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الزهرة الخضراء

08-04-2007, 08:49 PM

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2. Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,
And often is his gold complexion dimm'd;
And every fair from fair sometime declines,
By chance or nature's changing course untrimm'd

This is what I was afraid of, why I'm using the word "reflection" more than "commentary." It looks like the sun, in his shining, destroys his own gilded appearance. That irony gives "fair from fair" a double meaning: it means that something was more fair before, and has declined into something less fair but still fair, certainly. It also means that physical beauty (note that the sun was tied to passion and immoderation above) destroys itself, in a sense, because its most perfect moments lay behind it, and comparison with what was always make what is look bad.

Now how does that happen? I'm saying it happens because of the nature of time, and Shakespeare's "nature's changing course untrimm'd" aids that interpretation. But Shakespeare gives us the possibility that "chance" is involved. What is the difference between "chance" and "nature's changing course?"

I have mentioned before that to try and totally control chance - like we try to do via modern natural science and the social science - is to reject Nature as a guide. But that doesn't mean that using Nature as a guide is complete openness to "yeah, stuff happens." That's the way the vulgar view Nature - "I'm made this way, this is how I feel I want to act" - and they excuse their randomness because all they can see is chance, since strict causal relations aren't in effect regarding the human things.

Now that's an Aristotlean conception of the problem of chance and nature. I think Shakespeare is a lot more Machiavellian (coming soon: an essay on Macbeth), and that "chance" here is something more substantive. It is that which can be explained by Nature, perhaps, but more importantly, is just as much as a threat as Nature. If we go to Nature as a guide, then fair from fair will always decline. We want an immortal beauty, one that we recognize and establish, not one that exists when we cultivate our tastes and make them better.

3. But thy eternal summer shall not fade
Nor lose possession of that fair thou owest;
Nor shall Death brag thou wander'st in his shade,
When in eternal lines to time thou growest:
So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,
So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.

Even though this formally has the look of a Shakespearean sonnet, it divides 8 and 6 thematically. This is really a Petrarchian sonnet. And I wonder if Shakespeare is making a joke about poets that think they can make love everlasting through their verse.

For immortality here rests on these lines not merely being seen and read aloud, but on men remembering this poem, and trying to imagine the audience's beauty. It does make sense that immortality is conventional - it is because we choose to remember, choose to honor, that things last from age to age. But what utter arrogance is involved in asserting that one is giving another immortality through these lines! The joke is that the poem will last, while our poor audience dies. He is subject to the problem of the sun, after all, for he only seemingly differs from the sun by degree.

And then again, we have seen in the first few lines that the audience could very well be mature and moderate. And if that's the case, he is qualitatively different from the sun, and conventions are not used to make him immortal, but conventions come about because he is already in touch with something immortal. He exercises virtue in a sense, and therefore is part of something all men in all ages understand. I would imagine that it is the remembrance of virtue in the poem that makes the poem immortal, and thus brings our audience back to life.
http://inrethinking.blogspot.com/2007/01/some-personal-notes-re-shakespeare.html
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And every fair from fair sometime declines

All beautiful things (every fair) occasionally become inferior in comparison with their essential previous state of beauty (from fair). They all decline from perfection

By chance, or nature's changing course untrimmed

By chance accidents, or by the fluctuating tides of nature, which are not subject to control, nature's changing course untrimmed.
untrimmed - this can refer to the ballast (trimming) on a ship which keeps it stable; or to a lack of ornament and decoration. The greater difficulty however is to decide which noun this adjectival participle should modify. Does it refer to nature, or chance, or every fair in the line above, or to the effect of nature's changing course? KDJ adds a comma after course, which probably has the effect of directing the word towards all possible antecedents. She points out that nature's changing course could refer to women's monthly courses, or menstruation, in which case every fair in the previous line would refer to every fair woman, with the implication that the youth is free of this cyclical curse, and is therefore more perfect

But thy eternal summer shall not fade

Referring forwards to the eternity promised by the ever living poet in the next few lines,
through his verse
http://www.shakespeares-sonnets.com/xviiicomm.htm
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Commentary

This sonnet is certainly the most famous in the sequence of Shakespeare's sonnets; it may be the most famous lyric poem in English. Among Shakespeare's works, only lines such as "To be or not to be" and "Romeo, Romeo, wherefore art thou Romeo?" are better-known. This is not to say that it is at all the best or most interesting or most beautiful of the sonnets; but the simplicity and loveliness of its praise of the beloved has guaranteed its place.
On the surface, the poem is simply a statement of praise about the beauty of the beloved; summer tends to unpleasant extremes of windiness and heat, but the beloved is always mild and temperate. Summer is incidentally personified as the "eye of heaven" with its "gold complexion"; the imagery throughout is simple and unaffected, with the "darling buds of May" giving way to the "eternal summer", which the speaker promises the beloved. The language, too, is comparatively unadorned for the sonnets; it is not heavy with alliteration or assonance, and nearly every line is its own self-contained clause--almost every line ends with some punctuation, which effects a pause.
Sonnet 18 is the first poem in the sonnets not to explicitly encourage the young man to have children. The "procreation" sequence of the first 17 sonnets ended with the speaker's realization that the young man might not need children to preserve his beauty; he could also live, the speaker writes at the end of Sonnet 17, "in my rhyme." Sonnet 18, then, is the first "rhyme"--the speaker's first attempt to preserve the young man's beauty for all time. An important theme of the sonnet (as it is an important theme throughout much of the sequence) is the power of the speaker's poem to defy time and last forever, carrying the beauty of the beloved down to future generations. The beloved's "eternal summer" shall not fade precisely because it is embodied in the sonnet: "So long as men can breathe or eyes can see," the speaker writes in the couplet, "So long lives this, and this gives life to thee
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More links
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shakespeare's_sonnets#Structure
http://utopia.utexas.edu/lesson_plans/2004/oh_sonnet.php
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الزهرة الخضراء

09-04-2007, 10:41 PM

Rhyme Scheme:

Elizabethan Sonnet: noted in the poem as abab, cdcd, efef, gg Figurative Language: (Here are a few examples of figurative language used by Shakespeare)

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Metaphor -

1. Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May (the speaker is comparing his love to the harsh winds of summer, saying she is nicer/better)

2. But thy eternal summer shall not fade (The speaker is comparing his love to summer again, and this time saying summer will fade but her beauty won't)

3. summer's lease hath all too short a date (The speaker is saying that summer is too brief and that his loves beauty is not.

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Personification -
1. the eye of heaven shines (meaning the son - giving it the human characteristic of having a face.)

2. Nor shall Death brag thou wander'st in his shade (again giving human characteristics, but this time to death, saying it cannot brag about taking his love's beauty - he writes of her beauty which will outlast death)

3. So long lives this and this gives life to thee (The speaker's poems, words, give life to her and her beauty)

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Interpretation:
In this sonnet, Shakespeare asks if he should compare his lady or his love (or perhaps just some person he admires) to a summer day, but decides not a good idea to since, as he notes, that his subject is far more lovely and predictable. He says it would not be a good comparison, because summer is hot, unpredictable and sometimes unkind. He then tell his subject that as long has there are men who can read his poems, his subject will be forever alive.
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