One Hundred Love Sonnets (V) Pablo Neruda

This sonnet, "One Hundred Love Sonnets (V) by Pablo Neruda, captures the feeling of longing for another, and not being able to keep them off one’s mind. This is told in a private conversation between the author and "you". The author's lover is in the clay, the earth, and in memory. The author lives on the memories of feelings that have inspired him to keep interest in his love. When he is around her it is one thing, but when he is away from her, she becomes this being that he describes in this sonnet that has transcended all human existence, but has become eternal in his thoughts, and earth. Now that he is away, he knows now what love is. He knows that wherever he should be, it must be with her, and that is where he belongs; of this unknown place of “kisses and volcanoes”. To a reader, this can mean a land where she is present.

The first four stanzas give the impression that he is not worth enough to touch the essence which surrounds the author's lover's being. He is only worthy enough to worship the ground she walks on, literally the earth, as he says, “I did not touch your night, or your air, or dawn: only the earth”. He uses the adjective “sweet” to describe homely things that we all deem ordinary such as the clay, resins, and water of the earth. These things are not things that ordinary people may regard as “sweet”, or anything extraordinary, but to the author, anything associated with his lover is utopian.

The next four stanzas give the impression of a woman the author possesses. He describes the creation of his lover as being for no one but himself. He does not give thanks to a higher being, but a factual account of her body parts, and how their sole purpose were to love him as a whole. It is interesting how the language draws the reader from a real-life visual of touching her hips, to a flash of wheat in a field. Anyone can almost picture the flash on a movie screen, from the sensual imagery of the texture of clay, and him physically being able to touch her, yet he is not so close to draw us all back to the imagery of reality of touching the wheat in his field. This statement is a reluctant one, with sadness as reality sets in. She was built for him, but it is somehow felt that he author does not own her, only in words.

The third set of stanzas set a declaration to another town in Chile. Differing from the possession the author felt from the single woman from Quinchamali, he declares to his past experiences of woman from Arauco. When he says that “before I loved you I forgot your kisses”, he is explaining that he has also only began to love someone when they are gone. He eventually moved on with nothing to hold on to but a memory.

The last three stanzas describe the author's experiences through the battlefield of love in Arauco which led him to sink so low that he finally understands love once he has found a mate. He has finally stopped searching from town to town all around Chile, and had settled on a mystical place of “kisses and volcanoes”. This, of course, is a metaphor for conclusion the author has found from the emptiness, and homelessness that the author has felt for so long. It might be cliché, but home is where the heart is. The author has described for the reader in fourteen lines his search for love in memory, and in the dirt that surrounds him. He has nothing concrete, and no specific land where his lover resides except in metaphor. He declares to Quinchamali, and Arauco, but his lover is nothing concrete. She would transcend anything concrete or able to define. His lover is of no menial location, but of a land where all there is is explosions of love. His lover is everywhere, not one single town in Chile, but every specific object that has been created, and as she is, specifically for him.

This poem has a light and airy tone with no depth. Love is too deep of a concept to define in a poem. The reason why all poems appear cliché, is because love does encompass all, and in this sonnet, the author tries to explain this feeling of being overpowered. He is overwhelmed by the love he feels, but it is in no way scary for him. He has succumbed, and admitted to finding a home with no longer searching for a new love.(917)