A Battle between Love and Despair: “Tonight I Can Write” by Pablo Neruda Anonymous College

Love and despair do not look alike at first, someone could think that when you are in love you do not feel despair and when you feel desperation is because you may have lost the one you loved. Although for Pablo Neruda, love and despair go together, love can drive someone madness and despair can strengthen the love you felt. Neruda’s most famous work Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair (1924), collides two huge feelings that all lovers have felt once throughout time. This verse collection is composed of twenty love poems and one song of despair that unites all common themes of the previous poems. Throughout the twenty poems, it can be seen a changed in theme as it began describing the sensuality and passion towards one of the author’s lovers and towards the last poems it changes to a melancholy tone, feeling regret and loneliness, and to close “A Song of Despair”, is bitter and hopeless as the poetic voice has a constant reminder of the loss of his lover.

Poem XX, “Tonight I Can Write”, joins love and despair as the poetic voice goes through an internal battle about his current feelings towards his lover while he realizes she is gone. “Tonight I Can Write”, brings out all the past romantic feelings from the previous poems,...