The Death of Pablo Neruda

This multimedia work, “The Death of Pablo Neruda,” produced by Ram Devineni, includes a short documentary with Ariel Dorfman, who was in Chile on September 26, 1973, when Nobel Prize-winning poet Pablo Neruda was buried. “Looking back now, I could have so easily walked to that cemetery and joined the men and women chanting next to his coffin,” Dorfman confesses in an accompanying essay. “Along with them, I would have chanted his name and, in this way, I would have said farewell. But I did not take that walk and I did not join their chant. In all honesty, I did not attend the funeral and the final journey of the poet who had taught me to love Chile and the Spanish language more than any other author in the world.” In sharing this poignant remembrance against the backdrop of archival film of the funeral procession, Dorfman brings to life one of the greatest poets of the twentieth century.

In addition to the documentary, this multimedia work includes an essay, “From Beyond the Grave,” by Dorfman, poetry by Martín Espada and Idra Novey, and a translation of Neruda’s poem “XII from The Heights of Macchu Picchu” by Mark Eisner.