Chilean authorities decided this week to launch an investigation into the Sept. 23, 1973, death of Communist poet Pablo Neruda, winner of the 1971 Literature Nobel Prize, who is believed to have been poisoned by the military regime of dictator Augusto Pinochet (1973-1990) less than a fortnight after seizing power in a bloody coup d état. At that time, Neruda, 69, was said to be suffering from prostate cancer, but it is believed he was not terminally ill by then.
In a sense, in an arid desert where we went astray, Neruda's poetry embraces us like a fountain of love and sprinkles its pious water all over our afflicted hearts.
Santiago de Chile, Feb 4 (Prensa Latina) Half a century later, the death of Pablo Neruda remains unclear today, although the lawyer and nephew of the poet, Rodolfo Reyes, suspects the involvement of third parties in the decease of the Literature Nobel Prize winner.