Nocturne III by Jose Asuncion Silva

According to jacket2.org, which provided commentary about the poem Nocturne III by Jose
Asuncion Silva, I found out that the poem’s original name was “Noche” which in English means
‘night’. This poem was written after the death of his sister Elvira, which means this poem is
about the relationship between the author and his sister. The tone and the mood here is
missing and sadness.

Some of the poetic elements the author uses contributes to the theme/meaning or tone and
mood of the poem. First of all, this poem is a combination of lyric and free verse poetry,
because this poem expresses personal feeling and it does not follow a fixed rhythm or rules.
Additionally, the author uses repetition of the word ​shadow,​ and it occurs 12 times throughout
the whole poem. Repeating the word ​shadow​ represents his sister who has passed away
because shadows can have a negative connotation. I also noticed that this poem was separated
to two stanzas. the first stanza has 22 lines, the second stanza has 32 lines. In the first stanza,
the author mostly talk about himself together with someone else, his sister because he uses
words/phrases such as “by my side”, “and your shadow”, “and they became one”; however, in
the second stanza, the author uses words that have negative connotations such as ​alone,
bitternesses, death, blackness, tomb, distance, separated, pale, coldness, ice of death,sorrows
tears​. Using these words creates the mood of sadness and -longing for the readers, which is
what the author is feeling because the loss of his sister.
Reference:

Yépez, H. (2014, March 27). Toward a poetry and poetics of the Americas (4): Jose Asunción

Silva (1865–1896), 'Nocturne III' (J. Rothenberg, Trans.). Retrieved May 16, 2019, from

https://jacket2.org/commentary/toward-poetry-poetics-americas-4-jose-asunción-silva-

1865–1896-nocturne-iii