Comments on sonnet 18原文加解析

Comments on sonnet 18原文加解析 Comments on 'Sonnet 18' Shakespeare's sonnets are concerned with love, beauty, poetry, and, perhaps most pervasively, on the force that the passage of time exerts upon all three. Sonnet 18 The main premise of the sonnet is that the speaker compares a person's beauty with a summer's day, which points to the brief quality of one's youth and beauty. The point then is the ephemeral quality of youth and beauty. The first two lines establish the comparison and line 2 establishes who is the more radiant, but then the sonnet proceeds not with praise of the person's beauty but with a list of possible faults in a summer's day. The rest of the first quatrain and the entire second quatrain dwell on negative aspects that can mar a summer's day. The third quatrain starts to move in the real direction of the poem, which is to say that the young person's beauty and radiance (which we must assume would fade and be lost like the ephemeral summer's day) will never fade because Sonnet 18 will keep it alive. This, the main point, is then summed up in the ending couplet. Line by line (our interpretation): Line 1 If I compared you to a summer day – (how do you think this should be read? Would an ironic tone already be appropriate here?) Line 2I'd have to say you are more beautiful and serene – (now he flatters the person he is writing to) Line 3By comparison, summer is rough on budding life – (one may begin to wonder, here the speaker describes the beauty of the person not by direct referral to his or her beauty but by looking at what the summer's day can be in a negative sense) Line 4 And doesn't last long either Line 5 At times the summer sun (the eye of heaven) is too hot – (the speaker continues with the negative aspects of the summer's day) Line 6 And at other times clouds dim its beautiful golden glow Line 7 Everything that is nice in nature will at some point decline – (every fair may also refer to every fair woman who will lose her looks to age) Line 8 The decline might be by chance or by the natural workings of nature – (neither can be controlled) Line 9 However, you yourself will not fade ("Aah, finally," thinks the person in the poem, "we're getting to my positive traits, I hope." Line 10Nor lose ow nership of your fairness – (here is the sense of immortality as opposed to the ephemeral qualities of a summer's day) Line 11 Not even death will claim you Line 12 Because these lines I write will immortalize you – (the eternal lines must be seen as the sonnet itself) Line 13 As long as men breathe and see (as long as there are people who appreciate poetry. Does this suggest the poet's self-praise of his own abilities? Your beauty will fade, but by gosh my poetry is so good you've just been immortalized)? Line 14 We interpret "this" to be referring to the sonnet itself. So this sonnet will continue to live and it will give you immortal life. This is one of the most famous of all the sonnets, justifiably so. But it would be a mistake to take it entirely in isolation, for it links in with so many of the other sonnets through the themes of the descriptive power of verse; the ability of the poet to depict the fair youth adequately, or not; and the immortality conveyed through being hymned in these 'eternal lines'. It is noticeable that here the poet is full of confidence that his verse will live as long as there are people drawing breath upon the earth, whereas later he apologises for his poor wit and his humble lines which are inadequate to encompass all the youth's excellence. Now, perhaps in the early days of his love, there is no such self-doubt and the eternal summer of the youth is preserved forever in the poet's lines. The poem also works at a rather curious level of achieving its objective through dispraise. The summer's day is found to be lacking in so many respects (too short, too hot, too rough, sometimes too dingy), but curiously enough one is left with the abiding impression that 'the lovely boy' is in fact like a summer's day at its best, fair, warm, sunny, temperate, one of the darling buds of May, and that all his beauty has been wonderfully highlighted by the comparison. Commentary 1. Shall I compare thee to a summer's day? This is taken usually to mean 'What if I were to compare thee etc?' The stock comparisons of the loved one to all the beauteous things in nature hover in the background throughout. One also remembers Wordsworth's lines: We'll talk of sunshine and of song, And summer days when we were young, Sweet childish days which were as long As twenty days are now. Such reminiscences are indeed anachronistic, but with the recurrence of words such as 'summer', 'days', 'song', 'sweet', it is not difficult to see the permeating influence of the Sonnets on Wordsworth's verse. 2. Thou art more lovely and more temperate: The youth's beauty is more perfect than the beauty of a summer day. more temperate - more gentle, more restrained, whereas the summer's day might have violent excesses in store, such as are about to be described. 3. Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May, May was a summer month in Shakespeare's time, because the calendar in use lagged behind the true sidereal calendar by at least a fortnight. darling buds of May- the beautiful, much loved buds of the early summer; favourite flowers. 4. And summer's lease hath all too short a date: Legal terminology. The summer holds a lease on part of the year, but the lease is too short, and has an early termination (date). 5. Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines, Sometime= on occasion, sometimes; the eye of heaven= the sun. 6. And often is his gold complexion dimmed, his gold complexion= his (the sun's) golden face. It would be dimmed by clouds and on overcast days generally. 7. 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. 8. 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. 9. 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. 10. Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow'st, Nor shall it (your eternal summer) lose its hold on that beauty which you so richly possess. ow'st = ownest, possess. By metonymy we understand 'nor shall you lose any of your beauty'. 11. Nor shall death brag thou wander'st in his shade, Several half echoes here. The biblical ones are probably 'Oh death where is thy sting? Or grave thy victory?' implying that death normally boasts of his conquests over life. And Psalms 23.3.: 'Yea though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death I will fear no evil' In classical literature the shades flitted helplessly in the underworld like gibbering ghosts. Shakespeare would have been familiar with this through Virgil's account of Aeneas' descent into the underworld in Aeneid Bk. VI. 12. When in eternal lines to time thou grow'st, in eternal lines= in the undying lines of my verse. Perhaps with a reference to progeny, and lines of descent, but it seems that the procreation theme has already been abandoned. to time thou grow'st- you keep pace with time, you grow as time grows. 13. So long as men can breathe, or eyes can see, For as long as humans live and breathe upon the earth, for as long as there are seeing eyes on the eart. 14. So long lives this, and this gives life to thee. That is how long these verses will live, celebrating you, and continually renewing your life. But one is left with a slight residual feeling that perhaps the youth's beauty will last no longer than a summer's day, despite the poet's proud boast. Sonnet 18 - 'Shall I Compare Thee to a Summer's Day?' Photo ? Lee Jamieson Introduction Sonnet 18 deserves its fame because it is one of the most beautifully written verses in the English language. The sonnet’s endurance comes from Shakespeare’s ability to capture the essence of love so cleanly and succinctly. After much debate amongst scholars, it is now generally accepted that the subject of the poem is male. In 1640, a publisher called John Benson released a highly inaccurate edition of Shakespeare’s sonnets in which he edited out the young man, replacing “he” with “she”. Benson’s revision was considered to be the standard text until 1780 when Edmond Malone returned to the 1690 quarto and re-edited the poems. Scholars soon realized that the first 126 sonnets were originally addressed to a young man sparking debates about Shakespeare’s sexuality. The nature of the relationship between the two men is highly ambiguous and it is often impossible to tell if Shakespeare is describing platonic love or erotic love. , Sonnet 18: read the full text here Commentary The opening line poses a simple question which the rest of the sonnet answers. The poet compares his loved one to a summer’s day and finds him to be “more lovely and more temperate.” The poet discovers that love and the man’s beauty are more permanent than a summer’s day because summer is tainted by occasional winds and the eventual change of season. While summer must always come to an end, the speaker’s love for the man is eternal. For the speaker, love transcends nature in two ways: , The speaker begins by comparing the man’s beauty to summer, but soon the man becomes a force of nature himself. In the line, “thy eternal summer shall not fade,” the man suddenly embodies summer. As a perfect being, he becomes more powerful than the summer’s day to which he was being compared. , The poet’s love is so powerful that even death is unable to curtail it. The speaker’s love lives on for future generations to admire through the power of the written word – through the sonnet itself. The final couplet explains that the beloved’s “eternal summer” will continue as long as there are people alive to read this sonnet: So long as men can breathe or eyes can see, So long lives this, and this gives life to thee. The young man to whom the poem is addressed is the muse for Shakespeare’s first 126 sonnets. Although there is some debate about the correct ordering of the texts, the first 126 sonnets are thematically interlinked and demonstrate a progressive narrative. They tell of a romantic affair that becomes more passionate and intense with each sonnet. In previous sonnets, the poet has been trying to convince the young man to settle down and have children, but in Sonnet 18 the speaker abandons this domesticity for the first time and accepts love’s all-consuming passion – a theme that is set to continue in the sonnets that follow.