The Difficulties of Love as Defined in Pablo Neruda's poems

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Love is such a mysterious thing. It does not always happen to everyone. One might wander the world looking for it, but never truly find it. Love is unique to each and every person. Everyone has their own definition of based on their past experiences and thought process. Pablo Neruda had written many poems throughout his life, many of which dealt with love. Those poem with the theme of love started to define how Neruda defines love. Neruda defines love as something difficult.
Love is difficult, according to Neruda. In his poem, “I Do Not Love You Except Because I love you”, he describes his love going from hot to cold. “I go from loving you to not loving you” (2) and “My heart moves from cold to fire” (4) exemplify his persistence that love exists in two manners, either a person loves or does not love. Many things may make him love her, but also there are things that make him not love her. His love for her is stuck in this never ending loop. He tries to change in order to make her happy, but she is never satisfied. This constant, bipolar love has negative effects on his mental well-being, and he knows this, but because he loves her he is willing to go through such a whirlwind of emotions. At the same time as he loves her, he also hates her, “I hate you deeply, and hating you / Bend to you, and the measure of my changing love for you” (6-7). He hates that he loves her, in other words he does not like it that even though she makes his life hell, he still puts up with all of it because he loves her. One other key point he makes is his blind love for her. “Is that I do not see you but love you blindly” (8). Sometimes when a person is deeply in love with another they would do crazy things in order to maintain that love and close conne...

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Neruda’s examination of the difficulty of love is how he defines love. Love is a vessel that many people want, but without the difficulties. Typically love is supposed to be a wonderful thing to possess, but many times it is also the hardest thing to go through. Love will make people do crazy things, for example, love will make a person love another blindly. Another example is that even though love puts a person through so much trouble, it is all worth it to love and to be loved. Love will make people wait for it to the extent that even though they know it is not coming back; just the thought of it is enough to make a person wait for nothing. Neruda defined love as difficult because of the necessity for people to know that there are difficulties in love, but it is worth it in the end because deep down in our gut, we have the want to love and to be loved.

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