A collection of more than 600 pieces between manuscripts, Editions and personal objects that belonged to the Chilean poet Pablo Neruda will be auctioned on 8 October.

It will be carried out virtually with the particularity that most of the elements were grouped by batches to avoid their total disaggregation between different buyers..

Regarding the lot, including manuscripts, personal items, first editions or books dedicated to the Colombian writer Gabriel García Márquez or the former president Salvador Allende, should go up for auction on 19 March at La Suite gallery in Barcelona, but it was not possible due to the confinement decreed in Spain a few days before, in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic.

The postponement pushed the owner of the collection, Santiago Vivanco -a businessman passionate about the work of the author of “Residence on Earth” Y “General sing”- to make the decision to segment the pieces into groups to avoid the dispersion of this collection that has led to 25 years to gather.

The bid will now take place virtually and, instead of selling the 600 pieces individually, they were divided into 238 lots with starting prices that range between 50 and the 80.000 euros (between 58,5 Y 93.700 Dollars).

But nevertheless, the economic situation caused by the pandemic made it difficult to find a buyer who could afford the 650.000 euros (some 761.000 Dollars) set as starting price for the entire lot.

“There was interest from the Chilean government but in the face of the pandemic they said that this money had to be used for social and health purposes. And some institutions in the United States that had asked me, they could not assume it either - Vivanco explained by phone to the AFP agency -. It was difficult, but in the end I had to make this decision. Being smaller batches, there may be more smaller collectors interested because they don't have to shell out as much money”, he added.

The most expensive lot, with a starting price of 80.000 euros, is an extensive correspondence between Neruda and his family, “with very intimate and personal episodes, like the letter where they communicate the letter from his father”, as indicated by the businessman.

Last week, the original version of a sonnet by Neruda bearing the poet's signature, It was found among the belongings of a friend of the Nobel Prize for Literature, in his department of the Chilean capital, after his death in July of this year.

It's about the sonnet “Bull blood” (1965) that appears typewritten and that would be the preliminary version of the one that was later included in the book “Eating in Hungary” (1969), that the author of “One hundred sonnets of love” wrote together with the Guatemalan poet Miguel Ángel Asturias, when they traveled together around Budapest.

The poem was found in the house of a friend of the poet, Pearl Grinblatt, wife of lawyer Sergio Teiltelboim, after the woman's death, last 14 of July, to the 94 years, reported the University of Chile, who will keep the sonnet.