- “Love”
Author: Gustavo Adolfo Bécquer (1836-1870)
The sun may cloud forever;
The sea can dry up in an instant;
The axis of the earth may be broken
Like a weak crystal.
Everything will happen! May death
Cover me with his funereal crepe;
But it can never be turned off in me
The flame of your love.
About the author and the poem
Gustavo Adolfo Becquer He was a Spanish poet and narrator of the 19th century, belonging to the literary trend of Post-Romanticism. His most famous work, Rhymes and legends, is a compilation of his poems published in different Madrid newspapers of the time, published posthumously, and is one of the most widely read books in Hispanic literature.
This love poem is one of the shorter texts by Bécquer, who used to say that “the best poetry written is that which is not written.” In his few lines the poet promises an eternal love, comparing his end with other impossible or remote situations, and even with the death of the poet itself: all this will happen before his love is extinguished. It is also a poem that evidences the simple intimacy of the poetry of the moment in which Bécquer wrote, when Realism was the dominant literary movement.
- “That love does not admit stringent reflections”
Author: Rubén Darío (1867-1916)
Lady, love is violent
and when it transfigures us
the thought ignites us
The madness.
Don’t ask my arms for peace
that they have prisoners of yours:
my hugs are of war
and my kisses are of fire;
and it would be vain attempt
turning my mind dark
if the thought ignites me
The madness.
Clear is my mind
of flames of love, lady,
as the store of the day
or the palace of dawn.
And the perfume of your ointment
my luck pursues you,
and my thought ignites
The madness.
My joy your palate
rich honeycomb concept,
as in the holy Song:
Mel et lac sub lingua tua.
The delight of your breath
in such a fine glass it hurries,
and my thought ignites
The madness.
About the author and the poem
Ruben Dario is the pseudonym of Félix Rubén García Sarmiento, a Nicaraguan poet, journalist and diplomat born in 1867. He is the highest representative of the Latin American poetic movement known as Modernism, which was characterized by its refinement and elevated style, with which they sought to renew poetry in Spanish. Rubén Darío’s work was perhaps the best known and most celebrated of the 20th century in terms of poetry in Spanish, which is why he was known as “the prince of Castilian letters”.
In this poem, Rubén Darío characterizes love as a war or a fire, fierce and uncontrollable images, similar to the way of thinking about love in Romanticism (18th-19th centuries), which compared it to delirium and madness. In the poem you can also see the typical cultisms of Modernism, even a Latin verse taken from the Song of songs and that can be translated as “honey and milk under your tongue.”
- “Two words”
Author: Alfonsina Storni (1892-1938)
Tonight in my ear you have said two words to me
common. Two tired words
to be said. Words
that old are new.
Two words so sweet that the moon that walked
filtering through the branches
it stopped in my mouth. So sweet two words
that an ant walks around my neck and I don’t try
move to kick her out.
So sweet two words
that I say without wanting to – oh, how beautiful, life! –
So sweet and so meek
that odorous oils spill on the body.
So sweet and so beautiful
how nervous, my fingers,
They move towards the sky imitating scissors.
Oh my fingers wish
cut out stars.
About the author and the poem
Alfonsina Storni was an Argentine poet and writer born in Switzerland. Her work, linked to the Modernism current, consisted of poems, prose and plays, and reflected to some extent her feminist thinking. Storni was a friend and lover of the also writer Horacio Quiroga, and committed suicide at the age of 46 by throwing himself into the sea in the city of Mar del Plata. Its tragic end has inspired many later works, such as the song “Alfonsina y el mar”.
This poem describes two words spoken by the lover, without ever naming them, but making it clear to the attentive reader that it is “I love you” or “I love you.” It is also important to note in the first lines the rupture of the verse, which denotes a separation between what is written and what is read, between the word and the sound.
- “Love”
Author: Pablo Neruda (1904-1973)
Woman, I would have been your son, for drinking you
the milk of the breasts like a spring,
for looking at you and feeling you by my side and having you
in the golden laugh and the crystal voice.
For feeling you in my veins like God in the rivers
and worship you in the sad bones of dust and lime,
because your being will pass without pain by my side
and come out in the stanza -clean of all evil-.
How would I know how to love you, woman, how would I know
love you, love you like no one ever knew!
Die and still
love you more.
And yet
love you more
and more.
About the author and the poem
Pablo Neruda is the pseudonym of Ricardo Eliécer Neftalí Reyes Basoalto, Chilean maximum poet and one of the most celebrated authors in Spanish literature. Dedicated in his country to politics and diplomacy, Neruda was a communist militant and a close friend of Federico García Lorca. His vast work covers different stylistic periods, some strongly committed to the so-called Socialist Realism, and in 1971 he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature.
This poem is part of the many love and erotic poems that Neruda wrote, and belongs to his collection of poems Twilight 1923. In it, many of the typical resources of Neruda’s work can be seen, such as the use of certain verb tenses (the pluperfect of the subjunctive in the opening verses) to express a desire, a desire that cannot be satisfied. In the poem the limits between the body of the poet and that of his beloved are also blurred, as if seeking to merge, and ends with the typical declaration of love for all eternity, that is, beyond death.
- “Absence”
Author: Jorge Luis Borges (1899-1986)
I will raise the vast life
that even now is your mirror:
every morning I will have to rebuild it.
Since you walked away
how many places have become vain
and meaningless, the same
to lights in the day.Afternoons that were niche of your image,
music in which you always waited for me,
words of that time,
I will have to break them with my hands.
In what hollow will I hide my soul
so I don’t see your absence
that like a terrible sun, without setting,
shines final and ruthless?Your absence surrounds me
like the rope to the throat,
the sea to which it sinks.
About the author and the poem
Jorge Luis Borges He was an Argentine writer, poet and essayist, considered one of the great authors not only of the Spanish language, but also of world literature. His fantastic stories, full of labyrinths, dreams and references to books and invented historical figures marked a before and after in 20th century literature. At 55 he was almost entirely blind, but even so he continued to create, and was an eternal nominee for the Nobel Prize in Literature, which he never received, however.
In this poem, Borges approaches love from the perspective of the abandoned, that is, of spite, and sings not to the beloved but to her absence. The lack of his beloved is perceived by the poet as something immense, overwhelming, present in all things: music, places, the very words with which he writes. Unlike many other Borges poems, this one is written in free verse, without respecting metrics or stanzas, and emphasizing the metaphors that describe the way in which the poet lives what is described.
- “Sometimes”
Author: Nicolás Guillén (1902-1989)
Sometimes I feel like being corny
to say: I love you madly.
Sometimes I feel like being a fool
to scream: I love her so much!
Sometimes I want to be a child
to cry curled up in her bosom.
Sometimes I feel like I’m dead
to feel, under the moist earth of my juices,
that a flower grows breaking my chest,
a flower, and say: This flower,
for you.
About the author and the poem
Nicolas Guillén He was a Cuban poet and journalist, considered the national poet of his country. His work focuses on what he called “the Cuban color”, that is, the complex processes of miscegenation and the Afro-American heritage that are typical of Cuban and Caribbean culture. Popular culture also has a lot of presence in his poetry, which is why many understand it as a poetry committed to the political and social.
In this love poem, the poet uses the resource of repetition (“Sometimes” is the title and the beginning of four verses) to insist from different points of view on the description of his love, as well as the resource of orality , for the poet expresses what he would like to say, as if he wanted to quote himself. In its final verses death appears, that gloomy and fabulous image at the same time that it accompanies lovers, since the poet would not mind dying and that a flower germinated from his body, as long as he could give it to his beloved.
References:
- “Romantic poems” in Poemas del Alma.
- “Rubén Darío” in Wikipedia.
- “Gustavo Adolfo Bécquer” in Wikipedia.
- “Alfonsina Storni” in Wikipedia.
- “Pablo Neruda” in Wikipedia.
- “Nicolás Guillén” in Wikipedia.
- “Jorge Luis Borges” in Wikipedia.