An Assassinated Poet and the Music He Inspires

By: Matthew Desmond  

In 1973, Pablo Neruda, a politician and Nobel-Prize-winning poet, died in Chile. Around the same time, Pamela Illanes’s family escaped political turmoil of General Augusto Pinochet’s military takeover. Years later, Neruda’s poetry inspires Illanes’s music, and new evidence shows that Neruda was assassinated. 

Many consider Neruda to be the national poet of Chile. He worked in many genres, including historical epics, surrealism, and political essays. However, he was best known for his poetry, most of which were love poems.  

He was a vocal critic of Pinochet and the United States. He was Chile’s ambassador to a variety of countries. Salvador Allende, whom Pinochet ousted, counted Neruda as one of his closest advisors.  

Illanes was a young girl when Pinochet’s military dictatorship began. Her father thought that it was unsafe to stay. “I could hear gunshots at nighttime. It was very, very bad.” 

During Pinochet’s rule, the press was controlled. There was a crackdown on free speech, and political opponents were imprisoned, tortured, and often killed. In the midst of this, Neruda died under questionable circumstances. 

 He was undergoing treatment for cancer but left the hospital when he thought that a doctor had poisoned him. He died hours after checking himself out of the hospital. The official cause of death was heart failure. 

In 2015, the Chilean government reported that it was likely that Neruda had been assassinated, but they could not say with certainty that he had been poisoned. 

In 2023, 50 years after his death, new forensic testing showed that he was, indeed, poisoned. 

Illanes has lived in the United States for years, but Neruda’s work still inspires her. She works as a composer, sometimes using Neruda’s poems as lyrics.  

Her husband encouraged her to contact the Neruda Foundation to see if they would sanction her work. She sent her musical adaptation of “Puedo Escribir” for approval.  

She waited three or four months and finally got a response through the mail. “Several documents that I had to sign. The Pablo Neruda Foundation is very strict. They approved, and then I thought ‘Let’s keep going.’”  

She continued to adapt Neruda’s work; eventually, submitting ten works that the foundation accepted. 

When asked about what she thought of the recent news about Neruda, she said, “It is awful. It was a heartbreak for me as a composer, because I’ve become attached to Pablo Neruda, after working for so many years with his poems.”  

She said that many people have worked for many years to uncover the truth. “I believe that the truth will prevail.” 

In describing her process, Illanes said that she opens the book of poetry and sits at a piano. “While I’m reading the poem, the melody starts to show up. The emotions create certain notes.”  

With “Puedo Escribir” she said that the melody came naturally. “It was like a river. Those types of creations are the best.” 

She has adapted other works by writers such as Antonio Skarmeta, a Chilean novelist who was also friends with Neruda. Though not a poet, he sends Illanes words and phrases for her to adapt.  

She wrote ten compositions based on Skarmeta’s ideas, and they were performed by Ricardo Tamura, a tenor from the Metropolitan Opera.  

She is currently working on adapting the works of another Chilean poet, Gabriela Mistral. Similar to her work on Neruda, she has approached the Mistral Foundation for support. 

Illanes also loves the work of Robert Frost and Emily Dickinson.  

“I’m very attached…I love the poems of Robert Frost. He’s magical.” She said that when she is done with her work with Mistral, she will return to Frost and Dickinson.  

mdesmond@my.dom.edu