Poet Pablo Neruda was born on July 12, 1904, in the town of Parral in Chile. Pablo Neruda’s real name is Neftalí Ricardo Reyes Basoalto, but in 1920, he became a contributor to the literary journal “Selva Austral” under the pen name of Pablo Neruda. He adopted the name Pablo Neruda in memory of the Czechoslovak poet Jan Neruda and started to publish his poetry. The pseudonym was partly to hide his work from his father, who disapproved of Neruda’s poetic interests.

His first book, Crepusculario, was published in 1923 and the following year he published Veinte Poemas de aAmor y unaCcanción Desesperada, a book of intensely romantic poems, the following year. These became his most popular works, with more than a million and a half copies were published in Spanish alone. In the late 1920s and early 1930s, Neruda completed the first two volumes of Residencia en la Tierra and was universally considered the finest poet in Spanish. He claimed, however, that when he wrote these poems he knew nothing of surrealism. He had simply responded to “the same currents in the air,” that led to the formation of the surrealist movement elsewhere.

Between 1927 and 1935, Neruda served as a Chilean diplomat in Burma, Ceylon, Java, Singapore, Argentina, and Spain. In 1939, he was appointed consul for the Spanish emigration. He was also Consul General in Mexico, where he rewrote his Canto General de Chile, transforming it into an epic poem about which is South American continent, its nature, its people and its historical destiny. In 1943, Neruda returned to Chile, and in 1945, he was elected senator of the Republic, while joining the Communist Party of Chile.

Due to his protests against President González Videla’s of Chile repressive policy against striking miners in 1947, Neruda had to live underground in his own country for two years until he managed to leave in 1949. He returned home in three years later. Student Cameron M. Cameron said, “Pablo can be an inspiration to writers today because he still wrote and published poems even though his father disapproved of this career. Pablo can be an inspiration to writers today because he still wrote and published poems even though his father disapproved of this career.

Pablo Neruda died on September 23, 1973. Scientists, who exhumed Neruda’s remains, confirmed that Pablo suffered from prostate cancer when he died four decades ago. On the other hand, they have not stopped skepticism from one member of Neruda’s family, who said that he’s still pushing for answers about what caused the poet’s 1973 death. For years his former chauffeur has offered up another theory, claiming that Neruda was poisoned in the clinic where he was undergoing treatment for cancer.  International investigators say there is not evidence that Pablo was poisoned, but despite this there may always be questions as to scientists’ discoveries.