Widower's Tango by Pablo Neruda - Essay Example

no. "Widower's Tango" by Pablo Neruda "Jealousy, lack of trust, mental abuse, threat of death and fear between Josie Bliss and Pablo Neruda, the two paramours, in Pablo Neruda's poem "Widower's Tango" were the essential reasons that led to failed affiliation” (Neruda and Merwin 74). Pablo Neruda wrote the poem to expound on the suffering felt by a widower over the demise of his much-loved wife. It is written as a message to the dead-loved one whom he talks about as wicked one and to the widower.

It is likely that the departed one is considered wicked by the speaker because now they are asleep in heaven; however, the widower, who endured to stay alive is predestined to a lonely and single life. The life that was of pain and the same could be described as what fate had for him (Neruda and Merwin 76). Neruda was not married to Josie Bliss, but they tempted to live together so that they could tangle in amazing sexual freedom and pleasure. Along their life, it seems that the hell broke loose, and they separated to live a separate life.

Their separation was not because of castration or distrust fears (that drove Pablo Neruda away), but it was on a sexual connection where Neruda contacted a mystery powerful sexual oomph that freaked and forced him to run away (Neruda and Merwin89) from the Bliss. He later changed his mind and relocated to Colombo. The move to Colombo was a means to escape the controls of the ever tightfisted and desperate Josie Bliss, his wife, who steadily became threatening that her jealous outbursts turned into a disorder.

Her displeasure drove her to unrestrained paroxysms. In Colombo, Bliss wrote several letters in which he anticipated from abroad made her furious and resentful, she hid the letters without opening them and frowned at the air he exhaled (Neruda and Merwin 95). Neruda had an abnormal life after his separation form Bliss. Sometimes a bright light would wake him up, a ghost heartrending on the other side of his mosquito net. According to him, it was Josie Bliss, clad in white robes; showing off her sharpened, long native knife.

He further noted that, Bliss was one walking around my bed for hours at a time and without quite having intentions to kill him. During these horrifying moments, Neruda claimed that Bliss used to tell him, one day when he dies her terrors will end, and a day after his demise she would carry out covert rituals to make him remain faithful (Neruda and Merwin 110). While he was in Ceylon, Bliss settled in the outskirts of wellawatta she looked happier than she had ever been before. Her house was undeveloped; he napped on a camp bed.

His only companions were a tamed mongoose, dog, and a domestic boy. Solitude and calm environment broke a totally different and unanticipated storm, Josie Bliss. She was a love infatuated terrorist, capable of doing anything. For a few days, she was staying with a Ceylonese native Mr. Fernando who succeeded to persuade her of the impracticality of staying in Ceylon. She made one last wish for Pablo Neruda escort her to the berth to see her off. Pablo Neruda agreed, and as the boat was about to take off, Bliss unexpectedly turned around and held her by a flurry of grief and affection, she covered his face with kisses and washed him with her tears (Neruda and Merwin 112).

She kissed his arms and then his suits in a kind of a customary and suddenly slithered down to his shoes. This showed the amount or degree of love that existed between them regardless of the separation. He could not request her to give up her trip and leave the boat that was taking her far away for good and instead go and stay with him. His better decision stopped him from making such a mistake but his heart received a scratch that is still part of him. He chose to be a poet and not to live poetically which he confessed after leaving her, that depressing and disastrous moment for many was a noble matter for him, Depressed, a widowers’ sorrow is the actual recollect.

Pablo Neruda favored to write about Josie Bliss than to live with her. The conversion of urine into honey, a kind of psychological honey is what led to Neruda - Josie Bliss separation. Moreover, Josie Bliss incidents suggest that their separation was pegged on Neruda’s reluctance to forget (Neruda and Merwin 114) and pride that never made him reconsider his decisions. After the inhuman ending of the affair, Neruda had many women visitors who passed through his bedroom to help appease his remorse and boredom.

In the poem, Pablo refers to Josie Bliss as a La Maligna meaning, the Evil one (Neruda and Merwin 118). Work Cited Neruda, Pablo, and W S. Merwin. Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair. New York, N.Y., U.S.A: Penguin Books, 1993. Print.