14/11/2025
Pablo Neruda wrote the world's most beautiful love poems. But he called his disabled daughter "ridiculous being" and "vampire"—then erased her from history. Meet Malva Marina.
Pablo Neruda is one of the most celebrated poets of the 20th century. His words about love are quoted at weddings, printed on greeting cards, memorized by romantic souls around the world.
"I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where."
"I want to do with you what spring does with the cherry trees."
"In one kiss, you'll know all I haven't said."
Beautiful words. Immortal verses. Written by a man who abandoned his disabled daughter and pretended she never existed.
Her name was Malva Marina Trinidad del Carmen Reyes Hagenaar.
She was born on August 18, 1934, in Madrid, Spain. Her mother was Maria Antonieta Hagenaar Vogelzang, a Dutch woman Neruda had married in 1930. Her father was the famous poet Pablo Neruda, already gaining international recognition for his passionate verses about love and longing.
Malva was born with hydrocephalus—a condition that causes fluid to accumulate in the brain, leading to physical and developmental disabilities. In 1934, medical treatment was limited. Children born with severe hydrocephalus often didn't survive long, and those who did faced significant challenges.
Malva needed care, patience, and love.
Her father gave her none of those things.
From the moment of her birth, Pablo Neruda viewed his daughter not as a child to be cherished but as a burden to be resented. In private letters later revealed by Chilean literary critic Volodia Teitelboim, Neruda referred to Malva with shocking cruelty:
"Ridiculous being."
"Three-pound vampire."
"Monster."
He didn't call her by her name. He didn't call her "daughter." To him, she was an embarrassment, a deformity, something shameful that had contaminated his life.
His marriage to Maria Antonieta was already deteriorating when Malva was born. Neruda had been having an affair with Argentine painter Delia del Carril, whom he would later marry. The birth of a disabled child gave him the excuse he wanted to completely abandon his family.
Around 1936, as the Spanish Civil War erupted, Neruda left Spain. He left behind his wife and his two-year-old daughter.
He never came back.
Maria Antonieta fled with Malva to the Netherlands, her home country, hoping to find safety and support. She struggled to survive, working whatever jobs she could find while caring for a severely disabled child alone. Money was scarce. Medical care was limited. The Netherlands itself was approaching its own nightmare—Nazi occupation would begin in 1940.
Meanwhile, Pablo Neruda continued his ascent to literary immortality. He traveled. He published. He was celebrated in intellectual circles across Europe and Latin America. He wrote passionate love poems—to Delia del Carril, to Spain, to revolution, to ideals, to abstract concepts of beauty and longing.
He wrote nothing for Malva.
Not a single poem. Not a single letter. Not a single acknowledgment that she existed.
In his extensive correspondence, in his public appearances, in his literary work, Malva Marina was a ghost. Her father had performed a kind of literary murder—erasing her from his narrative while she was still alive.
She lived for eight years.
Eight years of medical struggles, of poverty, of her mother's desperate attempts to provide care while working and surviving in an increasingly dangerous Europe. Eight years of existing as the unwanted daughter of a famous poet who pretended she wasn't real.
On March 2, 1943, Malva Marina died in Gouda, Netherlands. She was eight years old.
Maria Antonieta, devastated, notified Neruda through the Chilean Consulate. It was wartime; communication was difficult, but she made sure the message reached him. She asked him to come. To see their daughter one last time. To offer in death the acknowledgment he had refused in life.
Neruda's response was silence.
He didn't attend the funeral. He didn't send condolences. He didn't respond to Maria Antonieta at all.
His daughter died, and he acted as if nothing had happened.
Years later, when Neruda wrote his memoirs—I Confess I Have Lived, published in 1974—he again erased Malva from existence. The book covers his marriages, his travels, his political activism, his literary triumphs. It mentions Maria Antonieta briefly as a failed early marriage.
Malva Marina isn't mentioned once. Not a single sentence. Not even a footnote acknowledging that she existed.
Pablo Neruda won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1971. He died in 1973, celebrated as one of the greatest poets of his generation, beloved across Latin America and the world.
And for decades, almost nobody knew about Malva.
It wasn't until 2007, when literary critic Volodia Teitelboim published revelations from Neruda's private correspondence, that the full scope of his cruelty toward his disabled daughter became public knowledge.
The revelation shook Chile. It shook the literary world. How do you reconcile the poet of Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair with the man who called his disabled daughter a "vampire" and erased her from history?
The answer is uncomfortable: you can't fully reconcile it. You have to hold both truths simultaneously. Great art can come from deeply flawed people. Beautiful words can be written by someone capable of profound cruelty.
But here's what we can do: we can remember Malva Marina.
We can say her full name: Malva Marina Trinidad del Carmen Reyes Hagenaar.
We can acknowledge that she lived, that she mattered, that her existence deserves recognition even though her father refused to give it to her.
We can honor Maria Antonieta Hagenaar, who stayed, who cared, who loved her daughter through impossible circumstances while the famous poet father abandoned them both.
We can recognize that Neruda's treatment of Malva wasn't just personal failure—it was ableism, the devaluation of disabled lives, the historical pattern of viewing children with disabilities as shameful burdens rather than human beings deserving of love.
And we can ask ourselves hard questions about how we remember artists and their legacies.
Do we separate the art from the artist? Do we acknowledge complexity? Do we allow terrible personal behavior to coexist with artistic genius in our cultural memory?
Or do we insist that when you write about love, you should practice it—at least toward your own child?
Malva Marina Reyes didn't get to write poetry. She didn't get to tell her own story. She died at eight years old, poor and abandoned, her existence denied by the father who could have helped her but chose not to.
But her story is being told now. And every time someone quotes Pablo Neruda's romantic verses, we should remember: the man who wrote those words refused to love his own disabled daughter.
That doesn't make the poems less beautiful.
But it makes their author less admirable.
And it makes Malva Marina's forgotten life worth remembering.
Rest in peace, Malva Marina Trinidad del Carmen Reyes Hagenaar.
You deserved better than the father you had.
You deserved better than history's silence.
You deserve to be remembered.
