Compare and Contrast Pablo Neruda’s “I Do Not Love You Except Because I Love You” and Edmund Spenser’s “My Love is Like To Ice”
Pablo Neruda’s “I Do Not Love You Except Because I Love You” and Edmund Spenser’s “My Love is Like To Ice” Share certain characteristics of these sonnets for, and certain techniques of expression, but overall are very different in treatment of love and in the mood that their sonnets creates.
The sonnets form transcends time - Spenser is writing in the 16th century, Neruda in the 20th century - and space - Spenser is writing in English, Neruda in Spanish and in different continents! European poets have for centuries been drawn to the sonnet form partly because of the difficulty of writing one is seen as the very height of poetic expression, because the form’s structure and rhyme scheme are so tightly controlled that to write a successful sonnets is a very great achievement and regarded as the peak of poetic expertise. Although the sonnet has been used over the centuries to address all types of subjects, poets have very often used sonnets for to explore love in all its varied aspects – Neruda and Spenser are no exception. However, their sonnets are different in structure: Spenser's sonnet is a Shakespearean sonnet which means that it consists of three quatrains followed by a final rhyming couplet; Neruda uses the form of the Petrarch sonnet – two quatrains followed by two tercets. A glance at Neruda’s Spanish original makes this much clearer. The different structures of the two types of sonnets are reflected in the overall impact of both “My Love is Like To Ice” and “I Do Not Love You Except Because I Love You”.
Superficially the two sonnets are very similar, because they both revolve around a curious paradox. Spenser presents his love for his lover as like a fire, full of heat, while his lover is consistently compared to ice; these two apparent opposites inform all the imagery that Spenser uses in the sonnet and he uses our assumptions about the natures of ice and fire in the development of the poem’s thought. Neruda does not use imagery in quite the same way because there is no recurring metaphor in his sonnet, but there are a series of paradoxical statements such as “I go from loving to not loving you” (Neruda 2), “I love you I hate you (Neruda 5 – 6), and in line four, reminiscent Spenser, Neruda writes “my heart moves from cold to fire”. The sonnets also differ in their mode of delivery: Spencer writes about his lover in the third person; by contrast Neruda addresses his sonnet to his lover in the second person – which, it could be argued, gives Neruda's poem a more intimate atmosphere. It might be said that Neruda’s poem is addressed to Love itself as an abstract human emotion - the capitalization of Love in the final line of the English translation suggests this; however, a quick glance at the original Spanish version shows that “amor” is not capitalized: it is intended as a term of endearment to his lover.
In terms of emotional complexity Spenser sonnet is very straightforward. His desire for his lover is intense – like a fire; it is a hot; it has a flame and he says it “all things melts” (Spenser 10); his lover, on the other hand, is like to ice (Spenser 1), but unlike real ice, which can be melted by fire, his lover’s emotional coldness seems to strengthen and increase despite his own “exceeding heat” (Spenser 5). Each of Spencer's quatrains ends with a question because he cannot understand why she does not respond to his love for her – or to use the metaphors from the poem, why ice in this instance cannot be melted by fire. This paradox leads Spencer to the conclusion he reaches in the final couplet:
But it can alter all the course of kind (Spenser, 13 - 14).
In other words, love is so powerful that it can change the essential nature (“kind”) of everything, so that ice, normally melted by heat, actually hardens. In this sense, Spenser's sonnet is a classic expression of bewildered, perplexed and unrequited love.
Neruda's sonnet, by contrast, is more emotionally complex and, although it is addressed to his lover, the subject is not her coldness in relation to his love and desire, but the way his own love and desire for her changes in its strength and nature. Thus in the second line Neruda writes “I go from loving to not loving you”; in line six he states “I hate you deeply”; in line 7 he talks of “my changing love for you”. It is as though his love and desire, although very deep and very intense, fluctuate so that he presents the state of being in love as a constant see-sawing of emotions. Perhaps, he suggests, he hates her because his love for her is so deep and so keenly felt: he would rather be calm, but to be calm would be to deny love.
Another way in which the two sonnets differ is in their use of the turn or a volta: many traditional sonnets have, in the ninth line, a change of thought or imagery or arguments. Spenser's sonnet has no return, but Neruda begins line 9 with “maybe” which leads him to take a slightly different perspective on his feelings. The overall form of the two sonnets determines, to a certain extent, their endings. The rhyming couplet of the Shakespearean sonnets encourages the writer to reach a neat conclusion and Spenser does this, as I have already quoted. On the other hand, the Petrarchan form does not encourage such a neat conclusion and Neruda does not really give the reader this, merely asserting that “I love you in a fire and blood” (Neruda 14).
Thus it can be seen that these two sonnets, while being superficially similar – they both concern love and its paradoxical nature – are actually very different in their overall impact and mood. Spenser ends his sonnet simply puzzled by why his love is not returned; Neruda, by contrast, despite all his mixed emotions expressed earlier in the sonnet, ends with a determined and defiance assertion of the power of love. Neruda mentions his death in line 13 and he seems to be suggesting that only in death will we escape the power of love.
