THE COMPLETE MEMOIRS

The Nobel Prize–winning poet’s memoirs, newly expanded.

Nearly 50 years after the posthumous publication of the memoir of Chilean poet Pablo Neruda (1904-1973), translators St. Martin and West offer a new edition, adding 19 sections of material from lectures, travel notes, and hitherto lost, unfinished, or unpublished fragments, along with editorial notes about where the material was found and why it was included. In addition, the translators have appended a detailed chronology of Neruda’s life. Some additions are brief, including “the only known version in writing of this phrase: ‘What is my poetry? I don’t know. It would be easier to ask my poetry who am I.’ ” But other new material offers salient insights: for example, a chapter on Federico García Lorca’s “intimate disposition,” which Neruda omitted from his original manuscript because he feared that prejudice about homosexuality would compromise the prestige of a poet he loved and admired. Lorca, Neruda wrote, “emanated a splendid intelligence the way a precious stone refracts rays of light.” Neruda was certain that Lorca was murdered by fascists in Spain, who, “as in Germany and Italy, specialized in the extermination of intellectuals.” Another new piece reflects on religion, which Neruda rejected even as a child, rebelling “against this always invisible kingdom and against the strange proceedings of the assorted gods.” The fresh material is skillfully woven into the original memoir, which Neruda called his “journey around myself,” with evocations of his family and childhood, global travels, friends and foes, carnal desires, aspirations and achievements as a poet, and celebration of the natural world, which “made me euphoric.” Overall, the selections round out Neruda’s image as a poet who strived “to denounce what contributes to backwardness and lift up the hopes, open the possibilities, increase the joy of the human race.” A final editorial note presents a helpful list of the “texts added to this edition.”

Emendations that contribute to a nuanced portrait of a complex man.