The first poem of Neruda’s that illustrates loss through masterful use of imagery, symbolism, metaphor, and allusion is “Sonnet 17.” The poem adopts the form of a Petrarchan sonnet, which often follows an “abb abba” rhyme scheme, this type of verse usually presents a problem within the first eight lines, using the remaining six lines to offer a resolution. In the translated version of Sonnet 17, there are no instances of rhyming, the translated version also doesn’t have the same meter that the original has. Nonetheless, the poem consists of three stanzas, totaling fourteen lines. The translation still adheres to the structure of the Petrarchan sonnet, however loosely; Neruda fills the first eight lines attempting to describe the speaker's love for their partner; “I love you as the plant that doesn’t bloom but carries / the light of those flowers, hidden, within itself” (lines 5-6) It is within the final six lines that the speaker concedes and abandons trying to explain why he loves his partner, instead, he explains that he loves them because he doesn’t know how else to express the intense affection and affinity he feels for his partner; “I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where” (line 9) The use of a Petrarchan sonnet to express the love the speaker is feeling allows the audience to understand the emotional tension and intensity that the speaker is feeling in the first eight lines, and ultimately that tension is relieved in the final six lines. Though Sonnet 17 conveys feelings of intense love, there is an underlying message that is revealed through Neruda’s use of symbols, imagery, and allegory. It could be argued that the speaker is simultaneously experiencing an all-consuming love and a loss of identity. The speaker describes his love for his partner first through imagery;
“I don’t love you as if you were a rose of salt, topaz, / or arrow of carnations that propagate fire: / I love you as one loves certain obscure things, / secretly, between the shadow and the soul.” (lines 1-4)
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Here, the speaker is not describing a love that is typical; often love is described through natural, pretty imagery. The speaker, however, is indicating that the love he has for his partner is not the love one has for beautiful things. Instead, the speaker describes his love for his partner as hidden; “I love you as the plant that doesn’t bloom but carries / the light of those flowers, hidden, within itself” (lines 5-6) The theme of the hidden creates a clear distinction between the speaker's lover and the rest of the world, the speaker is telling her that he loves the deepest, most hidden parts of her completely and honestly. Neruda reinforces this idea with a strong appeal to sensory imagery; “and thanks to your love the tight aroma that arose / from the earth lives dimly in my body” (lines 7-8) The imagery of a blooming flower, described in the previous lines, imparts on the audience that the speaker is conveying how it feels to love his partner. By invoking the sense of smell, the speaker connotes a sensual feeling and acts as a symbol; the love that he feels is like a smell that he constantly carries around. Because the speaker is constantly carrying this love with him, it’s begun to take over his being;
“I love you like this because I don’t know any other way to love, / except in this form in which I am not nor are you, / so close that your hand upon my chest is mine, / so close that your eyes close with my dreams.” (lines 11-14)
Here Neruda is using both a biblical allusion to Genesis 2:24 and a metaphor to describe how both he and his lover have lost their individual identity due to the intense nature of their love. Genesis 2:24 says “Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother and shall cleave unto his wife: and they shall be one flesh.” This reference to the biblical concept of two becoming one within the realm of love reinforces the metaphor that the speaker and his lover have lost their individual identity and have become “one flesh.”
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