Literature Entry Week 4
For this entry I have decided to focus on Shakespeare’s Sonnet 65, which was my favourite of those selected for this week’s readings. I love the recurring theme of time which emanates from the Sonnets. This one, especially shoes this. Through his use of repitions ‘nor’ and also a repetition in the essence of the nouns used ‘brass, stone, earth, boundless sea’ in Line 1, we are immediately introduced to the strength of time, and the inevitability of death. Line 3 sees beauty (connoting youth) introduced. The image created through the use of the flower simile is perfect here because it describes the beautiful, yet fragile image of youth. This description is contrasted with the effects of time in Lines 6-7. In our tutorial we discussed the use of phonetics to impact responders here with the “wr, and r” sounds being used to portray not only the power of time, but also its brutality.
In the second half of the Sonnet, we see the poet’s focus shift from describing the hopelessness of the situation of trying to challenge time. Shakespeare now takes on a questioning approach where he asks how to preserve beauty in Lines 10 through 13 “Where, alack, Shall time’s best jewel from time’s chest lie hid, or what strong hand can hold his swift foot back, or who his spoil of beauty can forbid?” In the couplet at the end he reaches an epiphany (one which forms a recurring theme through numerous sonnets); immortality can be reached by capturing one’s beauty on paper, by writing a poem about it.
This idea is also present in one of my favourite poems ever by Keats; Ode to a Grecian Urn. It can be found in full at this address http://www.bartleby.com/101/625.html , but here are some lines which I feel convey this same theme of beauty transcending time through preservation in art:
Fair youth, beneath the trees, thou canst not leave
Thy song, nor ever can those trees be bare;
Bold Lover, never, never canst thou kiss,
Though winning near the goal-yet, do not grieve;
She cannot fade, though thou hast not thy bliss,
For ever wilt thou love, and she be fair!
........
When old age shall this generation waste,
Thou shalt remain, in midst of other woe
Than ours, a friend to man, to whom thou say'st,
'Beauty is truth, truth beauty,-that is all
Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.'
COMMENT ON ANOTHER LIVE JOURNAL:
http://aussielatina.livejournal.com/15552.html?view=17600#t17600
hey candi, i really like your poem 'Sinners', and the pictures which you accompanied it with. It actually really reminded me of the poem by Martin Niemoller which you might have read about the rise of Hitler, and the lack of resistance.
"When the Nazis came for the communists,
I remained silent;
I was not a communist.
Then they locked up the social democrats,
I remained silent;
I was not a social democrat.
Then they came for the trade unionists,
I did not speak out;
I was not a trade unionist.
Then they came for the Jews,
I did not speak out;
I was not a Jew.
When they came for me,
there was no one left to speak out for me."