Introduction
Pablo Neruda is a prominent person of the last century. He was not a poet, but a diplomat and the Senator of the Chili. Moreover, Pablo Neruda was the winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature. Neruda’s poems keep on magnifying people even nowadays. Although, his poems have been studied a lot, there is still a lot to research. This thesis is aimed at revealing the new side of Neruda’s work. In the thesis, I will consider the issue of filling loneliness in Neruda’s poem If you forget me. I have chosen this poem for my research, because there no single mind in interpreting it. Almost all the researchers claim that the poem is about Chili and Pablo Neruda. However, I suggest that the poem is about love of two young people. The thesis will be divided into two parts. The first part I will devote to the issue of the poem analysis. The second part of the poem will deal with the issue of filling emptiness in the poem. I claim that Pablo Neruda showed all the way of forgetting and, perhaps, forgiving the former beloved one.
Analysis
The poem consists of seven stanzas. The stanzas are different in length. The peculiarity is that every stanza has its own idea. The poem is not narrative. I would rather say that Pablo Neruda wrote it in the form of a letter. When reading the poem, the image of a girl whose boyfriend broke up with her. The girl is crying days and nights; she writes a letter to her ex beloved one. Such mood determine the audience: one person. The poem is too intimate to be cited to everyone. The tone of the poem is sad. The author did not intend to give even a slight feeling that the girl tried to let her beloved one go and forget him. Instead, the author shows all her sorrow and grief:
“everything carries me to you,
as if everything that exists,
aromas, light, metals,
were little boats
that sail
toward those isles of yours that wait for me.” (Neruda)
All the stanzas differ on tone and rhythm. It makes it rather difficult to read. On the contrary, this difference gives the feeling that it was a prosaic letter. The words are off rhymes. Every stanza in the poem is determined by its topic. The first stanza asks the receiver of the letter to read it and to listen to the girl. The second stanza shows all her grief and sorrow, how she suffers. The other stanzas show that the girl is ready to forget her beloved one and let him go. Sooner or later, she will become as she has been before they met.
In this poem, the author used different poetic devices to express all the moods. When speaking about the sound, it is worth to mention that repetition was used:
“if I look
at the crystal moon, at the red branch
of the slow autumn at my window,
if I touch
near the fire
the impalpable ash” (Neruda)
When speaking about the meaning of words, I would say that the author used allusion. The readers do not see either the girl or her beloved one. Instead there is the clear image of the boy:
“I want you to know
one thing.
You know how this is” (Neruda)
In these lines, we see that the girl used to be very close to the one she is talking to. There is no description of his look or character. The only thing that we know is that she still loves him, and he can understand how difficult for her it is to live.
Besides, the author used analogy, stating that
“everything carries me to you,as if everything that exists” (Neruda)
One of the main poetical tools used in the poem is the contrast. The girl contrasted the life before “forgetting” and after it. Moreover, the girl seems glad to expect that someday her beloved one will remember about their love. The entire poem is soaked with tenderness and love. The language of the poem is the language of feelings. The girl, as the author of the letter, used colloquial word, such as “well”, “beloved”, etc. Such poetic device was used to create the friendly atmosphere.
Filling Emptiness
The poem was published in the Captain’s Verses collection. Most of the researches state that the poem is not about love of two people, but about Neruda’s love to his country, Chili. When Neruda was exiled from his native country, he was missing it and wrote the poem. However, I suggest to forget about all the researches that have ever been conducted and look at the poem from different angle. The point is that most of the researchers and literature critiques take one side and forget about alternative interpretations of poems, novels, short stories, etc. In the thesis statement I suggested that the poem is about a person who tries to forget the beloved one; all the feeling that are expressed and all the thoughts that are thought.
When a couple breaks up, there is always someone, who suffers more. In the previous part of the research, I suggested that the poem is a letter after breaking up. The poem is addressed to a boy who broke up with the author. It is too intimate to be cited in public. The poem is sad; however, there is some rationalism in it. The letter is not simply a passionate expression of feelings. It is a little plan for the future. Perhaps, it helped the author of it forget what happened and how cruel the world was. On the other hand, the author of the letter, the girl, does not see her future in bright colors.
When a person is left, he or she feels loneliness and emptiness in one’s heart. In this poem, the author showed that the girl feels lonely:
“if I look
at the crystal moon, at the red branch
of the slow autumn at my window,
if I touch
near the fire
the impalpable ash
or the wrinkled body of the log” (Neruda)
The moon is always alone, just as the girl. The red branch of the slow autumn shows how slowly time passes by. The last two symbols, the wrinkled body of the log and the impalpable ash, remain her that she is forgotten. The point is that everyone admires trees and fire, but not her, not the ash and the log.
In the second stanza, the girl asks her beloved one to forget her. She can be strong and can deal with this. Moreover, she is sure to forget him:
“if little by little you stop loving me
I shall stop loving you little by little.
If suddenly
you forget me
do not look for me,
for I shall already have forgotten you.” (Neruda)
The last two stanzas are the girl’s thoughts about her former boyfriend’s feelings. She suggested that he did not forget or stop loving her. Instead, he still loves her but choose to leave the girl:
“to leave me at the shore
of the heart where I have roots” (Neruda)
However, she suggest that he is not the last man on the Earth and she can find the better life:
“remember
that on that day,
at that hour,
I shall lift my arms
and my roots will set off
In the end, she gives him the right to choose: to stay with her or seek for someone other. She is not mad or angry, as it may be sometimes. Instead, she has dealt with the fact that he will not come back. The only thing she has now is her love.
In this poem, the author showed all the way from desperation of having been left to happiness and wishing all the best in the future. As I have already mentioned, all the researchers state that the poem is about Chili and Pablo Neruda; about his grief about leaving his homeland. In this thesis, I presented a totally different point of view on the analysis and interpretation of the poem. The alternative way of analyzing and interpreting the poem has always been something to think about. In my opinion, in this research I have proved that there is no single way in interpreting the author’s words. There is only a feeling of how to interpret it correctly.
Resources:
De Costa, R. The poetry of Pablo Neruda. 1979. Harvard University Press
Neruda P. If you forget me. 2003. Web. 23 Feb 2014
