Love Sonnet XVII

Another reader said this was the most natural poem. That is the telling quality of the impression Neruda gives here. But the poem is not natural so much as it is a hard sparkling diamond, fused carbon of stylistic skill and emotional intensity.

The poem is postmodern in style. It sets up a term for meaning, then evades it. I will demonstrate this in the first stanza:

I do not love you as if you were salt-rose, or topaz,
or the arrow of carnations the fire shoots off.
I love you as certain dark things are to be loved,
in secret, between the shadow and the soul.

Between what and what? Well, this is where the reader is expected to do some cognitive work, to try and discover what Neruda is on about. Eliot's 'The Wasteland' offers the same device ("between X and Y") for distinguishing a modern vision, but that is not Neruda's way. He is happy for you to wonder and wander around his meaning, so long as you get the emotion:

I love you as the plant that never blooms
but carries in itself the light of hidden flowers;
thanks to your love a certain solid fragrance,
risen from the earth, lives darkly in my body.

The unique cultural sense of South America makes this poem distinctive, yes, but I am tempted to give a more direct and simple interpretation. Read on and I'll give it:

I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where.
I love you straightforwardly, without complexities or pride;
so I love you because I know no other way

than this: where I does not exist, nor you,
so close that your hand on my chest is my hand,
so close that your eyes close as I fall asleep.

Okay. My interpretation is that Neruda is talking about his gay lover. The feelings of dirtiness from their lovemaking, and the deep need for secrecy in the macho culture of South America, are what he is talking about in the first two stanzas.

In the last two stanza he is coming to terms with the fact that he love another man because he knows "no other way". And with exhaustion and acceptence comes sleep in the final stanza.

That is my interpretation of this poem, knowing as I do only the basic fact of Neruda's homosexuality.

My lover sent it to me three years ago when we were just one another's fling on the side.

That is what it did the first time I read it ...like magic, the words reached beyond my rationale, my worry ...my need for reason and stole my breath right out of me.

This is the most beautiful collection of words I have ever read and quite possibly the most articulate description of love that I have ever come across.

Perhaps the meaning is in our own hearts; simply put, the poem means exactly the feelings that it seems to stir in all of us.

For me it is a feeling of instinctual, unexplainable connection that raw, indestructable and beyond all reason. That is what I have for Him and always will.

Breathtaking.

I don't know much about the writter of this poem but I am trying to research as best as possible.\
I read this poem when I was a senior in high school and keep it in my Bible until I understood what it ment to me(not anyone else)
I am ow getting married(and having it read at my wedding) and know exactly what the poem means to me.
Sometimes you have no reason to love someone but you just do. There are so many things I can't stand about my soon to be husband but I don't know any other way.
Certain dark things are to be loved...I think love is a very private feeling no one else will ever understand your love for another it's "secrate" it is not suppose to be loud and boastful it's suppose to be calm and precious.
Shadow and soul/I believe that the writter saying/representing "Shadow" as how you see yourself and "Soul" is what is your partner sees you if this is real love. True Love.They see your Soul. Sometimes we as a person never take the time to dig deep and see who we really are.
the plant that doesn't bloom: I think it means that even if you stay the same person and never grow the love still holes beauty or if the relationship never blooms because of fate then the love that the person felt for you will always hold a beautiful place/memory in their heart.
Dark fragrent///alot of people would disagree with me on this but I believe man was made from women and that man was made from the dust of the earth.Maybe be this is saying or I feel it means that dense(deep) fragrate(the life) that rises from the earth:God created man from dust and women from man so it a big circle. Earth into Man.Man into Women. Women into babies that creates Man and Woman.The Circle of life.
And i think the rest of the Poem is self explained. If you can't feel what the poem is saying to you when you read it,,,there is no reason for you to understand it because it is not to understand what someone else saids it's for you to create what it means to you and love it for that.

Topaz symbolizes “God” and rose salt contains a lot of iron, so the first line is Neruda’s way of telling his lover that he does not love him/her as if they were perfect or unattainable or judgemental. The second line furthers this idea by adding that he doesn’t love them in an idealized romantic way, rather he loves, as the third and fourth line describe, in a more primal, inherently natural way.

In the second stanza he goes on to say he loves “as the plant that never blooms”, which I believe is reference to his love being undying, because after a plant blooms it dies. Also, indicates his love as being constant and not fleeting as in a brief moment of intense passion. The third and fourth lines speak again of the primal, earthy love that is shared between Neruda and his lover.

The last two stanzas, I believe, are pretty straightforward and don’t need further explanation. In short, I believe this poem speaks of the true nature of love, that it isn’t a thing of fancy, or romanticism, or the stuff of novels, that it is dark and primal. It comes from somewhere beyond the rational of our brains and analytical tools. That is why, I believe, it is one of the best love poems ever written.

I know exactly how Pablo Neruda was feeling when he wrote this beautiful love sonnet.
When he writes "I love you as certain dark things are to be loved,
in secret, between the shadow and the soul."
He is refering to a secret love. One that he has to keep to himself, within himself...yet a love so strong and binding that nothing else can measure up to or compare to it.
He did not just sit down and write this sonnet for the heck of it. He wrote this while feeling all of those things and unlike most of us he found a way of putting it on paper.
This isn't a sonnet about new love or married love or age old love.. it's clearly a sonnet about a forbidden love so strong that it reaches into him and pulls out everything he's ever known... or not known about himself and what he believes real love would feel like.
I understood and could feel every word of the sonnet.