Sunday, March 16, 2008

Neruda's "Tonight I Can Write..."

Neruda's poem, "Tonight I Can Write...," is one of common theme for the author. Neruda was known as writer of love poems, apart from being a political activist. Nonetheless, I think the poem does much more than speak of a love that Neruda claims to be losing or have lost. In the poem he's quoted saying, "I loved her, and sometimes she loved me too," while also saying, "She loved me, and sometimes I loved her too." Lines such as these force me to think back to Neruda's number of marriages. Perhaps Neruda found love several times, but could never settle on one woman, and was always moving on to the next best thing. Even in the instance that Neruda did find the woman that he thought he loved, from the quotes mentioned above, that woman did not love him as he did her. While Neruda was an accomplished and eloquent writer of love poems, he was never able to turn his love life into anything more than a couple of unfinished stanzas.

1 comment:

Babu Syed said...

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