Richard Pithouse, SACSIS
Pablo
Neruda, the great Chilean poet, was awarded the Nobel Prize for
Literature in 1971 for “a poetry that with the action of an
elemental force brings alive a continent's destiny and dreams".
In his acceptance speech in Stockholm he cited Arthur Rimbaud, the
wild teenage poetic genius of the Paris Commune of 1871: "In the
dawn, armed with a burning patience, we shall enter the splendid
Cities." Neruda declared that “my duties as a poet involve
friendship not only with the rose and with symmetry, with exalted
love and endless longing”, but also a “taking sides” with the
“organized masses of the people” in struggle against the “the
condemnation of centuries” and for “justice and dignity”.
