If You Forget Me

In “If You Forget Me,” Neruda explores how love is a mutual exchange, which can be called reciprocity. This reciprocity includes the flourishing of love, as well as the end of love, or the dying of love. When love is given by both people, the speaker and his beloved (Neruda and his wife), are connected by “everything that exists” (Line 12). Their reciprocal love is evoked by celestial and earthly things, like the moon and a tree branch. The beloved is unavoidable, appearing in a fire’s ashes, as well as the night sky. However, this emotional state—that is, being reminded of the beloved by everything—can change if the beloved does not reciprocate the speaker’s love.

The dying of love is experienced in the same way by the speaker and his beloved. If she stops loving him gradually, then he stops loving her gradually. On the other hand, if she forgets him suddenly, then he forgets her just as abruptly. These are reciprocal relationships. The third and fourth stanzas focus on clearly conveying the idea of reciprocity with conversational and direct language, and the fifth stanza complicates the if-then construction of the previous two stanzas. Neruda uses conditional, or if-then, statements (if something happens, then something else happens) without comparisons or other imagery in the third and fourth stanzas.