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List Price: $18.00
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Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Written By: Pablo Neruda
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Average Reader Rating:  
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Binding: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 861
EAN: 9780374527532
Feature: ISBN13: 9780374527532
ISBN: 0374527539
Label: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Manufacturer: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 384
Publication Date: 2001-01-15
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Studio: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
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Features
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ISBN13: 9780374527532
Condition: New
Notes: BUY WITH CONFIDENCE, Over one million books sold! 98% Positive feedback. Compare our books, prices and service to the competition. 100% Satisfaction Guaranteed
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Editorial Review:
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The classic and deeply moving memoir by Pablo Neruda, the most widely read political poet of our time and winner of the Nobel Prize
The south of Chile was a frontier wilderness when Pablo Neruda was born in 1904. In these memoirs he retraces his bohemian student years in Santiago; his sojourns as Chilean consul in Burma, Ceylon, and Java, in Spain during the civil war, and in Mexico; and his service as a Chilean senator. Neruda, a Communist, was driven from his senate seat in 1948, and a warrant was issued for his arrest. After a year in hiding, he escaped on horseback over the Andes and then to Europe; his travels took him to Russia, Eastern Europe, and China before he was finally able to return home in 1952. The final section of the memoirs was written after the coup in 1972 that overthrew Neruda's friend Salvador Allende.
Many of the century's most important literary and artistic figures were Neruda's friends, and figure in his 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.
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Reader Reviews for Memoirs:
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Customer Rating: 
Summary: Inacurate and misleading translation
Comment: More than a review, I want to express my concern for so many mistakes in this translation.
Just in one page I chose to read (p.53-54)I found various inexplicable mistakes.
i.e. the translator chooses the word "vowels" to translate "vocablos", which in Spanish is a synonym for "words", therefore the whole sense of Neruda's "love for words" is twisted to say "love for vowels", totally meaningless!
Again, When Neruda says a word sits in a sentence "como una reinta", the translator changes the meaning of "like a little queen" to "like a small little thing" which has nothing to do with the sense of "little queen".
Just another example -of many more in just one page- when the Poet says "las palabras viven en el féretro escondido", what is hidden is the "féretro" (bier), not the words;nevertheless, the translator places the words as hidden in the bier, which is by no means the case.
One does wonder how such imprecise, careless translation of such a great poet has been allowed to be published!
Customer Rating:
Summary: Nice
Comment: It is wonderful when individuals take the risk to share such intimate and enlightening details of there life.
Aaron Bryant: BSW, CSAC Author A Synchronous Memoir of Addiction and Recovery
Customer Rating:
Summary: Great poet!
Comment: It seems like Neruda was an ornamented lamp which swang to and fro, between corners of this tumultous earth. What a poet he was! Disilliusioned, sharp sighted, naive, egoistical, but always compassionate. Time, that monster blindfolded him. He didn't see the "kremlin mountaineer, rolling out executions on his tounge like berries", like Mandelstam wrote, his brother in arms, who paid for his poems with his life. Those were dark and horrible days when even the most clearsighted poets refused to see the truth.
See how the winds blows, it never rests. The fire lies still, encaptured in his own heat. How can fire walk with the wind? Trough words, syllables and flames. Neruda takes a walk with the fire, and he lights the fire. They sit down and look over the darkened sea. Come, bring your memoirs, your lanterns!
Customer Rating:
Summary: Poet and friends of poets, traveler and man of adventure
Comment: This is not the kind of Memoir which attempts to truly detail and cover the life of its subject. It is rather impressionistic and anecdotal. For instance it opens with a description of the world of southern Chile ,Neruda's native land. Aside from one loving reference to his step-mother Neruda tells us almost nothing about his family. His father was a railroad worker who did not show any interest in or respect for the poetry of his son. Neruda's focus is on himself and the natural world. His descriptions have a poetic strength about them. The book is filled with many incidents and vignetters which are of great interest. For instance he tells of a time when lost in the forest and he is directed to the house of three elderly sisters who provide at the edge of the jungle a whole world in their home of Parisian culture and cuisine. He tells us of his childhood years, and then his time at university in Santiago. He writes much about Valparaiso. And then he writes about his travelings in the diplomatic service. His wanderings in Southeast Asia bring him in touch with many exotic worlds. Loneliness and adventure seem his twin companions. For the greatest part of the book we read of romantic and sexual adventures without love. At one point in the story it seems his most affectionate relation in life is with a strangely domesticated mangoose he has adopted in Ceylon. The weak part of the book for me is the political opinionizing, especially when this becomes anti- Americanism. Neruda was a dedicated Communist. The chapter on his life in Spain in the Loyalist cause is central. Neruda believed more great poetry came out of the Spanish Civil War than out of the whole of the Second War. Neruda was from youth deeply involved in the world of poetry. Poets were his best friends and he describes and praises the work of many. His generosity in this is one of the great virtues of his character. And in fact he writes towards the end of the book a series of portraits of poet- friends of his. He also writes about a 'poetry of joy' and has loving words for his third wife. Neruda is a poet who believe that poetry could be made out of anything and everything. And one feels a poetic spirit pervades his work.
Customer Rating:
Summary: great book! and my favorite Poet
Comment: Fabulous read, it is a great memoir and should be picked up by people interested in this genre.
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