If You Forget Me
“I want you to know one thing. You know how this is.” These beautiful and attention grabbing lines begin “If You Forget Me”, a popular poem by one of the most widely read Latin American poets of all time, Pablo Neruda (Lindstrom). Both his lyrical skill and his committed, collective voice throughout the poem convey the passion and intelligence that characterized his life and his works.
To understand the meaning behind this poem Neruda’s story must first be understood. Pablo Neruda, originally named Neftali Ricardo Reyes Basoalto, was born on July 12, 1904 in Chile in the small city of Parral (Gale). His mother, a school teacher, died a few months after he was born, and his father, a railroad worker, remarried while Pablo was still young. Through his father’s marriage young Pablo gained his two half-siblings, Rodolfo and Luara. Raised on a frontier populated by miners, cowboys, railroad men, farmers, and native tribes, he developed a lifelong passion for exotic places. After leaving school and taking some time to solely work on his writing, Neruda eventually began working as a traveling consul for the Chilean government residing in places like Burma, Ceylon, Java, and Singapore, and later served in Madrid during the Spanish Revolution. Neruda began living his full life early on already beginning to acquire his reputation as a poet by the age of 13. While his poetry gained fame throughout his life, Neruda also spent his time acting as a political diplomat for Chile and later on as an activist against its dictatorial government. Neruda was not shy to express through his writings and speeches his communist, far-left views and support of the Republican Party. Through his blatant belligerency toward the Nation’s ruling party, Neruda was removed from his post as consul and eventually banished from the country only being allowed to return years later (The Chile of Pablo Neruda). Long-lived and well accomplished, Neruda, by the time of his death from...