If you have ever felt sad and depressed for the lost of someone A Song of Despair
by Pablo Neruda is the right poem for you! A
Song of Despair was published in 1924 in a book called 20 Love Poems and A Song of Despair stirring up controversy for the
use of erotic expressions. In A Song of
Despair the narrator expressed his feelings for the woman he lost. He used mood
and metaphor to describe the love he felt for her and how intense and romantic their
relationship was comparing her with the sea in which "everything sank".
A Song of Despair penetrated into the
experience of heartbreak in a way of how his soul was dying and
his memories came back to him causing pain all over again.
The narrator
talked about how sad he felt for the lost of his woman using metaphor to
emphasize abandonment, "Cold flower heads are raining over my heart. Oh
pit of debris, fierce cave of the shipwrecked"(Neruda 55). He addressed
himself as the abandon one. The narrator felt lonely and sad because the woman
abandoned him, "the cold flower heads" gave the illusion of hollow
and emptiness like death the ultimate isolator.
Although the narrator felt sad and hollow, he remembered how happy he was when
they were together "It was the happy hour of assault and the kiss. The
hour of the spell that blazed like a lighthouse"(Neruda 55). The narrator
brought the time in which they were in love and assaulting each other with
kisses and spells giving us a glimpse of how their relationship was before she
left.
The
narrator used two different scenarios to show his mood and feelings for the
love one. As mention before the narrator started the poem feeling depressed and
hollow about the lost. His heart was a pit drowning in sorrow. Later in the
poem his mood changed bringing the brightness of the relationship when they
were a happy couple brazed in love.
A Song of Despair is a very sad poem
illustrating how hollow the narrator felt every time he remembered his love
woman. He felt lost and abandoned. The narrator compared her with the sea in
which everything sank leaving him alone and empty-handed.
In class we discussed a simple yet
effective technique to analyze and memorize poetry, writing it down on an index
card.I used this technique in
order to study a passage from the poem A Song of Despairs by Pablo Neruda.
The memories of you emerges from the night around me
The river mingles its stubborn lament with the sea
Deserted like the wharves at down
It is the hour of departure, oh deserted one!
Cold flowers are raining over my heart
Oh pit of debris, fierce cave of shipwrecked
In you the wars and flights accumulated
from you the wings of the song birds rose...(Neruda 55).
I memorized these first eight lines and
believe these lines represent Pablo Neruda’s lover. Neruda remembered his beloved
in the night and he associates the river mingling with the sea with his own
tormented cries for her absence.
The first four lines, I perceived the
sadness for the longing of his lost love.I can feel his pain as his love one has left him deserted. The remaining
four stanzas use metaphor to represent how torn into pieces he feel after she
has left him. He states that
his heart was "a pit of debris" which gave the idea of emptiness and
hollow.His words flow with how
incomplete he feels without her by his side.
I believe this poem is deep in emotions and metaphor
highlighting the tone and the diction of the poem with such intensity that makes
it the most beautiful despair poem ever written.Neruda was once interview and he responded that he did
not understand why this book of love and pain is continuing to be read by so
many people. "It is a mournful book, but its attractiveness has not worn
off..."(Guibert, "Pablo Neruda, The Art of Poetry No. 14").
"The Paris Review." Paris Review. 25 Nov. 2013 <http://www.theparisreview.org/interviews/4091/the-art-of-poetry-no-14-pablo-neruda>.
Pablo
Neruda was famous for writing about love. Twenty Love Poems and A Song Of Despair was a bestseller book,
which included nineteen-love poem and one with a sad and
heart-broken connotation. This is a reflection and brief analysis of the
poem, The Song of Despair. This
poem was a result of an unhappy relationship; it was filled with rhythm,
metaphors, imagery and mood.
The memory of you emerges from the night around me. The river mingles its stubborn lament with the sea.
Deserted like the wharves at dawn. It is the hour of departure, oh deserted one!
Cold flower heads are raining over my heart. Oh pit of debris, fierce cave of the shipwrecked.
In you the wars and the flights accumulated. From you the wings of the song birds rose.
You swallowed everything, like distance. Like the sea, like time. In you everything sank!
It was the happy hour of the assault and the kiss. The hour of the spell that blazed like a lighthouse.
Pilot's dread, fury of blind driver, turbulent drunkenness of love, in you everything sank!
In the childhood of mist my soul, winged and wounded. Lost discoverer, in you everything sank!
You girdled sorrow, you clung to desire, sadness stunned you, in you everything sank!
I made the wall of shadow draw back, beyond desire and act, I walked on.
Oh flesh, my own flesh, woman whom I loved and lost, I summon you in the moist hour, I raise my song to you.
Like a jar you housed the infinite tenderness, and the infinite oblivion shattered you like a jar.
There was the black solitude of the islands, and there, woman of love, your arms took me in.
There was thirst and hunger, and you were the fruit. There were grief and ruins, and you were the miracle.
Ah woman, I do not know how you could contain me in the earth of your soul, in the cross of your arms!
How terrible and brief was my desire of you! How difficult and drunken, how tensed and avid.
Cemetery of kisses, there is still fire in your tombs, still the fruited boughs burn, pecked at by birds.
Oh the bitten mouth, oh the kissed limbs, oh the hungering teeth, oh the entwined bodies.
Oh the mad coupling of hope and force in which we merged and despaired.
And the tenderness, light as water and as flour. And the word scarcely begun on the lips.
This was my destiny and in it was my voyage of my longing, and in it my longing fell, in you everything sank!
Oh pit of debris, everything fell into you, what sorrow did you not express, in what sorrow are you not drowned!
From billow to billow you still called and sang. Standing like a sailor in the prow of a vessel.
You still flowered in songs, you still broke the currents. Oh pit of debris, open and bitter well.
Pale blind diver, luckless slinger, lost discoverer, in you everything sank!
It is the hour of departure, the hard cold hour which the night fastens to all the timetables.
The rustling belt of the sea girdles the shore. Cold stars heave up, black birds migrate.
Deserted like the wharves at dawn. Only the tremulous shadow twists in my hands.
Oh farther than everything. Oh farther than everything. It is the hour of departure. Oh abandoned one!
- Pablo Neruda
The
poem The Song of Despair was addressed
to himself as the abandoned one. “The poem begins with a rhyming couplet, but this is a deceptive beginning as the poem is
anything but light in terms of construction as well as content" (Rance,
"Poetry Analysis a Song of Despair by Pablo Neruda"). The first two
lines in the poem ended with rhyme
"me" and "sea". The most interesting aspect to consider is
that in Spanish this poem rhymes perfectly
with each ending losing this in English. Neruda used metaphors through the entire poem describing him drowning in
sadness and sorrow. " The memory of you emerges from the night around me.
The river mingles its stubborn lament with the sea" (Neruda 55). He
remembered a woman, in whom everything sank, comparing her with the sea; long
and enormous like the time and the distance they were apart.
Neruda also remembered a happy time, the love,
and the idea of brightness. "He combines erotic imagery with extremely bleak visualizations of this doomed romance,
such as a 'Cemetery of kisses'" (Race, "Poetry Analysis a Song of Despair
by Pablo Neruda"). At the beginning of the poem, Neruda started with his
pastfeelings; He remembered his woman and the
love he felt for her. The moments they were happy and together. "The two
line verses of the poem are broken up by two single lines at the end of the
poem. The
penultimate line sees the poet repeat himself by thinking that nothing seems so
far away now as his departed lover. The last line brings out his sadness – both
for him, and for her" (Rance, "Poetry Analysis a Song of Despair by
Pablo Neruda"). The mood at the
end changed from happiness to sadness returning once again feeling sorry for
himself as well as empty and lonely because the woman is gone. He is all
wounded for his lost lover, and that is all he could think.
Pablo Neruda recited "The Song of Despair" (Spanish Version)
Neruda, Pablo, and W. S. Merwin. "Twenty Love poems: And a
song of despair." New York: Penguin Books, 1993.
"Poetry Analysis a Song of Despair by Pablo Neruda."
By Paul Rance. 16 Nov. 2013.
