Tonight I can Write Questions and Answers
1. As A Confessional Poem[Tonight I can Write Questions and Answers]
[Q. Examine the uniqueness of “Tonight I can write the Saddest Lines” as a confessional love poem.]
Pablo Neruda is the great poet of Chile. He was a communist and a revolutionary poet. He was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1971. ‘Tonight I can Write the Saddest Lines is one of the best love poems of Neruda. It is a monologue written in a confessional mood, lamenting the loss of love of a jilted lover. The lover thinks of the natural world, the night, the stars, the wind, the sky and everything that reminds him of his lost love. The night and the darkness match his sad mood. The lover confesses that tonight he is writing the saddest lines and thereby he is ritually killing his lady love with his pen which becomes his mighty sword!
The poet juxtaposes ‘tonight and the nights of the past when his lady love was with him. Tonight, he is terribly alone. Now the night stands for his shattered love and the twinkling stars became blue and shiver in the distance. The narrator of the poem is a jilted lover whose girlfriend has become another man’s wife/friend. This makes him very sad and is lamenting on the loss of his love. He admits that their love for each other became a failure on account of their mistakes.
The fickleness of love is the major cause of his loss of love. But he cannot run away from the past which haunts him day and night like a nightmare. He says, ‘She loved me, sometimes and I loved her too’. I loved her, and sometimes she loved me too’. This frank opinion of the narrator is the beauty of the love poem.
All human beings and their words and deeds are imperfect which leads to failures and the poet admits this truth. When she was with him, they enjoyed every night and all nature supported their love. The night, the sky, the stars and the cool breeze welcomed the young couple. They thought their meetings would last forever but the inevitable came and they were separated. Still the narrator loves her and thankfully remembers the sweet joy that she has given him.
He says, ‘Love is short, forgetting is so long’. Their love for each other was so sweet that the time flew away at a lightning speed. But the past love haunts him day and night like a nightmare. The narrator, like all human beings thought that she would be forever his lover and only his. It is a foolish idea. Nothing belongs to us. She has gone to another man. Now the narrator wants to escape from his past which is still haunting him day and night. Therefore, he starts writing a poem which begins ‘The night is shattered and the blue stars shiver in the distance’.
In the poem he expresses his love, anguish, helplessness and the terrible loneliness. Thus, he explains his love which is now dead and gone forever. His past love is shattered and shivered in the distance. Night and stars are metaphors of his past love. The lines of his poem fall on his heart like dews on the meadows. He is certain that this poem is like a ritual killing of his love for her. Thus, he can set himself free from the thought of her.
Tonight I can Write the Saddest Lines’ reaches universal level, Pablo Neruda gives us our love poem which we hug to our heart with great satisfaction and whisper every line of it in our solitude. This is a genuine love poem meant for every human being who is born to love and be loved!
2. The Role of the Universe [Q. Which lines from the poem do signify the role of the universe in the poem?]
‘The night is starry and the stars are blue and shiver in the distance. The night wind revolves in the sky and sings.] Map Tonight I can write the saddest lines.
These lines emphasize the role of the immense universe, “more immense without her,” in the feeling of loss and emptiness the poet feels: “my soul is not satisfied that it has lost her.”
The poem can be considered as the finality of lost love- justify.
The theme of Pablo Neruda’s poem “Tonight I Can Write the Saddest Lines”is the finality of lost love. The narrator is finally able to express his feelings. The line “Tonight I can write the saddest lines” is repeated three times while the author describes the type of night that allowed him to write down his thoughts about his former lover. He describes how sometimes she loved him and other times he loved her, but that his love was not enough for her to stay with him. On such nights he would hold her but now there is someone else.
As with other Neruda poems, he varies between present and past tense in the lines of the poem seemingly moving in and out of reality adding to the feeling of despair.
“Love is so short, forgetting is so long.” This line emphasizes the desolation that the narrator feels. He closes the poem with the words, “Though this be the last pain that she makes me suffer and these are the last verses that I write for her.” There is nothing more for him to do but to forget their love.
MARKS 2
1. Discuss the setting of the poem.
The poem takes place under the great, endless sky dotted with numerous stars. The speaker who recently lost the love of his life is bitterly regretting the separation and the night sky he now sat under only reminded him of the moments he spent with her.
2. How does Neruda use metaphor in the poem?
The poet has used some metaphors in the poem. For example, ‘The night is shattered’ and ‘The blue stars shiver in the distance’. These are the metaphors of the present state of the speaker about his love life. His passion is now broken like that night, and where there was warmth once, now there is coldness, coldness between the lovers, cold to the extent making him shiver.
3. What is the Historical Context behind?
Chile has an interesting political background owing to its Spanish Heritage and the way the country has been governed up until the late 19th century the country was primarily run by a group of wealthy landowners, but this prompted much unrest and eventually civil war. Eventually, a conservative regime was established but later this was superseded by a liberal movement that would have been prominent when this poem was written.
4. How is sadness signified in the poem?
The poet refers to the ‘sadness’ of failing to understand oneself in the monotonous existence of everyday life. He also finds it sad that humanity is moving towards its own ruins, owing to its unprecedented actions.
5. What is the Irony of the poem?
The speaker at first claims that he loved her, and sometimes she loved him back. It creates a belief that the love now lost was first lost from the girl’s hand. But then, the speaker says she loved him and sometimes he loved her back. So we’re now unsure who was primarily responsible for the lost love.
6. Discuss the Imagery in the poem.
Throughout the poem, the night is revealed to us in several respects. In the second paragraph, ‘the night is shattered’ and’ blue stars shiver’ make us see the night as the speaker sees it; cold and shattered. Imageries such as endless clouds,” dew to the pasture’ and ‘night whitening the trees’ continue in the following paragraphs. The imagery lets us painfully sense the speaker’s grief.
7. What kind of poem is this?
“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.”
8. How is sadness signified in the poem?
The poet refers to the ‘sadness’ of failing to understand oneself in the monotonous existence of everyday life. He also finds it sad that humanity is moving towards its own ruins, owing to its unprecedented actions.
9. In your opinion, why did the poet write this poem?
The poet has written the poem to express his longing for his lost love who expresses his desire for his lady love,, his emptiness at her loss, his unexplained grief for her amidst a double mind and all the complexities of his deeply cherished thoughts. Neruda’s longing for his lost love, and the pain he feels in her absence.
10. How does Love and Passion encompass the poem?
Throughout the poem, the speaker expresses his great love for a woman with whom he had a passionate romance. He remembers physical details: “her great still eyes,” “her voice, her bright body,” “her infinite eyes.” He also remembers kissing her “again and again under the endless sky” admitting “how I loved her.” His love for her is still evident even though he states twice “I no longer.
11. Why is the title repeated?
There are many lines repeated in this poem. The title of the poem itself is repeated three times throughout the entire poem. Then the lines like’ I loved her and ‘loved me sometimes’ are also seen to be repeated. These repetitions emphasize the feelings of the speaker and portray the state of their love while it lasted. It emphasizes the melancholy and the sadness that the speaker feels.
12. How does Memory and Reminiscence occupy the poem ‘Tonight I Can Write?
“Tonight I Can Write” is a poem about memories of a lost love and the pain they can cause. Throughout the poem the speaker recalls the details of a relationship that is now broken. He continually juxtaposes images of the passion he felt for the woman he loved with the loneliness he experiences in the present. He is now at some distance from the relationship and so acknowledges, “tonight I can write the saddest lines,” suggesting that the pain he suffered after losing his lover had previously prevented any reminiscences or descriptions of it. While the pain he experienced had blocked his creative energies in the past, he is now able to write about their relationship and find some comfort in “the verse [that] falls to the soul like dew to the pasture.”
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