love for Matilde is connected to his love of the
earth, this particular coast of Chile where both
he and Matilde spent their childhoods. He recov-
ers memory and innocence here with her. They
are alone with nature and their love, far from the
strife of cities. These poems abound in images of
Matilde as clay, wood, wheat, bread, fruit, and
water. Their love is passionate and sensuous.
Matilde Urrutia’s memoirs, My Life with
Pablo Neruda, written after the poet’s death, con-
firm this idyllic view of their early years together.
Though often fleeing with him from his political
peril or from scandal when he was still married to
Delia del Carril, Matilde recounts how they were
drawn irresistibly together. They were always
laughing and amusing themselves with delightful
pastimes such as swimming in the ocean; gathering
wildflowers; enjoying food and music; or going
over his poems, which she typed. There are photo-
graphs of them at home and in Europe, with their
dog, with Matilde singing and playing the guitar,
and at an outdoor cafe ́in France. Although it is a
completely domestic picture, she says that to them,
‘‘Our love felt big, very big.’’ They were careless,
like adolescents in love: ‘‘We lived in our own
world, far removed from reality.’’ With Matilde,
Neruda could be simple and earthy and live in the
present moment. All of which illustrates his view
of how life should be for everyone.
One Hundred Love Sonnetscreates a modern
Eden, and Neruda mythologized in it the life at
Isla Negra, though it is an Eden with seasons and
sorrows as well. Even in the ‘‘Morning’’ section,
there are forebodings of death. The lovers will
fall together like rocks into the grave, he wrote,
and the earth will continue to live. Perhaps one
appealing aspect of the love is that Neruda does
not always idealize Matilde. Sometimes he finds
her ugly, or he is not in love with her, but he
embraces that too. He accepts her completely,
even the dark in her. In the morning fullness, he
predicts their love will outlive death. In fact, the
constant threat of death in the background
makes their present joy more poignant.
The context of love expands in the ‘‘After-
noon’’ section with the theme of coming home
and Matilde as an earth goddess presiding over
the home. The activity of her hands moves all over
the day, creating order and life as she touches the
flowers and even the syllables of his poems that
ring like bells. Her hands are there beside him in
the dark like a bird with closed wings. In ‘‘Sonnet
XXXVI,’’ he says the soil opens for her hands
when she plants flowers. Having identified her as
the life force of the earth, he wants her life-giving
hands on his eyes in ‘‘Sonnet LXXXIX’’ when he
dies. Death, however, is a momentary thought in
the ‘‘Afternoon.’’ The man and woman reign over
their love and home like a king and queen. Love
has expanded from being about Pablo and Mat-
ilde to Man and Woman living in harmony with
the rhythms of earth. Even problems cannot dis-
turb their honeyed days that he calls a sort of
natural eternal life (Sonnet XLVIII).
The tone changes in the ‘‘Evening’’ sonnets;
the lovers cannot completely hide from the world.
Sorrow is rising and falling like a tide in the human
family, and it seeps into their paradise as well. His
poems, however, will exhaust the envy and spite.
The word ‘‘love’’ in his poems can bring the spring,
he declares. In ‘‘Sonnet LVII,’’ he confronts the
critics of his poetry who say that his lyric gift is
gone, that he can only connect to the people
through political poetry. His love sonnets to Mat-
ilde show this is false; he has been reborn as both a
man and an artist through her love. Images of
dark, of winter, and a wasteland recur in this
section, but Matilde is his refuge and daily bread.
Love has to bear grief as well as joy, and it has
expanded now to include the world and its trou-
bles. Their love is strong enough to survive this,
and his poems can overcome hate with love.
The ‘‘Evening’’ sonnets end with ‘‘Sonnet
LXXVIII’’ that explains what Neruda stands for.
He turns his exclusive gaze from Matilde momen-
tarily as if to address readers and include them in
the love sonnets. He is a simple man who loves his
fellowmen.Hesays,‘‘Iloveyou,’’inawaythat
suggests both Matilde and all people. He has stood
for the truth and fought against what was wrong.
With death he will go into oblivion, but in the
name of love, he wants to build a bonfire on the
mountain. This declaration was developed further
in Neruda’s Nobel acceptance speech in which heLOVE HAS EXPANDED FROM BEING ABOUT
PABLO AND MATILDE TO MAN AND WOMAN
LIVING IN HARMONY WITH THE RHYTHMS OF
EARTH.’’Sonnet LXXXIX