There's a real thrill in reading a line like "Not marble, nor the gilded monuments/Of princes, shall outlive this powerful rhyme" (1066): Shakespeare, writing four hundred years ago, was right. Through four centuries of war and disease and genocide and destruction, Shakespeare's sonnets have lived on unaltered, along with the sweet memory of his cherished friend. In the sonnets provided in the Norton Anthology, Shakespeare dedicates a lot of space to his "ingrafting," his ability to, as the Norton Anthology puts it, "renew by grafting, implant beauty again by [his] verse." (1063) Shakespeare, here, is operating just like this century's most popular poets (i.e. rappers): he's bragging about his artistic abilities within the context of his art. Except the gorgeous prose that surrounds these "brags"--and the fact that he was right about his art's longevity--turns these little interjections into something else entirely.*
Because in the sonnets provided, it would seem that everything, to Shakespeare, invokes art or the act of creation. He thematically links childbirth and the act of writing in those first few sonnets. His foolhardy, beautiful friend seems entirely averse to the idea of having a child, which in Shakespeare's eyes is tantamount to giving into Time: how will one's legacy live on otherwise? And so Shakespeare takes it upon himself to keep his beloved alive through his prose. "So long as men can breathe or eyes can see," he says, "So long lives this [poem], and gives live to thee."
But Time itself is also a creator, in Shakespeare's eyes. In sonnet 19, Shakespeare pleads with Time: "O carve not with thy hours my love's fair brow/Nor draw no lines there with thine antique pen" (1064). Notice his choice of instrument: Time and Shakespeare are wielding the same tools here--although for entirely different ends. (Shakespeare is trying to preserve his friend in all of his glory; unfeeling Time is trying to kill him.) Yet once again, the sonnet's last two lines invoke a triumphant defiance of Time's ravages: "Yet do thy worst, old Time: despite thy wrong/My love shall in my verse ever live young."
So for all his boasting, does Shakespeare keep his beloved friend alive through his prose? Are Shakespeare's words, four hundred years after the fact, convincingly recreating the memory of this man long since physically lost to Time? It would seem so. Shakespeare loves this man, but he does not idealize him. Take, for example, sonnet 35, a gorgeous treatise on human imperfection. Roses and silver fountains, the moon and the sun: nothing is perfect, Shakespeare is saying, and his subject's base "imperfection" is in fact what renders him so life-like in the mind of the reader.
*Here's my own interjection that I couldn't really fit into the text above: that a) every freestyle rapper I've even seen has spent at least 30% of their performance talking about how good they are at freestyle rapping, that b) I thought this might have been a recent trend and that c) no, of course not, nothing is new under the sun, not only was Shakespeare doing this four hundred years ago but, as the always resourceful Norton Anthology footnotes point out, "The boast of immortality for one's verse was a convention going back to the Greek and Roman classics."
It is amazing that Shakespeare's works survived so long and provide us with the immortalized version of his lover. I'm sure there were thousands of poets throughout history who made similar claims and failed, much like many of the rappers you mentioned.
ReplyDeleteThe sonnet that really got me thinking about this theme was Sonnet 106. I interpreted the sonnet as saying that when the narrator read the old poems describing lovers he saw the shade of his own lover and those poets were only prophesying about the coming of this new, greater beauty. My question was then, does Shakespeare really immortalize his subject or just preserve a shadow that we see reflected in the beauties in our own lives? Does Shakespeare preserve a more complete version of his lover than the older poets? I don't think so. When I read his poems I did not feel the immortalized presence of the great beauty as much as I felt the narrator's even.
I took a lot from the poems that you seemed to point out, especially the author's attempt to create an enduring image of himself as a writer.I feel that the poet's primary goal in his writing was to leave behind a lasting impression of himself. Shakespeare seeks to create the opportunity for his memory to live on, and through his writing he is able to accomplish this. I liked at the end of your rumination that you were able o relate the material back to a real life context, as i feel this helps in furthering understanding.
ReplyDeleteFirst of all, I think the title of this rumination is very clever! I agree that Shakespeare wrote these poems for a reason and that reason was for his work to live on and lasts over time.Yes, one would say that Shakespeare may have been bragging, but I think that he had every right to show off his work, because he worked so hard and wanted all to see-this includes us, and people in centuries from now. I thought it was interesting how you made the connection to today's rappers. Like Shakespeare, they have found a way to have their work be a memory about them and the points they are trying to prove. This was a great real life, modern example to use to prove that things have never really changed. If people have something important to say or want someone to be remembered they will make a statement and surely, it/that person will be remembered by all, even if the one reading or listening does not know that person personally.
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