I love you as certain dark things are to be loved, in secret, between the shadow and the soul.
— 100 Love Sonnets
Pablo Neruda, born Ricardo Eliécer Neftalí Reyes Basoalto, was a Chilean poet-diplomat and politician who won the 1971 Nobel Prize in Literature. He became known as a poet at 13 and wrote in many styles, including surrealist poems, historical epics, political manifestos, a prose autobiography and passionate love poems such as those in Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair.
He held diplomatic posts in several countries and served a term as a senator for the Chilean Communist Party. When President Gabriel González Videla outlawed communism in Chile in 1948, a warrant was issued for his arrest. Friends hid him for months, and in 1949 he escaped through a mountain pass into Argentina, not returning to Chile for more than three years. 100 Love Sonnets and Twenty Love Poems are his most quoted works in our library.
He held diplomatic posts in several countries and served a term as a senator for the Chilean Communist Party. When President Gabriel González Videla outlawed communism in Chile in 1948, a warrant was issued for his arrest. Friends hid him for months, and in 1949 he escaped through a mountain pass into Argentina, not returning to Chile for more than three years. 100 Love Sonnets and Twenty Love Poems are his most quoted works in our library.
Most quoted works
- 100 Love Sonnets 38
- Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair 10
- The Book of Questions 5
- Then Come Back: The Lost Neruda Poems 4
- Still Another Day 3
- The Essential Neruda: Selected Poems 3
Tonight I can write the saddest linesI loved her, and sometimes she loved me too.
— Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair
In this part of the story I am the one whodies, the only one, and I will die of love because I love you, because I love you, Love, in fire and in blood.
— 100 Love Sonnets
Then love knew it was called love. And when I lifted my eyes to your name, suddenly your heart showed me my way
— Veinte poemas de amor y una canción desesperada; Cien sonetos de amor
I am no longer in love with her, that's certain, but maybe I love her. Love is so short, forgetting is so long.
— Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair
I crave your mouth, your voice, your hair. Silent and starving, I prowl through the streets. Bread does not nourish me, dawn disrupts me, all day I hunt for the liquid measure of your steps.
— 100 Love Sonnets
By night, Love, tie your heart to mine, and the two together in their sleep will defeat the darkness
— 100 Love Sonnets
Donde termina el arco iris, en tu alma o en el horizonte? Where does the rainbow end, in your soul or on the horizon?
— The Book of Questions
We the mortals touch the metals, the wind, the ocean shores, the stones, knowing they will go on, inert or burning, and I was discovering, naming all the these things: it was my destiny to love and say goodbye.
— Still Another Day
It was at that agethat poetry came in search of me.
— Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair
You are the trembling of time, that passesbetween vertical light and darkened sky,
— 100 Love Sonnets
from that terrible love the soft pure handsgave peace to my eyes and sun to my senses.
— 100 Love Sonnets
I will die kissing your mad cold mouth, embracing the lost bouquet of your body, and searching for the light of your closed eyes
— 100 Love Sonnets
Like them you are tall and taciturn, and you are sad, all at once, like a voyage.
— Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair