19 pages • 38 minutes read
If You Forget Me
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Symbols & Motifs
Moon
The “crystal moon” (Line 5) carries the speaker to the beloved. It symbolizes the emotional connection between them. The speaker also refers to the moon, as well as the tree branch and all other things, as “little boats / that sail” (Line 14-15). The moon is a boat that takes the speaker to the beloved’s metaphorical island—The Heart’s Home. Neruda having the speaker look at the moon draws upon a long tradition of love poetry. Poetic speakers looking at the moon are frequently used in ancient Chinese and Japanese poetry—such as in the works of Li Bai and Izumi Shikibu—as well as in ancient Greek mythology, such as in the myth of Endymion, which poets like John Keats wrote about in the 1800s. Neruda’s symbolic moon can be read as an affirmation that all love poetry about the moon carries the speaker to the beloved. Every love poem he reads relates to his personal experience of reciprocal love.
Fire
Fire appears twice in the poem, in Lines 8 and 44, which reflects how “fire is repeated” (Line 44). The fireplace in the second stanza symbolizes the domestic sphere, and it—like the moon—carries the speaker to his beloved. In the final stanza, Neruda uses the repeated fire to symbolize how the speaker reciprocates the beloved’s affection and passion. In a metatextual sense, Neruda hints at his repetition of the poetic trope of fire as a symbol of love. His poem specifically mobilizes the fire symbol as part of his overall goal to define how Love Is Reciprocity (Mutual Exchange).
Flower
Neruda also uses a flower to symbolize the beloved’s affection. The speaker says, “if each day a flower / climbs up to your lips to seek me” (Lines 41-42), before discussing how he will reciprocate. The flower emanating from the lips could be read as a symbol of kissing, a specific form of physical affection, as well as affection and love more generally. The loving and sensual act symbolized by the flower is what causes the speaker to exclaim, “ah my love, ah my own” (Line 43). Reciprocal love gives the speaker a sense of possession over the beloved. Furthermore, how the symbolic flower “seek[s]” (Line 42) the speaker echoes how “everything carries” (Line 11) the speaker to his beloved in the second stanza. Flowers, like the moon and fire, are easily recognized as a trope of love poetry. They commonly have a symbolic association with sensual physical acts.
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By Pablo Neruda
