I Love You Without Knowing How
I Love You Without Knowing How - context Summary
Published 1959, Dedicated to Matilde
This sonnet appears in Neruda's Cien sonetos de amor, published in 1959 and dedicated to Matilde Urrutia, his third wife and muse. It frames love as intimate, unadorned fusion rather than a series of ornate images, presenting a steady voice that insists on simple, physical and inward unity. Read in the context of the collection, the poem is part of a larger effort to catalogue and celebrate a sustained, personal relationship, using concise, declarative lines to convey devotion and the erasure of separate selves within intimacy.
Read Complete AnalysesI do not love you as if you were salt-rose, or topaz, or the arrow of carnations the fire shoots off. I love you as certain dark things are to be loved, in secret, between the shadow and the soul. I love you as the plant that never blooms but carries in itself the light of hidden flowers; thanks to your love a certain solid fragrance, risen from the earth, lives darkly in my body. I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where. I love you straightforwardly, without complexities or pride; so I love you because I know no other way than this: where I does not exist, nor you, so close that your hand on my chest is my hand, so close that your eyes close as I fall asleep.
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