Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair
Pablo Neruda
Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair
The love poems Pablo Neruda published at nineteen. The memoirs say where some of them were written.
Read our takeMemoirs
Pablo Neruda
Memoirs
by Pablo Neruda
Pablo Neruda's own story of his life, finished by others after he died and still argued over today.
- 1974
About Pablo Neruda
The story, briefly
Spoiler-freeMemoirs is Pablo Neruda's autobiography. The Spanish title, Confieso que he vivido, means I confess that I have lived. Much of it first appeared in 1962 as a ten-part series in the magazine O Cruzeiro Internacional. In 1972, while he was Chile's ambassador in Paris, Neruda worked on turning the series into a full book at his country house in Normandy. He was still working on it when he died in September 1973. His widow, Matilde Urrutia, and the Venezuelan writer Miguel Otero Silva put the material in order, and the book came out in 1974. Hardie St. Martin's English translation followed in 1977.[1][2]
The story, in more detail
The book began as magazine writing. From January to June 1962 the Rio de Janeiro magazine O Cruzeiro Internacional ran ten installments, in Spanish and Portuguese, under the title Las vidas del poeta, the lives of the poet. The Fundación Pablo Neruda says these texts became the base of the memoirs.[1]
Ten years later Neruda was ambassador in Paris and seriously ill. He had bought a country house in Normandy, about an hour and a half from Paris, which he called La Manquel. He wanted somewhere to rest away from the embassy, where he also lived.[1]
On 5 August 1972 he wrote to his friend and biographer Volodia Teitelboim that he was working every day at La Manquel with his secretary, Homero Arce. The aim, he said, was to complete the Cruzeiro text until it formed an important book.[1]
Neruda never gave the book its final order. He kept working on it until the last days of his life, and Matilde Urrutia and Miguel Otero Silva arranged what he left.[1] The critic Tunku Varadarajan notes that he rushed to finish as his health failed, which gives the last chapters a fast, broken-up quality.[2]
What's inside
The book follows Neruda's life only roughly in order. Tunku Varadarajan describes it as a series of loosely connected pieces about his life, his loves, his politics and what inspired his poems.[2]
Some chapters explain where poems came from. Neruda writes that the wharves in the Song of Despair were the old wharves of Carahue and Bajo Imperial. He describes Josie Bliss, the woman he lived with in Rangoon, and he recalls how The Captain's Verses first came out in Naples without his name.[1]
Others are stories from his public life. He describes the secret printing of Canto General in Chile in 1950 and his arrest in Buenos Aires in 1957, when he was carried to prison on a stretcher. He tells of meeting Fidel Castro in Caracas in 1959. At the Nobel ceremony in 1971, he writes, people said the old king of Sweden held his hand longer than any other laureate's.[1]
Themes and analysis
Written in Normandy, while ambassador in Paris
The Chilean Senate approved Neruda's appointment as ambassador to France on 21 January 1971. He presented his credentials to President Georges Pompidou in Paris on 26 March. Chile's National Library dates his time as ambassador from March 1971 to the end of 1972.
He was already ill. After the Nobel Prize was announced in October 1971 he had surgery for prostate cancer, and he recovered at La Manquel, his house in Normandy. He spent his sixty-eighth birthday there on 12 July 1972 with a group of writers.
By August 1972 the memoirs were his daily work at La Manquel. He returned to Chile on 21 November 1972 and left the Paris embassy in the hands of the writer Jorge Edwards.
Published in 1974, kept out of Chile
The memoirs appeared in 1974 together with six posthumous books of poems. The Swedish Academy's bibliography records the edition of Seix Barral in Barcelona. The Fundación Pablo Neruda describes the edition of Editorial Losada in Buenos Aires.
General Augusto Pinochet's military government did not allow the book into Chile. A few copies were smuggled in behind a false cover, disguised as the Jorge Amado novel Teresa Batista cansada da guerra.
Reviews still appeared in Chile. The critic Alone wrote in El Mercurio on 21 July 1974 that the memoirs were crammed with facts and anecdotes but never argued anything. The critic Emir Rodríguez Monegal called the book deliberately fragmentary, a collage made from texts Neruda had already written.
The Colombo passage
One episode is among the most notorious in the book. Neruda describes his time as consul in Colombo, in British Ceylon, in 1929. A Tamil woman came every morning to empty the latrine of his house. He writes that he took her by the wrist, led her to his bed and had sex with her while she lay unresponsive.
Neruda never calls what he did rape. Reviewing the 2021 edition in The Wall Street Journal, Tunku Varadarajan does. He also reports that feminists opposed a 2018 proposal to rename the Santiago airport after Neruda because of the passage.
The Complete Memoirs of 2021
Farrar, Straus and Giroux published an expanded edition in 2021 as The Complete Memoirs. Hardie St. Martin's translation stays, and Adrian Nathan West translated the new material.
An editorial note lists nineteen additions, from a few pages to single sentences. The most important deals openly with the homosexuality of Federico García Lorca, whom Neruda knew in the early 1930s.
The Lorca pages had been left out on purpose. Neruda had asked Matilde Urrutia whether the public was free enough of prejudice to accept Lorca's homosexuality without harm to his reputation. In a handwritten note she said she had the same doubts, and so she did not include the pages.
Quotes from Memoirs
What the memoir writer remembers is not the same thing the poet remembers.
The private tragedy for us Communists was realizing that, on several sides of the Stalin problem, the enemy was right.La íntima tragedia para nosotros los comunistas fue darnos cuenta de que, en diversos aspectos del problema Stalin, el enemigo tenía razón.
The poems it contains were written here and there, throughout my exile in Europe.Los poemas que contiene fueron escritos aquí y allá, a lo largo de mi destierro en Europa.
Why we recommend it
The poems' back stories
Neruda explains where Twenty Love Poems, Canto General and The Captain's Verses came from, in his own words.
A life across the century
Rangoon in the 1920s, the secret printing of Canto General, exile in Europe, and the Nobel ceremony in Stockholm.
Worked on in France
Neruda worked on the book in Normandy in 1972 while he was Chile's ambassador in Paris.
A book to argue with
The Colombo passage and the pages on Stalin mean the book is read as evidence against its author as well as for him.
What this book explores
Bring it to book club
- The book's first line says the memoir writer and the poet remember different things. Where do you see the difference?
- How should a reader deal with the Colombo passage? Does it change how you read Neruda's love poems?
- Neruda both defends and criticizes his support for Stalin. Which view wins in the book?
- The book was put together by Matilde Urrutia and Miguel Otero Silva after Neruda died. How much does it matter that he did not finish it himself?
- Matilde Urrutia left out the pages on Federico García Lorca. Was she right to, in 1974?
Timeline
1962
O Cruzeiro Internacional publishes Las vidas del poeta, ten autobiographical installments that become the base of the memoirs.
1971
Pablo Neruda becomes Chile's ambassador to France and wins the Nobel Prize in Literature. After cancer surgery he recovers at La Manquel, his house in Normandy.
1972
In August Neruda works on the memoirs every day at La Manquel with his secretary, Homero Arce. He returns to Chile in November.
1973
Neruda resigns the embassy in February and dies in Santiago on 23 September, with the book unfinished.
1974
Confieso que he vivido is published, arranged by Matilde Urrutia and Miguel Otero Silva. The military government keeps it out of Chile.
1977
Farrar, Straus and Giroux publishes Hardie St. Martin's English translation as Memoirs.
2021
Farrar, Straus and Giroux publishes The Complete Memoirs, with nineteen added texts translated by Adrian Nathan West.
Book editions
- Paperback
- Farrar, Straus and Giroux
- 2021
- 9780374538125
- Hardie St. Martin and Adrian Nathan West
Reader reviews
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Canto General
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I Wonder as I Wander
Langston Hughes's second autobiography, which covers the Spanish Civil War, the war that turned Neruda toward political poetry, and ends in Paris.
Read our takeMemoirs: frequently asked questions
What does Confieso que he vivido mean?
I confess that I have lived. Memorias, meaning memoirs, is the subtitle, and English editions have used it as the title since 1977.
When was Pablo Neruda's Memoirs published?
In 1974, the year after Neruda died. The English translation by Hardie St. Martin followed in 1977.
Did Neruda finish his memoirs?
No. He worked on them until the last days of his life but never gave them a final order. His widow, Matilde Urrutia, and the Venezuelan writer Miguel Otero Silva arranged the material.
Where did Neruda write his memoirs?
Much of the text first appeared in 1962 in the magazine O Cruzeiro Internacional. In 1972 he expanded it at La Manquel, his country house in Normandy, while he was Chile's ambassador in Paris.
What is in The Complete Memoirs?
The 2021 expanded edition adds nineteen texts to the original book. The most important are pages on Federico García Lorca's homosexuality, which Matilde Urrutia had chosen to leave out.
Why is the book controversial?
Mainly because of a passage about Colombo in 1929, in which Neruda describes forcing himself on a Tamil woman who cleaned his house. Tunku Varadarajan, reviewing the 2021 edition, calls it rape. The book's pages on Stalin are also argued over.
Was the book banned in Chile?
Chile's military government did not let it into the country in 1974. A few copies were smuggled in with a false cover disguising them as a novel by Jorge Amado.
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References
References
The sources below include the primary text, editions, scholarship, archival materials, and other records that informed this page. They document Memoirs, its publication, and its place in literary history.
2abc'The Complete Memoirs' Review: Neruda in Full
PeriodicalThe Wall Street Journal, 25 June 2021; reprinted by the American Enterprise Institute, 2021Used forTunku Varadarajan's Wall Street Journal review of The Complete Memoirs: the added texts, the Lorca pages, the Colombo passage, and the book's opening line.
3The Complete Memoirs: Expanded Edition, translated by Hardie St. Martin and Adrian Nathan West — Library of Congress record
ArchiveLibrary of Congress, 2021Used forLibrary of Congress record for the 2021 expanded edition and its translators.
4Pablo Neruda diplomático (1927-1973)
WebsiteMemoria Chilena, Biblioteca Nacional de ChileUsed forThe National Library of Chile on Neruda's years as ambassador in Paris.
5Pablo Neruda — Bibliography (works in Spanish and in English)
Official recordNobel Prize Outreach, compiled by the Swedish AcademyUsed forThe Swedish Academy's bibliography: the 1974 Seix Barral edition and the 1977 English translation.
6Pablo Neruda: Cronología
WebsiteUniversidad de ChileUsed forThe University of Chile's chronology: the O Cruzeiro series and the embassy years.
7Pablo Neruda — Open Library author and edition records, used to confirm that every ISBN listed resolves to the book named
ArchiveOpen LibraryUsed forOpen Library edition records, used to confirm each ISBN listed.
8Memoirs
MemoirPablo Neruda, 1974Used forThe primary text represented by this page, used for descriptions of the work’s contents and for any quoted passages shown here.
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Why these sources are here
The primary text is the baseline reference for every book page. Additional references document publication history, interpretation, and historical context where that evidence is available.
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