Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair (1924) is one of the most influential and popular collections and won the Nobel Prize in 1971. The author, Neruda Pablo, is often perceived as the national poet of Chile. He shows his passion for poetry, combining traditional elements of love poetry and weaving them with his experiences in Chile.
There is a change of love during the whole collection. In the first poem, Body of a Woman, he starts the line “I love you” (3), continuing with “… you fill everything” (15). I suppose this romantic mood has gradually altered from poem, White Bee when it starts raining. As the poems progress, Neruda expresses his sorrowful feelings by saying he can write the saddest lines tonight. For instance, “She loved me, sometimes I loved her too” (77), Neruda uses the past tense to illustrate that the love is over. In comparison, he does not use present tense, like in his first poem. This change of tense is essential; later, he says, “I no longer love her” (79). His poetry depicts that love is complex, romantic, sad, and has a “cycle of falling in and out of love” (lecture); “love is so short, forgetting is so long” (lecture).
Nevertheless, this love poetry collection proved to me how in old Chilean culture, women acted with the utmost respect toward men and that men should act as dominating figures toward women. I found that this is reflected in Neruda’s work, as he acts more dominating toward the female he is depicting. For instance, Neruda describes a lady as a “toy doll” (9), “…. as a thing” (65) and shows his love by saying, “I love your joyful body” (75). In the poem, My Sky at Twilight, Neruda keeps writing, “you are mine, mine … ” and “you are taken in [my] net” (61). I cannot stop finding phrases of how he describes or perceives females as objects. I do not feel a strong attachment to his poems at all, and this is because it makes me stressed and uncomfortable to read because of his portrayal of women. However, the translated version of the poems may seem more critical of women; thus, reading the original texts in Spanish may solve the issues I have with the dominating description of women and their bodies.
In sum, the best way to conclude my blog is from the lecture, “he is definitely not a lover, but a writer”. Neruda Pablo’s work has a natural flow, description, and is easy to visualize as you read his poems. He could be an attractive male for many females at that time, but I will definitely not love this man since his love poetry is very old-fashioned, chaotic, and uncontrollable.
PS: I love gin and tonics<3
Questions: Did you enjoy reading this love poetry collection? Does his writing style attract you to him?
As every week you have proposed a series of very interesting ideas. You are right, there is something exaggerated and chaotic in this collection of poems. I think the lecture on Gabriela Mistral will interest you a lot, especially because of the contrast with Neruda. Maybe she is your type of poet.
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