Pablo Neruda’s Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair showed us someone’s love story. In his compilation of poems, the first nineteen were full of love and passion; however the last of the twenty love poems was about loss. And Neruda ends the book with “A Song of Despair,” the break up.
Pablo Neruda was a romantic; one of my favorite poems from the book was “I Like for You to Be Still.” I feel as if this poem best portrays the deepness of his love for this unidentified woman. He says, “Let me come to be still in your silence// And let me talk to you with your silence,” The speaker is saying that they have a profound love for each other, where they can sit in each other’s silence, without the need to talk and that would be enough. To him, he felt that their love had that the type of unspeakable understanding . However, he loses this love and writes, “Tonight I can Write” to end his twenty love poem series and finishes the book with “A Song of Despair.” In these last two poems, it is evident he has not lost sight of his love for this mystery woman, if anything- these two poems reinforces the readers that the speaker’s love for this woman was true. In these poems, Neruda uses repetition to emphasize the speaker’s grief. In “Tonight I can Write” it is said three times, “Tonight I can write the saddest lines.” The speaker talks about the love he had for her, the love she had for him, and the love that is now lost. And in “A Song of Despair,” the phrase, “In you everything sank!” is repeated many times. This line is powerful because he compares to his ex-lover to the sea and time; he uses this line to reiterate that he has lost everything to her and is now alone, referring himself as “the abandoned one” and “the deserted one.”
Questions:
1) Not much is said about who these poems are directed towards; however, from what is said about this woman, what kind of person do you think she was? (For example: In the poem, “I Like for You to Be Still,” the speaker says, “you are like the word Melancholy,” what do you think Neruda is inferring?)
2) In what other poems does Pablo Neruda use repetition, and how is it important in that poem?