| Abstract: | The contradictory and distorted portrayal of certain female attributes in Pablo Neruda's Veinte poemas de amor y una canción desesperada is an attempt to understand and unveil, from an adolescent's point of view, the mystery of the "beloved." The lack of knowledge about the female explains the ambivalence and insecurity in the representation of the woman, which resolves itself through a strategy of metamorphosis and textual dissection. Nevertheless, to discover and possess these female attributes is an illusion, a mirage created by masculine desire that only succeeds in approaching the beloved through a series of metamorphoses and fragmentation that actually obscures her further. But the effort is not in vain. The desire to understand (and love) makes possible the pursuit of the female who always is the same, although somehow different: the unknown stranger. |
