Pablo Neruda

Pablo Neruda was a communist poet. The Chilean won the Nobel Prize in Literature 1971. He wrote The Captain’s Verses in 1952 while he was in exile with his secret lover Matilde Urrutia on the island of Capri. The Captain’s Verses was a collection of his Love Poems that expresses Pablo’s different emotions to his love and the beautiful nature. From the book, we can see how Plabo treasured the time living with Matlide in the adorable exotic place. We can feel his passion, his pain, and his rage. His love poems were permeated with dense patriotism and his homesickness for Chile. Matilde was a singer.
Her life was changed after she fell in love with Pablo, the most important person in her life. It would never be easy to stay with a communist. With her faith of love, she had gone through a lot of danger with Pablo and she was also Pablo’s good helper. They had countless sweet and unforgettable moments. Pablo was dead in soon after the military coup of Chile in 1973. They were separated forever since then. The military government treated Maltide as an influential figure in the country because she was the widow of a communist. She had a choice to leave this Chile but she decided to keep on going Pablo’s path and stay in Pablo’s home.
Finally, she was able to publish Pablo’s work and write her own memoir. In her memoir, she told her legendary love with Pablo and the struggles she had faced. We can see their love on both Pablo’s poem and Maltide’s memoir. We can see their own perspective in their work. The memoir is a compliment to the poem that everything written by Pablo did happen to Maltide. She gave response and opinion to these experiences. In this essay, I’m going to analyze “The Soldier’s Love” in The Captain’s Verses from Plabo’s perspective and the view of Maltide’s memoir My Life with PABLO NERUDA. The Soldier’s Love “was written to Maltide. It is in free verse and there are ten stanzas. The tone of this poem is passionate and it sounds like Pablo is talking to Maltide directly. He used a lot of “You” to raise the momentum. “You’ll wear out your shoes/ but you’ll grow on the march/ You have to walk on thorns” (17-19) It sounds powerful and it makes Maltide become confident and dedicated. There are some words that are stressed at the end of the sentence such as “ fire”, “death”, “march”, “blood”, they all stand out in the poem because they accentuate the danger of their future.

The poem is well organized: From the second stanza to the fifth stanza, they are all three sentences long. From the sixth to eighth stanza, they are two sentences long. This splits the poem into two parts. The three sentences structure is talking about Maltide’s life before she met Pablo while the two sentences structure is talking about the life she is going to spend with him. The first stanza “in the midst of war life led you to be the soldier’s love” (1-2) is the introduction.
Then the last stanza ends the poem with two equal sentences “ Kiss me again, beloved/ Clean that gun, comrade (21-22) The whole structure of this poem looks very clear. The final stanza is strong to encourage Maltide with their faith of love and the word “beloved” and “comrade” shows Pablo’s tremendous passion. Pablo wanted to use this poem to let Maltide understand that her life had come to a turning point and also encourage her to be ready for the challenges coming up in their life. The introduction of the poem indicates that she no longer could enjoy a normal life. In the midst of war life led you to be the soldier’s love” (1-2) Pablo was the soldier fighting for the communist party. Everything would be different when she became a communist’s love. Pablo seemed disapproval of her past because he used “vagabond” to address her in the poem. He thought Maltide was political ignorant.
“You didn’t know where you were going/ you were the dancing partner/ you had no Party, no country”(9-11) What she had done before was not meaningful at all. She didn’t belong to anyone and anywhere. It was time to abandon her past and fight with him from now on. Now you can’t dance any more/ with your silk dress in the ballroom/ You’ll wear out your shoes/ but you’ll grow on the march” (15-18) Although she couldn’t have the comfortable life like before and she would be suffering a lot, she would learn a different dimension of life joining the fight for the fellow people. The fight of the communist is a long march that it will be full of sufferings. “ You’ll have to walk on thorns/ leaving little drops of blood” (19-20) Maltide should be prepared for any hurt or even death on the way. At last, Pablo encouraged Maltide to be dedicated to their love. Kiss me again, beloved” (21) He urged her to put the focus on their love, then they would not scare any situation coming up. Their faith of love is the best thing to console Maltide and keep her marching. Plabo thought Maltide was ready to fight with him. “Clean that gun, comrade” (22) She was not only his lover but also his “comrade”. Maltide was his counterpart who would share any problem with him and fight till the end. In Maltide’s memoir My Life With Pablo Neruda, she retold her terrible experiences that she had never encounter in her life. She had spent an agonizing night on the boat and almost swallowed by the sea.
In the hotel, she was treated as a criminal in the hotel. Then she left for Naples with fourteen suitcases. She had been followed by the undercover police from city to city during her journey. Maltide was very angry to these experiences at first. Then Pablo told her about his own experience. She realized everything just happened to her had already occurred on him many times. She got to know why Plabo became a communist. “He explained how, after his terrible experiences in that civil war, he returned to Chile and kept on fighting, writing about what he had witnessed in Spain.
He was already considered the biggest communist of all and figured that “if protesting and denouncing injustice means being a communist, well alright then,” and he joined the party. He was always a communist, because the suffering of others hut him too much. While he was alive, he put his pen and his life in the service of the people. ” (115) After the Maltide learned the reason why Plabo being a communist. She appreciated what he was doing. She admired his passion of helping all the people. Now she could accept being a communist and understand its fight.
These experiences deepened Plabo and Maltide’s love because they could know each other even more. However, Pablo’s heart was painful for dragging Maltide into his own sufferings. “ Pablo laughed until he cried as I told him about the Italian police, especially since Pablo had considered me the most politically ignorant woman he ever knew. But I was his love, and from that moment forward, I would take on all that he did and face all the difficulties in his life with him. ” (155) Maltide was happy to see Pablo blaming himself for not being able to protect her.
They both consider each other very much. Therefore, Maltide made up her mind to dedicate herself to follow Pablo’s path and fight with him together. She didn’t care how dangerous it would be as she was so strong in her love. The poem addressed the changes of Maltide’s life and Pablo encouraged her to take the challenges with their faith of love. In the memoir, Maltide’s talked about her experiences and her own feeling. She started to learn about the adversities of being a soldier’s love. She would stay with Plabo all they way and fight with him. She would use action to respond his poem.