19 pages • 38 minutes read
Pablo NerudaIf You Forget Me
Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1952A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Themes
Love Is Reciprocity (Mutual Exchange)
In “If You Forget Me,” Neruda explores how love is a mutual exchange, which can be called reciprocity. This reciprocity includes the flourishing of love, as well as the end of love, or the dying of love. When love is given by both people, the speaker and his beloved (Neruda and his wife), are connected by “everything that exists” (Line 12). Their reciprocal love is evoked by celestial and earthly things, like the moon and a tree branch. The beloved is unavoidable, appearing in a fire’s ashes, as well as the night sky. However, this emotional state—that is, being reminded of the beloved by everything—can change if the beloved does not reciprocate the speaker’s love.
The dying of love is experienced in the same way by the speaker and his beloved. If she stops loving him gradually, then he stops loving her gradually. On the other hand, if she forgets him suddenly, then he forgets her just as abruptly. These are reciprocal relationships. The third and fourth stanzas focus on clearly conveying the idea of reciprocity with conversational and direct language, and the fifth stanza complicates the if-then construction of the previous two stanzas. Neruda uses conditional, or if-then, statements (if something happens, then something else happens) without comparisons or other imagery in the third and fourth stanzas. In the fifth stanza, the same “if you [...] I shall” (Lines 24, 33) construction exists, but it is complicated by imagery of wind in banners and the metaphor of the heart as an island home.
At the end of the poem, the reciprocity is positive—a growing love. Like the second stanza and the fifth stanza, the final stanza includes a complicated if-then statement. Between the if-statement and the then-statement is an address of the beloved. The speaker says, “ah my love, ah my own” (Line 43), to separate her actions (the if-statement) from his actions (the then-statement). Her actions include floral imagery and “implacable sweetness” (Line 40), while the speaker’s reaction includes fire and feeding imagery. While the speaker “repeat[es]” (Line 44) what the beloved does, it is not exactly the same. Reciprocity, then, is not complete symmetry but rather an exchange of equal amounts.
The Heart’s Home
Neruda uses metaphorical “land” (Line 35) to describe the heart, or the location of love. The first instance of land is the “isles of yours that wait for me” (Line 16). This is the location where everything takes the speaker to the beloved. Her heart is an island that the speaker is transported to when love is reciprocated. The isles can only be reached by “boats” (Line 14). Neruda compares these boats with all the objects that remind the speaker of the beloved. Coming home on boats is an old poetic trope (subject), such as Homer’s ancient Greek poem about Odysseus coming home after the Trojan War. Additionally, the imagery of the fireplace with a burnt “log” (Line 10) can be read as domestic.
Dying romantic love is compared to being exiled from a home. When the beloved decides “to leave me at the shore / of the heart where I have roots” (Lines 28-29), the speaker is unable to enter the island of the heart. This forces him to “lift my arms / and my roots will set off / to seek another land” (Lines 33-35). Like someone who is exiled, the speaker becomes a transplant in another place. The arms associated with leaving the heart’s home can be contrasted with the beloved’s “arms” (Line 47) at the end of the poem. If the beloved reciprocates his love, he describes her arms intertwined with his. If she stops loving him, he can only focus on his own arms.
Temporal (Time-Related) Nature of Love
“If You Forget Me” assesses how the past, present, and future define love. Remembering and forgetting are temporal (time-related) words about the past. Neruda equates forgetting the past with the death of love. The poem also serves as a warning about the future. The speaker cites the specific time when his beloved leaves him: “remember / that on that day, / at that hour” (Lines 29-32). Simultaneity, or things happening at the same time, is one feature of the reciprocity of love. Whether love “suddenly” (Line 19) disappears, or if love gradually disappears, the experience is simultaneous in the speaker and his beloved.
If love is an ongoing experience, then it can last a lifetime. In addition to the specific hour of the beloved’s departure, the speaker uses temporal language to describe the experience of being in love continuously. He says:
if each day,
each hour,
you feel that you are destined for me (Lines 37-39).
Here, love is felt each and every hour. Love is “repeated” (Line 44), or felt many times by the beloved and the speaker in a reciprocal relationship. This can be contrasted with the moment when the beloved ends the relationship, or love’s specific and singular time of death.
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By Pablo Neruda
