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Tonight I Can Write | Introduction

“Tonight I Can Write” was published in 1924 in a collection of poems by Pablo Neruda titled Veinte poemas de amor y una cancion desesperada. The collection was translated into English in 1969 by W. S. Merwin as Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair. Although some reviewers were shocked by the explicit sexuality in the poems, the collection became a best seller and was translated into several languages. Marjorie Agosin writes in her article on Neruda, “One of the reasons that Twenty Love Poems draws the reader so powerfully is the sobriety of expression and the economy of the images.” René de Costa in his article on Neruda notes that all the poems in this collection contain “a highly charged confessional intimacy that challenged and charmed the sensibility of its reader, creating in the process a contemporary stil nuovo which continues to resonate in the language of love.” The poems chart a love story from the initial infatuation to the release of passion, and finally to a separation. “Tonight I Can Write,” the penultimate poem in the poetic sequence, expresses the pain the speaker feels after losing his lover. The bittersweet sentiment recalls their passionate relationship and his recognition that “love is so short, forgetting is so long.”

Tonight I Can Write Summary

Lines 1–4: The theme of distance is introduced in the opening line. When the speaker informs the reader, “Tonight I can write the saddest lines,” he suggests that he could not previously. We later learn that his overwhelming sorrow over a lost lover has prevented him from writing about their relationship and its demise. The speaker’s constant juxtaposition of past and present illustrate his inability to come to terms with his present isolated state. Neruda’s language here, as in the rest of the poem, is simple and to the point, suggesting the sincerity of the speaker’s emotions. The sense of distance is again addressed in the second and third lines as he notes the stars shivering “in the distance.” These lines also contain images of nature, which will become a central link to his memories and to his present state. The speaker contemplates the natural world, focusing on those aspects of it that remind him of his lost love and the cosmic nature of their relationship. He begins writing at night, a time when darkness will match his mood. The night sky filled with stars offers him no comfort since they “are blue and shiver.” Their distance from him reinforces the fact that he is alone. However, he can appreciate the night wind that “sings” as his verses will, describing the woman he loved.

Lines 5–10: Neruda repeats the first line in the fifth and follows it with a declaration of the speaker’s love for an unnamed woman. The staggered repetitions Neruda employs throughout the poem provide thematic unity. The speaker introduces the first detail of their relationship and points to a possible reason for its demise when he admits “sometimes she loved me too.” He then reminisces about being with her in “nights like this one.” The juxtaposition of nights from the past with this night reveals... » Complete Tonight I Can Write Summary