Neruda was famous for his love poems. In fact, his first major work, Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair remains his most popular work. It was somewhat of a scandal at the first publishing as he was only 19 years old when he wrote it. You may recognize the footage that helps tell the story. Another well known ladies man of his time.
As a child, Neruda often rode the rails with his father, a train conductor, where he witnessed the indignities suffered by the railroad workers and the indigenous peoples - encounters that would come to shape his world view and influence his poetry. Neruda’s poetry is so rich and diverse that it defies classification. His style varied depending on his source of inspiration: be it love or beauty - politics or history - or the simple things in life that often go unnoticed.
Puedo Escribir / Tonight I can write
Tonight I can write the saddest lines.
Write, for example, 'The night is shattered
and the blue stars shiver in the distance.'
The night wind revolves in the sky and sings.
Tonight I can write the saddest lines.
I loved her, and sometimes she loved me too.
Through nights like this one I held her in my arms
I kissed her again and again under the endless sky.
She loved me sometimes, and I loved her too.
How could one not have loved her great still eyes.
Tonight I can write the saddest lines.
To think that I do not have her. To feel that I have lost her.
To hear the immense night, still more immense without her.
And the verse falls to the soul like dew to the pasture.
What does it matter that my love could not keep her.
The night is shattered and she is not with me.
This is all. In the distance someone is singing. In the distance.
My soul is not satisfied that it has lost her.
My sight searches for her as though to go to her.
My heart looks for her, and she is not with me.
The same night whitening the same trees.
We, of that time, are no longer the same.
I no longer love her, that's certain, but how I loved her.
My voice tried to find the wind to touch her hearing.
Another's. She will be another's. Like my kisses before.
Her voice. Her bright body. Her infinite eyes.
I no longer love her, that's certain, but maybe I love her.
Love is so short, forgetting is so long.
Because through nights like this one I held her in my arms
my soul is not satisfied that it has lost her.
Though this be the last pain that she makes me suffer
and these the last verses that I write for her.
A link to another classic Neruda love poem - From Love Sonnets - Poema 20:
Translated by: M.S. Merwin
Recited by: Carlos Alfaro
Footage:
Blood and Sand / Directed by Fred Niblo
Seven Horseman of the Apocalypse / Directed by Rex Ingram
Music:
Awicha / Composers: Ehrlich, Loy
A Four Seasons Production - www.4spFilm.com
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4 окт 2024
