Tonight I Can Write… by Pablo Neruda
This poem is one of Neruda’s earlier works on love, before he began to explore other genres such as poverty and politics.
The poem begins with the declarative statement “Tonight I can write the saddest lines”, which is repeated throughout the poem. Neruda doesn’t tell us why he feels this way for a few more lines, with three simple, but powerful words “I loved her”. A theme of distance begins to evolve, with Neruda contemplating the natural world and how it reminds him of his love, for example he used to hold her “under the endless sky”.
I was drawn to the contradictions in some of his thoughts, which I feel really emphasize the turmoil and complicity he was experiencing (going from “I loved her” to “sometime I love her”). You really get the sense that he was in a state of inner tension and both him and his lover went through a roller-coaster of emotions.
The lines “To think that I do not have her. To feel that I have lost her” stood out to me because they are so simple yet so powerful. Every word is a monosyllable, nothing fancy or flowery; yet the sense of loss and loneliness is so clear. This is reiterated by the “immense night” which became “still more immense without her” – again he refers back to the night which he did in the beginning and the distance it creates. This deep sense of loss causes the speaker to write down his thoughts (“the verse falls to the soul like dew to pasture”). Here we learn what the speaker does to deal with his loss and writing is his only response. This may prove as evidence as to why he keeps repeating the line “Tonight I can write the saddest lines”. I get the sense that the speaker is writing down his thoughts as a kind of therapy to deal with his loss and finally accept it.
Towards the end of the poem, the speaker points out the sameness of the nature yet how he and his lover have changed. He tells himself that he no longer loves her and then says that maybe he does love her. To me, this means the speaker is in the early stages of dealing with heartbreak, he hasn’t fully accepted it is over – almost as if the wounds are still too fresh.
“Love is so short, forgetting is so long” is quite a chilling line and especially coming from Neruda at the young age of 20, it shows his maturity and insight as a young poet. In such simplistic language he evokes a deep sense of heartbreak and you can’t help but feel sorry for the speaker.
Themes that I found in the poem include memory and reminiscence, love and passion, heartbreak and loneliness. Neruda uses personification (“the night wind revolves in the sky and sings”, “my voice tried to find the wind to touch her hearing”), repeated symbols (night…sky), and the repetition of words/phrases.
I think that the overall purpose or essence of the poem is the painful exercise of forgetting a love and the range of emotions/thoughts/stages one goes through during the process until one can finally accept that it is over. But as Neruda said “forgetting is so long”.
4 responses so far
The stanza that I found the most interesting in this poem was the following: “I no longer love her, that’s certain, but maybe I love her. Love is so short, forgetting is so long.” (586)
To me, this stanza shows exactly the difficulty to forget someone who we have loved, and it implicitly says that if we do forget about the loved one, then maybe that person was never really loved to start with. Also, it creates a certain confusion to the reader, who is confused about the poet’s state of mind. Indeed, the juxtaposition of “certain” and “maybe” could be considered an oxymoron.
Also, this can be interpreted as a never-ending cycle, where love is ephemeral, but the fact that we are trying to forget makes love continual since remembering brings back memories of love. It can then be concluded that love is always present for it is hard to get rid of it and forget it. This adds to the confusion created in the stanza, where we have love depicted as a short process, even though it really is a long one.
In addition, this particular stanza makes the reader ask himself about what love is, and what is its true meaning. But one could ask himself: would Neruba have had a similar approach to a love affair if he were more mature, maybe towards the end of his life?
My favorite poem from this selection is Neruda’s “I’m explaining a Few Things” where he uses poetry, as oppose to prose to bring forth is personal narrative. I love how Neruda’s first stanza is set in a direct, even sarcastic tone. He seems to be mocking conventional similes, metaphors, and images employed in poetry, yet he infuses these examples with such beauty, making the poem seem inviting to the reader.
This direct dialogue with the reader reappears in the last stanza, bringing the poem full circle. “And you will ask:why doesn’t his poetry speak of dreams and leaves…” is such a powerful line. In a way it seems like an “in your face” type of comment-the war in Spain had such a profound effect on Neruda and his people, that he couldn’t even fathom writing about beauty, nature, and emotions. To him, these conventional poetic ideas became trivial. Yet instead of forgoing his writing, he chose to craft his work to depict the challenges he was enduring during this time in a beautiful way.
Being that he chooses poetry (a form we tend to associate with emotions and feelings), the civil war’s effect on Neruda becomes more vivid and relatable for the reader. It begs the question of: what will the future be for Neruda?
There’s a lot of imagery here – which you make great note of – that lends itself to Neruda portraying his love as a shining star in a night sky. He loves this star, but the sense of having to move on from past love hints that Neruda will forge forward and begin to love another star in the night.
He first mentions “The night is starry” in the second line of the poem, and continues to reference the star-filled night sky consistently throughout the poem. He then refers to his love as having a “bright body,” and “infinite” eyes. She’s a star to him, and the love shared between them appears to blossom only in the night. By losing her, Neruda may also be referencing the coming of the sun, which would result in the disappearance of the nighttime stars.
I’m not sure if he’s honestly trying to forget about this love of his, because he struggles greatly between feeling “in love with her” and simply “loving her.” I don’t know if he finally separates the two by the end of the poem, but he at least makes the move to cease letting her presence slip into his work, which would no doubt suggest that he’s able to move her memories into the remembrance portion of his mind.
In the introduction part, the book suggests that the author evolves the consciousness of a love fair. I like this this poem especiallly the line” I love her, and sometimes she loved me too”. He did not reveal why he wrote this, and i think when i see ” i love her” i feel the power of the sentence. Even though there are only three words, the Effect is powerful and wrenching in this swift moment. the poem ends with ” these the last verses that i write for her” and as Daniel mentions, the forgetting is long.