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.
Further Reading & Resources
Related Poems
Twenty Songs of Love and a Song of Despair by Pablo Neruda (1924)
This link provides readers with the entirety of Pablo Neruda’s third book, Twenty Songs of Love and a Song of Despair (1924). Readers can see the 19 poems that detail the speaker’s romantic feelings leading up to their breakup with the subject of “Tonight I Can Write the Saddest Lines.” “Every Day You Play” is another famous poem from this collection. The last poem is the “Song of Despair.”
“One Hundred Love Sonnets: XVII (I don’t love you as if you were a rose)” by Pablo Neruda (1959)
This poem comes from Neruda’s later collection of love poems, One Hundred Love Sonnets. Readers will note clear similarities in style and theme between this poem and “Tonight I Can Write the Saddest Lines.” Both describe the mysterious aspects of love, make comparisons between women and nature, and use hyperbolic language. By contrast, this poem expresses an ongoing connection, rather than a disconnection from the beloved.
“I’m Explaining a Few Things” by Pablo Neruda (1970)
This is an example of Neruda’s political poetry or poetry of witness he wrote in response to his experience of the Spanish Civil War. Though he uses many poetic devices, he also refuses to use them to hide or disguise the brutality. He has no metaphor for “the blood of children” and indicates as much. This poem is very different in theme and style from “Tonight I Can Write the Saddest Lines” but demonstrates Neruda’s characteristic intensity of emotion. Reading this will give readers an understanding of the breadth of Neruda’s work.
Further Literary Resources
“20 Love Poems and a Song of Despair by Pablo Neruda” by Assoc. Dean Darrell Lockhart (2021)
In this video, University of Nevada, Reno, Associate Dean Lockhart gives a brief introduction to Neruda and his importance. He explains that Twenty Songs of Love marked a change from Neruda’s earlier style and the popular style of Modernist, Symbolist poetry into a freer, more direct, personal, and sexually explicit form of poetry. Lockhart reads two of Neruda’s most famous poems, including “Tonight I Can Write the Saddest Lines,” in Spanish.
“He’s known as Chile’s greatest poet, but feminists say Pablo Neruda is canceled” by John Otis (2022)
In this article, John Otis reviews Neruda’s importance and popularity, especially in Chile. He is a figure who brought prominence to the region and remains popular as a topic of study, especially in university. However, in recent years there has been a feminist backlash against Neruda as a rapist, womanizer, and a writer whose poetry frequently treated women as silent objects. The article relates how Neruda, in his 1971 biography, retells the story of a sexual assault on a cleaning woman, and how he admits that she had every right to “despise him.” One can argue that the Twenty Songs of Love exemplify some of his objectifications of women and preview attitudes that he would hold and display in most of his writing throughout his life.
Pablo Neruda Documentary (2022)
This 45-minute documentary gives viewers an overview of Neruda’s life and importance to Latin America. Viewers can gain insight into the way Neruda’s life influenced his poetry, including his political and love poems. They can see images from his native country and the landscape that often influenced his writing.
Related Titles
By Pablo Neruda
