Pablo Neruda was a Nobel Prize–winning Chilean poet who was once called "the greatest poet of the

20th century in any language."

Synopsis

Born in Parral, Chile, on July 12, 1904, poet Pablo Neruda stirred controversy with his affiliation with the
Communist Party and his outspoken support of Joseph Stalin, Fulgencio Batista and Fidel Castro. His poetic
mastery was never in doubt, and for it he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1971. Neruda died on
September 23, 1973, with subsequent investigations exploring whether he might have been poisoned.

Early Life

Pablo Neruda was born Ricardo Eliecer Neftalí Reyes Basoalto in the Chilean town of Parral in 1904. His father
worked for the railroad, and his mother was a teacher who died shortly after his birth. At age 13, he began his
literary career as a contributor to the daily La Mañana, where he published his first articles and poems. In 1920,
he contributed to the literary journal Selva Austral under the pen name Pablo Neruda, which he assumed in
honor of Czech poet Jan Neruda.

Growing Popularity

Some of Neruda's early poems are found in his first book, Crepusculario (Book of Twilight), published in 1923,
and one of his most renowned works, Veinte poemas de amor y una canción desesperada (Twenty Love Poems
and a Song of Despair), was published the following year. Twenty Love Poems made Neruda a celebrity, and he
thereafter devoted himself to verse.

Diplomatic Career

In 1927, Neruda began his long diplomatic career (in the Latin American tradition of honoring poets
with diplomatic posts), and he moved frequently around the world. In 1936, the Spanish Civil War
began and Neruda chronicled the atrocities, including the execution of his friend Federico García
Lorca, in his España en el corazón (Spain in Our Hearts).
Over the next 10 years, Neruda would leave and return to Chile several times. Along the way, he was
named Chile's consul to Mexico and won election to the Chilean Senate. He would also begin to
attract controversy, first with his praise of Joseph Stalin (in poems such as "Canto a Stalingrado" and
"Nuevo canto de amor a Stalingrado") and later for his poetry honoring Fulgencio Batista ("Saludo a
Batista") and Fidel Castro.

Always left-leaning, Neruda joined the Communist Party of Chile in 1945, but by 1948 the Communist
Party was under siege, and Neruda fled the country with his family. In 1952, the Chilean government
withdrew its order to seize leftist writers and political figures, and Neruda returned to Chile once
again.

Accomplishments

For the next 21 years, Pablo Neruda continued to write prodigiously, rising in the ranks of 20th
century poets. (The collection of his complete works, which is continually being republished, filled 459
pages in 1951; by 1968 it amounted to 3,237 pages, in two volumes.) He also received numerous
prestigious awards, including the International Peace Prize in 1950, the Lenin Peace Prize and the
Stalin Peace Prize in 1953, and the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1971.

Death and Investigations

Neruda died just two years after receiving his Nobel Prize on September 23, 1973, in Santiago, Chile.
Though his death was officially attributed to prostate cancer, there have been allegations that the
poet was poisoned, as he died right after the rise of dictator Augosto Pinochet to power. (Neruda was
a supporter of Pinochet's deposed predecessor, Salvador Allende.)

In 2011, Neruda's chauffeur alleged that the writer said he'd been given an injection at a clinic by a
physician that worsened his health. Chilean judge Mario Carroza later authorized an official
investigation into cause of death. Neruda's body was exhumed in 2013 and examined, but a forensics
team found no initial evidence of foul play.

However, in January 2015, the Chilean government reopened the investigation with new forensic
testing. Although Judge Carroza ordered Neruda's body to be returned to his gravesite, the discovery
of unusual bacteria in the writer's bones indicated that the matter had yet to be fully resolved.

In 2016, the life of the renowned poet inspired the acclaimed Chilean film Neruda, which is directed
by Pablo Larraín and follows a police inspector (played by Gael García Bernal) on the hunt for
Neruda as he hides to escape arrest for his Communist views.

XX. Tonight I Can Write

Tonight I can write the saddest lines.
Write, for example, “The night is starry
and the blue stars shiver in the distance.”
The night wind revolves in the sky and sings.
Tonight I can write the saddest lines.
I loved her, and sometimes she loved me too.
Through nights like this one I held her in my arms.
I kissed her again and again under the endless sky.
She loved me sometimes, and I loved her too.
How could one not have loved her great still eyes.
Tonight I can write the saddest lines.
To think that I do not have her. To feel that I have lost her.
To hear the immense night, still more immense without her.
And the verse falls to the soul like dew to the pasture.
What does it matter that my love could not keep her.
The night is starry and she is not with me.
This is all. In the distance someone is singing. In the distance.
My soul is not satisfied that it has lost her.
My sight tries to find her as though to bring her closer.
My heart looks for her, and she is not with me.
The same night whitening the same trees.
We, of that time, are no longer the same.
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.
Love is so short, forgetting is so long.
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.

1. This line instantly establishes the mood of the poem. The narrator is suffering from something that has
occurred recently. It establishes an incredible sense of loss early in the poem.
2. There is something incredibly lonely about the night sky. The image itself is beautiful, but it is also distant,
very distant. It is a beauty that is forever out of reach.
3. The night wind is rending the skies, spinning somber serenades. The night is a metonymy of the birds and
the rustling of trees and all the creatures of the night that flood it with noise.
4. Love is capricious for Neruda. It fleets away and returns darting around like the lines of a sad poem, and
then ending and breaking your heart.
5. Neruda resorts to holding his beloved when he’s doleful. At this point, and alluded to later as a quasi-hook,
it seems as though the repetition of this line means that he can no longer help himself. As such, it’s soothing
capacity wanes and Neruda yearns for a more he can’t find.
The narrator cannot help but associate everything to his lost love. Even the night sky itself is a reminder of her.
6. He truly loves her occasionally, and he doesn’t know he didn’t love her all the time.
7. There is a great sense of destitution.
8. to hear the immense nigh, still more immense without her,
I. An unforgetable love.
As. his translation is not exact. A closer one would be “Like she was of my kisses”, like she belonged to his
affections (kisses) in the past; instead, the current translation implies that she belonged to someone else
before being kissed by him.
But. It’s a interesting concept to think of romantic love as a continuum instead of a binary state (love/not-
love). When he parts way with her and remembers her he is not sure whether he still “loves” her or not
anymore.
Love. One of Neruda’s more famous lines, both beautiful and sad. Love always seems to go by too fast. The
process of forgetting or getting over something or someone takes a great deal of time.
Bcoz. nights like these ones his having is when he was with her but since hes not with her he remembers and
his soul crumbles
no more will he allow her to make him suffer because he wont write back to her

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 night wind revolves
and sings and the stars shiver, so that on this night he can write the saddest poem.

“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 Poemsdraws 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.”

Author Biography

Pablo Neruda was born Ricardo Eliezer Neftali Reyes y Basoalto on July 12, 1904, in the agricultural

Region of Parral, Chile. His father Jose del Carmen Reyes Morales, a railroad worker, soon relocated
his family to Temuco, a frontier settlement in southern Chile. As a teenager he received
encouragement from one of his teachers, the poet Gabriela Mistral, who would later win a Nobel
Prize. Manuel Duran and Margery Safir in Earth Tones: The Poetry of Pablo Neruda note, “It is almost
inconceivable that two such gifted poets should find each other in such an unlikely spot. Mistral
recognized the young Neftali’s talent and encouraged it by giving the boy books and the support he
lacked at home.” This support helped him find the confidence to write poetry and at fourteen to
change his name legally to Pablo Neruda. During high school he published poems in local papers and
won literary competitions. In the early 1920s he attended Instituto Pedagogico in Santiago, Chile, and
in 1926, the University of Chile. His first collection of poetry, La cancion de la fiesta, was published in
Chile in 1921. He followed that volume with two more: Crepusculario in 1923 and Veinte poemas de
amor y una cancion desesperada in 1924. The latter collection, which includes his poem “Tonight I
Can Write,” became a popular success in Latin America and was translated in 1969 as Twenty Love
Poems and a Song of Despair.