, he worked stints in Colombo (Ceylon), Batavia (Java), and Singapore.^[8] In Java he met and married his first wife, a Dutch bank employee named Maryka Antonieta Hagenaar Vogelzang. While on diplomatic service, Neruda read large amounts of poetry and experimented with many different poetic forms. He wrote the first two volumes of Residencia En La Tierra, which included many surrealistic poems.

Spanish Civil War[link]

After returning to Chile, Neruda was given diplomatic posts in Buenos Aires and then Barcelona, Spain.^[9] He later replaced Gabriela Mistral as consul in Madrid, where he became the center of a lively literary circle, befriending such writers as Rafael Alberti, Federico García Lorca, and the Peruvian poet César Vallejo.^[9] A daughter, Malva Marina Trinidad, was born in Madrid in 1934; she was to be plagued with health problems, especially hydrocephalus, during her short life.^[10] During this period, Neruda became slowly estranged from his wife and began a relationship with Delia del Carril, an Argentine twenty years his senior.

As Spain became engulfed in civil war, Neruda became intensely politicised for the first time. His experiences of the Spanish Civil War and its aftermath moved him away from distinctive, privately focused work in the direction of collective obligation. Neruda became an ardent communist, and remained so for the rest of his life. The radical leftist politics of his literary friends, as well as that of del Carril, were contributing factors, but the most important catalyst was the execution of García Lorca by forces loyal to the Spanish dictator Franco.^[9] By means of his speeches and writings, Neruda threw his support behind the Republican side, publishing the collection España en el corazón (Spain in The Heart, 1938). Consequently, he lost his post as consul due to his political militancy.^[9] Neruda's marriage broke down and couple divorced in 1936. She moved to Monte Carlo and then to the Netherlands with their only child, and he would never see either of them again.^[11] After leaving his wife, he lived with Delia del Carril in France.

Following the election in 1938 of President Pedro Aguirre Cerda, whom Neruda supported, the poet was appointed special consul for Spanish emigration in Paris. There Neruda was given responsibility for what he called "the noblest mission I have ever undertaken": shipping 2,000 Spanish refugees, who had been housed by the French in squalid camps, to Chile on an old boat called the Winnipeg.^[12] Neruda is sometimes charged with only selecting communists for emigration while excluding others who had fought on the side of the Republic.^[13] Others deny these accusations, pointing out that Neruda chose only a few hundred of the refugees personally; the rest were selected by the Service for the Evacuation of Spanish Refugees, set up by Juan Negrín, president of the Spanish Republican government in Exile.

Mexican appointment[link]

Neruda's next diplomatic post was as Consul General in Mexico City, where he spent the years 1940 to 1943.^[14] While in Mexico, he married del Carril, and learned that his daughter Malva had died, age eight, in Nazi-occupied Netherlands from various health problems.^[14] He also became a friend of the Stalinist assassin Vittorio Vidali.

After the failed 1940 assassination attempt against Leon Trotsky, Neruda arranged a Chilean visa for the Mexican painter David Alfaro Siqueiros who was accused of having been one of the assassination conspirators.^[15] Neruda later said he did it at the request of Mexican President Manuel Ávila Camacho. This enabled Siqueiros, then jailed, to leave Mexico for Chile, where he stayed at Neruda's private residence. In exchange for Neruda's assistance, Siqueiros spent over a year painting a mural in a school in Chillán. Neruda's relationship with Siqueiros attracted criticism and Neruda dismissed the allegations that his intent had been to help an assassin as "sensationalist politico-literary harassment". In Mexico, Pablo Neruda met the famous Mexican writer Octavio Paz with whom he nearly came to blows in 1942.^[16]

Return to Chile[link]

In 1943, following his return to Chile, Neruda made a tour of Peru, where he visited Machu Picchu.^[17] The austere beauty of the Inca citadel later inspired Alturas de Macchu Picchu, a book-length poem in twelve parts which he completed in 1945 and which marked a growing awareness and interest in the ancient civilizations of the Americas: themes he was to explore further in Canto General. In this work, Neruda celebrated the achievement of Machu Picchu, but also condemned the slavery which had made it possible. In the Canto XII, he called upon the dead of many centuries to be born again and to speak through him. Martín Espada, poet and professor of creative writing at the University of Massachusetts, has hailed the work as a masterpiece, declaring that "there is no greater political poem".

Communism[link]

Bolstered by his experiences in the Spanish Civil War, Neruda, like many left-leaning intellectuals of his generation, came to admire the Soviet Union of Joseph Stalin, partly for the role it played in defeating Nazi Germany.^[18] This is echoed in poems such as "Canto a Stalingrado" (1942) and "Nuevo canto de amor a Stalingrado" (1943). In 1953 Neruda was awarded the Stalin Peace Prize. On Stalin's death that same year, Neruda wrote an ode to him, as he also (during World War II) wrote poetry in praise of Fulgencio Batista "Saludo a Batista", ("Salute to Batista") and later to Fidel Castro. His fervent Stalinism eventually drove a wedge between Neruda and longtime friend Octavio Paz who commented that "Neruda became more and more Stalinist, while I became less and less enchanted with Stalin".^[19] Their differences came to a head after the 1939 Nazi-Soviet Ribbentrop-Molotov Pact when they almost came to blows in an argument over Stalin. Although Paz still considered Neruda "the greatest poet of his generation", in an essay on Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn he wrote that when he thinks of "Neruda and other famous Stalinist writers and poets, I feel the gooseflesh that I get from reading certain passages of the Inferno. No doubt they began in good faith [...] but insensibly, commitment by commitment, they saw themselves becoming entangled in a mesh of lies, falsehoods, deceits and perjuries, until they lost their souls".^[20] Neruda called Lenin the "great genius of this century". His speech of June 5, 1946) gives a tribute to the late Soviet leader Mikhail Kalinin, who for Neruda was "man of noble life", "the great constructor of the future", and "a comrade of arms of Lenin and Stalin".^[21]

Neruda later came to rue his support of the Soviet leader; after Nikita Khrushchev's famous Secret Speech at the Soviet 20th Party Congress in 1956, which denounced the "cult of personality" that surrounded Stalin and accused him of committing crimes during the Great Purges, Neruda wrote in his memoirs "I had contributed to my share to the personality cult," explaining that "in those days, Stalin seemed to us the conqueror who had crushed Hitler's armies".^[18] Of a subsequent visit to China in 1957, Neruda would write: "What has estranged me from the Chinese revolutionary process has not been Mao Tse-tung but Mao Tse-tungism", which he dubbed Mao Tse-Stalinism: "the repetition of a cult of a Socialist deity".^[18] However, despite his disillusionment with Stalin, Neruda never lost his essential faith in communist theory and remained loyal to "the Party". Anxious not to give ammunition to his ideological enemies, he would later refuse publicly to condemn the Soviet repression of dissident writers like Boris Pasternak and Joseph Brodsky: an attitude with which even some of his staunchest admirers disagreed.^[22]

Wikisource has original text related to this article: I Accuse

On March 4, 1945 Neruda was elected a Communist party senator for the northern provinces of Antofagasta and Tarapacá in the arid and inhospitable Atacama Desert.^[23][24] He officially joined the Communist Party of Chile four months later.^[14] In 1946, Radical Party presidential candidate Gabriel González Videla asked Neruda to act as his campaign manager. González Videla was supported by a coalition of left-wing parties and Neruda fervently campaigned on his behalf. Once in office, however, González Videla turned against the Communist Party and issued the Law of Permanent Defense of the Democracy. The breaking point for Senator Neruda was the violent repression of a Communist-led miners' strike in Lota on October 1947, where striking workers were herded into island military prisons and a concentration camp in the town of Pisagua. Neruda's criticism of González Videla culminated in a dramatic speech in the Chilean senate on January 6, 1948, which became known as "Yo acuso" ("I accuse"), in the course of which he read out the names of the miners and their families who were imprisoned at the concentration camp.^[25]

During the late 1960s, Argentine writer Jorge Luis Borges was asked for his opinion of Pablo Neruda. Borges stated, "I think of him as a very fine poet, a very fine poet. I don't admire him as a man, I think of him as a very mean man."^[26] He said that Neruda had not spoken out against Perón because he was afraid to risk his reputation, noting "I was an Argentine poet, he was a Chilean poet, he's on the side of the Communists, I'm against them. So I felt he was behaving very wisely in avoiding a meeting that would have been quite uncomfortable for both of us."^[27]

Exile[link]

A few weeks later in 1948, finding himself threatened with arrest, Neruda went into hiding and he and his wife were smuggled from house to house hidden by supporters and admirers for the next thirteen months.^[14] While in hiding, Senator Neruda was removed from office and in September 1948 the Communist Party was banned altogether under the Ley de Defensa Permanente de la Democracia (Law for the Permanent Defense of Democracy), called by critics the Ley Maldita (Accursed Law), which eliminated over 26,000 people from the electoral registers, thus stripping them of their right to vote. Neruda moved later to Valdivia in southern Chile. From Valdivia he moved to Fundo Huishue a forestry estate in the vicinities of Huishue Lake. Neruda's life underground ended in March 1949 when he fled over the Lilpela Pass on the Andes Mountains to Argentina on horseback. He would dramatically recount his escape from Chile in his Nobel Prize lecture.

Once out of Chile, he spent the next three years in exile.^[14] In Buenos Aires, Neruda took advantage of the slight resemblance between him and his friend, the future Nobel Prize-winning novelist and cultural attaché to the Guatemalan embassy, Miguel Ángel Asturias, to travel to Europe using Asturias's passport.^[29] Pablo Picasso arranged his entrance into Paris and Neruda made a surprise appearance there to a stunned World Congress of Peace Forces^{[clarification needed]}, while the Chilean government denied that the poet could have escaped the country.^[29] Neruda spent those three years traveling extensively throughout Europe as well as taking trips to India, China, Sri Lanka and the Soviet Union. His trip to Mexico in late 1949 was lengthened due to a serious bout of phlebitis.^[30] A Chilean singer named Matilde Urrutia was hired to care for him and they began an affair that would, years later, culminate in marriage.^[30] During his exile, Urrutia would travel from country to country shadowing him and they would arrange meetings whenever they could. Matilde Urrutia was the muse for "Los versos del Capitán", which he later published anonymously in 1952.

While in Mexico, Neruda also published his lengthy epic poem Canto General, a Whitmanesque catalog of the history, geography, and flora and fauna of South America, accompanied by Neruda's observations and experiences. Many of them dealt with his time underground in Chile, which is when he composed much of the poem. In fact, he had carried the manuscript with him on his escape on horseback. A month later, a different edition of five thousand copies was boldly published in Chile by the outlawed Communist Party based on a manuscript Neruda had left behind. In Mexico, he was granted honorary Mexican citizenship.^[31] Neruda's 1952 stay in a villa owned by Italian historian Edwin Cerio on the island of Capri was fictionalized in Antonio Skarmeta's 1985 novel Ardiente Paciencia (Ardent Patience, later known as El cartero de Neruda, or Neruda's Postman), which inspired the popular film Il Postino ("The Postman", 1994).^[32]

Second return to Chile[link]

Neruda recording his poetry at the U.S. Library of Congress in 1966.

By 1952, the González-Videla government was on its last legs, weakened by corruption scandals. The Chilean Socialist Party was in the process of nominating Salvador Allende as its candidate for the September 1952 presidential elections and was keen to have the presence of Neruda, by now Chile's most prominent left-wing literary figure, to support the campaign.^[31] Neruda returned to Chile in August of that year and rejoined Delia del Carril, who had travelled ahead of him some months earlier, but the marriage was crumbling. Del Carril eventually learned of his affair with Matilde Urrutia and he sent her back to Chile in 1955. She convinced the Chilean officials to lift his arrest allowing Urrutia and Neruda to go to Capri, Italy. Now united with Urrutia, Neruda would, aside from many foreign trips and a stint as Allende's ambassador to France from 1970 to 1973, spend the rest of his life in Chile.

By this time, Neruda enjoyed worldwide fame as a poet, and his books were being translated into virtually all the major languages of the world.^[14] He vigorously denounced the U.S. during the Cuban missile crisis and later in the decade he would likewise repeatedly condemn the U.S. for the Vietnam War. But being one of the most prestigious and outspoken left-wing intellectuals alive, he also attracted opposition from ideological opponents. The Congress for Cultural Freedom, an anti-communist organization covertly established and funded by the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency, adopted Neruda as one of its primary targets and launched a campaign to undermine his reputation, reviving the old claim he had been an accomplice in the attack on Trotsky in Mexico City in 1940.^[33] The campaign became more intense when it became known that Neruda was a candidate for the 1964 Nobel prize, which was eventually awarded to Jean-Paul Sartre.^[34]

La Sebastiana, Neruda's house in Valparaíso

In 1966, Neruda was invited to attend an International PEN conference in New York City.^[35] Officially, he was barred from entering the U.S. because he was a communist, but the conference organizer, playwright Arthur Miller, eventually prevailed upon the Johnson Administration to grant Neruda a visa.^[35] Neruda gave readings to packed halls, and even recorded some poems for the Library of Congress.^[35] Miller later opined that Neruda's adherence to his communist ideals of the 1930s was a result of his protracted exclusion from "bourgeois society". Due to the presence of many Eastern Bloc writers, Mexican writer Carlos Fuentes later wrote that the PEN conference marked a "beginning of the end" of the Cold War.^[35]

Upon Neruda's return to Chile, he stopped in Peru, where he gave readings to enthusiastic crowds in Lima and Arequipa and was received by President Fernando Belaúnde Terry.^[35] However, this visit also prompted an unpleasant backlash; because the Peruvian government had come out against the government of Fidel Castro in Cuba, July 1966 saw more then one hundred Cuban intellectuals retaliate against the poet by signing a letter that charged Neruda with colluding with the enemy, calling him an example of the "tepid, pro-Yankee revisionism" then prevalent in Latin America. The affair was particularly painful for Neruda because of his previous outspoken support for the Cuban revolution, and he never visited the island again, even after receiving an invitation in 1968.

After the death of Che Guevara in Bolivia in 1967, Neruda wrote several articles regretting the loss of a "great hero".^[36] At the same time, he told his friend Aida Figueroa not to cry for Che, but for Luis Emilio Recabarren, the father of the Chilean communist movement, who preached a pacifist revolution over Che's violent ways.^[37]

Last years[link]

La Chascona, Neruda's house in Santiago.

In 1970, Neruda was nominated as a candidate for the Chilean presidency, but ended up giving his support to Salvador Allende, who later won the election and was inaugurated in 1970 as the first democratically elected socialist head of state.^[31][38] Shortly thereafter, Allende appointed Neruda the Chilean ambassador to France, lasting from 1970–1972; his final diplomatic posting. During his stint in Paris, Neruda helped to renegotiate the external debt of Chile, billions owed to European and American banks, but within months of his arrival in Paris his health began to deteriorate.^[31] Neruda returned to Chile two and half years later due to his failing health.

In 1971, Neruda was awarded the Nobel Prize,^[31] a decision that did not come easily because some of the committee members had not forgotten Neruda's past praise of Stalinist dictatorship. But his Swedish translator, Artur Lundkvist, did his best to ensure the Chilean received the prize.^[39] "A poet", Neruda stated in his Stockholm speech of acceptance of the Nobel Prize, "is at the same time a force for solidarity and for solitude."^[40] The following year Neruda was awarded the prestigious Golden Wreath Award at the Struga Poetry Evenings.

As the coup d'etat of 1973 unfolded, Neruda, then diagnosed with prostate cancer, was devastated by the mounting attacks on the Allende government.^[31] The military coup led by General Augusto Pinochet on September 11 saw Neruda's hopes for a Marxist Chile destroyed. Shortly thereafter, during a search of the house and grounds at Isla Negra by Chilean armed forces at which Neruda was present, the poet famously remarked: "Look around—there's only one thing of danger for you here—poetry." ^[41]

Neruda died of heart failure on the evening of September 23, 1973, at Santiago's Santa María Clinic;^[42][43][44] The funeral took place amidst a massive police presence, and mourners took advantage of the occasion to protest against the new regime, established just a couple of weeks before. Neruda's house was broken into and his papers and books taken or destroyed. ^[31]

In 1974 his Memoirs appeared under the title I Confess I Have Lived, updated to the last days of the poet’s life, and including a final segment describing the death of Salvador Allende during the storming of the Moneda Palace by Pinochet and other generals – occurring only twelve days before Neruda died.^[31] Matilde Urrutia subsequently compiled and edited for publication the memoirs and possibly his final poem "Right Comrade, It's the Hour of the Garden". These and other activities brought her into conflict with Pinochet's government, which continually sought to curtail Neruda's influence on the Chilean collective consciousness. Urrutia's own memoir, My Life with Pablo Neruda, was published posthumously in 1986.^[45] Manuel Arraya, his Communist Party-appointed chauffeur published a book about Neruda's final days in 2012.^[46]

In June 2011, a Chilean judge ordered that an investigation be launched following suggestions that Neruda may have been poisoned by the Pinochet regime for his pro-Allende stance and political views at the time of his death.^[47] In December 2011 Chile's Communist Party asked Chilean Judge Mario Carroza to order the exhumation of the remains of the famed poet. Carroza has been conducting probes into hundreds of deaths allegedly connected to abuses of Pinochet's regime from 1973 to 1990.^[48] In 2012, the Chilean courts are continuing to re-examine Neruda's death. ^[46]

Legacy[link]

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 south side of the Organization of American States building in Washington D.C.

Music[link]

• Greek composer Mikis Theodorakis set to music the Canto General.
• Austrian avantgarde 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. 1960-3).
• Mexican composer Daniel Catán wrote an opera Il Postino (2010), whose premiere production featured Spanish tenor Plácido Domingo portraying Pablo Neruda.
• 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.
• Peter Lieberson composed Neruda Songs (2005) and Songs of Love and Sorrow (2010) based on Cien Sonetos de Amor.^[49]
• 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 on Jackson Browne's album The Pretender, there is a poem by Neruda
• Canadian rock group Red Rider named their 1983 LP/CD release, Neruda.
• 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.^[50]
• The Occitan singer Joanda composed the song Pablo Neruda ^[51]
• American contemporary composer Morten Lauridsen set Neruda's poem "Soneto de la Noche" to music as part of his cycle "Nocturnes" from 2005.
• Juan Luis Guerra credits Neruda for two phrases for his song, "Bachata Rosa".^[52]
• Ezequiel Vinao composed "Sonetos de Amor" (2011) a song cycle based on Neruda's love poems.

Literature[link]

• 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).^[53]
• 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.^[54]

Film[link]

• 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), centres on the story of Pablo Neruda (Philippe Noiret) living in exile on Salina Island near Sicily during the 1950s. While there, he befriends the local postman and inspires in him a love of poetry.
• Pablo Neruda: The Poet's Calling is a documentary film about Neruda's life, times, and poetry, directed by Mexican director Carlos Bolado and Mark Eisner.^[55]}
• Neruda is a 120 min documentary about his life and poetry including interviews with his friends like Volodia Teitelboim, Jose Balmes, Jorge Edwards, Andrej Wosnessenski, Mikis Theodorakis. This film was directed by the German filmmaker Ebbo Demant and broadcast 2004 in the European culture TV channel ARTE and the German public-service broadcaster ARD.

See also[link]

Poetry portal

• Cien Sonetos de Amor

Notes[link]

Sources[link]

• Feinstein, Adam Pablo Neruda: A Passion for Life, Bloomsbury, 2004. ISBN 1-58234-410-8
• Neruda, Pablo. Memoirs (translation of Confieso que he vivido: Memorias), translated by Hardie St. Martin, Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 1977. (1991 edition is ISBN 0-374-20660-0)
• Shull, Jodie. Pablo Neruda: Passion, Poetry, Politics. Enslow. ISBN 978-0-7660-2966-8. http://www.enslow.com/displayitem.asp?type=1&item=2578. 
• Tarn, Nathaniel, Ed (1975) Pablo Neruda: Selected Poems Penguin.
• Burgin, Richard (1968) Conversations with Jorge Luis Borges, Holt, Rhinehart, & Winston
• Consuelo Hernández.“El Antiorientalismo en Pablo Neruda;” Voces y perspectivas en la poesia latinoamericanana del siglo XX. Madrid: Visor 2009.

Further reading[link]

• Pablo Neruda, Selected Poems ed. Ilan Stavans 2003
• Translating Neruda: The Way to Macchu Picchu John Felstiner 1980
• Pablo Neruda. Durán, Manuel., 1981
• Pablo Neruda: all poets the poet . Bizzarro, Salvatore., 1979
• The poetry of Pablo Neruda. Costa, René de., 1979
• Pablo Neruda: Memoirs (Confieso que he vivido: Memorias) / tr. St. Martin, Hardie., 1977
• The Essential Neruda / ed. Mark Eisner, intro by Lawrence Ferlinghetti (City Lights), 2004
• "Paz and Neruda: Clash of Literary Titans". Free Online Library. July 2008. http://www.thefreelibrary.com/Clash+of+literary+titans.-a0180277640.  Americas Magazine, Jaime Perales Contreras

Books of English translations of Neruda[link]

• World's End (Copper Canyon Press, 2009) (translated by William O'Daly)
• The Hands of the Day (Copper Canyon Press, 2008) (translated by William O'Daly)
• The Book of Questions (Copper Canyon Press, 1991, 2001) (translated by William O'Daly)
• The Yellow Heart (Copper Canyon Press, 1990, 2002) (translated by William O'Daly)
• Stones of the Sky (Copper Canyon Press, 1990, 2002) (translated by William O'Daly)
• The Sea and the Bells (Copper Canyon Press, 1988, 2002) (translated by William O'Daly)
• Winter Garden (Copper Canyon Press, 1987, 2002) (translated by James Nolan)
• The Separate Rose (Copper Canyon Press, 1985) (translated by William O'Daly)
• Still Another Day (Copper Canyon Press, 1984, 2005) (translated by William O'Daly)
• On the Blue Shore of Silence: Poems of the Sea (Rayo Harper Collins, 2004) (translated by Alastair Reid, epilogue Antonio Skármeta)
• Intimacies: Poems of Love (Harper Collins, 2008) (translated by Alastair Reid)
• The Essential Neruda: Selected Poems (City Lights, 2004) (translated by Robert Hass, Jack Hirschman, Mark Eisner, Forrest Gander, Stephen Mitchell, Stephen Kessler, and John Felstiner. Preface by Lawrence Ferlinghetti)

External links[link]

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: Pablo Neruda

• Profile at the Poetry Foundation
• Profile at Poets.org with poems and articles
• Profile at Emory University
• Rita Guibert (Spring 1971). "Pablo Neruda, The Art of Poetry No. 14". The Paris Review. http://www.theparisreview.org/interviews/4091/the-art-of-poetry-no-14-pablo-neruda. 
• Nobel Biography
• "Celebrating Chilean Poet Pablo Neruda", Amy Goodman of Democracy Now! interviews Martín Espada, poet and professor at the University of Massachusetts Amherst.
• NPR Morning Edition on Neruda's Centennial 12 July 2004 (audio 4 mins) "Pablo Neruda's 'Poems of the Sea'" 5 April 2004 (Audio, 8 mins)
• "The ecstasist: Pablo Neruda and his passions." The New Yorker. 8 September 2003
• "Neruda, Chilean Poet-Politician, Wins Nobel Prize in Literature" New York Times 22 October 1971 and "Songs of himself" New York Times, Robert Bly 23 May 1982
• "Neruda's Chile". Daily Telegraph 18 September 2010