Love Sonnet Number 5

I’d like to start out by saying that I frequently refer back to original Spanish poem in order to examine the subtle elements of the piece that were lost in translation. I’d also like to say that this poem is pretty sweet.

Pablo Neruda’s One Hundred Love Sonnets, of which this poem is the fifth, presents the theme of love in flowing, image-rich sonnets. The work was written for and passionately dedicated to the poet’s third wife, Matilde Urrutia, who is explicitly referred to in this love sonnet.
The poem is written in a traditional Spanish sonnet form; in the original piece each line contains fourteen syllables with the spoken stress on the second to last syllable of each line (versos llanos). The poem of course has two quatrains, which when taken together could be considered an octet, followed by a sextet.
Neruda begins his poem by introducing the extended metaphor that extends through the first two quatrains of the poem. By describing his love in terms of the beautiful, bountiful, thriving, and rejuvenating earth, the speaker says that he did not build his love upon the abstract notions and ideas surrounding the woman whom he loves, but rather that he bases his love upon her physical presence and beauty. The prevalent images of fruit and rich lands provide the reader with a sense of growth within the beautiful landscape of the woman whom the speaker loves.
In the closing sextet (which could be considered two linked tercets), the speaker leaves the extended metaphor and directly addresses his love; this effectively creates a turn within the course of the poem. The speaker tells his lover that before they were in love he forgot her kisses, but his heart remembered her. In the original Spanish text the phrase that refers says he forgot her kisses (me olvide de tus besos) implies that the speaker purposefully forgot her kisses; this means that before he truly loved he tried not to, but ultimately he found himself in love. The speaker then describes himself as once being a wounded man running through the streets ‘until he understood what [he] had found, / love, [his] territory of kisses and volcanoes’ (this is a more direct translation of the last two lines).
An important piece of the poem to consider from the original Spanish is the use of the preterite tense in the closing sextet. In the Spanish language, there are two verb tenses for the past tense: the imperfect tense, which suggests a continuity or permanence of some action in the past, and the preterite tense, which indicates an occurrence that took place immediately at a specific, defined, and closed time. The speaker here uses the preterite, which implies that he was in his ‘wounded’ state for an exact and abbreviated period in time and that he no longer is in and will never again be in that state. Instead, the speaker found his territory of kisses and volcanoes at a definite moment and ended his brief time outside the grace of love.
The speaker, with his many referrals to an outside ‘you,’ addresses the poem to his woman; while this could limit our relation to the poem, it instead forces the reader directly into the perspective of the speaker. By creating a distant second-person center for the poem, the reader is placed into the thoughts and feelings of the speaker as he relates them to his love. This piece may seem like the speaker’s sentimental reflection on his love; however, by directing the words at a distant you, the reader gains the inside perspective, views, and feelings of the speaker that creates a personal experience within the microcosm of this poem.

What does the speaker mean by ‘a land of kisses and volcanoes’?
What is meant by ‘your night… your air… [your] dawn’?
Do you think that this poem is solely about the physical side of the speaker’s relationship, or is more implied within the metaphor of the earth? If the poem is completely physical, is it a fair presentation of love? If there is something more, what is it?

The Stranger

For this AP English novel assignment thing, I chose to read The Stranger by Albert Camus. I have finished the novel and I am now considering several pieces of literary criticism to use in my essay.
While I enjoyed the novel, I am still pondering some of its subtle meanings. The characterization of Mersault is most perplexing; although Camus' ideas are fascinating, the full existential implications of his main character's personality, descriptions, and speech are complicated and difficult to interpret.
Camus said that this novel is about the nakedness of man when faced with the absurd (or something like that...). Indeed, the notion of a man being tried for an unwitting and unintentional murder and being convicted for essentially lacking the morals that his peers expect him to have is ridiculous, yet at the same time fully plausible and frightening. The jury should not have the power to judge a man's lifestyle, yet Mersault's 'nakedness,' the nakedness of man when faced with life, allows them to do so.
Also, I noticed that Camus' descriptions are purely physical and seem to center around light and dark, heat and cold. Mersault frequently tells the reader how stiflingly warm it is and how he is blinded by the intense light outside; in Mersault's apparently existential view of life those repressive sensations, along with the desire to 'go back to his place' with his girlfriend, is perhaps all that matters.