Neruda's poems were filled with words and connections to nature and stillness. Neruda's love is rooted in nature and earth, "his feet almost literally rooted in the ground" (Lecture, Twenty Love Poems and A Song of Despair). This concept of love is not romantic but reachable and inspires Neruda and gives him the drive to write. His love is not perfect, but do you think love is always perfect?
After reading several poems, I noticed how Neruda described his woman.
His woman is a "dark butterfly, sweet and definitive, like the wheat-field and the sun, the poppy and the water" (45), "Body of skin, of moss" (3), "I want to do with you / what spring does with the cherry trees." (33).
Neruda feels his woman in Twenty Love Poems through nature; he sees her through his senses and feels her strong connection and his own in "native soil" (viii). This new perspective was very eye-opening because I have never read any love poems like this. With his connection to nature and his love poems intertwined with politics and sadness, his love shows the messy and chaotic side that lust brings. Most love poems I have read take on a more surface-level perspective, forgetting about the things that can alter love. Neruda doesn't live in a perfect world, and his love isn't perfect. Likewise, nature isn't perfect and is sometimes uncontrollable and not always in our hands, just like his woman is not always close to him. The relation of nature to his women's body and her actions is apparent throughout Twenty Love Poems.
Although these poems are labelled "Twenty Love Poems," I think that Neruda's love is more of lust. In the first poem, the woman gives him her body, a material thing, not her soul. Neruda intensely focuses on her body, making the lust aspect more apparent. The women throughout the set of poetry is also passive and silent. The woman's voice is never heard, and her story remains unclear.
Because of her silence, she gives Neruda control over her.
However, in Neruda's poem "Tonight I Can Write" and his last poem, "A Song of Despair," he explores feelings of loss and sadness.
"To think that I do not have her. To feel that I have lost her" (47)
Although his woman was silent, not speaking up and not being in control, he still lost her. He misses her and wants to have her. However, I don't honestly believe he loved his woman. He just wants her presence to be his and something to control.
"You please me when you are silent," then, because "it is as though you were absent" (35).
He wants his women to be absent and passive and to lust for her whenever he can.
After thinking about politics and the time Neruda wrote his poems, he may have loved her in his own way. Perhaps it was the only way he knew how to love, given his age and the socio-historical context of the 1920s. Where most women were not seen as a person. Maybe that is why he related her to nature and could only see and love her that way because women were seen as passive?
Some questions I have for thought,
Given that women were subject to men during this time (socio-historical background) and that Neruda was only 19 years old, do you think he loved her? Was this the only way he could have loved and seen her given the time? (within nature and only seeing/describing her with non-human nature aspects)
Thank you Alyssa for these very complex questions. I don't know if I can answer them right now! There is an "earthly" characteristic in Neruda's poetry, which will continue to be present in other books, although the theme has changed (without abandoning love, he will later write about the history of Latin America, for example). That mental exercise that you propose, of placing these poems at the moment in which they were written, would lead us to interesting discussions. If you remember Dr. Beasley-Murray's lecture, there are those who try to resolve the Neruda controversy that way. In your opinion, what should we not lose sight of in this debate?
ReplyDeleteHey Alyssa! Your analysis into his poems were really insightful! Personally, I would not want to call Neruda's feelings in these poems love, or anything adjacent to love as we know it today. Maybe it was they best way he could've loved, but that reads almost closer to infatuation in my opinion. this is because I don't really know if you can love something and yet have their character feel so foreign in your writing. I do think that the culture at the time is very much a contributor to this gender attitude, although I am quite positive this wasn't the only way to love someone, but maybe the most convenient way, which is a debatable attitude to take up considering the topic is love.
ReplyDelete^sorry I wrote the above comment and forgot to insert my name
ReplyDeleteHi Alyssa,
ReplyDeleteGreat and insightful post! Having read your perspective, I must agree that Neruda's feelings towards his "lover" seem closer to feelings of lust and attachment than true love.