“I Love You as certain dark things are to be loved, in secret between shadow and the soul”. This quotation is from “I Do Not Love You” by Pablo Neruda. This poem is not a normal love poem like we see when we read Shakespeare but is the real essence of true love. True love cannot be explain in words or in actions. It just seems to happen and you cannot explain it. You feel the world consume you and when you see the one you truly love your world opens up again. The title to the actual poem are very different it states that Pablo Neruda does not actually love her/him, but in the poem he confesses his love but in a way that is not typically normal. He explains that he will love her/him in a way that people love darkness and he will love that person with his soul. He explains love as an action that is not seen but yet you know that you are in love. You cannot really feel love it just happens.
It was interesting how he says he does not know how he loves that person but much rather he just does not how he does but he really loves that person. I believe that in life you just know when that person is the love of your life and their is nothing that can explain why you actually love that person you just do. When asked why you cant really answer it but you just know that is the love of your life. This poem depicts true love and how you just know when you love someone with no explanation.
“I Love You as certain dark things are to be loved, in secret between shadow and the soul”. This quotation is stated in ” I Do Not Love You” by Pablo Neruda. This poem talks about love in a way no other person does. It explains true love to the fullest and does not compare a women to a summers day like Shakespeare. It has a different way of explaining love in the correct way. The poem shows the true love between two people. True love cannot be explained in words or even in actions it just happens. When you fall in love you just know that you are in love. Pablo Neruda explains love in the simplest and most correct way I have ever read it. Love cannot be explain it is just something that you feel, you feel it in the middle of the day when you miss your significant other, when you see them and light up because they are there. Love is something you feel not something that can be shown. When you love someone you do and there are no words or gifts that can explain. When someone asks you about love you cannot explain why you actually love someone you just do.
Pablo Neruda explains love and shows that he cannot even explain why he loves that person he just does. It shows that love is happening but he cannot really explain it he just knows he does. You get that feeling when you love someone and you just know. Love is something that just happens with no explanation it is something that no one can control or even seem to explain. Pablo Neruda shows that love is unpredictable and not explainable.
So as many of you know I wanted everyone to read I Do Not Love You by Pablo Neruda. This poem has been my favorite for years and was the first poem that got me into reading poetry. When people read the title of this poem they believe that it will be the opposite of a love poem, but of course if you know Neruda, he can never say no to poetry about love. I love the contrasting effect that the poem has from what the title is. In the beginning he describes all the reasons why he doesn’t love this individual the way that people love beautiful things such as flowers and pretty stones. This shows how his love for this individual is way beyond the love people have for beautiful things, but its a much deeper and complex love. He continues explaining how he does love this person, in the shadows and in secret. Many people speculate that this poem could be about his alleged affair he had. The poem continues to say that he loves this person for their internal beauty and that he knows no other way than to love her. His love for this person has no barriers, and he wants to spend his time as close to them as possible. I’ll leave you with my favorite line to think about, “So I love you because I know no other way to love.”
As you said the title caught me off guard. I dove into the poem thinking it would be about a man who wants nothing to do with love but while I read it seemed to me as if he wanted everything to do with love. I like how Neruda tries to imply that love is not something that can be easily replaced like the material things one owns such as their favorite sweater. Love is very deep and complex and just like the dark it is hard to describe and hard to tell what’s at the center of it. Love is not something that can easily be shown or explained its just a feeling and you and only you would know what you feel and how to show it.
As was said before, once I read the title of ” I Do Not Love You” I was expecting the poem to be listed with many reason as to why the person does not love the one he speaks of but as I began reading it, it was clear to be that it was definitely the opposite of what I initially thought as the poem quickly shifts from I do not love you to I love you. I find this poem to be absolutely beautiful! In the first stanza, he speak of loving this person “as certain dark things are to be loved”. This is important to be as he shows that this love which he speaks of is not frivolous and fleeting as it is quite east to love flowers and precious metals, of course this is not true love and are easily replaced by other things. It is however, not easy to love “dark things” and so when one does it can be presumed that this love takes a lot more effort and is more pure. (It could also speak of a secret/ forbidden love).
He continues with the idea of loving something not just for its aesthetics ” the plant that never blooms”. Once again looking past the outward appearances and focusing more deeply into who that person really is. I believe that when we are able to do this then we are exhibiting real love. I also like the line “I love you because I know no other way”. Neruda is letting the reader knows that this is not just something which he can control ( a manifestation of true love). Love is always defined differently by different people and therefore shown differently by different people but one thing that is universally true is that love cannot be controlled and one can only love the way they know how to love and it is unexplainable.
This is a response to Hibbert.
I also think this poem is absolutely beautiful, and incredibly intimate (Can you imagine what it would sound like in Spanish?). I agree that the speaker is incredibly wise because he doesn’t love something from its aesthetics, but from what is within. This is also shown when he says “I love you as the plant that doesn’t bloom but carries the light of those flowers, hidden, within itself, and thanks to your love the tight aroma that arose from the earth lives dimly in my body”. He is impliying that their relationship is a healthy, mutual love which both people cherish. I don’t know about you, but I would LOVE to be in such an emotionally stable and emotionally invested relationship like this one.
I like Neruda’s romantism, but the first time I read his poems translated into English, I did not feel very attracted to them so I decided to choose a different poem.
I chose “Walking Around”, because this poem not only shows me the non-romantic side of Neruda, but also Neruda’s feeling of concern with society and the world around him.
When I first read “Walking Around”, the title of the poem made me believe that its content was calm and probably also romantic. However, after reading a few lines, it also made me ask myself about the reasons why people would walk around?
Well, I think people walk around when they are lost or do not have a place to go. This makes me believe that the author somehow has the necessity to arrive and belong to a different place, or that he does not belong to this world, which made sense after I finished reading his lines and biography.
“Walking Around” seems to be a confession, where Neruda feels tired of the routine and men’s life. Neruda defines men’s life as something pitiful, he also shows his existential weariness, and indirectly describes the world as a catastrophic place. While reading this poem, I could feel his anger and how I was tired of the artificial things of our society. He manifests himself against the Church and a notary who represents the public system. At the end, he no longer wants to sit back and do nothing while others suffer.
With this poem, I could learn a different side from Neruda, and it was until I decided to search more about his life when I learned he was also involve in political activities along with other Latin America writers.
Do you think political issues made Neruda change his style from Romantic poems to political affairs? why?
I think political issues made Neruda change his style because it affected his life personally as his close friends, Federico Garcia Lorca and Rafael Alberti, were killed for their political stance. In one of his poem, I’m Explaining a Few Things, he wrote about the tragedies occuring when he was in Spain during its civil war. This poem and Walking Around are very different from his other poems like Tonight I Can Write, which usually contain romantic themes. He didn’t feel like addressing anymore to personal and private matters but instead wanted to give voice on social issues. I think his history as a world traveling diplomat helped him further develop his later poems because it allowed him to see first-hand the issues and violence occurring in the world like the Spanish Civil War. In I’m Explaining a Few Things, he wrote very detailed description of what he saw and end the poem with “Come and see the blood in the streets!” It is addressing the reader to emphasize that these are every human being’s issue and not just one country’s issue.
I agree that political affairs could have affected Neruda’s life, but as far as I know, most Latin American writers had political inclinations toward communism or socialism. This makes me wonder if writers deprived themselves of some feelings in order to write about events during that time.
I agree with this, Neruda had many things going on in his life and could only express himself through his work of words. He felt the need to express how he truly felt and how things could have been better and what he wishes he could have done. In his poems you can hear all that he had dealt with, he does not just come out with it but much he shows things in a way the reader thinks about his past and puts themselves in his place much rather then just coming out with what has actually been happening in his life.
Christopher Gjoni
Like many of you, once I heard the title of the poem, “I Do Not Love You,” I expected to read a poem full of unhappiness and possibly anger. However, after reading it, it was the complete opposite of my expectations. The poem written by Pablo Neruda is actually a very intimate and heartfelt work of literature. The opening line of the poem is “I do not love you…” but as you continue to read on, the speaker continues to discuss how much he genuinely loves this mysterious woman, such as by comparing his love for her to that of loving a plant that does not “bloom” but retains its hidden beauty. However, as the poem continues, he explains that he can’t really explain why he loves her, but he just does. I found that to be very relatable to my life because there are people who I love just because I do, and there isn’t really a deep explanation as to why. I really enjoyed reading this poem, and can say it is one of my favorite works of literature.
Like everyone said, the title of the poem “I Do Not Love You” threw me off. I expected it to be some depressing poem. It turns out to be the opposite. It was quite enjoyable and lovable. The way he talks about this mysterious person is so heartfelt. It throws you off completely from the title. You would expect this poem to be about hate on an ex lover or something on the lines of that, but it throws you off. It’s actually quite cute.
In “Tonight I can Write” by Pablo Neruda, Neruda experiences a type of love that I personally would not call love. I would call obsession and to refute what some others have said I feel like this is a type of feeling that we all have had or will have at some point in our lives. He realizes something about love that interested me specifically, he realizes the fleeting nature of love and the ubiquity of sorrow and heartbreak. Neruda depicts this by saying “Love is so short, forgetting is so long”. There is not much special in how Neruda feels about this ex-lover he seems as if he is toiling away writing about very raw feelings that we as readers may refuse to believe that we also hold. I think that is one of Neruda’s reasons for writing this. This poems raw nature allows us as readers to look within ourselves honestly as Neruda did for himself. This love is an obsession, in my opinion, I think Neruda is obsessing over the fact that their relationship felt so sweet while they were fooling around but never had a firm standing. I say this because Neruda says “I loved her, and sometimes she loved me too”, and then later he says “she loved me, and sometimes I loved her too”. What this says to me is that they never really solidified their feelings for each other and never pulled the trigger on the relationship. Then something happened and Neruda lost her causing him to now reflect on what he lost. He is obsessed heartbroken and raw. The symptoms of love but not the true definition in my opinion.
“I Love You as certain dark things are to be loved, in secret between shadow and the soul”. This quotation is from “I Do Not Love You” by Pablo Neruda. This poem is not a normal love poem like we see when we read Shakespeare but is the real essence of true love. True love cannot be explain in words or in actions. It just seems to happen and you cannot explain it. You feel the world consume you and when you see the one you truly love your world opens up again. The title to the actual poem are very different it states that Pablo Neruda does not actually love her/him, but in the poem he confesses his love but in a way that is not typically normal. He explains that he will love her/him in a way that people love darkness and he will love that person with his soul. He explains love as an action that is not seen but yet you know that you are in love. You cannot really feel love it just happens.
It was interesting how he says he does not know how he loves that person but much rather he just does not how he does but he really loves that person. I believe that in life you just know when that person is the love of your life and their is nothing that can explain why you actually love that person you just do. When asked why you cant really answer it but you just know that is the love of your life. This poem depicts true love and how you just know when you love someone with no explanation.
“I Love You as certain dark things are to be loved, in secret between shadow and the soul”. This quotation is stated in ” I Do Not Love You” by Pablo Neruda. This poem talks about love in a way no other person does. It explains true love to the fullest and does not compare a women to a summers day like Shakespeare. It has a different way of explaining love in the correct way. The poem shows the true love between two people. True love cannot be explained in words or even in actions it just happens. When you fall in love you just know that you are in love. Pablo Neruda explains love in the simplest and most correct way I have ever read it. Love cannot be explain it is just something that you feel, you feel it in the middle of the day when you miss your significant other, when you see them and light up because they are there. Love is something you feel not something that can be shown. When you love someone you do and there are no words or gifts that can explain. When someone asks you about love you cannot explain why you actually love someone you just do.
Pablo Neruda explains love and shows that he cannot even explain why he loves that person he just does. It shows that love is happening but he cannot really explain it he just knows he does. You get that feeling when you love someone and you just know. Love is something that just happens with no explanation it is something that no one can control or even seem to explain. Pablo Neruda shows that love is unpredictable and not explainable.
So as many of you know I wanted everyone to read I Do Not Love You by Pablo Neruda. This poem has been my favorite for years and was the first poem that got me into reading poetry. When people read the title of this poem they believe that it will be the opposite of a love poem, but of course if you know Neruda, he can never say no to poetry about love. I love the contrasting effect that the poem has from what the title is. In the beginning he describes all the reasons why he doesn’t love this individual the way that people love beautiful things such as flowers and pretty stones. This shows how his love for this individual is way beyond the love people have for beautiful things, but its a much deeper and complex love. He continues explaining how he does love this person, in the shadows and in secret. Many people speculate that this poem could be about his alleged affair he had. The poem continues to say that he loves this person for their internal beauty and that he knows no other way than to love her. His love for this person has no barriers, and he wants to spend his time as close to them as possible. I’ll leave you with my favorite line to think about, “So I love you because I know no other way to love.”
As you said the title caught me off guard. I dove into the poem thinking it would be about a man who wants nothing to do with love but while I read it seemed to me as if he wanted everything to do with love. I like how Neruda tries to imply that love is not something that can be easily replaced like the material things one owns such as their favorite sweater. Love is very deep and complex and just like the dark it is hard to describe and hard to tell what’s at the center of it. Love is not something that can easily be shown or explained its just a feeling and you and only you would know what you feel and how to show it.
As was said before, once I read the title of ” I Do Not Love You” I was expecting the poem to be listed with many reason as to why the person does not love the one he speaks of but as I began reading it, it was clear to be that it was definitely the opposite of what I initially thought as the poem quickly shifts from I do not love you to I love you. I find this poem to be absolutely beautiful! In the first stanza, he speak of loving this person “as certain dark things are to be loved”. This is important to be as he shows that this love which he speaks of is not frivolous and fleeting as it is quite east to love flowers and precious metals, of course this is not true love and are easily replaced by other things. It is however, not easy to love “dark things” and so when one does it can be presumed that this love takes a lot more effort and is more pure. (It could also speak of a secret/ forbidden love).
He continues with the idea of loving something not just for its aesthetics ” the plant that never blooms”. Once again looking past the outward appearances and focusing more deeply into who that person really is. I believe that when we are able to do this then we are exhibiting real love. I also like the line “I love you because I know no other way”. Neruda is letting the reader knows that this is not just something which he can control ( a manifestation of true love). Love is always defined differently by different people and therefore shown differently by different people but one thing that is universally true is that love cannot be controlled and one can only love the way they know how to love and it is unexplainable.
This is a response to Hibbert.
I also think this poem is absolutely beautiful, and incredibly intimate (Can you imagine what it would sound like in Spanish?). I agree that the speaker is incredibly wise because he doesn’t love something from its aesthetics, but from what is within. This is also shown when he says “I love you as the plant that doesn’t bloom but carries the light of those flowers, hidden, within itself, and thanks to your love the tight aroma that arose from the earth lives dimly in my body”. He is impliying that their relationship is a healthy, mutual love which both people cherish. I don’t know about you, but I would LOVE to be in such an emotionally stable and emotionally invested relationship like this one.
I like Neruda’s romantism, but the first time I read his poems translated into English, I did not feel very attracted to them so I decided to choose a different poem.
I chose “Walking Around”, because this poem not only shows me the non-romantic side of Neruda, but also Neruda’s feeling of concern with society and the world around him.
When I first read “Walking Around”, the title of the poem made me believe that its content was calm and probably also romantic. However, after reading a few lines, it also made me ask myself about the reasons why people would walk around?
Well, I think people walk around when they are lost or do not have a place to go. This makes me believe that the author somehow has the necessity to arrive and belong to a different place, or that he does not belong to this world, which made sense after I finished reading his lines and biography.
“Walking Around” seems to be a confession, where Neruda feels tired of the routine and men’s life. Neruda defines men’s life as something pitiful, he also shows his existential weariness, and indirectly describes the world as a catastrophic place. While reading this poem, I could feel his anger and how I was tired of the artificial things of our society. He manifests himself against the Church and a notary who represents the public system. At the end, he no longer wants to sit back and do nothing while others suffer.
With this poem, I could learn a different side from Neruda, and it was until I decided to search more about his life when I learned he was also involve in political activities along with other Latin America writers.
Do you think political issues made Neruda change his style from Romantic poems to political affairs? why?
I think political issues made Neruda change his style because it affected his life personally as his close friends, Federico Garcia Lorca and Rafael Alberti, were killed for their political stance. In one of his poem, I’m Explaining a Few Things, he wrote about the tragedies occuring when he was in Spain during its civil war. This poem and Walking Around are very different from his other poems like Tonight I Can Write, which usually contain romantic themes. He didn’t feel like addressing anymore to personal and private matters but instead wanted to give voice on social issues. I think his history as a world traveling diplomat helped him further develop his later poems because it allowed him to see first-hand the issues and violence occurring in the world like the Spanish Civil War. In I’m Explaining a Few Things, he wrote very detailed description of what he saw and end the poem with “Come and see the blood in the streets!” It is addressing the reader to emphasize that these are every human being’s issue and not just one country’s issue.
I agree that political affairs could have affected Neruda’s life, but as far as I know, most Latin American writers had political inclinations toward communism or socialism. This makes me wonder if writers deprived themselves of some feelings in order to write about events during that time.
I agree with this, Neruda had many things going on in his life and could only express himself through his work of words. He felt the need to express how he truly felt and how things could have been better and what he wishes he could have done. In his poems you can hear all that he had dealt with, he does not just come out with it but much he shows things in a way the reader thinks about his past and puts themselves in his place much rather then just coming out with what has actually been happening in his life.
Christopher Gjoni
Like many of you, once I heard the title of the poem, “I Do Not Love You,” I expected to read a poem full of unhappiness and possibly anger. However, after reading it, it was the complete opposite of my expectations. The poem written by Pablo Neruda is actually a very intimate and heartfelt work of literature. The opening line of the poem is “I do not love you…” but as you continue to read on, the speaker continues to discuss how much he genuinely loves this mysterious woman, such as by comparing his love for her to that of loving a plant that does not “bloom” but retains its hidden beauty. However, as the poem continues, he explains that he can’t really explain why he loves her, but he just does. I found that to be very relatable to my life because there are people who I love just because I do, and there isn’t really a deep explanation as to why. I really enjoyed reading this poem, and can say it is one of my favorite works of literature.
Like everyone said, the title of the poem “I Do Not Love You” threw me off. I expected it to be some depressing poem. It turns out to be the opposite. It was quite enjoyable and lovable. The way he talks about this mysterious person is so heartfelt. It throws you off completely from the title. You would expect this poem to be about hate on an ex lover or something on the lines of that, but it throws you off. It’s actually quite cute.
In “Tonight I can Write” by Pablo Neruda, Neruda experiences a type of love that I personally would not call love. I would call obsession and to refute what some others have said I feel like this is a type of feeling that we all have had or will have at some point in our lives. He realizes something about love that interested me specifically, he realizes the fleeting nature of love and the ubiquity of sorrow and heartbreak. Neruda depicts this by saying “Love is so short, forgetting is so long”. There is not much special in how Neruda feels about this ex-lover he seems as if he is toiling away writing about very raw feelings that we as readers may refuse to believe that we also hold. I think that is one of Neruda’s reasons for writing this. This poems raw nature allows us as readers to look within ourselves honestly as Neruda did for himself. This love is an obsession, in my opinion, I think Neruda is obsessing over the fact that their relationship felt so sweet while they were fooling around but never had a firm standing. I say this because Neruda says “I loved her, and sometimes she loved me too”, and then later he says “she loved me, and sometimes I loved her too”. What this says to me is that they never really solidified their feelings for each other and never pulled the trigger on the relationship. Then something happened and Neruda lost her causing him to now reflect on what he lost. He is obsessed heartbroken and raw. The symptoms of love but not the true definition in my opinion.