Twenty Love By Pablo Neruda Summary

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IThis poem was completed by none other than Pablo Neruda (July 12, 1904 – September 23, 1973). Neruda became known as a poet when he was 10 years old. He wrote in a variety of styles, including weird poems, successive epics, openly political policy declaration, a prose autobiography, and passionate love poems such as the ones in his collection Twenty Love Poems & a Song of Despair (1924). The poem begins with the single line ‘Tonight I can write the saddest lines’. Creating a repetition and is its recurring theme. In lines 1-4, the poet uses imagery as he illustrates the night being both beautiful and treacherous, and this may be reflective of the persona’s relationship. The alliteration of ‘s’ throughout the lines are reflective of the quiet night. The poet continues to use images that can help …show more content…

In this stanza, he searches for her with his ‘sight’ and ‘heart’ but to no avail. As the beauty of night wanes, ‘whitening’ the trees, the persona’s reality similarly becomes bleak as he realizes that the ‘time’ that has proceed can never be returned and that they are no longer the ‘same’, or no longer one. The persona is ‘certain’ that he ‘no longer’ loves her, but express grief over how he used to love her. His ‘voice’, looked for her. There is a change from present tense in ‘sight searches’ and ‘heart looks’ to past tense in ‘voice tried’, suggestive of that he has accepted that his lover has moved on. His loss is highlighted by the single worded phrase ‘Another’. He recounts all the things that he has lost. The line ‘Her voice. Her bright body. Her infinite eyes.’ contains 3 separate things and further stresses the height of this loss. The persona repeats that he is ‘certain’ that he ‘no longer’ loves her. However he contradicts himself by saying that ‘maybe’ he still does. This shows uncertainty in his emotions. Though this is the last pain that she makes me suffer And these the last verses that I write for