HERE'S ANOTHER ESSAY I WROTE IN AN ANTIQUE AGE that misses the mark. I include the prof's comments at the end and some of his editing in red. It's helpful to see where you get off track in order to get back on. I'm sure even Shakespeare wrote a turkey or two in his time.
I did rework it a bit, but it's mostly as is, and might be helpful for those afraid of poems and poets.
Cheers, Jake
In the first fourteen sonnets there are insistent appeals by the speaker for the addressee to have a child. and preserve his present beauty through his future offspring. The speaker presents his appeals in a number of ways by, for example, stating it is the addressee’s social responsibility, his duty, to reproduce, that he woes it to the world to preserve a beauty such as his. By reproducing, he will make others happy, including the speaker. The addressee himself will be happy and in harmony with the world, and by reproducing he will be showing love to others, and so on.
The appeals vary, but the stated reason for them remains constant: Time is an enemy. It is cruel and unrelenting, and there is no escaping its effects. In Sonnet 2 for example, time “shall beseige thy brow”; in Sonnet 5, the hours will “play the tyrants”. Sonnet 12 characterizes old age as “hideous night”. Time is seen as an implacable force against which beauty has no defence. Time is the destroyer of beauty.
Shakespeare also characterizes time using imagery of the seasons: the “gaudy spring” of Sonnet 1 and “forty winters” of sonnet 2, for example. He uses images of both gardens and graves, of day and night, sunrise and sunset to describe the movement from youth to old age. In addition, he uses images from everyday life—a mirror, a clock, a house, music, even references to bookkeeping and usury to depict time’s effect upon the beauty of the addressee and of the urgent need the speaker feels for the addressee to preserve his beauty.
As well, up to the end of Sonnet 13, time is seen as an earthly event. Its effects are visible and understandable in terms of the earth’s natural cycles and events. However, in Sonnet 14 Shakespeare introduces a new concept of time: ‘Astrological’ time. This concept introduces a view of time that is both cyclical, that is, time as a continuous movement from birth to death, an earthly time; as well as the view of time which is also mutable, that is it is somehow affected by a higher power—the stars. When Shakespeare’s speaker uses the analogy of astrological prophesy in the context of comparing the addressee’s eyes to the “constant stars” that act to guide him in divining the future, the idea of time being transcended is introduced. (This concept will be elaborated on in Sonnet 15.)
If the future is predictable, then what the speaker has characterized as the tyrany of time, is to some extent, overcome. This view of time being transcended is an important one for the development of the theme of poetry as an agent of immortality. Poetry will be claimed to have the function of preserving that which time destroys.
In the procreation sonnets, then, the way time is to be challenged is by having offspring. Sexual reproduction is the only route open to the addressee. Sonnet 14 acts to destabilize this assumption somewhat by introducing the transcendent as a possibility. By Sonnet 15, Shakespeare is ready, through his speaker, to make a larger claim on time’s domain, by introducing poetry as a method to combat the ravages of time.
In Sonnet 15 he argues in favour of poetry. So we must ask: How valid are his criteria? And why is time seen as a tyrant that must be overcome? Why must the addressee’s beauty be preserved? Can you preserve beauty? And how do children guarantee this apparently literal preservation of beauty? At the beginning of Sonnet 15, then, we are left with contradictions that will not be addressed within the framework of this new theme of poetry Shakespeare introduces here. Rather, he suggests, these questions will will be incorporated into it.
As well, in the procreation sonnets Shakespeare characterizes his speaker as being contradictatory around what he wants to do: Does he want to preserve the addressee’s physical beauty, his “substance” (Sonnet 5)? Is it the memory of his beauty he wishes to preserve? Is it the addressee’s happiness, or his love of others, or his “truth and beauty” (Sonnet 15) that needs preservation? By introducting in Sonnet 15 the possibility of poetry as an alternative to procreation, the ‘how’ of preserving the speaker’s beauty (whatever “beauty” finally means to the speaker) is, for a short time, problematic. Will poetry or procreation prove to be the most effective agent of preservation? Sonnets 16 and 17 debate this point, while Sonnets 18 onward seem to conclude that poetry is the only way to preserve whatever quality or characteristic of the addressee the speaker deems important.
By Sonnet 15 we are presented with contradictions: the contradictions between what the speaker wants to do and why, and how he will accomplish it. Future sonnets concerned with poetry as their theme are also contradictatory. They often emphasize how ineffective poetry or the poet’s skills are in accomplishing their aims. Poetry’s aims, too, are at times as contradictory as they are are varied. In some sonnets we are told the poem is to be read as a record of the speaker’s love for the addressee. In others, its purpose is to compete with rival poets to represent the addressee’s beauty faithfully, or else to record the speaker’s inspiration, or to record the memory of the addressee, or his youth or beauty. Again, these often conflicting purposes for using poetry as a means of preservation remind the reader that the speaker’s logic is flawed. In Sonnet 15, the speaker presents his criteria for writing a poem. He writes his poem, or “engraft[s]”, he tells us, because he must preserve “perfection” which lasts “but a little moment”. He goes on to say that humankind are like actors—“showes”—on a stage and are dominated by a “secret influence” of the stars. Time will not be transcended through astrological influences, as was suggested in Sonnet 14. Rather, it will be assisted in its promotion of decay by the stars. In the second quatrain, time’s power of decay is further emphasized by the more earthly images of men as plants rising in “their youthful sap” and declining into rot. The speaker tells us that these considerations, as outlined in the first two quatrains, bring the image of the addressee to his mind, in the third quatrain. Here he envisions time and decay debating over ways to alter the addressee’s youth into “sullied night”. This, in turn, demands of the speaker that he engage “time” in a war to preserve the addressee’s youth. As “time” takes from him, he, the speaker, will “engraft” the addressee “new”.
This final line of Sonnet 15 provides an unsettling image of stasis: the cycle of decay and preservation is suggested, rather than the more natural one of decay and rebirth. The speaker seems to want ot halt the process of time in a kind of poetic ‘embalming jar’. And the reader must ask: Why should perfection be preserved? If perfection lasts but a brief moment, as the speaker suggests, what then do we make of all the other moments of existance? If perfection, by his definition, does indeed last but a brief moment, then preserving it would seem to violate one of its necessary components—its impermanence. Also, one asks why is youth considered the only ‘perfection’ worth preserving? Would not the addressee be considered worthy of preservaton if he were older? Apparently not. As well, are we just “showes” at odds with [the poem talks of "communicating" and "influencing"--not of being "at odds" per say] time and the stars? Again, the question is asked : Why are we “all at war” with time? These questions cannot be answered, of course, but only be raised as we examine the conflicting logic of many of the sonnets that seem to ask poetry to perform impossible tasks. These are the preoccupations of the speaker assigned to him by Shakespeare. He operates within this world view and his logic is influenced by his obsessions with time and preservation. Poetry cannot preserve life or beauty or youth; neither can having children, for that matter. Poetry is art, not nature. A poem is a record of an experience (or a memory). It is experience translated, and as such it is an interpretation of nature. It can neither substitute for nature nor be equated with it.
When in Sonnet 16, the speaker refers to his poetry as “barren rime”, his self criticism, while extreme, is nevertheless informative: A poem, as a recording of experience is, at best, second rate. Great poets may be able to provide great poetry, but even the greatest work will always pale in comparison to the actual experience they draw their inspiration from. Shakespeare implicitly argues, through his speaker’s contradictatory arguments, that Art will always fall short of Nature.
Sonnet 16 continues with the absurd image of warring against “tirant” time, but interestingly, the line “And fortifie your selfe in your decay”, implies a contradictatory viewpoint. “[Y]our decay” can be interpreted as the decay imposed by the enemy time or it can mean that decay is a natural part of one’s existence. However, the second meaning is difficult to maintain when connected to the seige imagery of the first two lines. But, if it is connected with the image of fortifying oneself against decay by the more “blessed” means of procreation, as the second quatrain suggests, then we are presented with a perfect example of the speaker’s difficulties. He cannot maintain the logic of his argument (that we are at war with time), and thus he slips into contradiction (or as he often does in other poems, slips into unresolved ambiguity). The absurdity of his position conflicts with the logic of his arguments. The speaker cannot decide which way to go and ends up confused, and confusing the reader.
Further contradictions in Sonnet 16 force the reader to ask: Why should life repair life’s “lines”? Why does the speaker argue for this unnatural reversal? He follows this illogical statement with a further passage whose meaning is ambiguous: [unclear passage: isn't reproduction one of the common attributes of life forms: an innate should.]
Which this (Times pensel or my pupill pen)
Neither in inward worth nor outward faire
Can make you live your selfe in eies of men,
This passage is confusing because Nature, referred to as “Times pensel”, is equated with Art by having one of Art’s tools—a “pensel”—which is impossible. And we are given to understand that neither “Times pensel” (Nature), nor his “pupill pen” (Art) [this artist] can make the addressee live in the “eies of men”. The ambiguity arises because it seems that the speaker is saying that both Nature and Art are incapable of making the addressee live. It would seem impossible to suggest that Nature cannot make someone live. But perhaps his confusion is more clearly understood in his apparent willingness to promote Art as Nature’s equal and allow it to do the job of nature, as we have earlier examined? Art is confused with Nature, [or at least with time--which may transcend Nature] it seems, at this point.
The sonnet’s couplet, however, emerges from ambiguity, into a clearer [?] resolution, and we are provided with some relief from the speaker’ confusing logic. He says the addressee, in giving himself away, keeps himself still. Initially, this would again seem to be contradictatory. How can you give yourself away and at the same time keep yourself? But when procreation suggests itself here, in terms of giving away your seed, you still can maintain yourself; you give away a part of yourself and still keep yourself. When the image of being drawn “by your owne sweet skill,” is matched with the procreation motif, the couplet resolves the sonnet’s ambiguity. The couplet suggests the person of the addressee as existing in nature, articulating his own existence and begetting children, independent of the poet and his poetry.
Finally, with all the confusing arguments surrounding the function and efficiency of poetry, both in sonnets 15 and 16 and elsewhere, it is refreshing to find arguments by the speaker that are clear and logical. In sonnet 81, there is perhaps the most balanced appreciation by the speaker of art and mortality that is to be found anywhere in the Sonnets. Here, he seems to say, death comes naturally to all, to both common and gentle folk alike. Here the addressee is seen to live, not statically preserved in a monument (of Art) but “Where breath most breaths, even in the mouths of men.” [but when poetry lives, this is "where it lives."]
Works Cited
Shakespeare, William. Shakespeare’s Sonnets. Ed. Stephen Booth. New York:. Yale University Press, 1977.
Prof Comments:
Don McDonnell
Dear Don, this paper has all the virtues of your participation in class. it is very closely reasoned, full of accurately and subtly observed detail, and certainly in grasp of the big issues. open to paradox, discontinuities, ironies. in short, you have a great gift for literary interpretation.
Nevertheless, I unexpectedly found the paper hard to hold onto as I read. I think that I saw the trees very vividly, but not the forest. the forest is there, to be sure, and as I go back over the paper reading the first sentences of each paragraph, I can see it. It would be best, of course, if I found both forest and trees were visible at the same time. (I do realize, by the way, that some of this problem stems from Shakespeare, whose speaker seems to be discovering himself in the act of advising the addressee.) To achieve mutual visibility, may I suggest offering the reader summaries and glimpses ahead; signposting; transitional paragraphs; that way, the reader will continually be reminded of the big picture. I should think this would be a fairly easy adaptation for you to make as a writer, especially because I sense that in conversation you are very tuned into where your auditor is coming from, and able to make adjustments. (Maybe it is easier for you in conversation (where there is feedback) than in writing.)
There is something else about your style I could suggest, but though it is a minor problem, you might find it hard to repair. In the first three sentences of your paper, I detected 5 redundancies. None of this stops me from discerning what your meaning must be. But this high rate suggests to me that you may be so strongly committed to getting your ideas structured, that you don't pay much attention to the packaging.
I guess my role, therefore, is to assure you that your ideas are top-rate, and your argumentation is strong. You least of anyone in the class should have doubts on that score; I would like to suggest, therefore, that you simply accept that you can afford to direct your energies where they may not presently be at work, in the service of rounding out your literary expression.
I would enjoy talking with you about your "career as an essayist." My ideas of what your next move might be may not be the important ones--the ones that matter to you.
Randy Grade=79.
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