Pablo Neruda - Nobel Prize in Literature, 1971 (19 books)

PABLO NERUDA (1904-1973) was a Chilean poet, diplomat and politician who won the 1971 Nobel Prize for Literature "for a poetry that with the action of an elemental force brings alive a continent's destiny and dreams." Gabriel García Márquez called him "the greatest poet of the 20th century -- in any language."

Neruda wrote in a wide variety of styles, including surrealist poems, historical epics, overtly political manifestos, a prose autobiography, and erotically charged love poems that are widely regarded as some of the most romantic ever written. In a famous essay, "On Impure Poetry" (included in Belitt's edition of SELECTED POEMS), Neruda calls for "a poetry as impure as old clothes, as a body with its foodstains and its shame, with wrinkles, observations, dreams, wakefulness, prophesies, declarations of love and hate, stupidities, shocks, idylls, political beliefs, negations, doubts, affirmations, and taxes."

This collection features a large selection of his poetical works, many in bilingual editions. Highlights include TWENTY LOVE POEMS (1924) that launched him into the international spotlight; RESIDENCE ON EARTH (1933), a collection of esoteric surrealistic poems which marked a literary breakthrough; CANTO GENERAL (1950), an epic poem tracing the history of Latin America and evoking the grandeur of its landscape; SELECTED ODES (1954-57); THE CAPTAIN'S VERSES (1963), passionately sensuous and exploding with all the erotic energy of a new love; ISLA NEGRA (1964), where Neruda "in the company of his muse, walked alongside the source of his most lyrical inspiration, the sea ... and discovered a new way of seeing, as the ocean became a living metaphor for the infinite riches of the world"; and THE BOOK OF QUESTIONS (1973), finished only month before his death and composed of 316 unanswerable questions, by turns Orphic, comic, surreal, and poignant.

In his MEMOIRS (1974), Neruda retraces his bohemian student years, his time as Chilean consul and senator, his years in hiding, up to and including the 1972 coup that overthrew Salvador Allende. Many of the century's most important literary and artistic figures were Neruda's friends, and figure in these memoirs -- Garcia Lorca, Aragon, Picasso, and Rivera, among them -- and also such political leaders as Gandhi, Nehru, Mao, Castro, and Che Guevara. In his uniquely expressive prose, Neruda not only explains his views on poetry and describes the circumstances that inspired many of his poems, but he creates a revealing record of his life as a poet, a patriot, and one of the twentieth century's true men of conscience.


The following books are in PDF format unless otherwise indicated:

* 2000 (Azul Editions, 1992). Translated by Richard Schaaf.

* THE BOOK OF QUESTIONS (Copper Canyon, 1991). Translated by William O'Daly.

* THE CAPTAIN'S VERSES: The Love Poems (New Directions, 1972). Translated by Donald D. Walsh. -- PDF + ePUB

* EXTRAVAGARIA (Jonathan Cape, 1972). Translated by Alastair Reid.

* THE HEIGHTS OF MACCHU PICCHU (FSG, 1966). Translated by Nathaniel Tarn.

* ISLA NEGRA (White Pine, 2001). Edited by Dennis Maloney. -- ePUB

* LATE AND POSTHUMOUS POEMS: 1968-1974 (Grove, 1988). Edited and translated by Ben Belitt.

* LOVE POEMS (New Directions, 2008). Translated by Donald Walsh. -- ePUB

* MEMOIRS (FSG, 1977). Translated by Hardie St. Martin.

* NERUDA & VALLEJO: Selected Poems (Beacon, 1993). Edited and with a new Preface by Robert Bly. -- ePUB

* RESIDENCE ON EARTH (New Directions, 2004). Translated by Donald D. Walsh, with an Introduction by Jim Harrison. -- ePUB

* THE SEA AND THE BELLS (Copper Canyon, 2002). Translated by William O'Daly.

* SELECTED ODES OF PABLO NERUDA (University of California, 1990). Translated with an Introduction by Margaret Sayers Peden.

* SELECTED POEMS OF PABLO NERUDA (Grove, 1961). Edited and translated by Ben Belitt.

* SUBLIME BLUE: Selected Early Odes (WingsPress, 2013). Translated by William Pitt Root. -- ePUB

* TWENTY LOVE POEMS AND A SONG OF DESPAIR (Penguin Classics, 2004). Translated by W. S. Merwin.

* TWENTY POEMS (Rapp & Whiting, 1968). Translated by James Wright and Robert Bly.

* THE YELLOW HEART (Copper Canyon, 1990). Translated by William O'Daly.

* WINDOWS THAT OPEN INWARD: Images of Chile [with Milton Rogovin] (White Pine, 1985). Edited by Dennis Maloney.