![]() ![]() Pablo Neruda was born Neftalf Ricardo Reyes Basoalto in 1904 in southern Chile, where he spent his boyhood. ![]() ![]() What is far less clear, however, is whether those morals as revealed in these autobiographical pages, are worthy of praise. That Neruda expected his private person to be judged by his public morals, is clear enough. Neruda’s career was not confined to literary work and personal relationships instead, it crossed and re-crossed the terrain of politics and ideology, which he saw as a natural extension of his artistic vocation. Few autobiographies nowadays can be said to be “honest,” but this does not mean that they cannot be revealing-even devastatingly so-a point that is brought home in an especially poignant way by the posthumous memoirs of Pablo Neruda, the Chilean poet and Nobel laureate. Ours is an age sorely pressed for alibis, and neither publishers nor public seem to tire of reading the “extenuating circumstances” which purportedly explain everything from personal indiscretions (Kay Summersby Morgan) to genocide (Albert Speer). $11.95.Īn autobiography, as Cardinal Newman once confessed, is an exercise in self-justification. ![]()
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