Tonight I Can Write the Saddest Lines

In “Tonight I Can Write the Saddest Lines,” the speaker, presumably representing the author, explores feelings in the aftermath of a love affair, declaring that they indeed “can write the saddest lines” (Line 1). The speaker blames their sadness on the loss of a romantic love, but the imagery and repetition of phrases indicate that the speaker is not only sad over the loss of a relationship but also tormented by the mysterious, unpredictable, almost uncontrollable nature of love itself—the way memory of a love can torment a person after the relationship is over.

The poem is the second to last poem in Pablo Neruda’s collection Twenty Songs of Love and a Song of Despair. Each poem is equated to a song. Songs, by form, are traditionally repetitive, using lyrics and a refrain that emphasize a feeling. Unlike narrative poems, a lyrical poem or song doesn’t necessarily move action forward to a clear conclusion but can instead dwell on a theme, circling back and saying the same thing over and over again.

This mimics the way obsession plays out in the mind. A person in love, specifically the speaker of this poem, may go over the same ideas, memories, and feelings on a loop, circling an emotion without a clear way forward. The speaker repeats “Tonight I can write the saddest lines” (Lines 1, 4, 10) three times. This emphasizes the speaker’s attachment to their sadness, circling back to it over and over.

Despite this clear feeling of sadness and the overall nostalgic and lamenting tone of the poem, it is unclear whether the speaker believes they succeed in writing the very saddest of lines, or if their ongoing emotional turmoil hinders them from doing so. The speaker only gives one explicit example of what they consider one of these saddest lines to be, placing them in quotation marks: “The night is starry and the stars are blue and shiver in the distance” (Lines 2-3). While these lines indicate a stark or lonely view of the landscape, and it is subjective how sad one may find these lines, they are also much more understated and less dramatic than expected given the speaker’s claims. Furthermore, the speaker’s repetitions and contradictions throughout the poem—revolving perhaps in the same way as the “night wind” in Line 4—may indicate that the speaker’s current sadness, while inspiring their poetry, is hindering their ability to write about it, paradoxically making the situation all the sadder.

Between the repetitions of the speaker’s somewhat hyperbolic proclamation that they can write the saddest lines, the speaker ironically explains the cause of their sadness in straightforward, sometimes clipped language: “I loved her, and sometimes she loved me too” (Line 6). Three lines later, the speaker juxtaposes this line with a similar one, saying, “She loved me, sometimes I loved her too” (Line 9), which recycles the language but adds meaning, telling the reader that both parties in the relationship loved one another, but only “sometimes” (Lines 6, 9), indicating what was likely a turbulent love affair. The speaker also says, “To think that I do not have her. To feel that I have lost her” (Line 11). These sentences rhapsodize the speaker’s strong feelings of loss and nostalgia, but without the addition of any descriptive language. Later, the speaker mutedly states, “My soul is not satisfied that it has lost her” (Line 18), which the speaker repeats in Line 30.

Over and over, the speaker plays the same “song,” or repeats similar phrases with similar meanings, as though they are repeating the same information to themself. This shows what the speaker means when they say that “Love is so short, forgetting is so long” (Line 27). Though the relationship may be over, the speaker’s pondering of their feelings and getting past them takes a long time. The speaker’s memory of the relationship continues to last and seems strongest at night, presumably when most of their lovemaking occurred and when the speaker would “[kiss] her again and again” (Line 8).

About halfway through the poem, the speaker says, “The night is starry and she is not with me. / This is all” (Lines 16-17), as though they will now stop singing this song, declaring that they’ve said everything they need to say. Yet the speaker goes on, as though powerless to stop it, even stating that the lines “[fall] to the soul like dew to the pasture” (Line 14), a simile that likens their current poetic ability to an uncontrolled—yet mundane—force of nature.

When the speaker says in the final line that “these [are] the last verses that I write for her” (Line 32), readers may doubt the speaker. The speaker has demonstrated throughout the poem that they have been unsuccessful in stopping their thoughts from returning. The speaker is also ambivalent about whether they have really fallen out of love with the former lover, stating that they are “certain” they “no longer love her” (Line 23), and then backpedaling by saying that “maybe [they] love her” (Line 27). Perhaps the speaker, though they cannot stop their feelings, can stop their writing—at least on this subject. Ending the poem may be how the speaker regains control over their internal world. The suddenness of the final line jars the reader, which mimics the way a relationship’s ending may feel jarring. It indicates the speaker’s own resolve to move on, but how successful they will be is uncertain.