LITERATURE: Pablo Neruda - Prague, Czech Republic
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ToRo61
N 50° 04.232 E 014° 23.232
33U E 456146 N 5546652
Pablo Neruda was the pen name and, later, legal name of the Chilean poet and politician Neftalí Ricardo Reyes Basoalto. He chose his pen name after Czech poet Jan Neruda.
Waymark Code: WMGJ0T
Location: Hlavní město Praha, Czechia
Date Posted: 03/10/2013
Views: 70
Neruda wrote in a variety of styles such as erotically charged love poems as in his collection Twenty Poems of Love and a Song of Despair, surrealist poems, historical epics, and overtly political manifestos. 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." Neruda always wrote in green ink as it was his personal color 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. During his lifetime, Neruda occupied many diplomatic positions and served a stint as a senator for the Chilean Communist Party. When Conservative 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.
Neruda was hospitalized with cancer at the time of the Chilean coup d'état led by Augusto Pinochet. Three days after being hospitalized, Neruda died of heart failure. 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.
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Description of memorial
metal bust placed on a granite pedestal, approx 160 cm high;
a monument is in a small park, about 1 km from the city center
Inscription on memorial
CZ: Na pocest chilského básníka a velkého prítele ceskoslovenského lidu
PABLA NERUDY 1904-1973
Nositele Nobelovy ceny a Leninovy cenu míru, neohroženého bojovníka za mír a sociální pokrok
EN: In honor of the Chilean poet and great friend of the Czechoslovak people
Pablo Neruda 1904-1973
The holder of Nobel and Lenin Peace Prize, the fearless fighter for peace and social progress