Today, I would like to talk about a person who chases dreams, a person who has moved and inspired people all over the world for his writings, a person who lived for his beliefs and struggled with tradition. That person is Neftalà Ricardo Reyes Basoalto famously known as Pablo Neruda, the most widely read of the Spanish American poets. Born in a poor family on the small town of Parall in Chile, Pablo Neruda started writing poetry at the young age of ten. His family did not approve of his literary ambitions so he has to adapt the name Pablo Neruda. On 1921, he studied French language at the Instituto Pedagogico in Santiago. On 1924 he gained international fame with Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair, which sold over a million copies in its first release but he was perhaps most known for his poem in the movie, Patch Adams, Sonnet 17. The sonnet, which led me to the discovery of this eminent and profound man. .
Pablo Neruda who came from a poor family and unknown town managed to rise from destitution. Aside from being a great poet, he was a diplomat, a Marxist and a winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1971. He was a man of hardship but most of all he was a man determined and destined to live his dream. He struggled with poverty yet he managed to emerge prominently in the political and literary scene. At the age of 23, he was already appointed by the Chilean government as a consul in Burma and later on held diplomatic posts in various East Asian and European countries. Neruda's passion for writing was as intense as his belief in politics. In 1936 he had to resign from his post in Spain because he sided with the Spanish Republicans. Due also to his insistence in his beliefs, he was put into exile and so he traveled to the Soviet Union where he was warmly received. As busy as he was in his political life, Pablo Neruda never turned his back to his first passion, which is writing.