On this day in 1904, Pablo Neruda was born in Parral, Chile, as Neftali Ricardo Reyes Basoalto. When he began to publish poetry in his teens, Neruda chose a new name in order to hide his authorship from his father; he liked "Pablo," and saw the name of Jan Neruda, the 19th century Czech writer, while glancing through a literary journal. Neruda's Memoirs (1977) tell us of a father who warned of his return from the railway yard each evening by blowing his whistle, and who greeted Neruda's first poem, written when he could barely read, with "Where did you copy this from?" But his stepmother was "the guardian angel of my childhood," and the headmistress of his hometown high school was Gabriela Mistral, Chile's other Nobel winner ... FULL STORY »
