What is a theme of "Tonight I Can Write (The Saddest Lines)"?
One theme, the main theme, is the emptiness caused by lost love in an immense universe. The two ideas of love and universe are tied inseparably together in Neruda’s poem. The poetry "falls" into his soul because of "the immense night, more immense without her." The night wind revolves and sings and the stars shiver, so that on this night he can write the saddest poem. Tonight, he can write the saddest lines about stars and immensity because he feels he has lost her.
His soul, however, is not satisfied to think that "it has lost her." In the distant immensity of stars and night, his soul is not satisfied, and still his eyes and heart search for her. On other starry nights, he used to hold her, and maybe he still loves her, but now, under a night sky, with singing in the distance and starlight falling on the...
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same trees, his soul is not satisfied without her.
There are multiple English translations of "Tonight I Can Write (The Saddest Lines)," including one by American poet and Pulitzer Prize winner W. S. Merwin, who lived in Spain and was a prolific translator:
Tonight I can write the saddest lines.
Write, for example, 'The night is starry and the stars are blue and shiver in the distance.'
The night wind revolves in the sky and sings.
Tonight I can write the saddest lines. (Merwin)
These lines emphasize the role of the immense universe, "more immense without her," in the feeling of loss and emptiness the poet feels: "my soul is not satisfied that it has lost her."
References
The theme of Pablo Neruda’s poem “Tonight I Can Write the Saddest Lines” is the finality of lost love. The narrator is finally able to express his feelings. The line “Tonight I can write the saddest lines” is repeated three times while the author describes the type of night that allowed him to write down his thoughts about his former lover. He describes how sometimes she loved him and other times he loved her, but that his love was not enough for her to stay with him. On such nights he would hold her but now there is someone else.
As with other Neruda poems, he varies between present and past tense in the lines of the poem seemingly moving in and out of reality adding to the feeling of despair.
“Love is so short, forgetting is so long.” This line emphasizes the desolation that the narrator feels. He closes the poem with the words, “Though this be the last pain that she makes me suffer and these the last verses that I write for her.” There is nothing more for him to do but to forget their love.
What are the themes in "Tonight I Can Write"?
We could identify several themes in Pablo Neruda's "Tonight I Can Write," but the poem is primarily a meditation on the nature of love, loss, and memory, as well as about how life experiences inspire the speaker's poems.
We learn gradually in the poem that the reason the speaker "can write" on this night is that he has lost his beloved. This loss has inspired him to reflect on their love and on the nature of love itself. He says that "love is so short, forgetting is so long" (28). While the love itself, the feeling and the relationship both, have ended, he will still remember it for much longer. He even immortalizes it through writing this poem.
Love and memory constantly intermingle in the poem, to the extent that remembering this beloved makes the speaker question whether he really has ceased to love her. Take these lines for example:
I no longer love her, that's certain, but how I loved her.
My voice tried to find the wind to touch her hearing.
Another's. She will be another's. As she was before my kisses.
Her voice, her bright body. Her infinite eyes.
I no longer love her, that's certain, but maybe I love her. (23–27)
This section begins with the speaker confidently stating that he "no longer love[s] her, that's certain." However, once he thinks about her some more, and imagines her as with someone else, he is less sure. Even after he repeats that he is "certain" he doesn't love her any more, he immediately says, "maybe I love her." The memory of her brings back some of the feelings he experienced when they were together.
Beyond the meditation on love, loss, and memory, the poem is also about the writing process and how poets are inspired to create their works. The speaker claims that on this night, he is able to "write the saddest lines," because he is reflecting on this former lover and his loss of her. The process of writing connects to the theme of memory as well, and again, possibly rekindles some of the speaker's love.
This poem is above all a poem about the power of memory and bittersweet nature of reminiscence. In this poem the speaker talks about lost love and how painful memories can be. The speaker conveys his sadness and anguish by juxtaposing the memories of the passion he felt for this woman with the reality of his loneliness and loss in the present:
Through nights like this one I held her in my arms
I kissed her again and again under the endless sky.
The way in which the poem starts off by saying "Tonight I can write the saddest lines" seems to suggest that the poet has been so incapacitated by the pain this relationship has caused him that he is only now, after a period of some years, able to write this poem and reflect on this ended relationship. Although this pain is something that blocked his creative talent, he is now able to finally go down memory lane and write about this relationship so that he can find some element of closure and put this relationship behind him, as is suggested by the last two lines of the poem, that establish this will be the last verse the speaker will write for her. Memory and reminiscence are therefore key themes of this poem.