What is the central theme of the poem ‘Tonight I can Write’ by Pablo

Neruda?
This poem uses imagery and symbols including metaphors to present the pain of
a jilted lover. It is about the memories of a lost love and the pain it can cause.
The lover is both physically and metaphorically remembered. She is
remembered for her embraces, her kisses, her love and passion, and yet is
remembered as a symbolic absence. The absence of lover represents an extreme
state of emotions – desperation and longing – but the poet’s love is also
changeable, variant and prone to indecisiveness. The themes of longing,
separation and absence come together in the poem ‘Tonight I can Write’.
Besides, the finality of lost love could be seen as a dominant theme. 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.
The central theme regards the pain that a memory can cause someone, and it is
conveyed through the struggle the speaker has to forget his former love. The
overall theme of this poem is of lost love and how he longs to have it again.
While in the beginning of the poem he starts to talk about the love they used to
have and how now it is long gone. The longing part comes more towards the
end saying of how an already immense night can be more immense, showing
that he still wants it.
PLUS POINTS
It is a monologue written in a confessional mood, lamenting the loss of love of a
jilted lover. The lover contemplates the natural world, the night, the stars, the
wind, 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 uses nature image and symbolism to express the lost love. Words such
as “The night is shattered and the blue stars shiver in the distance”. The lover
says “ my heart looks for her”.; at the same time he says” she loved me,
sometimes. This tone is repeated in an opposite style “ I loved her, and
sometimes she loved me too”. Thus he confesses that their love was not genuine
or sincere. But he again confesses that her love gave him maximum pleasure.
This is why even when she left him to become another man’s wife, he says “
My sight searches for her, My heart looks for her, My voice tried to find the
wind to touch her hearing”. But the beauty of their love reaches when the lover
confesses “Love is short, but forgetting so long”. Thus, the love poem reaches
universal level. Pablo Neruda gives all of us our love poem which we hug to our
heart with great satisfaction and whisper every line of it in our solitude. This is
genuine love poem meant for every human being who is born to love and be
loved!
Themes
Memory and Reminiscence
“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.”
Love and Heartache
Neruda’s poem explores the pain and heartache following a break-up. The
speaker, with one eye on the past and another on the present, tries to make sense
of the fact that a relationship that seemed filled with endless love has, in fact,
ended for good. Standing alone under the same star-filled night sky he used to
share with his ex-lover, the speaker bitterly contrasts the love he once had with
his current sadness and solitude. In doing so, the poem showcases the sorrow
and confusion that accompany love’s loss—and how memories of that love
make it all the more difficult to move on. The change in the speaker’s romantic
situation seems to have altered everything around him. Just as love once made
the world seem full of joy, bliss, and intimacy, love’s absence makes the world
suddenly cold, barren, and harsh.
Alienation and Loneliness
The speaker juxtaposes memories of his passionate relationship with his lover
with his present state of alienation and loneliness without her. The speaker
employs the imagery of nature to reflect his internal state. He writes his
“saddest lines” on a night that is similar to the nights he spent with his lover.
Yet the darkness and the stars that “shiver at a distance” in this night suggest his
loneliness. The speaker expresses his loneliness when he notes that he hears
someone in the distance singing and repeats, “in the distance.” No one now
sings for him. He admits, that his heart looks for her and throughout the poem
he's in state of confusion and hurt saying that he no longer loves her but then
again states that maybe he loves her. With a world-weary tone of resignation, he
concludes, “love is so short, forgetting is so long.” Determined to end his sense
of alienation and loneliness, the speaker insists that these will be “the last verses
that I write for her.”