Because I Love You
Because I Love You - context Summary
Dedicated to Matilde Urrutia
This sonnet appears in Pablo Neruda's Cien sonetos de amor (published 1959) and is dedicated to his third wife, Matilde Urrutia. It stages the push-and-pull of an intimate relationship, moving between love and hate, waiting and indifference, cold and burning passion. The speaker frames love as fluctuating and consuming, confessing blind devotion and the sense of personal annihilation that intense desire can bring. In the collection’s context, the poem reads as a personal declaration that blends erotic longing with the darker, sacrificial language of devotion.
Read Complete AnalysesI do not love you except because I love you; I go from loving to not loving you, from waiting to not waiting for you my heart moves from cold to fire. I love you only because it's you the one I love; I hate you deeply, and hating you bend to you, and the measure of my changing love for you is that I do not see you but love you blindly. Maybe January light will consume my heart with its cruel ray, stealing my key to true calm. In this part of the story I am the one who dies, the only one, and I will die of love because I love you, because I love you, love, in fire and blood.
Just because I love you.