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POET, HERO, VILLAIN: The Complicated Life and Philosophy of PABLO NERUDA

Sisyphus 55 | September 7, 2025



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SOURCES
Life
https://www.washingtonpost.com/entertainment/books/the-messy-brilliant-life-of-pablo-neruda/2018/04/17/836d2ad4-3ce4-11e8-a7d1-e4efec6389f0_story.html

http://www.chileculture.org/biography-of-pablo-neruda/

Solitude https://www.brainpickings.org/2018/08/30/pablo-neruda-nobel-lecture/

Love and Passion [The Ecstasist | The New Yorker](https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2003/09/08/the-ecstasist)

Politics and Resistance [The Paris Review – What We Can Learn From Neruda’s Poetry of Resistance](https://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2018/03/26/pablo-nerudas-poetry-of-resistance/)

Written by Sisyphus 55

Comments

This post currently has 42 comments.

  4. @uralbob1

    September 7, 2025 at 6:50 pm

    When we were at Isla Negra, I was disturbed by something in Neruda’s beautiful home,and It seemed to be a contradiction in the mind of a self proclaimed communist.
    It was the model of his proposed luxurious home, complete with an expensive Citroen DS.
    It seems that a true communist would not accept such an extravagant lifestyle. Of course, we all know about Leonid Brezhnev’s secret collection of American and European luxury cars.
    For me, he was s bit of a dichotomy, but without a doubt, a wonderful poet; especially his love poems.
    I am sending to you, an American’s perception of Neruda in the form of a very short biography.
    Bob

  13. @DaArcaneNinja

    September 7, 2025 at 6:50 pm

    I recently came across his work and it was a coincidence this video came to my recommendations! I'm not surprised that another artist is flawed from being a neglectful father and husband, but i don't think his politics makes him controversial. He seems to strive for a better quality of life for humans and understood sadness, which is something Marx spoke about too in theorizing alienation. Still, him being a product of the times like misogyny was (and still kinda is) a social norm.

  17. @karun_vv7190

    September 7, 2025 at 6:50 pm

    Last day my professor was giving us a lecture on Neruda's poem "Tonight i can write" . I kept on thinking where I listened to his poem. Today i was researching him and found your video on him. I remember i watched your video months ago and there is where i listened to that poem

  18. @PearLock

    September 7, 2025 at 6:50 pm

    Country: Wants socialism and votes for it legally
    US: wait, that's illegal. You're supposed to be a banana republic for us and essentially our slaves. overthrows government and installs dictatorship

    Also US: communism bad

  19. @DoggARithm

    September 7, 2025 at 6:50 pm

    Humans suck, the bar could be higher, but it could be much, much lower.
    I think only we care about crimes committed against their kind. People. Not animals, not nature. In this sense, most of humanity is fascist. And unworthy of any sort of praise.
    Who cares cares if he didn't denounce Stalin enough, honey, you need to be more apolitical on that front. The guy never lived in the USSR

  20. @andresguzman8185

    September 7, 2025 at 6:50 pm

    For the last year I've greatly appreciated your videos (and really cool animations). Neruda's worth a video. It is hard, though necessary, to separate his idealized life from his literary work (ie. communist preacher with 3 expensive houses) Greetings from a chilean living in Toronto! Keep the great work

  24. @Velvetec

    September 7, 2025 at 6:50 pm

    Why a villain though? Isn't it a exaggeration? The only thing 'disgusting' to me or 'bad' and hypocritical is how he did not react to the oppression of the workers of Soviet Union while he did react for the oppression in Chile.

  31. @TM-qt2ze

    September 7, 2025 at 6:50 pm

    haha he's probably the less liked nobel prize poet here in Chile, because of his shitty attitudes towards women, but we all were made to memorize some of his poems in school, at some point. Canto general has some pretty iconic works, i would recommend XII from Alturas de Macchu Picchu. Chileans remember that poem from a song versing of it by prog rock band Los Jaivas.

  32. @jurekrisch5737

    September 7, 2025 at 6:50 pm

    Hey, you probably won´t read this, but I wanted to buy the Sisyphus 55 Basic Hoodie, however it is out of stock, I bought one in L which was to small and now I could only refund, not chose a new size. This is quite frustrating, since I really like the design, are there plans to restock them?

  33. @Depresso_dr

    September 7, 2025 at 6:50 pm

    Other latins and Spanish speaking writers that (at least to me) are a must: Jorge Luis Borges, Gabriel García Márquez, Juan Emilio Bosch Gaviño, Octavio paz.

    I hope some day you get to talk about them, specially Juan Bosch since I'm bias toward him after all his from my motherland, and a man i like to describe as ahead of his times in the Dominican sociopolital sphere

  35. @h4skey2001

    September 7, 2025 at 6:50 pm

    Could you do a video on Immanuel Wallerstein?? I feel like he shaped a lot of the way I think about history and present day capitalism as a whole in my first year as a history student and a socialist when I read him. Event though he s more of a historian and sociologist I think he deserves a video like yours due to his long life, prolific work and political activism on the left.

  37. @ms.greywolf8228

    September 7, 2025 at 6:50 pm

    Although I did read some of Pablo Neruda's poetry as a child, I grew up to distance myself from the genre itself for long, so long that barely a couple of months ago I began digging into it again, but, ironically, not because of Neruda.

    It was actually because of Hernán Rivera Letelier, a man who grew up in that lucid dream that was "salitre", and the towns with their nicely named office and all that nice jazz that doesn't sound so good when you investigate about it. His literature took me to a place where I never thought I'd set my feet on, and I have yet to do so, but being there throughout his words has made me feel so inspired to keep doing what I love, which is writing, about many things, trying to close the gap between poetry and narration the same way he did. He may not be a philosopher, on a strict scale at least, but he is a writer, a storyteller, you could easily say he's a survivor from those beautiful yet hostile landscapes, and his words are some of the phew that managed to make me cry.

    I love his work, and from what I've gathered from his life, he's been a good guy in general, who knows what may come to the surface someday, but up until now, what I know is that he's a nice read. Sadly, because life's a bitch and prefers to keep a genocide bitch alive rather than keeping an artist— and a witness of some of the worst of humanity—, free from that damned Alzheimer. But he's made a lot of stories to read, some short some long: I've enjoyed each and every one of them, and never have I ever and will I ever read an introduction so powerful as that of "La Reina Isabel cantaba rancheras".

    So, uuuh, ye. Check him out, if you haven't, I guess. Bye bye~

  38. @freehuskercreations6852

    September 7, 2025 at 6:50 pm

    You should do a video on Charles Bukowski. A true post-modernist Kafka, and one of my favorite writers. Women is one of my favorite literary pieces, and it peers so eloquently into the self-destruction he himself indulged

  40. @Billycca3

    September 7, 2025 at 6:50 pm

    I love your videos man. Your tone, the pace of the storytelling, the ambience in general are all perfect. I haven't watched a single video of yours that leaves me wanting more. No matter the subject matter I'm always smiling at the end. Please keep up the amazing work

Comments are closed.

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