Analysis of I Love You Except Because I Love You by Pablo Neruda

The Poet

Another love poem by Pablo Neruda. The poem title "I do not love you except because I love you" is a poem that portrayed the unhappy condition of someone (male or female) missing dearly the presence of his or her lover.

The Overview

The poem showed that a lover will go from loving someone to hating such a person for maintaining absence.

The verse 2 of the poem put it this way:
"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."

The theme of the poem is crystal clear with the repeated use of "love" within the 3 stanza free verse.

The fervent followers of this blog will recollect Analysis of Absence by Pablo Neruda , where I wrote "Absence by Pablo Neruda has the theme of love and optimism. Neruda composed the poem on the ground of love; based on the context of the poem, we see two lovers without close contact. While the female feels hurt, the poem speaker composed this reassuring poem to prove that his love for her remains intact."

The Poem

According to poemhunter poetry archive, the goes thus:

I 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.

Enunwa Chukwudinma S.
aka samueldpoetry
(the Leo with wings flying)