Neruda

October 15, 2017

A leading Neruda expert--he edited and mainly translated The Essential Neruda: Selected Poems (City Lights, 2004) and is working on a documentary about the poet that has already won a Latin American Studies Association Award of Merit--Eisner spent 15 years researching this biography. The comprehensive result examines Neruda's beloved poetry, political commitment, and roiling personal history to show how his art reflected his life and also stood on its own. With a 40,000-copy printing.

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January 1, 2018
Neruda scholar and translator Eisner (The Essential Neruda) provides a bracingly comprehensive and authoritative account of the “poetry, personality, and politics” of one of the 20th century’s most revered poets. The heavily researched narrative illustrates how Neruda’s formative years in Chile, volunteer role on the Republican side in the Spanish Civil War, frequent travels as diplomat and cultural ambassador, marriages and affairs, and “ambition and belief in his own greatness” shaped his poetry. Claiming to be “neither unbiased nor hagiographic,” Eisner doesn’t let the enchantment of the verse soften his disapproval of the poet’s serial adultery or mistreatment of women, and questions Neruda’s self-appointed “people’s poet” status. Nevertheless, the thematic arc of Neruda’s poetic vocation is invitingly presented; several of his books are given a patient and thorough analysis, including the “monumental cultural event” of the early work Twenty Love Poems, published in 1924. Meanwhile, the descriptions of places where Neruda lived and traveled are poetry themselves, such as Eisner’s description of how the young Neruda would “watch the light blue ocean pulse its universal heartbeat.” This efficient and moving study should delight scholars and poets with its depth of detail and excellent translations, and may even draw new admirers who share Neruda’s belief that “poetry is like bread; it should be shared... by all our vast, incredible, extraordinary family of humanity.”

January 1, 2018
An empathetic biography of the Chilean Nobel Prize winner.For more than 20 years, Eisner (The Essential Neruda: Selected Poems, 2004) has steeped himself in the life and works of Pablo Neruda (1904-1973), resulting in a newly translated edition of his poetry, a documentary film, and this thoroughly researched, respectful, and evenhanded biography. Born Ricardo Neftali Reyes Basoalto, the poet began to use his pen name in 1920 in order to hide his publications from his father, who vehemently disapproved of his son's vocation. Fame came early: by the time he was 19, "such was his stature," Eisner writes, "that he had disciples who would dress like him, copy his metaphors, and...follow him around the city." Neruda's reputation and popularity grew with his prolific output, and he became "the public poet, a people's poet." As a young man, though, needing to earn more than poetry could provide, he joined the Chilean diplomatic corps, taking assignments in Myanmar, Sri Lanka, Buenos Aires, and Spain. His outspoken political liberalism was contradicted by a "pattern of disturbing misogynistic behavior" and sense of entitlement and superiority. In his memoirs, for example, he admits to raping a Tamil servant, whom he perceived "as inhuman, a piece of stone." Sexually, "he was comfortable with the role of aggressor--even predator," and he often juggled more than one lover at a time. Lauded for his humanitarian views, he nevertheless neglected his first wife and their daughter, who was born with a birth defect and died at the age of 8. As a senator representing the Communist Party and champion of Stalin, Neruda finally "saw the errors of Stalinism and was emboldened enough to reject them." Some detractors criticized him as a "Champagne Communist," who enjoyed luxury; admirers praised his fervent opposition to Franco. Beginning in 1949, when Neruda denounced Chile's president for his oppression of workers, he was forced into hiding and, finally, exile.Perceptive readings of Neruda's poems are contextualized by an absorbing historical, cultural, and political chronology.

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February 15, 2018
As author, translator, and filmmaker, Eisner has devoted most of his creative and intellectual career to the work of Pablo Neruda, editing The Essential Neruda: Selected Poems (2004) and producing a documentary biopic narrated by Neruda's Chilean comadre, best-selling writer Isabel Allende. In this comprehensive biography, Eisner covers Neruda's life from baby steps to final breath, charting the poet's childhood and adolescence, emergence into literary fame and on the public stage as well as his numerous setbacks, including affairs, drug use, and eventual exile from his homeland. While a hefty volume, Eisner's exacting and evocative prose will compel readers through each stage of the poet's life. The influence of a strong-headed, hard-working, absentee father on little Neftali, as Neruda was called, is just one facet of the gemstone Eisner unearths from the past of Chile's best-known icon. A lifelong scholar of Neruda, a dedicated advocate of the poetry, and a scrutinizing critic of the man himself, Eisner succeeds in sharing the story of the People's Poet and his life's many callings in this new standard-bearer among Neruda biographies.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2018, American Library Association.)