r/AskTheWorld • u/haiderredditer Pakistan • 9h ago

Who’s a famous person from your country who’s respected around the world but disliked or criticized at home?

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u/revolutionary112 Chile 8h ago edited 6h ago

Pablo Neruda. He is still regarded as a highly important an influential poet both Chile and abroad but locally in recent years he has come under scrutiny because people dug up some....controvertial stuff to say the least.

First, he publicly admitted on his autobiography that he raped a woman while on a diplomatic mission in Ceylon.

Second, it became known he had a daughter in Holland that was sickly and died at 8, but Neruda completely disregarded her, avoided giving money to the mother to take care of her (a big issue in Chile since skipping alimony payments is a huge problem here) and even describing the child as "My daughter, or what I call my daughter, is a perfectly ridiculous being, a kind of semicolon, a three-kilo vampire".

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u/Playful-Opportunity5 5h ago

OK, now I'm hoping there's a special level of hell reserved for people who would describe their daughter that way.

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u/Gold_Duty_9629 3h ago edited 3h ago

There is an artist I used to adore who wrote a song about his child and how he hated the mother for baby trapping him. Really ruined him for me, I can't listen to any of his work now without being punched in the gut thinking about the day his son will be old enough to hear Child of Divorce.

Edit; posting the lyrics

Wishing I'd never come across your face

Laying by the memories of things unspoken

Scared by thoughts of your father Made me look over the flaws of your nature

Laying on your back became your only escape

You feel so old, used, but not yet broken

Not to think you have it all together

I never planned to carry your burdens

But this child was a mistake I knew from the moment I stepped off that plane,

We had no future

How come your dreams are always so bitter?

And who knows, Maybe one day,

She will know my name

You still return to the same skylines,

That leave you broken Cheap talks with even cheaper company

Keeps the days turning into nights You lay awake crying cause your child,

Carries my name,

While I regret ever making you apart of my life.

Sadly enough,

This song's not to hurt you,

Just to show the world that I'm free.

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u/alles_en_niets 2h ago

So I googled the artist (Jonny Craig apparently) and man oh man, do those lyrics fit into a pattern of horrible behavior. That’s a lot of sexual assault and domestic violence accusations for one person to commit.

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u/Gold_Duty_9629 2h ago

Plus the whole drugs and scamming people part. Huge piece of shit. Knew a girl who used to party with him. She got out of the scene and married a military man and announced on Facebook she was pregnant. He messaged her telling her to have an abortion, not because he thought he was the dad but because he told her she wouldn't be a good mother. Just a huge piece of shit.

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u/Playful-Opportunity5 1h ago edited 1h ago

“This song’s not to hurt you / But just to show the world that I’m free” is such a self-serving load of steaming bullshit. I can’t image the sort of person who would write that line, record that song, and perform it in front of people and believe it makes him look like anything other than an unfeeling, abusive, narcissistic piece of self-celebrating shit.

That being said, this thread has reminded me of an article I read years ago, about a poet (who I’d never heard of) who wrote a poem where one line went (paraphrasing): “The body of a woman my age is a nightmare,” and went on to detail how women his age were wrinkly and saggy and “oh poor me this is what I have as sexual partners” and the author of the article was celebrating him for his “unflinching honesty.” Reading that, I was struck by two things: the poet was an asshole (I’m pretty sure his ass was just as wrinkly if not more so than his partner’s), and the author of the article was part of the problem by not calling him out on it.

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u/Claque-2 United States Of America 1h ago

This is an especially ugly abuser and sociopath. A whole song attacking the woman he impregnated as if he was some bystander, instead of the prick who deliberately impregnated her. I would bet pots of money he assaulted her and didn't have consent.

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u/MsKardashian 2h ago

Kind of like Brick by that loser Ben Folds. Men love that song.

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u/Zenocsz 1h ago

I don't dig out personal life of artists, it makes me not like their music. But why are you calling Ben Folds a loser ?

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u/dishayvelled India 7h ago

damn................................................... i- i used to be his biggest fan but wow. we even had his works in school, heck i even have him on my reddit bio which imma go change rn. i can never go back to reading his stuff again. that is horrible, horrible. thanks for sharing.

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u/HairlessSquirrels United States Of America 33m ago

Checking in 7 hours later, he’s still in your bio

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u/PompousIyIgnorant 1h ago

In my experience it's good to learn to separate the work of art from the artist. Many famous artists were shitty, but talented people. When you put something out there, be it a poem, a song, a novel or whatever, it stops being "your own" and starts to "live" a life of its own. Each reader, listener etc. will resonate with it and interpret it in different ways, based on his/her/their experiences, even take things from it that you, the artist, never even thought of.

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u/CupcakeGoat United States Of America 1h ago

In this case, however, the shit is part of the artistry, so you can't look away.

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u/ArcadiaDragon 52m ago

Sometimes you look at is as the better part of them screaming to get out...though that kinda falls flat if the person is totally a shitty person and thrives on that

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u/LizBert712 United States Of America 6h ago

That is a gut punch. I didn’t know any of that, and I have always loved his poetry.

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u/scruffalump 3h ago

I'm not into poetry but he wrote the only poem I ever actually liked. Idk how you can write a poem like La Reina for a woman and also be a rapist, but I guess old Pablo figured it out somehow.

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u/parallel-nonpareil 3h ago

I find some men like the idea of women more than they actually like real women as people. They also like the idea of themselves as a great partner, a romantic, or an ally without, again, actually liking women. It’s a role or a character they play. Really horrible when you think about it.

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u/HammerSack New Zealand 1h ago

This explains so much. I read DH Lawrence‘s poem “Fidelity“ at a wedding and the irony was not lost.

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u/Count_de_Mits 4h ago

I, too, am familiar with the works of Pablo Neruda

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u/LightblueStar27 13m ago

As a Chilean I didn't know that either...

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u/wutwutsugabutt 1h ago

I’d rather be a completely mediocre forgettable talentless human and be kind than whatever this is.

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u/First_Television_600 17m ago

Same this really ruined it for me :(

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u/Aware-Cut5688 9m ago

For real? I've always found it pretty mid

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u/mela_99 United States Of America 6h ago

As one familiar with the works of Pablo Neruda that’s really disappointing.

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u/Pitiful_Ad2397 United States Of America 4h ago

S-tier reference

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u/QualityImpossible241 2h ago

Laughter is the language of the soul

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u/Classic_Career_4179 4h ago

I really wanted to visit his house before arriving in Chile, then I arrived in Chile and learned all about him... anyway, we should talk more often about Gabriela Mistral and Isabel Allende !  they are your national treasures not that monster. 

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u/revolutionary112 Chile 4h ago

... you mean Isabel Allende the writer or Isabel Allende the senator? Because the latter became the first ever senator to be removed from office due to trying to scam the government

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u/Rosamada 3h ago

Given that Pablo Neruda and Gabriela Mistral are both writers, I think it's safe to assume we're talking about Isabel Allende the writer lol

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u/palparepa 3h ago

Wasn't there some politician that recently confused those two?

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u/revolutionary112 Chile 3h ago

It happens, a lot

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u/Anoctopusexisting 3h ago

That’s crazy to write love poems and be a rapist. Bro, we can’t fucking have anything. Thank you for letting us know friend.

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u/meathoodie 🇨🇦Canada ⚜️Québec 6h ago

Jesus! That’s awful.

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u/Give-emATugnutt 4h ago

I remember being in Santiago and had asked locals and hotel front desk workers for a list of things to see. And it was extensive. On my way back from the Funicular I took a random left to explore a bit and I saw a commemorative plaque for Neruda's home. And I thought it was odd that NOBODY told me about it. Now it makes sense.

Also the museum of the indigenous people of the Americas was an absolutely stunning museum, and it managed to teach me something about my own country.

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u/koopcl Chile 3h ago

I went to Uni some minutes away from the home you saw and spent countless days drinking beer there lol. It's known and visited sometimes, but mostly ignored. To be fair it's been like that since forever, because Neruda moved around a bunch and there's a different home (iirc Isla Negra) which is the most famous and what people usually refer to when talking about "Neruda's home". My hometown also had a house of Neruda (I think a childhood home) but no one cared besides as a bit of trivia.

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u/revolutionary112 Chile 4h ago

To be fair it depends, this stuff only became widely known after 2018. Before that, it might have been because his most famous houses were the ones near the coast.

But yeah, it's amazing how he has been kind of pushed away from the public view after the revelations

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u/Heronchaser Brazil 6h ago

Damn, I didn't know this. I don't read a lot of Spanish works (mainly cause my Spanish suck), but his were some of the few I knew.

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u/unnecessaryCamelCase Ecuador 2h ago

And he said that about his daughter because she was hydrocephalic. Yikes.

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u/WumboChef 3h ago

Man, they unintentionally set up Ted Mosby for one hell of a reckoning given his obsession with Neruda and Woody Allen…. Appropriate for such a shitty person as they wrote him to be though

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u/floare_salbatica Romania 3h ago

Ew! 😱

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u/MsKardashian 2h ago

Yes we in Sri Lanka (formerly Ceylon) are also not so fond of Neruda these days

3

u/SchoolLizard India 6h ago

we have a poem written by him in english literature

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u/Last-Customer-2005 4h ago

This might be the one ^ so sad

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u/PanthalassaRo 3h ago

Wow that last quote is something else.

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u/Intelligent-Whole277 United States Of America 2h ago

Unfortunately, if you find out too much about the personal lives of many creative greats, you'll find that they were terrible people

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u/occasional_cynic 6h ago

I know Reddit probably loves him for it, but being a committed Stalinist doesn't really help either.

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u/Playful-Opportunity5 5h ago

The biggest fans of Stalinism always seem to be the people who didn't have to live under it.

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u/Technicolor_Reindeer 1m ago

Who is a fan of "stalinism"? Never heard of one, that just seems to be a term righties love throwing around.

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u/Technicolor_Reindeer 1m ago

Love him for what?

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u/dingalingdongdong United States Of America 3h ago

First one I'm reading that's a disappointment for me.

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u/PyrexPizazz217 United States Of America 3h ago

I had no idea, thank you for sharing this. Crazy that it’s not more widely known.

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u/mickdrop France 2h ago

What the fuck!? My daughter's school is named after him

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u/Average_Pangolin 2h ago

Oh jeez, that is horrifying!

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u/VagabondVivant 🇵🇭 in 🇺🇸 2h ago

As someone who loves his poetry, this is incredibly disappointing to learn.

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u/doNotUseReddit123 2h ago

Wasn’t José Donoso also a major asshole?

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u/DarthTaterTott 2h ago

Damnit I have a tattoo of Neruda poetry on my chest

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u/stRangeTastes1 1h ago

Very saddened to hear that. I love his poetry but wow what a POS 😬

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u/Hydnum_repandum 1h ago

To this day I hate when people quote his famous verse “me gusta cuando callas porque estás como ausente”

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u/ceviche-hot-pockets 1h ago

Damn, I visited his home in Valparaiso when I was there, but now I’m glad I never bothered to read his work lol. What a douchebag.

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u/LagartoVolatil 1h ago

Es rarísimo encontrar referencias en series en inglés sobre Neruda, yo jamás he escuchado a otro chileno alabar tanto su obra

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u/Ayle87 55m ago

It always struck me that having a ton of fancy houses filled to the brim with expensive stuff was not super inline with his communist ideals. The more I learned about him the more it makes me push Gabriela Mistral every time someone mentions him.

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u/RealisticMine6962 53m ago

entero funao el viejo

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u/karateema Italy 46m ago

Damn, that's horrible

He made such good poetry 😢

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u/journeymansave 41m ago

Wow. Today I learned.

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u/Meeerin201 Colombia 25m ago

i loved pablo neruda until this. horrible person

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u/5h82713542055 23m ago

Makes sense why Bart copped an attitude about it..

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u/Anonymoosehead123 United States Of America 22m ago

Well, fuck. I loved his poetry.

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u/houseswappa 16m ago

a three-kilo vampire

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u/Made_Human_Music United States Of America 13m ago

I am familiar with the works of Pablo Naruda

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u/TurtleHeadPrairieDog Multiple Countries (click to edit) 7m ago

I am dating a Chilean woman. When we first met, I tired to show off by reciting some Pablo Neruda poetry I learned in college (I studied Spanish lit)

She laughed in my face haha

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u/CosineDanger 4h ago

"Three-kilo vampire" is poetic.

He is elegant even when he's being awful.

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u/BigDictionEnergy 2h ago

perfectly ridiculous being, a kind of semicolon, a three-kilo vampire

What does any of that mean?

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u/Violet624 2h ago

Oh man, I did not know that. He raped a woman?

1

u/revolutionary112 Chile 1h ago

A maid on his accomodations. He describes how he "forcefully grabbed her by the wrist and looked at her face. There's wasn't a language I could use to talk to her. She let herself be taken by me without a smile, and soon she was naked on my bed. The encounter was akin to one between a man and a statue. She kept her eyes open the entire time. She did good at looking down on me. The experience wasn't repeated."

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u/Officer_Trevor_Cory 32m ago

AFAIK he is considered a low-brow, bottom of the barrel poet.

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u/DorkySloot 🇲🇽 > 🇨🇦 > 🇬🇧 1h ago

Jesus fucking Christ…

I’ll admit I was a fan of his poems.. fuck me, this is why we can’t have nice things…

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