Pablo Neruda's Sonnet 75: An Analysis Of Indonesia

Love is everlasting. This saying is echoed in both “Sonnet 75” by Edmund Spenser and “Sonnet 89” by Pablo Neruda which are almost identical in the idea they want to introduce. With their utilization of imagery, tone, figurative language, symbolism, and worldview both speakers convey that strong love can still exist past death.

Through their diction both speakers display a depressing tone with an underlying optimistic tone despite that they are talking about death. Neruda illustrates a depressing tone through his words such as “die” and “asleep” all of which connote to death (Neruda 1,5). Likewise, Spenser utilizes diction filled with connotations of death such as “his prey,” “mortal thing,” and “decay,” (Spenser 4,6,7). Their use of these

Neruda uses “freshness” and “light,” all of which create an image of green life to get across to the readers that even though the speaker comes face to face with the darkest part of life, death, he religiously believes that his love for his lover is immortal.(Neruda 3,2). Additionally, Neruda states, “I want what I love to continue to live, ” demonstrating the optimism he still holds for this love he has (Neruda 9). He wants his love to “continue to flourish, full-flowered” despite that death has come to take him away (Neruda 11) By the same token, Spenser illustrates this same tone of optimism when faced with death. The speaker of “Sonnet 75” also uses words such as “immortalize,” “eternize,” and “live,” which all draw an image of life as well (Spenser 6,11,14). He believes his love “shall live, and later life renew,” (Spenser 14). Though Spenser’s tone is identical to Neruda’s, in the first quatrain there is some form of ignorance and fear in the way Spenser’s speaker faces death. In the first quatrain when the waves come and wash his lover’s name away, “Again [he] wrote it with a second hand,” (Spenser 3). His actions of rewriting conveys the unworldly point of view that often

“Sonnet 89” offers a mature and raw point of view that is not found in “Sonnet 75,” and this helps get across the worldview of immortal love. Furthermore, though the symbols in “Sonnet 75” were well appreciated because they made the poem more complex and interesting, Neruda used every quatrain and tercet to bring to life this endless love he feels for his lover. He adds a form to realism in the way he writes his sonnet, and this in turn, makes the poem much more relatable than “Sonnet