Mohammed Ashraf
Mr. Ali Alshehab
English – poetry analysis
26 November 2016
Tonight I Can Write the Saddest Line Pablo Neruda, one of the most popular and prolific poets during the twentieth century was born in July 12, 1904, Parral, Chile and died in September 23, 1973. Tonight I can write is a poem that he wrote at the age of twenty expressing his feeling about a lost love and writing his saddest lines for it. The main theme, is the opening created by lost love in a horrible universe. The two thoughts of love and life are tangled together in Neruda's poem. The verse "falls" into his spirit due to "the immense night, more immense without her." The night wind spins and sings and the stars shudder, so that on this night he can compose the saddest lines. Because he is feeling that he lost her so tonight he will write his saddest lines.
The first four lines tended to the feeling of separation. The matter of having a lost love
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But these last lines show that he is now ready not to look back at the past and tries not to make himself affected with the lost of his love. This poem served as a painful exercise in forgetting. We think that the words "last pain that she makes me suffer" on the 31st line pertains to the memories he remembered while writing the poem
The line 'Tonight I can write the saddest lines' is repeated in line 1, in the first line of the fourth stanza (line 5), and again in the first line of the seventh stanza (line 11). By repeating this line, Neruda creates rhythm that returns the reader back to that phrase. Also, the reader is able to fully understand the depth of what the speaker is feeling when that line is read multiple times and expanded upon with the lines that come after it. The speaker is sad because he is no longer with the woman and the night reminds him of her, which brings up charming memories that he struggles to let go
The poem’s structure as a sonnet allows the speaker’s feelings of distrust and heartache to gradually manifest themselves as the poem’s plot progresses. Each quatrain develops and intensifies the speaker’s misery, giving the reader a deeper insight into his convoluted emotions. In the first quatrain, the speaker advises his former partner to not be surprised when she “see[s] him holding [his] louring head so low” (2). His refusal to look at her not only highlights his unhappiness but also establishes the gloomy tone of the poem. The speaker then uses the second and third quatrains to justify his remoteness; he explains how he feels betrayed by her and reveals how his distrust has led him
In the first stanza, the writer uses many techniques to convey the feeling of loss, when he says,
While “Ode to enchanted light” has 3 stanzas and is aligned to the left side. Also, “Sleeping in the forest” is a lyric poem while, “Ode to enchanted light” is an ode, which is two different structures. Another example of a difference is the topic of figurative language. Oliver uses more of a personal language than Neruda does. An example of this is with Oliver’s poem which states,”I thought the Earth remembered me, she took me back so tenderly”, lines 1-3. This conveys that she has a personal connection with the earth and the phrase also brings out a feeling of calmness. In addition, this quote is an example of personification. On the other side, Neruda’s poem has a more serious tone. For instance, in the text it states, “A cicada sends its sawing song high into the empty air”, lines 10-12. In the text, it puts two words that normally would not be placed next to each other. The words, “Sawing” and “Song” would normally not be used together. The word “Song” refers to a beautiful sound while the word “Sawing” hints of something unpleasant to hear. The lines are also an example of figurative language and
beloved dies. Throughout the poem, the speaker describes the hurt and sorrow that he is feeling
By once again noting “the hour,” Neruda portrays individuality as perpetuating humanity’s existential woes. Many see the time’s passage as horrid, but nature sees every hour, winter or spring, the same way. However, since the Egoist unfortunately falls victim to the ego’s trap, he cannot experience nature’s wonders.
When you read a long poem, sometimes as a young ready, you lose interest. The longer the poem, the faster a reader gets over it. I believe Neruda does not want his readers to lose interest. He wants his readers to understand the meaning behind his art. The reason I say this, is because of his word choice in his poems. The
In stanza 12, she tells us that he has “bit her pretty red heart in two.” Next, she states that he died when she was ten, and when she was twenty years old, she attempted suicide - “…I tried to die, to get back back back to you.” In stanza 13 is where she starts talking about her husband. She says that instead of dying, her friends “stuck her together with glue,” and since she could not die to get back to her father, she would marry someone who was similar.
Neruda then states, "I do not dare, / I do not dare to write it, / if you die" (YEAR, 4-6). Neruda repeats the "do not dare" to
The use of figurative language in the poem helps develop the strong theme of appreciation. Neruda conveys his
Pablo through the poem speaks his mind of experiences in Latin America by using the company of the United Fruits to describe the injustices to the locals vividly. Throughout the poem, Pablo uses a great deal of symbolism, metaphors, and connotations to relate the situation in Chile. The evidence of the setting as Chile is described in line 8 and 9 where the poet describes it as ‘…coast of my world….waist of America.’ Through the use of the word mu in the 8th line, it is evident that the persona in the poem is Pablo hence recounting events experienced in a colonial error marred by killings and social injustices against Latin Americans. There are multiple perpetrators such as Coca-Cola who
From a perspective of sound, it is obvious that there is a pattern in the poem that could provide readers the same feel of the sea just by listening to it. The poet uses two techniques basically to create that effect in terms of internal rhythm and soft sounds. For example, in the line “I love the sea because it teaches me” and “what it taught me before, I keep”, a consonance syllable “ee” has been used by Neruda. Also, there are several words containing the syllables like “s”, “sh”, and “w” playing an essential role in creating the whole mood of the poem. For example, Neruda writes” If it’s a single wave or its vast existence, / or only its
The third stanza goes on to define the pain, only now in more emotional terms, such as "It hurts to thwart the reflexes / of grab, of clutch" (14-15), as well as the pain of continuously having to say good bye, each perhaps as if for the last time: "to love and let / go again and again" (15-16). These lines reinforce the impression that the first stanza's definition of "to love differently" is in fact an anti-freedom or state of emotional anarchy, now using words like "pester" to describe any separation; the poet is compelled "to remember / the lover who is not in the bed" (16), hinting at obsessive tendencies as being possible components of the relationship. We also learn that she believes love requires work, which she cannot do without her partner's assistance, and that this lack of cooperation frustrates her. She believes this neglected effort is the other party's fault by his failure to do his fair share, thereby leaving her own efforts ineffective, the whole of it characterized as an effort "that gutters like a candle in a cave / without air" (19-20). Her demands of this work are quite broad, encompassing being "conscious, conscientious and concrete" in her efforts and optimistically calling this work "constructive" (20-21) before ending the stanza.
Romantic relationships,contains emotions that both partner share for each other,when conflict begins to arise animosity causes the separation within the relationship from those two people.This may or may not leave mutual feeling for each other.However,within the poem “IF You Forget Me”by Pablo Neruda emanates the message,regardless of what may had happened between you and someone else in a intimate relationship the bond between them will either last forever or disappear between each other.But, no matter what the feeling of “If You Forget Me” is mutual by the author uses of metaphor,express to attempt to tell his lover that he will forget her if she forgets him,in the same instant that it might happen.As Equally important
The first way I noticed that Pablo Neruda uses form to establish a grief-filled tone in his poem is by repetition, specifically, of the word “night”. The word is present through his entire work. Nights are linked to darkness, and darkness is neurologically linked to depression. In 2007, some neuroscientists at the University of Pennsylvania conducted a study with rats which concluded that light deprivation produces depression in rats. So it is scientifically correct to say that this repeated darkness adds to the grief-filled tone. His first word in both the title and line 1 of the poem is “Tonight” (1) which derives from the word night. After this,
At the mere age of seventeen, Pablo Neruda wrote ’Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair’ and it has since become one of his most famous collection of poems. Once, in an interview, Neruda stated that he could not understand “why this book, a book of love-sadness, of love-pain, continues to be read by so many people, by so many young people” (Guibert, 2015). He also mentioned that “Perhaps this book represents the youthful posing of many enigmas; perhaps it represents the answers to those enigmas.” (Guibert, 2015). Neruda was one of the first poets to explore sexual imagery and eroticism in his work and become accepted for it. Many Latin-American poets had attempted the same, but failed to become popular with their critics. He merges his own experiences and memories with that of the picturesque Chilean scenery to present a beautifully poetic sense of love and sexual desire. The collection hosts quite a controversial opinion, however, amongst critics and readers alike, with the risqué themes running throughout the poems. Eroticism being one of the most evident and reoccurring themes.