The Immortal Beloved in Pablo Neruda’s Soneto LXXXIX from “Cien Sonetos de Amor”

By Jonathan Ayson

Soneto de la Noche
Cuando yo muera quiero tus manos en mis ojos:
When I die, I want your hands upon my eyes:
quiero la luz y el trigo de tus manos amadas
I want the light and the wheat of your beloved hands
pasar una vez más sobre mí su frescura:
to pass their freshness over me one more time
sentir la suavidad que cambió mi destino.
I want to feel the gentleness that changed my destiny.
Quiero que vivas mientras yo, dormido, te espero,
I want you to live while I wait for you, asleep,
quiero que tus oídos sigan oyendo el viento,
I want your ears to still hear the wind,
que huelas el aroma del mar que amamos juntos
I want you to smell the scent of the sea we both loved,
y que sigas pisando la arena que pisamos.
and to continue walking on the sand we walked on.
Quiero que lo que amo siga vivo
I want all that I love to keep on living,
y a ti te amé y canté sobre todas las cosas,
and you whom I loved and sang above all things
por eso sigue tú floreciendo, florida,
To keep flowering into full bloom.
para que alcances todo lo que mi amor te ordena,
so that you can touch all that my love provides you,
para que se pasee mi sombra por tu pelo,
so that my shadow may pass over your hair,
para que así conozcan la razón de mi canto.
so that all may know the reason for my song.

- Pablo Neruda, trans. Nicholas Lauridsen

New Criticism.

This approach to literary criticism gained footing in some American universities in the

early part of the 20th century and puts an emphasis on a close reading of the text itself. New

Criticism sees the piece of literature as something independent of its author, the time it was written,

or the historical context. It also believes in the organic unity of literature. It does not purposely

seek a text’s meaning but rather how it speaks in itself. Since it persuades readers to do a close

reading of a text, some sort of democratization of literary study prospers wherein nearly everyone

is placed on equal footing and forms an “interpretive community”.

New Criticism explores how parts of the text relate to each other and to resolve the paradox,

irony, and ambiguity as a means to find order and harmony in it. Proponents of this theory strongly

believed that their readings of poetry would result to a “humanizing” influence on readers. These

readers would in turn have an appreciation of the words (the text) before them and just rely on

their own interpretation of it.

For everything there is a season…

First, let’s establish the persona of the speaker and the addressee. The text shows their

relationship to each other in the following line:

and you whom I loved and sang above all things

We can also establish that they share physical intimacy:

I want your hands upon my eyes

Are they lovers? Is the addressee a family member? Let’s find out more by looking further

into the symbols in the text. As we can see, the text uses a lot of imagery referring to nature as

well as the natural surroundings.

When I die, I want your hands upon my eyes:

I want the light and the wheat of your beloved hands
to pass their freshness over me one more time
I want to feel the gentleness that changed my destiny.
I want you to live while I wait for you, asleep,
I want your ears to still hear the wind,
I want you to smell the scent of the sea we both loved,
and to continue walking on the sand we walked on.

I want all that I love to keep on living,

and you whom I loved and sang above all things
To keep flowering into full bloom.
so that you can touch all that my love provides you,
so that my shadow may pass over your hair,
so that all may know the reason for my song.
 These different imageries show us the different seasons (spring, summer, autumn, winter).

Now each of these seasons symbolizes different things and have competing meanings. Themes of

rebirth and renewal are often associated with spring. It can also refer to love, hope, youth, and

growth. The following lines shows images of spring:

I want the light and the wheat of your beloved hands

to pass their freshness over me one more time
I want to feel the gentleness that changed my destiny.

Summer may refer to the prime of one’s life, a vacation, friendship, joy, fullness,

exploration, and warmth. We can see these images in the following lines:

I want your ears to still hear the wind,

I want you to smell the scent of the sea we both loved,
and to continue walking on the sand we walked on.

Ripeness, change, maturity, beauty, sadness, or preparing for an end or decline may

symbolize autumn as shown in the following line:

To keep flowering into full bloom.

And lastly, winter may refer to death, old age, pain, loneliness, despair or an end as evident

in the opening line of the text:

When I die, I want your hands upon my eyes

so that my shadow may pass over your hair

These symbols then lead us to our paradox:

A season is something that shows growth and fullness as well as decline and death.
 The next step is to look for the ambiguity. Why does the speaker talk about his death? Do

the lives of the speaker and addressee show growth and fullness? Do they also show decline and

death? They have to be one or the other because that’s the imagery we have in the text. This then

leads to an essential question or tension:

When I die, I want your hands upon my eyes:

I want the light and the wheat of your beloved hands
to pass their freshness over me one more time
I want to feel the gentleness that changed my destiny.
I want you to live while I wait for you, asleep,
I want your ears to still hear the wind,
I want you to smell the scent of the sea we both loved,
and to continue walking on the sand we walked on.

I want all that I love to keep on living,

and you whom I loved and sang above all things
To keep flowering into full bloom.
so that you can touch all that my love provides you,
so that my shadow may pass over your hair,
so that all may know the reason for my song.

In the underlined parts of the text above, we can see that the tension is that the speaker and

the addressee (man) are at the mercy of the seasons and nature itself. Nature seems to have a great

deal of control over them. In this sense, the essential tension is between nature and man.

Moving from tension, let’s consider the following lines of the text:

When I die, I want your hands upon my eyes:

I want you to live while I wait for you, asleep,

I want all that I love to keep on living,

and you whom I loved and sang above all things
To keep flowering into full bloom

The speaker has already accepted the inevitability of death and will wait for the addressee

to pass on as well yet he wants her to keep on living. This is then the central irony of the text.
 Now, this leads us to check for a specific pattern in the text:

When I die, I want your hands upon my eyes:

I want the light and the wheat of your beloved hands
to pass their freshness over me one more time
I want to feel the gentleness that changed my destiny.
I want you to live while I wait for you, asleep,
I want your ears to still hear the wind,
I want you to smell the scent of the sea we both loved,
and to continue walking on the sand we walked on.

I want all that I love to keep on living,

and you whom I loved and sang above all things
To keep flowering into full bloom.
so that you can touch all that my love provides you,
so that my shadow may pass over your hair,
so that all may know the reason for my song.

We can see a constant juxtaposition of man (the speaker and addressee) in nature as well

as references to things they have done in the past and things that will happen in the future. So, the

pattern in the text is that man is continually moving through nature. This pattern helps us in

unifying the text. Considering all the steps we have taken; we can then say that:

The speaker has an illusion that everything he loves can keep on living, when in reality, they

cannot. Nature has the power and that he must learn to accept that everything goes through

a process of growth and fullness as well as decline and death.

For everything there is a season, and a time for every purpose under heaven: a time to be born

and a time to die;

Ecclesiastes 3:1-2
The Immortal Beloved

After analyzing the text of Pablo Neruda’s poem, we saw that nature has control over man.

Everything follows the pattern of growth and decline, of birth and eventual death. On one hand,

nature provides and nourishes man with bountiful resources. Man has learned to cultivate the land

to make it fruitful. On the other hand, the falling of the leaves of the trees in Autumn signifies the

transition to Winter when trees seem to die and plants don’t grow and bear fruit. This never-ending

cycle of birth, death, and rebirth is something that modern man has learned to live with. But the

one thing that man hasn’t come to grips with is his own mortality.

Since time immemorial, man has been on the search for the proverbial “fountain of youth”

– the quest for immortality. Even with the advent of modern science and advancement of medicine,

man still hasn’t found a way to prevent his own death. This leaves us with another question: how

does one keep on living even long after his death? Let’s consider the following line from the text:

so that my shadow may pass over your hair,

The speaker is saying that he (shadow) will be remembered (pass over your hair) by the

people he loved. In a lot of cultures, those who passed on are immortalized in the memories of

people they have left behind. We can see this in Mexico, the Philippines, and other countries with

a strong Catholic tradition, where Día de los Muertos is a celebration and commemoration of the

lives of the departed.

I and my siblings grew up under the love and nurturing of my beloved grandmother who

joined our creator in December of 2018. She was a simple homemaker who made sure that we

were well scrubbed after an afternoon of playing in the dirt when we were children and also made
sure to save some food for anyone who was not be able to join the evening meal during our grown-

up years. Simple as it was, her life revolved around us. We are the fullness of her life.

so that all may know the reason for my song

We her grandchildren are the reason for her song. She lives in our hearts and minds. Her

memory lives on in the habits we learned from her, the trees that she planted in our garden, even

with the recipes we cook. And when we get to the autumn of our lives, these would have definitely

passed on to our children. We are her legacy and she is our immortal beloved.

Remember me
For I will soon be gone
Remember me
And let the love we have live on
And know that I'm with you the only way that I can be
So, until you're in my arms again
Remember me

Excerpt of “Remember Me” from the animated film “Coco”

Kristen Anderson-Lopez / Robert J. Lopez

In memoriam (+)
Minerva Fernandez Manga (2018)
References:

Gbenoba et al (2014). Literary Theory and Criticism. National Open University of Nigeria

Perez-Santalla (2017). Soneto dela Noche. The Metamorphosis of Life.

https://metamorphosisinwords.blog/2017/05/13/soneto-de-la-noche/

Richards-Gustafson (2020). Examples of Seasonal Symbolism. Pen&thePad.

https://penandthepad.com/examples-seasonal-symbolism-22272.html

Lopez and Lopez (2017). Remember Me. Sony/ATV Music Publishing LLC, Universal Music
Publishing Group