★ 02/15/2018 Pablo Neruda (1904–73) received the 1971 Nobel Prize "for a poetry that with the action of an elemental force brings alive a continent's destiny and dreams," to quote the Nobel Committee. Now Eisner (editor, The Essential Neruda: Selected Poems) brings alive Latin America's greatest poet. Sensitive analysis and vibrant storytelling infuse the hundreds of pages forming this second major biography of Neruda published in English (the first, by Adam Feinstein, came out in 2004). Neruda was a Chilean diplomat and left-wing activist whose poems pulse with amorous passion and radical politics. His whole self emerges here: the romantic whose marvelous poemas de amor have enthralled generations, the Communist politician who persisted in a rosy view of the Soviet Union, the narcissist whose trysts sometimes sound disturbingly like sexual assault, and the humanitarian who helped anti-Fascist refugees from the Spanish Civil War escape to Chile. Empathetic but unflinching when occasion calls for criticism, Eisner weaves his subject's stanzas that resonate with the poet's personal stories. A real treat is the who's who of intellectual luminaries who make cameos throughout, revealing the synergistic interconnectivity of Latin American, North American, and European literary and leftist traditions. VERDICT A definitive biography and instant classic. [See Prepub Alert, 9/25/17.]—Michael Rodriguez, Univ. of Connecticut, Storrs
We live in a time of fallen heroes. As a college student I carried around a dog-eared, bilingual paperback of Pablo Neruda's Veinte poemas de amor y una canción desesperada (Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair), hooked by its achingly beautiful imagery and emotional cyclones. Neruda was only nineteen when he published this second collection in 1924, propelling him to the top tier of Chile's literati. These are assuredly the poems of a young man -- self-involved, self-loathing, glowing with sex and epiphany -- and yet they reveal the immense talent that would eventually net Neruda the Nobel Prize for literature. Mark Eisner's vigorously researched, engaging biography topples the poet from his pedestal while affirming his singular genius. Neruda: The Poet's Calling plumbs all facets of his complex personality without shying away from troubling facts. Early on Neruda sympathized with the Mapuche, an indigenous people who lived in and around his hometown, but as he matured a racist streak emerged. His friends noted that Neruda thrived on chaos, relentless socializing, the pleasures of drink and women; he would have been perfectly at home in the Paris Review era of the 1960s and 1970s, seeking inspiration in excess. His personal morality was often abhorrent: he abandoned his first wife and their severely disabled daughter and was an unabashed aficionado of Stalin. Born Neftalí Reyes Basoalto in rural southern Chile, the poet was raised in an unusual extended family: generations of Chilean blue-collar workers and American expatriates, a disapproving father and a devoted stepmother. As a teenager he apprenticed under future Nobel laureate Gabriela Mistral, who, in one of those serendipitous quirks of literary history, had settled in his hometown of Temuco. He pushed through a strict regimen of meter and form -- sonnets, alexandrines, clever rhymes that Eisner wisely avoids replicating in English -- which proved to be "essential training" for Twenty Love Poems: "The frequent use of rhythmic repetition within these poems helped pop the emotion off the page, off the reader's tongue." Neftalí's publications and prestige expanded rapidly; he took on a nom de plume, Pablo Neruda. Poetry may have called him early, but he embarked on a career in Chile's diplomatic corps, posting to Southeast Asia. Here there be monsters. Eisner unflinchingly exposes Neruda's prodigious sexual appetites: his habit of carrying on multiple affairs at once, his pathological lies, even the rape of a Tamil servant girl. His first marriage, to a tall Dutch woman in Java, produced a daughter afflicted with hydrocephaly, a fluid-enlarged head; in short order Neruda left his wife and child (who would die at the age of eight) and fled to Madrid, where he plunged into a vibrant literary and artistic scene on the eve of the Spanish Civil War. With anti-fascist forces pouring into Spain, ready to fight Franco, Neruda coupled with an older, chic Argentine intellectual who would become his second wife. Surrounded by brutal crimes, including the execution of his close friend, Federico García Lorca, the poet shifted from the personal to the political. As Eisner observes, "His three years there forged a new voice. The war compelled him to make a personal commitment to bring injustices to light." The war, then, was a catalyst for change. Eisner deftly portrays Neruda's transformation: the poet's tight embrace of Stalin; his return to Chile as a senator; forced political exile in Europe; his career as a "champagne Communist" with a taste for expensive clothes and restaurants; his idiosyncratic collections of seashells and carved figureheads, which he later displayed in his uniquely designed ship-of-a-house at Isla Negra, overlooking the Pacific Ocean. The poet shuttled among countries even as he published masterpieces such as La Residencia in la tierra (Residence on Earth) and Canto general (General Song) and found yet another wife, his Chilean nurse. Eisner renders these peripatetic years in lavish detail, seasoning his narrative with original blank- verse translations from Neruda's oeuvre as well as incisive criticism of the landmark "Alturas de Machu Picchu" (The Heights of Machu Picchu): "Unlike many of Neruda's poems to come, it is not merely Communist propaganda. Neruda's commitment to the workers who built Machu Picchu drew from a well that he had now dug and explored deeply, one of empathy and commitment that he attached to the working class on a much broader scale through a more enabled technique than he first had as a teenager." As his fame and stature grew, Neruda backed away from more extreme stances, preferring a benign, Gandhi-like resistance to imperialism rather than the military aggressions of Fidel Castro and Che Guevara. A documentarian and translator of The Essential Neruda, Eisner taps an array of archives and interviews to conjure this Whitmanesque poet, probing the common Latin American view that writers will blossom into public figures. The book bleeds purple in sections where Eisner's admiration swells, and he rushes through the poet's final decade: the 1971 Nobel Prize, a diagnosis of prostate cancer, Neruda's sad, self- indulgent liaisons with his wife's niece even as he was dying amid the Pinochet coup. But in meticulously dissecting Neruda's poems and in mapping out the chronology of a rich if profoundly flawed life, Eisner gives us a definitive work. Neruda: The Poet's Calling unfolds as a masterful weave of biography, literary criticism, and cultural history, a scrupulous portrait of a genius as vast and contradictory as the continent he loved. Hamilton Cain is the author of a memoir, This Boy's Faith, and a former finalist for a National Magazine Award. He lives in Brooklyn, New York.
Reviewer: Hamilton Cain
The Barnes & Noble Review
01/01/2018 Neruda scholar and translator Eisner (The Essential Neruda) provides a bracingly comprehensive and authoritative account of the “poetry, personality, and politics” of one of the 20th century’s most revered poets. The heavily researched narrative illustrates how Neruda’s formative years in Chile, volunteer role on the Republican side in the Spanish Civil War, frequent travels as diplomat and cultural ambassador, marriages and affairs, and “ambition and belief in his own greatness” shaped his poetry. Claiming to be “neither unbiased nor hagiographic,” Eisner doesn’t let the enchantment of the verse soften his disapproval of the poet’s serial adultery or mistreatment of women, and questions Neruda’s self-appointed “people’s poet” status. Nevertheless, the thematic arc of Neruda’s poetic vocation is invitingly presented; several of his books are given a patient and thorough analysis, including the “monumental cultural event” of the early work Twenty Love Poems, published in 1924. Meanwhile, the descriptions of places where Neruda lived and traveled are poetry themselves, such as Eisner’s description of how the young Neruda would “watch the light blue ocean pulse its universal heartbeat.” This efficient and moving study should delight scholars and poets with its depth of detail and excellent translations, and may even draw new admirers who share Neruda’s belief that “poetry is like bread; it should be shared... by all our vast, incredible, extraordinary family of humanity.” (Apr.)
Perceptive readings of Neruda’s poems are contextualized by an absorbing historical, cultural, and political chronology.” — Kirkus Reviews
“The comprehensive result examines Neruda’s beloved poetry, political commitment, and roiling personal history to show how his art reflected his life and also stood on its own.” — Library Journal
“Efficient and moving... Eisner doesn’t let the enchantment of the verse soften his disapproval of the poet’s serial adultery or mistreatment of women, and questions Neruda’s self-appointed “people’s poet” status. Nevertheless, the thematic arc of Neruda’s poetic vocation is invitingly presented. Meanwhile [Eisner’s] descriptions are poetry themselves...” — Publishers Weekly
“...brings alive Latin America’s greatest poet...Empathetic but unflinching when occasion calls for criticism, Eisner weaves his subject’s stanzas that resonate with the poet’s personal stories. A real treat is the who’s who of intellectual luminaries who make cameos throughout...A definitive biography and instant classic.” — Library Journal (starred review)
“Eisner succeeds in sharing the story of the ‘People’s Poet’ and his life’s many callings in this new standard-bearer among Neruda biographies.” — Booklist
Eisner succeeds in sharing the story of the ‘People’s Poet’ and his life’s many callings in this new standard-bearer among Neruda biographies.
Eisner succeeds in sharing the story of the ‘People’s Poet’ and his life’s many callings in this new standard-bearer among Neruda biographies.
Perceptive readings of Neruda’s poems are contextualized by an absorbing historical, cultural, and political chronology.
2017-12-05 An empathetic biography of the Chilean Nobel Prize winner.For more than 20 years, Eisner (The Essential Neruda: Selected Poems, 2004) has steeped himself in the life and works of Pablo Neruda (1904-1973), resulting in a newly translated edition of his poetry, a documentary film, and this thoroughly researched, respectful, and evenhanded biography. Born Ricardo Neftalí Reyes Basoalto, the poet began to use his pen name in 1920 in order to hide his publications from his father, who vehemently disapproved of his son's vocation. Fame came early: by the time he was 19, "such was his stature," Eisner writes, "that he had disciples who would dress like him, copy his metaphors, and…follow him around the city." Neruda's reputation and popularity grew with his prolific output, and he became "the public poet, a people's poet." As a young man, though, needing to earn more than poetry could provide, he joined the Chilean diplomatic corps, taking assignments in Myanmar, Sri Lanka, Buenos Aires, and Spain. His outspoken political liberalism was contradicted by a "pattern of disturbing misogynistic behavior" and sense of entitlement and superiority. In his memoirs, for example, he admits to raping a Tamil servant, whom he perceived "as inhuman, a piece of stone." Sexually, "he was comfortable with the role of aggressor—even predator," and he often juggled more than one lover at a time. Lauded for his humanitarian views, he nevertheless neglected his first wife and their daughter, who was born with a birth defect and died at the age of 8. As a senator representing the Communist Party and champion of Stalin, Neruda finally "saw the errors of Stalinism and was emboldened enough to reject them." Some detractors criticized him as a "Champagne Communist," who enjoyed luxury; admirers praised his fervent opposition to Franco. Beginning in 1949, when Neruda denounced Chile's president for his oppression of workers, he was forced into hiding and, finally, exile.Perceptive readings of Neruda's poems are contextualized by an absorbing historical, cultural, and political chronology.