22 pages • 44 minutes read
Pablo NerudaTonight I Can Write the Saddest Lines
Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1924A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Literary Devices
Free-Verse Lyric
“Tonight I Can Write the Saddest Lines” is a free-verse poem, which means it does not have a predictable, traditional rhyme scheme or pattern. Free-verse poetry became increasingly popular in the 20th century as poets abandoned rigid rules of meter and rhyme and wrote poetry that mimicked the speech of everyday people. Though “Tonight I Can Write the Saddest Lines” does not employ a conventional poetry form, it relies heavily on repetition to mimic the structure of a song. The speaker repeats “I can write the saddest lines” and other words and phrases. This helps create a coherent sense of the poem, the way a song creates a coherent rhythm and structure by using repeated lines and refrains. Yet, unlike a song, the repeated lines do not follow a rigid pattern but mimic the way an obsessive person thinks the same thought over and over, with small variations that do not necessarily adhere to a set of rules.
Synecdoche
Synecdoche is a literary device wherein an author uses part of a thing to represent the whole. Pablo Neruda writes “My sight tries to find her as though to bring her closer. / My heart looks for her, and she is not with me” (Lines 18-19), and later “My voice tried to find the wind to touch her hearing” (Line 23). “Sight,” “heart,” and “voice” all represent different parts of the speaker and also the person as a whole.
By breaking themself into three components, the speaker suggests the feeling of being torn apart by a lost love. The speaker also emphasizes the sensuality of the way they try to connect with their beloved, using their eyes, voice, and the more emotionally symbolic heart. By showing how each different part of themself fails to reach her, they put the emphasis on the depths of futility they feel. All three parts of the speaker have tried and failed to make connection.
Volta
The word “volta” means turn. It is often employed at the end of a poem to create a sense of discovery or epiphany, where the speaker realizes something new or changes the direction of their poem. At the end of “Tonight I Can Write,” the speaker creates a sharp turn, when, after writing how “forgetting is so long,” they declare:
Because through nights like this one I held her in my arms
my soul is not satisfied that it has lost her.
Though this be the last pain that she makes me suffer
and these the last verses that I write for her (Lines 29-32).
Up until this moment, the speaker obsesses over their lost lover. They continue to say the same lines, or variations on this line, over and over. They speak of the night as “immense” and indicate that their sadness will last forever. Yet, they declare so quickly that they will stop writing about their old lover immediately, and that “these, [will be] the last verses that I write for her” (Line 32).
This turn could be read in two ways. One is that the speaker is impetuous, making a decision that they may not be able to follow through on. Given the intensity of their obsession over the loss of love, it is likely their feelings will return again, in spite of what they say. If the reader believes what the speaker says, it indicates how even these intense feelings can be cut short without expectation. In either reading, the final lines come as a surprise and mimic the unpredictability of human emotion.
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