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.
Neruda, Pablo, and W. S. Merwin. "Twenty Love poems: And a song of despair." New York: Penguin Books, 1993.
