Helen Vendler on Sonnet 30
Paul Crowley
two of Helen Vendler's analyses of the sonnets
(as samples for the rest): those about sonnets
numbers one and thirty.
http://www.hup.harvard.edu/features/venart/sonnet30_com.html
Those few of us who have looked her work will
know that she commonly presents elaborate
diagrams which set out the structure of the
sonnet (as she conceives it) and show the inter-
relationship of its concepts and words. The
concepts are often abstruse and the diagrams
are usually complex.
This is very much the case for Sonnet 30.
Any reader who tries to follow her essay
on this sonnet needs to study the
accompanying diagram closely. The essay
is about the diagram and makes not a scrap
of sense in its absence.
Yet what do we get on the promotional website?
Yes -- you've guessed it. We get the essay,
but NOT the diagram.
Hilarious.
Is this a kind of Shakespearean joke? He'd
have appreciated it. Vendler's essays are
close to incomprehensible. If her book
was printed with the pages more-or-less
randomly re-arranged , no one would ever
notice. The 'promotional' website for her
book seems to set out to prove this theory
-- and succeeds, beyond the wildest
dreams of any anti-Strat, or anti-Vendler,
theorist.
The website has been like this for years,
and no one has noticed this aspect, nor
has drawn it to the attention of Harvard
University Press. Why? Well, the answer
is simple. NO ONE reads her stuff. No
one has read her stuff on the website.
No one reads it in her book. It's unreadable
even in it's original format. A lot of copies
of it have been sold, but after at best a few
cursory glances, it is put on the bookshelf
for show -- and for nothing else.
Yet another Stratfordian emperor with no
clothes.
Paul.
bobgr...@nut-n-but.net
Damn, you come up with vividly fresh phrases, Paul. How do you do it?
Only someone with the acutest sensitivity to the creative uses of the
English language could have come up with this one.
As for the Vendler website, I just went to it and read her analysis of
Sonnet 30. I didn't need a diagram to easily understand it. She's
just another mediocre academic bardolator who wants to show how clever
she is about a ridiculously straight-forward sonnet which says no more
than Sonnet 29 did: to wit, when things are bad for me, in this case,
when I think about the losses I've suffered, things turn right when I
think of you, so she invents some kind of temporal scheme that's more
than then and now, according to her, but not to anyone sane, and
credits Shakespeare with its invention. And she out-deconstructs
Derrida with some nonsense about "sought" being the past participle of
"sigh" or "sight" or some such thing.
These kinds of critics can't deal with any kind of poetry but
multi-analyzed knownstream poetry, so are forced to come up with daffy
"insights" to avoid complete plagiarism.
--Bob G.
Paul Crowley
news:1102513226....@z14g2000cwz.googlegroups.com...
> As for the Vendler website, I just went to it and read her analysis of
> Sonnet 30. I didn't need a diagram to easily understand it.
You just missed the point of nearly
everything that she says.
For example:
" In the situation sketched in the poem, he begins by deliberately
and habitually making these tears flow again; he willingly--for the
sake of an enlivened emotional selfhood--calls up the griefs of the
past. In receding order, before the weeping "now" (T5, where T=Time),
there was the "recent" dry-eyed stoicism (T4); "before that,"
the frequent be-moanèd moan (T3) of repeated grief; "further back
in the past," the original loss (T2) so often mourned; and "in the
remote past" (T1), a time of achieved happiness, or at least neutrality,
before the loss. These panels of time are laid out with respect to
various lacks, grievances, and costs, as we track the emotional history
of the speaker's responses to losses and sorrows (the two summarizing
categories of line 14). . ."
If this means anything, you'd need the
LARGE (i.e whole page) table in which
Vendler explains the meaning of T5
(habitual present) T4 (Time of Stoicism)
T3 (Times of loss) T2 (Happy time) and
T1 (Neutral Time).
Actually the creators of the website cut
out two diagrams. Both are vital -- or could
be said to be so -- IF Vendler actually said
anything meaningful. But since she doesn't,
you might as well gaze at the clouds. In fact
the best way to 'understand her analysis of
Sonnet 30' is probably to gaze at the clouds.
No doubt you'd find that easy too.
> She's
> just another mediocre academic bardolator who wants to show how clever
> she is about a ridiculously straight-forward sonnet which says no more
> than Sonnet 29 did: to wit, when things are bad for me, in this case,
> when I think about the losses I've suffered, things turn right when I
> think of you, so she invents some kind of temporal scheme that's more
> than then and now, according to her, but not to anyone sane, and
> credits Shakespeare with its invention.
Shakespeare's sonnets are NEVER
ridiculously straight-forward. They bear
almost no relationship to what you think
of them (insofar as it can be called 'thought').
At least Vendler half-recognises that they
DO possess some non-obvious level of
complexity. She does sense that something
special (along the line of her diagrams) is
needed. But -- what is remarkable to me --
she never begins to cop on that all her
elaborate work takes us nowhere. They are
quite uninformative. We learn nothing from
them. There are never any surprises. She
is working in a completely wrong set of
dimensions.
> And she out-deconstructs
> Derrida with some nonsense about "sought" being the past participle of
> "sigh" or "sight" or some such thing.
Sure. To read a Shakespeare sonnet
without a sense of humour is to attempt
flight without wings. It's beyond
hopelessness. Of course, all Strats are
in the same position. It is extremely
obvious that 'sigh-sought' is a joke --
but if you are a Strat (or -- even worse
-- an academic or an American) the idea
is simply not going to occur to you.
> These kinds of critics can't deal with any kind of poetry but
> multi-analyzed knownstream poetry,
Ah . . . how I have missed your profound
grasp of the English language.
> so are forced to come up with daffy
> "insights" to avoid complete plagiarism.
Err . . since ALL the Strat commentators
say nothing, could they be said to
plagiarise each other?
Paul.
Terry Ross
> As for the Vendler website, I just went to it and read her analysis of
> Sonnet 30. I didn't need a diagram to easily understand it. She's just
> another mediocre academic bardolator who wants to show how clever she is
> about a ridiculously straight-forward sonnet which says no more than
> Sonnet 29 did: to wit, when things are bad for me, in this case, when I
> think about the losses I've suffered, things turn right when I think of
> you, so she invents some kind of temporal scheme that's more than then
> and now, according to her, but not to anyone sane, and credits
> Shakespeare with its invention. And she out-deconstructs Derrida with
> some nonsense about "sought" being the past participle of "sigh" or
> "sight" or some such thing.
Bob, I think you're right that there is, in a way, a straightforward
structure to the sonnet. The strategy of postponing the reference to the
beloved until the end, at which point everything that comes before seems
to get reversed, is common enough in other sonnets (it's almost a tic of
*Astrophil and Stella*).
You're also right that seeing Vendler's diagram is not necessary for
understanding the five different time planes that she identifies in the
sonnet.
I disagree with you about the rest. The time scheme of the sonnet is
extremely complicated (it could even be a bit more complicated than
Vendler suggests); and if this is not something you would have noticed
without Vendler's help, then you should give her credit. If you can't
follow her discussion, then follow Paul's advice and look at the table in
her book.
The present is the time of the summoning, but what is being summoned up is
not just "remembrance" and not just "things past" but "remembrance of
things past." The "things past" must have occurred before the
"remembrance" of them that the speaker is summoning in the present. You
might be reminded of *Krapp's Last Tape*, in which a man listens to tapes
he has made of himself listening to even earlier tapes.
How many different planes of time are represented in this quatrain?
Then can I drown an eye (unused to flow)
For precious friends hid in death's dateless night,
And weep afresh love's long since cancelled woe,
And moan th'expense of many a vanished sight.
The habitual present is the time of "then I can drown an eye," but that is
an eye "unused to flow." This means that there was an earlier habitual
present when the speaker was emotionally unmoved. In fact, he seems to be
generally unmoved except when he does his summoning. He grieves for the
dead -- "for precious friends hid in death's dateless night" -- but they
have not always been dead. They were his friends in life; they died; he
remembered them; he got over it (his eyes became "unused to flow"); but he
can summon back his memory of them "and weep afresh love's long since
canceled woe." Again we see movement through these planes of time: the
"love" dates to when the friends were alive; they died; the "woe" is his
original reaction to their deaths; he got over it (the woe is "long since
canceled); but when he summons his remembrance of them again, he weeps
afresh.
Vender labels the times from T1, the present, to T5, the most distant
past.
T1: "then can I drown"; "weep afresh"; "moan th'expense"
T2: tears are "unused to flow"; woe has become "long since canceled"
T3: "woe" (original); "weep" (original)
T4: "hid in death's dateless night"; "
T5: "precious friends"; "love"; "sight"
Vendler:
In receding order, before the weeping "now" (T5, where T=Time), there was
the "recent" dry-eyed stoicism (T4); "before that," the frequent be-moaned
moan (T3) of repeated grief; "further back in the past," the original loss
(T2) so often mourned; and "in the remote past" (T1), a time of achieved
happiness, or at least neutrality, before the loss. These panels of time
are laid out with respect to various lacks, grievances, and costs, as we
track the emotional history of the speaker's responses to losses and
sorrows (the two summarizing categories of line 14).
>
> These kinds of critics can't deal with any kind of poetry but
> multi-analyzed knownstream poetry, so are forced to come up with daffy
> "insights" to avoid complete plagiarism.
>
It's not "daffy" at all; Vendler is one of the finest and subtlest readers
of poetry we have. She has also written extensively about contemporary
poetry; she is one of those whose criticism will allow some contemporaries
to join your "multi-analyzed knownstream."
Of course she cannot exhaust Sonnet 30 in a couple of pages; I don't think
she does anything with the legal and debt imagery, but you should be able
to handle that on your own.
Why is the poem so alliterative? I don't agree with Paul that this is a
sign of a parody, exactly, but there is some distance between the
overstatement of grief and what we guess the speaker's true emotion must
be. The eye "unused to flow" -- the more stoic observer of Vendler's T2
-- might well find bathos in "and heavily from woe to woe tell o'er / The
sad account of fore bemoaned moan." The alliteration and assonance
present us with an exhibition of grief that the T2 speaker, and some
readers, might find embarrassing. "Get over it," some might say, and
indeed the T2 speaker is someone who DID get over it, yet "now" in T1, the
speaker once more seems to wallow in his excessive grief.
And then the speaker reverses himself, and also rearranges our sense of
the time panels:
But if the while I think on thee (dear friend)
All losses are restored, and sorrows end.
The final present of the poem is a time in which the speaker's eye becomes
once again "unused to flow" and in which the old woe is once again
"canceled," but it is not because the speaker truly is a stoic at heart.
All of those old pains are still available for the summoning, and the
speaker can and does relive all those past times (the five or more planes
of past time) so long as he can also think on his dear friend. The
seemingly exaggerated statements of earlier woes become, by reverse
understatement, exaggerated statements of the restorative powers of the
mere thought of the dear friend.
Is this cycle of remembrance endlessly repeatable? It might seem so:
"when ... I summon" ... "if the while I think on thee"; but there is one
other panel of time, or rather a panel of timelessness. Death's night is
"dateless"; the dead are unchangeably dead; there is only one panel of
time for them. The last word of the poem is "end"; while thinking on the
dear friend makes "sorrows end," such an end is temporary and conditional.
Only in death's dateless night is the end itself endless.
Vendler shows how to see that this is not merely a poem that uses words
such as "remembrance" and "losses" but one that recreates the processes it
describes. It may take a reading such as Vendler's to unpack the way this
poem works.
Mine seems to be a minority view here; I think the poem is an extraordiary
piece of work, and Vendler's analysis is dazzling. We have been very
fortunate of late in our sonnet sequences, having this poem by Shakespeare
and Sidney's marvelous "With how sad steps o Moone, thou climb'st the
skies."
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
Terry Ross tr...@bcpl.net
SHAKESPEARE AUTHORSHIP http://ShakespeareAuthorship.com
CHRISTMAS POEMS http://ShakespeareAuthorship.com/xmas/
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
Gary Kosinsky
<tr...@bcpl.net> wrote:
SNIP
>How many different planes of time are represented in this quatrain?
Why "planes of time"? Why not simply 'points in
time'? "Planes of time" is a bit grandiose and unnecessary,
isn't it?
SNIP
In terms of the dead friends:
- the speaker's beloved friends are alive
- the speaker's beloved friends die
- the speaker mourns for the dead friends
- the speaker gets over the loss of his dead friends
- the speaker can remind himself, if he so chooses, of his
dead friends, and feel sorry all over again.
- the speaker can then remind himself of the addressee, if
he so chooses, and this would soothe his feelings over his
lost friends.
Why do you need a diagram for this?
"Planes of time." Bah!
- Gary Kosinsky
Robert Stonehouse
<slkwuoiut...@slkjlskjoioue.com> wrote:
...
>Vendler's essays are
>close to incomprehensible. If her book
>was printed with the pages more-or-less
>randomly re-arranged , no one would ever
>notice.
It is true that Helen Vendler's book gets quoted less than
most on this newsgroup. The reason, in my case, is that she
is mainly interested in questions of poetic technique that I
do not feel capable of handling. But every now and then she
says something that convinces me she understands these poems
in other ways as well, better than anyone else. For example,
in sonnet 31 she is the only editor who picks up the
religious context. Certainly she is not incomprehensible,
though perhaps difficult on occasion.
In sonnet 30, she uses some space in setting out a division
of the poem into five time-slices that I personally am
inclined to question. That division is the main subject of
the diagram on page 166. The five are these (in my words,
not hers).
1. The initial happy state.
2. The death of the friends.
3. Grief at the death.
4. Recovery and stoical rejection of grief.
5a. Current habitual memory and renewal of grief.
5b. Current, immediate cure for grief by thinking of the
addressee.
I cannot see any reference to stage 1 in the poem. At best,
it can be read into it. Stage 2 seems to imply that the
friends all died at the same time, or as near as no matter,
which seems implausible. If we were meant to think that, we
should have been told. Surely it is more likely that we are
to think of individual deaths, griefs and recoveries, which
might overlap, much or little, or might not.
There is nothing to say that the end of the period of
grieving is due to stoicism. Vendler deduces that (I think)
from the words 'unused to flow'. But that includes no
indication of how long his eyes have been unused to flow, or
from what motive. It sounds more like saying 'I do not often
weep, but this gets me going.' So I do not go with the
argument for stoicism.
That does enough damage to the five time-slices to make me
think they are not real. But there really is something there
and Vendler has got hold of it, even if we should perhaps
express it differently: 'we track the emotional history of
the speaker's responses to losses and sorrows' (page 165).
'30 is not only one of the richest sonnets of the sequence,
but also one of the most searching, in its analysis of
inevitable emotional phases' (page 167). 'the successive
phases of feeling (so well enacted by the general, the
particular, and the rapidly intensified) seem to melt into
one another because of the resemblance of their syntactic
structures, as if they were all one long process, each
generating the next' (page 168). The speaker's reaction to
traumatic events does not need to be laid out as stages in
his life-history.
Also on page 168, 'The credibility of the couplet depends on
the probability that once the things summoned up in thought
become rawly painful, the speaker will in reaction turn to
the (recent) friendship with the young man'. If we abandon
time-slicing, we need not insist on 'recent'. But (as I see
it) there is a real question about the couplet, though I
suggest solving it differently, by reading straight on to
sonnet 31.
Paul Crowley
> Why is the poem so alliterative? I don't agree with Paul that this is a
> sign of a parody, exactly, but there is some distance between the
> overstatement of grief and what we guess the speaker's true emotion must
> be.
You completely fail to deal with my claim
that the poem, taken as a whole, is a parody
of Raleigh's style.
This is a very simple YES/NO question.
If the answer is 'yes' then all that Vendler
and you (and the traditional commentators)
write on the sonnet is nonsense -- or largely
so. If the answer is 'no', then you should
have no difficulty in showing it. Why do
duck the challenge?
It is not a claim that could be made as regards
any other poet of the day. It would, for example,
be manifestly false to claim that the poem is a
parody of Spenser. It does not imitate his style,
nor does it echo his vocabulary, nor any of his
favourite hobby-horses. And likewise for Sidney,
Dyer, Surrey, etc. But there is one poet whose
work it does fit -- and fits perfectly.
a) Is much of its poetry of an appalling
standard, and full of the crudest errors?
b) Was our poet intelligent and competent
enough to be able to see those crudities
for what they were?
c) Are those crudities typical of Raleigh?
d) Does the poem echo the topics on which
Raleigh continually harped?
e) Does it emphasise words favoured by
Raleigh?
> The eye "unused to flow" -- the more stoic observer of Vendler's T2
> -- might well find bathos in "and heavily from woe to woe tell o'er / The
> sad account of fore bemoaned moan." The alliteration and assonance
> present us with an exhibition of grief that the T2 speaker, and some
> readers, might find embarrassing.
Bathos is everywhere. It is all
embarrassing. It is all MEANT to
be embarrassing.
> "Get over it," some might say, and
> indeed the T2 speaker is someone who DID get over it, yet "now" in T1, the
> speaker once more seems to wallow in his excessive grief.
And what contemporary poet made a
speciality of doing that -- to the
exclusion of nearly everything else?
[..]
> The last word of the poem is "end"; while thinking on the
> dear friend makes "sorrows end," such an end is temporary and conditional.
> Only in death's dateless night is the end itself endless.
God help us. "Deaths dateless night"
is not meant to be taken seriously.
It's a piss-take -- like most of the other
way-over-the-top phrases in the sonnet.
The Victorian Bardolators (and especially
the academics) would never have
conceived of the possibility of the Great
Bard taking the piss from anyone. But
we should not follow them so stupidly.
> Vendler shows how to see that this is not merely a poem that uses words
> such as "remembrance" and "losses" but one that recreates the processes it
> describes. It may take a reading such as Vendler's to unpack the way this
> poem works.
>
> Mine seems to be a minority view here; I think the poem is an extraordiary
> piece of work, and Vendler's analysis is dazzling.
Vendler's analysis MAY have some
validity. PERHAPS the poet did follow
some kind of scheme along the lines
she sets out -- but, if so, it would have
been largely subconscious. However,
any such analysis is pointless when
you miss the entire purpose of the
sonnet.
Paul.
Terry Ross
> On Wed, 8 Dec 2004 18:27:11 -0500, Terry Ross
> <tr...@bcpl.net> wrote:
>
> SNIP
>
>
>> How many different planes of time are represented in this quatrain?
>
> Why "planes of time"? Why not simply 'points in
> time'? "Planes of time" is a bit grandiose and unnecessary,
> isn't it?
"Planes of time" is better, because the speaker refers not to actions
performed once but to a series of what may have seemed steady-states.
Love lasts for a time; grief lasts for a time; having-gotten-over-it lasts
for a time. The speaker moves not from point to point but through a
series of states, each one of which he may have thought would endure.
This was not a point of time but a period of time, as with the other times
T1 through T4.
>
> - the speaker's beloved friends die
Even this is not a point, but a period of time. It may have seemed a
series of points when the speaker lived through it (A died, and then B
died, and so on), but in remembrance it seems to have a season at least.
>
> - the speaker mourns for the dead friends
Not a point but a period.
>
> - the speaker gets over the loss of his dead friends
>
> - the speaker can remind himself, if he so chooses, of his
> dead friends, and feel sorry all over again.
>
> - the speaker can then remind himself of the addressee, if
> he so chooses, and this would soothe his feelings over his
> lost friends.
>
> Why do you need a diagram for this?
The poem does not lay out its time pattern in a schematic way, but moves
backwards and forwards through the panes of time. You might not find a
diagram helpful but some readers seem to have need one. Paul, for one,
thinks Vendler's analysis is incomprehensible without her chart.
>
> "Planes of time." Bah!
>
You don't have to accept her term -- but did she say something about the
poem that you did not notice before but that you can now see?
LynnE
I like "the panes of time," Terry. I always think of the past as looking
through windows.
I have found the exegeses in your last two emails fascinating. Thank you
very much; however, I disagree that the sonnet is good. I still find it one
of the poorest in the collection. Somehow the poet doesn't seem emotionally
engaged, despite his language of grief. And the alliteration, although
fashionable at one time, is 'orrible, as my son used to say.
Regards,
LynnE
www.shakespearefellowship.org
P.S. Once again, thanks for the Christmas poems. :)
Gary Kosinsky
<tr...@bcpl.net> wrote:
>On Thu, 9 Dec 2004, Gary Kosinsky wrote:
>
>> On Wed, 8 Dec 2004 18:27:11 -0500, Terry Ross
>> <tr...@bcpl.net> wrote:
>>
>> SNIP
>>
>>
>>> How many different planes of time are represented in this quatrain?
>>
>> Why "planes of time"? Why not simply 'points in
>> time'? "Planes of time" is a bit grandiose and unnecessary,
>> isn't it?
>
>"Planes of time" is better, because the speaker refers not to actions
>performed once but to a series of what may have seemed steady-states.
>Love lasts for a time; grief lasts for a time; having-gotten-over-it lasts
>for a time. The speaker moves not from point to point but through a
>series of states, each one of which he may have thought would endure.
Okay - so use 'periods of time'. I'm probably
over-reacting to one phrase, but her "planes of time" really
strikes me as pretentious.
SNIP
>> "Planes of time." Bah!
>>
>
>You don't have to accept her term -- but did she say something about the
>poem that you did not notice before but that you can now see?
Not particularly. I think she's overdoing it in an
effort to say something about a Shakespearean sonnet. At
least in the brief passages that have been quoted in this
thread. I haven't read much of her book, and am quite
willing to accept your characterization of her as a gifted
analyst. But that "planes of time" irked me.
- Gary Kosinsky
Gary Kosinsky
<slkwuoiut...@slkjlskjoioue.com> wrote:
SNIP
SNIP
The idea that Shakespeare, in a collection of 154
sonnets, may have taken the opportunity to parody some other
sonneteer is not, on the face of it, far-fetched to me.
As I recall, JimKQ, while he was here, used to argue
that the entire sequence was intended as a parody of
traditional sonnet cycles.
However, I don't know enough about Ralegh's poetry,
or poetry in general, to say whether Ralegh's stuff is being
parodied in this sonnet.
I'd be interested in the responses of other's, who
do know about poetry and hopefully have some familiarity
with Ralegh, to Paul's questions.
- Gary Kosinsky
Tom Reedy
news:wb%td.36663$dC3.1...@news20.bellglobal.com...
>
<snip>
> I like "the panes of time," Terry. I always think of the past as looking
> through windows.
The sonnet is not just about the past of the speaker. It's a Russian nesting
box puzzle of time. The speaker is in the present, thinking about the times
in the past that he thought about the past, of the times in the future when
he will do the same, and the thought that saves him from wallowing in excess
sentimentality.
Have you ever been going through an experience and thought about how good it
will be in the future when you remember the experience you're going through
in the present? It's like a backward one of those, whatever they're called.
>
> I have found the exegeses in your last two emails fascinating. Thank you
> very much; however, I disagree that the sonnet is good. I still find it
one
> of the poorest in the collection. Somehow the poet doesn't seem
emotionally
> engaged, despite his language of grief.
It's not about grief, either, except as an object of recollection.
I think the sonnet expresses the overall theme of Shakespeare's works: the
passage of time and its contemplation. Quite profound and universal, IMO.
Too simple and banal for some, I suppose, although I question if they are
even capable of appreciating it.
And the alliteration, although
> fashionable at one time, is 'orrible, as my son used to say.
Do you thinak all alliteration is horrible? What makes good alliteration as
opposed to bad, in your opinion?
TR
LynnE
"Tom Reedy" <reed...@earthlink.net> wrote in message
news:Qyjud.7256$0r....@newsread1.news.pas.earthlink.net...
Well, that certainly puts me in my place.
>
> And the alliteration, although
> > fashionable at one time, is 'orrible, as my son used to say.
>
> Do you thinak all alliteration is horrible? What makes good alliteration
as
> opposed to bad, in your opinion?
Small doses.
Merry Christmas, Tom. :)
Lynne
bookburn
"Tom Reedy" <reed...@earthlink.net> wrote in message
news:Qyjud.7256$0r....@newsread1.news.pas.earthlink.net...
Oh, oh; looks like Paul Crowley and LynnE are out on an unreliable
"alliteration" limb in sonnet 30, and Oxfordians are going to have to
resort to some dissembling or reveal something novel about Oxford vs.
Stratman poetic tastes that explains assigning a low rank to 30 on
this basis.
I found the following summary of sonnet 30 in Cliff Notes that adds
more weight on the limb. Paul and Lynne might have to plead some
special case to restores them to their tree, like a uniquely Oxfordian
way to read Shakespeare, unknown before now. bookburn
(quote)
Critical Commentaries
Sonnet 30
(snip)
This sonnet is one of the most exquisitely crafted in the entire
sequence dealing with the poet's depression over the youth's
separation (Sonnets 26-32). It includes an extraordinary complexity of
sound patterns, including the effective use of alliteration-repetitive
consonant sounds in a series of words-for example, both the "s" and
"t" sounds in "sessions of sweet silent thought."
But alliteration is only one method poets use to enhance the melody of
their work. Rhyme, of course, is another device for doing this. A
third is assonance-similar vowel sounds in accented syllables-for
example, the short "e" sound in the phrases "When sessions" and
"remembrance". In this case, the short "e" sound helps unify the
sonnet, for the assonant sound both begins-"When"-and concludes-"
end"-the sonnet.
Contributing to the distinctive rhythm of Sonnet 30's lines is the
variation of accents in the normally iambic pentameter lines. For
example, line 7 has no obvious alternation of short and long
syllables. Equal stress is placed on "weep afresh love's long," with
only slightly less stress on "since," which follows this phrase.
Likewise, in line 6, "friends hid" and "death's dateless night" are
equally stressed. This sonnet typifies why the Shakespeare of the
sonnets is held to be without rival in achieving rhythm, melody, and
sound within the limited sonnet structure. (unquote)
Gary Kosinsky
<reed...@earthlink.net> wrote:
SNIP
>The sonnet is not just about the past of the speaker. It's a Russian nesting
>box puzzle of time.
"Russian nesting box puzzle of time"? Now that's
good. Much better than the unnecessary "planes of time".
>The speaker is in the present, thinking about the times
>in the past that he thought about the past, of the times in the future when
>he will do the same, and the thought that saves him from wallowing in excess
>sentimentality.
Well said. And you didn't need a diagram.
>Have you ever been going through an experience and thought about how good it
>will be in the future when you remember the experience you're going through
>in the present?
No. Usually in those cases I'm too involved in the
moment.
>It's like a backward one of those, whatever they're called.
Paging Bob Grumman.
>> I have found the exegeses in your last two emails fascinating. Thank you
>> very much; however, I disagree that the sonnet is good. I still find it
>one
>> of the poorest in the collection. Somehow the poet doesn't seem
>emotionally
>> engaged, despite his language of grief.
>
>It's not about grief, either, except as an object of recollection.
Good point.
>I think the sonnet expresses the overall theme of Shakespeare's works: the
>passage of time and its contemplation. Quite profound and universal, IMO.
>Too simple and banal for some, I suppose, although I question if they are
>even capable of appreciating it.
Judging poetry seems so subjective. It would be
interesting to get the major players (ie KDJ, Kerrigan,
Vendler etc.) to rank each sonnet in the series as great,
good, average or poor, and see how their respective lists
compare.
- Gary Kosinsky
Elizabeth
need tables and charts.
Two tropes used in the Renaissance are static--metaphor and synecdoche.
Two tropes operate in the field of time--metonymy and irony.
Strats have such a problematic author the only way they can keep him is
to disconnect the Shakespeare works from the Renaissance.
Cordially,
Elizabeth
Elizabeth
show how clever she is about a ridiculously straight-forward sonnet?'
Really?
So how long have you been an Oxfordian, Grumman?
Cordially,
Elizabeth
Paul Crowley
> I'd be interested in the responses of other's, who
> do know about poetry and hopefully have some familiarity
> with Ralegh, to Paul's questions.
Not a hope.
There is only one possible answer, but
no 'expert' will dare to put it into words.
(Is it not amazing how week by week,
and post by post, I grind them into dust
-- yet there is not the faintest possibility
that they will change their opinions?
Even Lynne -- who should be expected
to leap at the mass of detailed and
undeniable proof for her candidate --
can't allow herself to change her tiny
mind -- not by a gnat's whisker. Yet
each of them would regard themselves
as the epitome of Rationality and as
supreme exemplars of Enlightenment
Thought.)
> However, I don't know enough about Ralegh's poetry,
> or poetry in general, to say whether Ralegh's stuff is being
> parodied in this sonnet.
It is easy enough to find statements about
Raleigh's poetry from those who have
studied it. I quoted Winton on it recently
" . . . the prevailing tone of virtually everything Ralegh wrote is of
disappointment and defeat. His favourite line of his own poetry
seems to have been 'Of all which past, the sorrow only stays'. . ."
This fits exactly Shakespeare's description
of both his subject-matter and his leaden
style, as summarised in line 10:
10. And heavily from woe to woe tell ore
1. When to the Sessions of sweet silent thought,
2. I sommon up remembrance of things past,
3. I sigh the lacke of many a thing I sought,
4. And with old woes new waile my deare times waste:
5. Then can I drowne an eye (un-us'd to flow)
6. For precious friends hid in deaths dateles night,
7. And weepe a fresh loves long since canceld woe,
8. And mone th'expence of many a vannisht sight.
9. Then can I greeve at greevances fore-gon,
10. And heavily from woe to woe tell ore
11. The sad account of fore-bemoned mone,
12. Which I new pay as if not payd before.
13. But if the while I thinke on thee (deare friend)
14. All losses are restord, and sorrowes end.
It's also easy to see what Ralegh's poetry
is like for yourself. I've quoted this
endless harping on 'woe' here before.
Note the same words as in Sonnet 30, and
the boringly dull regularity of the metre.
------------------ From Raleigh's poetry ---------------
WOES without date, discomforts without end
She sleeps thy death, that erst thy danger sithed.
Strive then no more, bow down thy weary eyes -
Eyes which to all these WOES thy heart have guided.
She is gone, she is lost, she is found, she is ever fair:
Sorrow draws weakly, where love draws not too.
WOE's cries sound nothing but only in love's ear:
Do then by dying what life cannot do.
Grief, sorrow, sickness, and base fortune's might:
Thy rising day saw never WOEful night,
My heart was he that all my WOE had wrought,
For he my breast, the fort of love, resigned,
When of such wars my fancy never thought.
Like to a hermit poor in place obscure
I mean to spend my days of endless doubt,
To wail such WOES as time cannot recure,
Where none but Love shall ever find me out.
My mind to WOE, my life in Fortune's hand,
Of all which past, the sorrow only stays.
As in a country strange without companion,
I only wail the wrong of death's delays,
Whose sweet spring spent, whose summer well nigh done,
Of all which past, the sorrow only stays;
As ships in port desired are drowned,
As fruit once ripe then falls to ground,
As flies that seek for flames are brought
To cinders by the flames they sought:
So fond desire, when it attains,
The life expires, the WOE remains.
Sufficeth it to you, my joys interred,
In simple words that I my WOES complain,
You that then died when first my fancy erred,
Joys under dust that never live again.
Slain with self-thoughts, amazed in fearful dreams
WOES without date, discomforts without end,
From fruitful trees I gather withered leaves,
And glean the broken ears with miser's hands,
The messengers sometimes of my great WOE,
But all on earth as from the cold storms bending
Her regal looks my rigorous sithes suppressed,
Small drops of joys sweetened great worlds of WOES,
No other power effecting WOE or bliss,
She gave, she took, she wounded, she appeased
The weal, the WOE, the passages of old,
And worlds of thoughts described by one last sithing;
So did the time draw on my more despair;
Then floods of sorrow and whole seas of WOE
What altered sense conceive the weakest WOE
That tore, that rent, that pierced thy sad heart?
So did my mind in change of passion
From WOE to wrath, from wrath return to WOE,
A sweetness which WOE's wrongs outwipeth not,
That as her beauties would our WOES should dune,
But leave her praise, speak thou of naught but WOE,
Write on the tale that sorrow bids thee tell,
Such is of women's love the careful charge
Held and maintained with multitude of WOES;
So doth the mind root up all wonted thought
And scorns the care of our remaining WOE.
Were I resolved her promise was not just.
Sorrow was my revenge, and WOE my hate;
And hides, if any be, his inward WOES,
And will not know, while he knows his own passion,
Which never sickness, or deformity,
Which never wasting care, or wearing WOE -
The salves that heal love's wounds and do amend
Consuming WOE, and slake our hearty sithing,
Oh love - the more my WOE - to it thou art
Even as the moisture in each plant that grows,
A fraud bought at the price of many WOES,
A guile whereof the profits unto me:
But stay, my thoughts, make end; give fortune way;
Harsh is the voice of WOE and sorrow's sound;
Strive then no more, bow down thy weary eyes
-Eyes which to all these WOES thy heart have guided.
WOE's cries sound nothing but only in love's ear:
Do then by dying what life cannot do.
My pipe, which love's own hand gave my desire
To sing her praises and my WOE upon,
But be it so, or not, th' effects are past.
Her love hath end: my WOE must ever last.
Leaving us only WOE, which, like the moss,
Having compassion of unburied bones,
But love's and WOE's expense
Sorrow can only write.
But friendships, kindred, and love's memory
Dies sole, extinguished hearing or beholding
The voice of WOE or face of misery;
But if both God and time shall make you know
That I your humblest vassal am oppressed,
Then cast your eyes on undeserved WOE,
Paul Crowley
> Oh, oh; looks like Paul Crowley and LynnE are out on an unreliable
> "alliteration" limb in sonnet 30, and Oxfordians are going to have to
> resort to some dissembling or reveal something novel about Oxford vs.
> Stratman poetic tastes that explains assigning a low rank to 30 on
> this basis.
>
> I found the following summary of sonnet 30 in Cliff Notes that adds
> more weight on the limb. Paul and Lynne might have to plead some
> special case to restores them to their tree, like a uniquely Oxfordian
> way to read Shakespeare, unknown before now. bookburn
I'm sure Lynne would hesitate as much as me to
question that near-ultimate authority 'Cliff Notes',
but -- and I express this with trepidation -- its
near god-like wisdom could possibly be at fault.
> This sonnet is one of the most exquisitely crafted in the entire
> sequence dealing with the poet's depression over the youth's
> separation (Sonnets 26-32). It includes an extraordinary complexity of
> sound patterns, including the effective use of alliteration-repetitive
> consonant sounds in a series of words-for example, both the "s" and
> "t" sounds in "sessions of sweet silent thought."
> This sonnet typifies why the Shakespeare of the
> sonnets is held to be without rival in achieving rhythm, melody, and
> sound within the limited sonnet structure. (unquote)
Almost any thought is conceivable when
you're a Strat.
OR -- maybe the author of this particular
Cliff Note was taking the piss?
Paul.
Jim KQKnave
> These kinds of critics can't deal with any kind of poetry but
> multi-analyzed knownstream poetry, so are forced to come up with
daffy
> "insights" to avoid complete plagiarism.
>
> --Bob G.
This is part one of two posts.
>From Helen Vendler's "The Given and the Made -
Strategies of Poetic Redefinition", Harvard
University Press, 1995, pp 91ff (curly
brackets mine):
"Jorie Graham, the fourth of my instances of
postwar American poetry, is what used to be
called a philosophical poet. Her original
donnee is a complex one, consisting, linguistically,
of trilingualism in American English, Italian
and French. 'I was taught three//names for the
tree facing my window..../Castagno..../
Chassagne..../And then chestnut.' Graham grew
up in Italy, though born of American parents -
a Jewish-American artist mother and an Irish-American
writer father. To borrow a phrase from Seamus
Heaney, is it any wonder that when she thought
she would have second thoughts? That second
thought that we call philosophical wonder was
reinforced in Graham by her schooling at the
Rome Lycee Francais, where, in philosophy class,
students were regularly assigned essays on
such intimidating abstractions as 'Justice'
or 'Being'. Graham's family had close relations
with other writers, artists, and filmmakers in
Rome, and in fact Graham first came to live in
the United States in her twenties, when, after
studying at the Sorbonne, she arrived at New
York University to study filmmaking with Martin
Scorcese. During the marriage that gave her
the name Graham, she studied writing at both
Columbia University and the University of Iowa.
She is now Professor of English in the Writer's
Workshop at Iowa. She is now Professor of English
in the Writer's Workshop at Iowa, where she
and her husband, the poet and essayist James
Galvin, both teach. (Her daughter Emily appears
occasionally in the poems.)
I mention these biographical facts because
they help to explain some of the thematic features
of Graham's writing - Italy (its landscapes, its
saints), the history of the Holocaust (seen in
recurring episodes), and the work of both early
and modern painters (Piero della Francesca, Luca
Signorelli, Klimt, Pollock, Rothko). They also
help to account for certain technical aspects
of her poetry - its cinematic strategies (close
and far focus, panning, jump-cutting, emphasis
on point of view and on looking), its recourse
to enfolded European historical vignettes, its
persistent use of philosophical diction, and, most
centrally, its trying-on of several different
linguistic expressions for the 'same thing' -
as though language itself offered no perfect
match for the material world, and as though
'English' were a congeries of sub-languages,
each with its own 'flavor'. Most of all, I
suspect, the rhythms of Italian - the language
which surrounded Graham from her youngest
years - lie behind her music in English. It
was that music - a set of rhythms I hadn't
heard before in American poetry - which first
drew me to Graham, many years ago, when a
few poems of hers were printed in The American
Poetry Review.
Platonic dualism is both Graham's donnee
and her demon; her recent name for the antagonists
in that dualism - Matter and Interpretation -
show the Protean variability of the terms of
dualism under her hands. She brings into postwar
American poetry the urgent and inescapable need
of the modern writer to embody in art a
non-teleological universe - a universe without
philosophical coherence though bound by physical
law, a universe unconscious of us but which
constitutes, by materiality, our consciousness.
For Graham, what used to be called spirituality
is a fact of life as self-evident as materiality.
Perhaps no-one brought up in Italy - with its
churches, its music, its paintings, its grandeur
of aspiration - could fail to think of the
spiritual activity of consciousness as wholly
real and productive, something which deserves
a grander denomination than either of its
secular names, 'thought' and 'aesthetic conception.'
Graham's deepest subject is how to represent
the unboundedness and intensity of aspiration
as it extends itself to fullest self-reflexivity
with ample awareness of its own creative powers.
But Graham refuses to detach this metaphysical
inquiry from either the passing perceptual flow
of the here-and-now or the hideous recollective
flow of the there-and-then that we call 'history.'
The tension caused in Graham's work by the
counter-pulls of aspiration, material perception,
and historical accountability assumes different
forms in her five books, each substantially longer
than the one before: Hybrids of Plants and Ghosts
(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1980);
Erosion (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1983);
The End of Beauty (New York: Ecco, 1987); Region
of Unlikeness (New York: Ecco, 1991); and Materialism
(Hopewell, N.J.: Ecco, 1993). These books contain,
by my count, 151 poems (some of them long sequences)
occupying some 500 pages. Like Lowell and Berryman,
Graham has produced a daunting body of work, but
since it is only now beginning to receive critical
codification, there are in her case few received
ideas to work with or against. I will track
Graham's journey from the unnameable toward
'materialism' - a word in itself already problematic -
by considering one typical and thoroughly achieved
poem from each of her books, conscious of how
limited a sample of her work is thereby afforded,
but firm in my belief that these five poems are
representative of her ambitious pursuit of a new
poetry, as 'material' as it is 'spiritual.'"
{End of Part 1}
See my demolition of Monsarrat's RES paper!
http://hometown.aol.com/kqknave/monsarr1.html
The Droeshout portrait is not unusual at all!
http://hometown.aol.com/kqknave/shakenbake.html
Agent Jim
Jim KQKnave
Strategies of Poetic Redefinition", Harvard
University Press, 1995, pp 91ff (curly
brackets mine):
{Part 2}
"Graham's first volume takes its arresting
title from Also Sprach Zarathustra: 'But he who
is wisest among you, he also is only a discord
and hybrid of plant and ghost.' The animal, as
a category, is conspicuously absent from this
formulation. While plants are material, they are
neither carnal nor appetitive; and ghosts, deprived
of corporeality, have memory but not sensual
perception. Human beings are discords, hybrids,
then, but also curiously deprived (in this
Nietzschean formulation) of immersion in the
body. The body is a site of puzzlement, its
relation to thought almost unformulatable. In
Hybrids of Plants and Ghosts, Graham's love of
conceptual pattern - of the orienting grids
of thought - questions, over and over, its
perpetually vexed relation to sensory perception
even before the two are formulated in language.
Here is the poem 'The Geese,' which displays
two contrasting patterns - one in the sky, made
by the ambitious, goal-directed 'conceptual'
paths of migrating geese, and another, parallel
one on the earth, made by the netting of
spiderwebs. There are two organizing remarks
in the poem. The first remark expresses a fear
of being overwhelmed by 'texture' - the infinite
web-like registering of perceptual data that
cannot be codified either by time (into 'history')
or by space (into 'place'); the second remark
expresses a dissatisfaction with the voyaging
mind alone, since the body tells the mind that
in its lofty activity it has missed something
crucial, 'a bedrock poverty':
{The stanzas are all 4 lines, except the final line, so
if there are more lines it's because the words wrapped
around}
The Geese
Today as I hang out the wash I see them again, a code
as urgent as elegant,
tapering with goals.
For days they have been crossing. We live beneath these geese
as if beneath the passage of time, or a most perfect heading.
Sometimes I fear their relevance.
Closest at hand,
between the lines
the spiders imitate the paths the geese won't stray from,
imitate them endlessly to no avail:
things will not remain connected,
will not heal,
and the world thickens with texture instead of history,
texture instead of place.
Yet the small fear of the spiders
binds and binds
the pins to the lines, the lines to the eaves, to the pincushion bush,
as if, at any time, things could fall further apart
and nothing could help them
recover their meaning. And if these spiders had their way,
chainlink over the visible world,
would we be in or out? I turn to go back in.
There is a feeling the body gives the mind
of having missed something, a bedrock poverty, like falling
without the sense that you are passing through one world,
that you could reach another
anytime. Instead the real
is crossing you,
your body an arrival
you know is false but can't outrun. And somewhere in between
these geese forever entering and
these spiders turning back,
this astonishing delay, the everyday, takes place.
(Hybrids, 38-39)
The two patterns - the skyey adventurousness
of the geese, the anxious closures of the spiders -
dictate the alternately expansive and contracting
lines of Graham's stanzas. Unable to decide
between the directed urgency of the mind and the
restrictive chainlink of perception, Graham stops
'somewhere in between,' in 'the astonishing delay,
the everyday.' (Later, in The End of Beauty, she
will write a poem called 'Self-Portrait as Hurry
and Delay,' where the spiders' weavings have
turned into Penelope's web.)
'The Geese' is original in its juxtaposition of
two matching and yet contrastive instinctual
patterns, and in its refusing to choose one over
the other, instead taking as its resting-place
the 'delay' between them. Yet the stanzas in which
these things take place are, perhaps, imperfectly
articulated with the crux that stimulates them,
the relation of body to mind. The two movements
that close the poem - the one, a mental fall
without a sense of traversing reality; the other,
the real that 'cross[es] you' in a false 'arrival'
in the body - are not quite clear enough in themselves
or in their relation to the adventurous geese and
the spiders fearfully binding things against a
potential disintegration. And yet the perplexity
they embody is at least partially conveyed: that
all perception arrives first at and through the
body, and that the ambitious mind cannot 'outrun'
the body, which always precedes it. How to give
bodily perception its due in thought is a question
already vexing Graham's verse. How to match thought
and perception with language remains as yet
an unnamed problem.
The procedure of 'The Geese' is one that many
of Graham's early poems will follow. First, a
mundane beginning (here, 'hanging out the wash')
situates the speaker in the natural world; then,
a natural emblem or set of emblems (here, the
geese and the spiders) is carefully rendered;
next, a quasi-philosophical formulation of a
problem is offered; and finally there appears
a resolution, which may, and often does, evade
the terms in which 'philosophy' has posed (or
would pose) the original problem. The Wittgensteinian
move away from the original anterior and
imprisoning concepts (which would always dictate
a solution within their own terms) is a liberating
one for Graham here as elsewhere - and is enacted,
in 'The Geese,' by the single concluding line
of the poem, with its 'astonishing delay, the
everyday,' freeing the awaited remainder of
its incomplete stanza into invisibility,
openness and escape."
[end of passage from Vendler]
Jim KQKnave
Terry Ross wrote:
> On Thu, 9 Dec 2004, Gary Kosinsky wrote:
>
> > On Wed, 8 Dec 2004 18:27:11 -0500, Terry Ross
> > <tr...@bcpl.net> wrote:
> >
> > SNIP
> >
> >
> >> How many different planes of time are represented in this
quatrain?
> >
> > Why "planes of time"? Why not simply 'points in
> > time'? "Planes of time" is a bit grandiose and unnecessary,
> > isn't it?
>
> "Planes of time" is better, because the speaker refers not to actions
> performed once but to a series of what may have seemed steady-states.
> Love lasts for a time; grief lasts for a time; having-gotten-over-it
lasts
> for a time. The speaker moves not from point to point but through a
> series of states, each one of which he may have thought would endure.
But a "state" is not a "plane", nor does the word "plane" imply
anything about a length of time. The phrase "point in time" has come to
mean not just a point but a period of time, but if you are concerned
about
the literalness of "point" you could say "How many periods of time are
represented by this quatrain?" But if you still want to use some
pseudo-scientific jargon, why not "volume of time", since human
beings exist in three dimensions, or four if you include time, not
two.
I think the improper use of words that have specific scientific
meanings in humanities discourse is hilarious, but ironically it's
the kind of thing that could win you $500,000 (MacArthur fellowship)
(http://www.poets.org/poems/prose.cfm?45442B7C000C04050B70).
Jim KQKnave
Gary Kosinsky wrote:
> SNIP
> > The idea that Shakespeare, in a collection of 154
> sonnets, may have taken the opportunity to parody some other
> sonneteer is not, on the face of it, far-fetched to me.
>
> As I recall, JimKQ, while he was here, used to argue
> that the entire sequence was intended as a parody of
> traditional sonnet cycles.
I'm still here, I just don't have as much time to post
as I did.
I believe that the sequence as a whole was intended
as parody, but if you have some strict academic definition of
the word "parody" you may find fault with it. How
about "Poking fun at the sonnet sequences of earlier
sonneteers"? I think many individual sonnets were written
as stand-alone pieces over a period of years, with
complete sincerity, but when the time came to put
together a sequence, he tried to put his own stamp
on it.
Jim KQKnave
> These kinds of critics can't deal with any kind of poetry but
> multi-analyzed knownstream poetry, so are forced to come up with
daffy
> "insights" to avoid complete plagiarism.
>
> --Bob G.
>From Helen Vendler's "The Given and the Made -
Strategies of Poetic Redefinition", Harvard
University Press, 1995, pp 91ff (curly
brackets mine):
"Jorie Graham, the fourth of my instances of
See my demolition of Monsarrat's RES paper!
bobgr...@nut-n-but.net
"When I remember bad things, then I weep, although I don't usually,
etc." I don't feel I'm belittling it: I consider it one of
Shakespeare's best. I think Vendler is super-ingeniously trying to
force something new into the reading of a simple sonnet (except
linguistically). And while she does discuss the work of living poets,
she has not for forty years discussed what I would call contemporary
poetry--i.e., poetry that uses poetic techniques not in wide use fifty
or more years ago. Ashbery and Ashbery-clones are where her criticism
stops.
I know I sound like I'm doing a Crowley on you, but I just don't have
time to get into the details of your interesting (and often valuable)
comments above (although they are definitely worthy of it). In some
cases, I think you say what I would also say except in different words
(and using Vendler's diagram unnecessarily--since the different parts
of the past Shakespeare deals with are obvious without it, and there
aren't as many as she says, in my view, nor do they seem to me that
important).
--Bob G.
bobgr...@nut-n-but.net
--Bob
bobgr...@nut-n-but.net
find the alliteration and other use of what I call repenemes overdone,
just not quite overdone enough to spoil the poem. I certainly don't
hold the Shakespeare of the sonnets unrivalled in what I call
melodation.
And, alas, I still can't find more than one real then in the poem, or
anything to indicate thoughts of the future.
--Bob G.
bobgr...@nut-n-but.net
higher mediocrity than her others. I think Vendler's commentary on it
proves my point about her criticism. I hope that's that why you posted
the excerpt, Jim.
--Bob G.
Gary Kosinsky
But Ralegh, surely, doesn't have a monopoly on poems
dealing with sorrow. That is, just because a poem evokes
sorrow doesn't mean that Ralegh is being parodied.
>1. When to the Sessions of sweet silent thought,
>2. I sommon up remembrance of things past,
>3. I sigh the lacke of many a thing I sought,
>4. And with old woes new waile my deare times waste:
>5. Then can I drowne an eye (un-us'd to flow)
>6. For precious friends hid in deaths dateles night,
>7. And weepe a fresh loves long since canceld woe,
>8. And mone th'expence of many a vannisht sight.
>9. Then can I greeve at greevances fore-gon,
>10. And heavily from woe to woe tell ore
>11. The sad account of fore-bemoned mone,
>12. Which I new pay as if not payd before.
>13. But if the while I thinke on thee (deare friend)
>14. All losses are restord, and sorrowes end.
>
>
>It's also easy to see what Ralegh's poetry
>is like for yourself. I've quoted this
>endless harping on 'woe' here before.
>Note the same words as in Sonnet 30, and
>the boringly dull regularity of the metre.
SNIP of examples.
Thanks for the examples, Paul. Certainly Ralegh
appears to have used the word "woe" often. But does that
mean that because Shakespeare used "woe" in sonnet 30 he
must be parodying Ralegh?
As far as the boringly dull regularity of the metres
in each - sorry, but once again my tin ear for poetry
prevents me from judging this aspect.
BTW: even if it could be shown that the author was
parodying Ralegh in this Sonnet, what would stop someone
from simply saying William Shakespeare of Stratford was
parodying Ralegh in this sonnet?
- Gary Kosinsky
Gary Kosinsky
<kqk...@yahoo.co.uk> wrote:
>
>Gary Kosinsky wrote:
>> SNIP
>> > The idea that Shakespeare, in a collection of 154
>> sonnets, may have taken the opportunity to parody some other
>> sonneteer is not, on the face of it, far-fetched to me.
>>
>> As I recall, JimKQ, while he was here, used to argue
>> that the entire sequence was intended as a parody of
>> traditional sonnet cycles.
>
>I'm still here, I just don't have as much time to post
>as I did.
>
>I believe that the sequence as a whole was intended
>as parody, but if you have some strict academic definition of
>the word "parody" you may find fault with it. How
>about "Poking fun at the sonnet sequences of earlier
>sonneteers"? I think many individual sonnets were written
>as stand-alone pieces over a period of years, with
>complete sincerity, but when the time came to put
>together a sequence, he tried to put his own stamp
>on it.
Nice to hear from you, Jim.
What do you think of Crowley's idea that Sonnet 30
was a parody of Ralegh's poetry?
- Gary Kosinsky
bobgr...@nut-n-but.net
Shakespeare does parodies in it. He makes them funny. He doesn't make
them in such a way that no one except you recognizes them as such.
Incidentally, it wouldn't hurt the Shakespeare was Ashakespeare cause
if an expert demonstrated that the sonnet was a parody of Raleigh. No
reason our Shakespeare could not have written such a parody.
Another by the way: whom was Shakespeare parodying with
"fore-bemoaned?" Also: what poet of the time didn't use "woe" a good
deal of the time in his poems?
--Bob G.
Buffalo
<bobgr...@nut-n-but.net> wrote in message
news:1102860407.4...@c13g2000cwb.googlegroups.com...
There are only 5 plays in the canon that don't contain the word. The Rape of
Lucrece sports 34 uses, and Richard II has 27. It would make a change if Mr
Crowley could just once come up with an assertion that would take, say a
couple of days to refute, instead of ten minutes. It's like swatting midges.
Buffalo
Tom Reedy
> On Fri, 10 Dec 2004 15:48:00 GMT, "Tom Reedy"
> <reed...@earthlink.net> wrote:
>
> SNIP
>
> >The sonnet is not just about the past of the speaker. It's a Russian
nesting
> >box puzzle of time.
>
> "Russian nesting box puzzle of time"? Now that's
> good. Much better than the unnecessary "planes of time".
>
> >The speaker is in the present, thinking about the times
> >in the past that he thought about the past, of the times in the future
when
> >he will do the same, and the thought that saves him from wallowing in
excess
> >sentimentality.
>
> Well said. And you didn't need a diagram.
>
> >Have you ever been going through an experience and thought about how good
it
> >will be in the future when you remember the experience you're going
through
> >in the present?
>
> No. Usually in those cases I'm too involved in the
> moment.
Surely you have. Or at least you've done something with the idea about how
others might remember it.
One more "plane of time" would be contemplating how you will remember it
before you've even done it. Anticipation of future remembrance before the
fact, so to speak. An example:
He that outlives this day, and comes safe home,
Will stand a tip-toe when the day is named,
And rouse him at the name of Crispian.
He that shall live this day, and see old age,
Will yearly on the vigil feast his neighbours,
And say 'To-morrow is Saint Crispian:'
Then will he strip his sleeve and show his scars.
And say 'These wounds I had on Crispin's day.'
Old men forget: yet all shall be forgot,
But he'll remember with advantages
What feats he did that day: then shall our names.
Familiar in his mouth as household words
Harry the king, Bedford and Exeter,
Warwick and Talbot, Salisbury and Gloucester,
Be in their flowing cups freshly remember'd.
This story shall the good man teach his son;
And Crispin Crispian shall ne'er go by,
From this day to the ending of the world,
But we in it shall be remember'd;
>
> >It's like a backward one of those, whatever they're called.
>
> Paging Bob Grumman.
>
> >> I have found the exegeses in your last two emails fascinating. Thank
you
> >> very much; however, I disagree that the sonnet is good. I still find it
> >one
> >> of the poorest in the collection. Somehow the poet doesn't seem
> >emotionally
> >> engaged, despite his language of grief.
> >
> >It's not about grief, either, except as an object of recollection.
>
> Good point.
>
> >I think the sonnet expresses the overall theme of Shakespeare's works:
the
> >passage of time and its contemplation. Quite profound and universal, IMO.
> >Too simple and banal for some, I suppose, although I question if they are
> >even capable of appreciating it.
>
> Judging poetry seems so subjective. It would be
> interesting to get the major players (ie KDJ, Kerrigan,
> Vendler etc.) to rank each sonnet in the series as great,
> good, average or poor, and see how their respective lists
> compare.
Ratings are overrated. It would be kind of like ranking each sexual
experience you've had.
TR
>
>
> - Gary Kosinsky
Jim KQKnave
What? That's all we get, Bob? I was hoping for
steam coming out of your ears and at least a
4-day rant on the blog! I posted it because
I agreed at least in part on your verdict
concerning some of Vendler's anaysis. I like
her introduction to the sonnets in her book,
it's very informative, while some of the commentary
on the individual sonnets is strained, but some
of it is good too. But even Booth goes overboard
sometimes.
I thought Vendler's commentary on Graham was
a hoot. That is just puffery, one academic
buddy helping out another. "...ghosts, deprived
of corporeality, have memory but not sensual
perception." How does she know this? Or
"The Wittgensteinian move away from the original
anterior and imprisoning concepts (which would
always dictate a solution within their own terms)...."
Hot air at its finest!
The poem ("The Geese") seems more like an outline
for a poem, a story board, put together by someone who
has an idea what a poem is supposed to do,
but doesn't have any idea how to write a real
poem. Imagine writing down your idea for
a painting but, not knowing how to paint,
instead tack your outline to the Sistine
Chapel (or the internet if you don't have
the benefit of rich parents and Columbia
U. and the connections they bring).
The poem seems to be better than the commentary
actually, but I don't think the poem is worth
an extended commentary to begin with. I think
the idea of the contrast between the spiders
and the geese is good, and in its way is
worthy of a Twilight Zone episode. But it ain't
a poem.
Why not just present it as prose, like this:
***
Today as I hang out the wash I see them again, a code
as urgent as elegant, tapering with goals. For days they
have been crossing. We live beneath these geese as if
beneath the passage of time, or a most perfect heading.
Sometimes I fear their relevance. Closest at hand,
between the lines the spiders imitate the paths the
geese won't stray from, imitate them endlessly to no avail:
things will not remain connected,will not heal, and
the world thickens with texture instead of history,
texture instead of place. Yet the small fear of the spiders
binds and binds the pins to the lines, the lines to the
eaves, to the pincushion bush, as if, at any time, things
could fall further apart and nothing could help them
recover their meaning. And if these spiders had their way,
chainlink over the visible world, would we be in or out?
I turn to go back in. There is a feeling the body gives the mind
of having missed something, a bedrock poverty, like falling
without the sense that you are passing through one world,
that you could reach another anytime. Instead the real
is crossing you, your body an arrival you know is false
but can't outrun. And somewhere in between these geese
forever entering and these spiders turning back,
this astonishing delay, the everyday, takes place.
***
In this way it appears closer to what it really is, not
a poem, but a jotting in a diary or a workbook of some
thoughts that occurred to the writer.
The lazy free association is even more apparent in
the poem at the poets.org website
http://www.poets.org/poets/poets.cfm?45442B7C000C030C
Prayer (by Jorie Graham):
Over a dock railing, I watch the minnows, thousands, swirl
themselves, each a minuscule muscle, but also, without the
way to create current, making of their unison (turning, re-
infolding,
entering and exiting their own unison in unison) making of themselves a
visual current, one that cannot freight or sway by
minutest fractions the water's downdrafts and upswirls, the
dockside cycles of finally-arriving boat-wakes, there where
they hit deeper resistance, water that seems to burst into
itself (it has those layers) a real current though mostly
invisible sending into the visible (minnows) arrowing
motion that forces change--
this is freedom. This is the force of faith. Nobody gets
what they want. Never again are you the same. The longing
is to be pure. What you get is to be changed. More and more by
each glistening minute, through which infinity threads itself,
also oblivion, of course, the aftershocks of something
at sea. Here, hands full of sand, letting it sift through
in the wind, I look in and say take this, this is
what I have saved, take this, hurry. And if I listen
now? Listen, I was not saying anything. It was only
something I did. I could not choose words. I am free to go.
I cannot of course come back. Not to this. Never.
It is a ghost posed on my lips. Here: never.
The meandering free-association is not even suprising,
just the kind of associations that anyone would make as
some words recall others:
"something at sea" brings to mind "sand": "hands full of sand,
letting it sift through the wind" where the phrase "hands
full of sand" immediately brings to mind "sift through
[my fingers], and "infinity" begets "oblivion", "go" begets
"come back". The injection of stale aphorisms like
"Nobody gets what they want." in the middle of all this
is especially annoying, the kind of thing that Bob comments
on in his blog for December 11. One could also question
why the "poem" is written in prose except for a couple
of lines. Why not 4 verse stanzas like "The Geese"?
The imposition of some random form on these lines
is annoying, but if you are passing yourself off as
a poet, I suppose it's necessary to offset at least
a couple of lines.
I don't want to begrudge Graham her right to practice
as an academic "poet", but I really have to question
whether any of what she does is worth the $500,000
she received for the MacArthur fellowship. I don't deserve
the award because I don't have a body of work, for one
thing, but there must be many who do. Surely the work
that Bob has done (see for example
http://www.geocities.com/Comprepoetica/Blog/Gallery.html)
is worth a few bones tossed in his direction? Whaddya say,
MacArthur people?
Jim KQKnave
Raleigh's poetry? Or did he just make the statement? Shakespeare's
sonnet 30 is a type of poem that kind be found in many places,
including Wyatt and some of the poems in Tottel's Miscellany.
Should we be suprised that Crowley is just talking out of his a**?
In my opinion that poem is not a parody of anything, it's just
an exemplar of the poems that express that mood. And it's
one of the best poems in the sequence.
Robert Stonehouse
<reed...@earthlink.net> wrote:
>"Gary Kosinsky" <gk...@vcn.bc.ca> wrote in message
>news:41b9fba2...@news.individual.net...
>> On Fri, 10 Dec 2004 15:48:00 GMT, "Tom Reedy"
>> <reed...@earthlink.net> wrote:
>He that outlives this day, and comes safe home,
>Will stand a tip-toe when the day is named,
>And rouse him at the name of Crispian.
>He that shall live this day, and see old age,
>Will yearly on the vigil feast his neighbours,
>And say 'To-morrow is Saint Crispian:'
>Then will he strip his sleeve and show his scars.
>And say 'These wounds I had on Crispin's day.'
>Old men forget: yet all shall be forgot,
>But he'll remember with advantages
>What feats he did that day: then shall our names.
>Familiar in his mouth as household words
>Harry the king, Bedford and Exeter,
>Warwick and Talbot, Salisbury and Gloucester,
>Be in their flowing cups freshly remember'd.
>This story shall the good man teach his son;
>And Crispin Crispian shall ne'er go by,
>From this day to the ending of the world,
>But we in it shall be remember'd;
No! RememberED this time.
It matters (a) in a minor way, because of the metre and
(b) principally, because this is the point at which Harry's
tone changes.
He has just found his chief officers talking among
themselves, and wishing they were somewhere else and not
having to fight tomorrow's battle. What is worse, they have
a very reasonable point. Something has to be done.
He begins by engaging their attention with an ordinary story
in very ordinary language, in an ordinary tone of voice.
People tend to assume this speech is a uniform rant from
beginning to end, like the Harfleur speech - wrongly. At the
beginning it is mere conversation, and that allows it to be
something more than rant at the end.
The change begins (as I see it) with the list of names. With
his own he links (and this is an honour) those of the people
he is talking to (Bedford, Exeter and Gloucester) and the
one who has just gone out and comes back at the end
(Salisbury).
What are Warwick and Talbot doing there? Well, there was Guy
of Warwick and Warwick the Kingmaker, and so a Warwickshire
man has a reasonable excuse for including the name. Talbot
was under a cloud (friend of the heretic Sir John Oldcastle)
and had been left to maintain order in Ireland, but the
author of 1 Henry VI would not have forgotten how much he
mattered to the audience. Forget chronology! This is a play,
and Harry needs to make his subordinates feel they are equal
to the heroes of all ages.
The idea of remembrance is important here. It means, not a
ceremony on the eleventh day of the eleventh month, but
immortal fame. So it is introduced in a conversational
metre:
'Be, in their flowing cups, freshly remember'd.'
But then the metre changes, becoming stricter and more
regular:
>This story shall the good man teach his son;
>And Crispin Crispian shall ne'er go by,
>From this day to the ending of the world,
>But we in it shall be remember'd;
But, as I argue, rememberED.
Gary Kosinsky
<kqk...@yahoo.co.uk> wrote:
>I'm not sure what to think. Did he offer any specific examples from
>Raleigh's poetry? Or did he just make the statement?
The things you have to do when people aren't
speaking to one another on the list!
Below is what Paul posted. Personally, I find the
idea that Shakespeare might have deliberately parodied a
specific poet, in one of his sonnets in the series, a
plausible and interesting one. Whether that was going on in
Sonnet 30 with Ralegh, as I've mentioned to Paul, I have no
idea.
Paul's post:
************************************************************
It is easy enough to find statements about
Raleigh's poetry from those who have
studied it. I quoted Winton on it recently
" . . . the prevailing tone of virtually everything Ralegh
wrote is of
disappointment and defeat. His favourite line of his own
poetry
seems to have been 'Of all which past, the sorrow only
stays'. . ."
This fits exactly Shakespeare's description
of both his subject-matter and his leaden
style, as summarised in line 10:
10. And heavily from woe to woe tell ore
1. When to the Sessions of sweet silent thought,
2. I sommon up remembrance of things past,
3. I sigh the lacke of many a thing I sought,
4. And with old woes new waile my deare times waste:
5. Then can I drowne an eye (un-us'd to flow)
6. For precious friends hid in deaths dateles night,
7. And weepe a fresh loves long since canceld woe,
8. And mone th'expence of many a vannisht sight.
9. Then can I greeve at greevances fore-gon,
10. And heavily from woe to woe tell ore
11. The sad account of fore-bemoned mone,
12. Which I new pay as if not payd before.
13. But if the while I thinke on thee (deare friend)
14. All losses are restord, and sorrowes end.
It's also easy to see what Ralegh's poetry
is like for yourself. I've quoted this
endless harping on 'woe' here before.
Note the same words as in Sonnet 30, and
the boringly dull regularity of the metre.
Terry Ross
> "Terry Ross" <t...@bcpl.net> wrote in message
> news:Pine.GSO.4.61.0412081621120.1104@mail...
>
>> Why is the poem so alliterative? I don't agree with Paul that this is
>> a sign of a parody, exactly, but there is some distance between the
>> overstatement of grief and what we guess the speaker's true emotion
>> must be.
>
> You completely fail to deal with my claim that the poem, taken as a
> whole, is a parody of Raleigh's style.
I do indeed; your claim is not well supported. You quote lines in which
the word "woe" appears -- how rare is that? Here is a single line (not by
Raleigh) that is fuller of woes than any line by Raleigh you posted:
"Then WOE, and WOE, and euerlasting WOE,"
[emphasis added]
Three WOEs in a single line -- but the line is not by Raleigh. Your ONLY
point of comparison was that "woe" appeared several times in Raleigh.
Here is a non-Raleigh sonnet with three WOEs in 14 lines:
Thou paine, the onely guest of loath'd constraint,
the child of cursse, mans weakenes foster child,
brother to WOE, and Father of complaint,
thou paine, thou lothed paine from heauen exilde:
How hold'st ye her whose eies constraint doth feare,
who curst, doth blesse, who weakneth vertues arme,
who others WOES and plaints can chastly heare,
in whose sweet heauen, angels of hie thoughts swarm
What courage strange hath caught thy catife hart?
Fear'st not a face that oft whole harts deuours?
or art thou from aboue byd play this part?
and so no helpe gainst enuie of those powers.
If thus, alas; yet whilst those parts haue WO,
So stay her tongue that shee no more say no.
Here is another poem, not by Raleigh or Shakespeare, that has 8 WOEs in 33
lines:
YE wastefull woodes beare witnesse of my WOE,
Wherein my plaints did oftentimes resound:
Ye carelesse byrds are priuie to my cryes,
Which in your songs were wont to make a part:
Thou pleasaunt spring hast luld me oft a sleepe,
Whose streames my trickling teares did ofte augment.
Resort of people doth my greefs augment,
The walled townes do worke my greater WOE:
The forest wide is fitter to resound
The hollow Echo of my carefull cryes,
I hate the house, since thence my loue did part,
Whose waylefull want debarres myne eyes from sleepe.
Let stremes of teares supply the place of sleepe:
Let all that sweete is, voyd: and all that may augment
My doole, drawe neare. More meete to wayle my WOE,
Bene the wild woddes my sorrowes to resound,
Then bedde, or bowre, both which I fill with cryes,
When I them see so waist, and fynd no part
Of pleasure past. Here will I dwell apart
In gastful groue therefore, till my last sleepe
Doe close mine eyes: so shall I not augment
With sight of such a chaunge my recklesse WOE:
Helpe me, ye banefull byrds, whose shrieking sound
Ys signe of dreery death, my deadly cryes
Most ruthfully to tune. And as my cryes
(Which of my WOE cannot bewray least part)
You heare all night, when nature craueth sleepe,
Increase, so let your yrksome yells augment.
Thus all the night in plaints, the daye in WOE
I vowed haue to wayst, till safe and sound
She home returne, whose voyces siluer sound
To cheerefull songs can chaunge my cherelesse cryes.
Hence with the Nightingale will I take part,
That blessed byrd, that spends her time of sleepe
In songs and plaintiue pleas, the more taugment
The memory of hys misdeede, that bred her WOE:
And you that feele no woe, when as the sound
Of these my nightly cryes ye heare apart,
Let breake your sounder sleepe and pitie augment.
>
> This is a very simple YES/NO question. If the answer is 'yes' then all
> that Vendler and you (and the traditional commentators) write on the
> sonnet is nonsense -- or largely so. If the answer is 'no', then you
> should have no difficulty in showing it. Why do duck the challenge?
>
The answer is "no." A high "woe" count would not be enough; we find high
"woe" counts in poems by neither Raleigh nor Shakespeare.
> It is not a claim that could be made as regards any other poet of the
> day. It would, for example, be manifestly false to claim that the poem
> is a parody of Spenser.
The three-WOE line quoted above is by Spenser; the eight-WOE poem is a
song sung in *The Shepheardes Calender*.
> It does not imitate his style, nor does it echo his vocabulary, nor any
> of his favourite hobby-horses. And likewise for Sidney, Dyer, Surrey,
> etc. But there is one poet whose work it does fit -- and fits
> perfectly.
Excessive grief reminds me more of Spenser than of Raleigh. *Daphnaida*
is an elegy that wallows in grief and then denies us the consolation we
expect. The lamenting shepherd disappears at the end of the poem, and the
speaker tells us he does not know "what became of him."
That does NOT mean Shakespeare's sonnet is a parody of *Daphnaida* or
anything else by Spenser; the grief in *Daphnaida* is relentless; the
grief in Sonnet 30 is relived intensely but (for the reader) briefly.
>
> a) Is much of its poetry of an appalling standard, and full of the
> crudest errors?
You have not accurately described Sonnet 30; it's a better poem than you
know.
>
> b) Was our poet intelligent and competent enough to be able to see those
> crudities for what they were?
There may be certain "crudities" in your approach to poetry, but I
wouldn't blame Shakespeare for them.
>
> c) Are those crudities typical of Raleigh?
Your crudities are your own responsibility.
>
> d) Does the poem echo the topics on which Raleigh continually harped?
>
It's not at all clear that there is any "echo" of Raleigh in the sonnet at
all. There IS a clear echo of this verse from the Wisdom of Solomon:
"Whether they were absent or present, their punishment was alike: for
their griefe was double with mourning, & the remembrance of things past."
There is no Raleigh passage that is so clearly echoed in Sonnet 30.
> e) Does it emphasise words favoured by Raleigh?
You mean "does it emphasize words that were peculiarly favored by Raleigh"
-- the answer is "no." There are words that Shakespeare used that many
other poets (including Raleigh) also used, but Raleigh did not control
access to that common storehouse.
>
>> The eye "unused to flow" -- the more stoic observer of Vendler's T2 --
>> might well find bathos in "and heavily from woe to woe tell o'er / The
>> sad account of fore bemoaned moan." The alliteration and assonance
>> present us with an exhibition of grief that the T2 speaker, and some
>> readers, might find embarrassing.
>
> Bathos is everywhere. It is all embarrassing. It is all MEANT to be
> embarrassing.
One might say that *Daphnaida* fails because it is NOT meant to be
embarrassing.
Sonnet 30 is a different matter. Shakespeare sketches in a few lines the
kind of thing that might be embarrassing if it went on at great length,
but there is always more than self-pity; there is self-awareness.
The recognition that exaggerated woe may be unconvincing is common among
poets of the time, and they may leaven such exaggeration with a bit of
self-mockery, or some other acknowledgement of the exaggeration.
Astrophil "sought fit wordes to paint the blackest face of woe"; Spenser
in *Amoretti* says at times "I waile and make my woes a Tragedy." We do
not find these strategies embarrassing because we know the speaker of the
poem knows that they are strategies.
>
>> "Get over it," some might say, and indeed the T2 speaker is someone who
>> DID get over it, yet "now" in T1, the speaker once more seems to wallow
>> in his excessive grief.
>
> And what contemporary poet made a speciality of doing that -- to the
> exclusion of nearly everything else?
Nobody that I know of; certainly not Raleigh. Raleigh does not wallow in
excessive grief in his first published poem, his commendation of
Gascoigne's *Stelle Glass*. He does not do this in his commendatory poems
for *The Faerie Queene*. He does not do this in "The Shepherd's
Description of Love" or in "The Shepherd's Praise of his Sacred Diana" or
in "A Poesie to Prove that Affection is Not Love" or in a number of other
poems I could cite. While there certainly are poems of grief, it is not
accurate to say he "made a speciality of doing that -- to the exclusion of
nearly everything else."
>
> [..]
>> The last word of the poem is "end"; while thinking on the dear friend
>> makes "sorrows end," such an end is temporary and conditional. Only in
>> death's dateless night is the end itself endless.
>
> God help us. "Deaths dateless night" is not meant to be taken
> seriously. It's a piss-take -- like most of the other way-over-the-top
> phrases in the sonnet.
Do you really think so? It sounds like echt Shakespeare to me.
>
> The Victorian Bardolators (and especially the academics) would never
> have conceived of the possibility of the Great Bard taking the piss from
> anyone. But we should not follow them so stupidly.
Do you believe that Victorian academics devoted no effort to tracing
Shakespeare's sources and influences?
>
>> Vendler shows how to see that this is not merely a poem that uses words
>> such as "remembrance" and "losses" but one that recreates the processes
>> it describes. It may take a reading such as Vendler's to unpack the
>> way this poem works.
>>
>> Mine seems to be a minority view here; I think the poem is an
>> extraordiary piece of work, and Vendler's analysis is dazzling.
>
> Vendler's analysis MAY have some validity. PERHAPS the poet did follow
> some kind of scheme along the lines she sets out -- but, if so, it would
> have been largely subconscious.
That's an interesting concession. If Vendler has pointed out features of
the poem that you would not have noticed without her help, then you are in
her debt. As for whether Shakespeare's craft was unconscious -- well, you
certainly don't seem to believe that. If you think the poem is a parody,
then you must think Shakespeare knew what he was trying to do.
> However, any such analysis is pointless when you miss the entire purpose
> of the sonnet.
>
If you take from it only a "point" then you have cheated yourself. Why
bother with poems at all, if all you want from them is a "point"? Why
bother with them if they are only the excuse for a Kinbotian allegory?
bookburn
"Robert Stonehouse" <ew...@bcs.org.invalid> wrote in message
news:ko0sr0d8sro8vvoeg...@4ax.com...
BBC News, UK edition.
(quote)
Last Updated: Saturday, 13 November, 2004, 15:52 GMT
Globe event for Remembrance Day
A walk will take place from the theatre to a peace garden
Actors and musicians will be taking part in a special Remembrance Day
event at Shakespeare's Globe Theatre in London.
The free event, to be held on Sunday, will include music and readings
by Globe actors, musicians and staff.
Names of the fallen will be read out in the afternoon and candles will
be lit.
A walk has also been organised from the theatre to the Tibetan Peace
Garden at the Imperial War Museum where a remembrance rope will be
laid.
A prayer will also be said at the garden, in Lambeth.
The event, which will be hosted by the theatre's artistic director
Mark Rylance, will start at 1600 GMT.
(unquote)
Paul Crowley
> >" . . . the prevailing tone of virtually everything Ralegh wrote is of
> >disappointment and defeat. His favourite line of his own poetry
> >seems to have been 'Of all which past, the sorrow only stays'. . ."
> >
> >This fits exactly Shakespeare's description
> >of both his subject-matter and his leaden
> >style, as summarised in line 10:
> >
> > 10. And heavily from woe to woe tell ore
>
> But Ralegh, surely, doesn't have a monopoly on poems
> dealing with sorrow. That is, just because a poem evokes
> sorrow doesn't mean that Ralegh is being parodied.
Of course not. I have given the other
reasons for the identification of Raleigh:
-- the clumsiness of the verse, the crude
alliterations, the hollow sentiments, and
the leaden metre. No other contemporary
poet consistently wrote in a manner fitting
the description given to us in line 10, and
throughout this sonnet.
> >1. When to the Sessions of sweet silent thought,
> >2. I sommon up remembrance of things past,
> >3. I sigh the lacke of many a thing I sought,
> >4. And with old woes new waile my deare times waste:
> >5. Then can I drowne an eye (un-us'd to flow)
> >6. For precious friends hid in deaths dateles night,
> >7. And weepe a fresh loves long since canceld woe,
> >8. And mone th'expence of many a vannisht sight.
> >9. Then can I greeve at greevances fore-gon,
> >10. And heavily from woe to woe tell ore
> >11. The sad account of fore-bemoned mone,
> >12. Which I new pay as if not payd before.
> >13. But if the while I thinke on thee (deare friend)
> >14. All losses are restord, and sorrowes end.
> >
> >
> >It's also easy to see what Ralegh's poetry
> >is like for yourself. I've quoted this
> >endless harping on 'woe' here before.
> >Note the same words as in Sonnet 30, and
> >the boringly dull regularity of the metre.
>
> SNIP of examples.
>
> Thanks for the examples, Paul. Certainly Ralegh
> appears to have used the word "woe" often. But does that
> mean that because Shakespeare used "woe" in sonnet 30 he
> must be parodying Ralegh?
Of course not. I have given the other
reasons for the identification of Raleigh:
-- the clumsiness of the verse, the crude
alliterations, the hollow sentiments, and
the leaden metre. No other contemporary
poet consistently wrote in a manner fitting
the description given to us in line 10, and
throughout this sonnet.
> As far as the boringly dull regularity of the metres
> in each - sorry, but once again my tin ear for poetry
> prevents me from judging this aspect.
Read it out loud. Read any of Raleigh's
verse out loud. Compare it with Shake-
speare's. One is dull and leaden, the
other is full of life.
> BTW: even if it could be shown that the author was
> parodying Ralegh in this Sonnet, what would stop someone
> from simply saying William Shakespeare of Stratford was
> parodying Ralegh in this sonnet?
No comment.
Paul.
Paul Crowley
news:cpij5k$6gu$1...@titan.btinternet.com...
>
> <bobgr...@nut-n-but.net> wrote in message
> news:1102860407.4...@c13g2000cwb.googlegroups.com...
> > Paul, read A Midsummer Night's Dream sometime. You'll find out how
> > Shakespeare does parodies in it. He makes them funny.
You don't recognise a fraction of his
parodies. You see only see the extremely
crude -- the near-slapstick. A parody in a
sonnet (of his rival's style) requires that
you put in a little more than when you
watch |an actor clowning about on stage.
> He doesn't make
> > them in such a way that no one except you recognizes them as such.
Note how, after my identification, no 'expert'
denies it. The principal reason why it has
not been noticed before is the prevailing
assumption that all great poetry was written
only when the poet had a stick up his arse
-- and in no mood for parody. (Btw, would
that be a fair description of how you write
your own poetry?)
> > Incidentally, it wouldn't hurt the Shakespeare was Ashakespeare cause
> > if an expert demonstrated that the sonnet was a parody of Raleigh. No
> > reason our Shakespeare could not have written such a parody.
> >
> > Another by the way: whom was Shakespeare parodying with
> > "fore-bemoaned?" Also: what poet of the time didn't use "woe" a good
> > deal of the time in his poems?
>
> There are only 5 plays in the canon that don't contain the word. The Rape of
> Lucrece sports 34 uses, and Richard II has 27.
Err . . . most of us know what The Rape
of Lucrece is about. And most of us
know the subject of Richard II and
remember the nature of the speeches
made by, to or about a great monarch
in a slow decline into a dreadful fate.
Why did Raleigh so consistently adopt
in his poetry a tone fitting such tragedies?
(As he did.) His life up to the late 1580s
was one of triumphant success, of immense
riches, of enormous influence, and of rising
from almost nothing.
> It would make a change if Mr
> Crowley could just once come up with an assertion that would take, say a
> couple of days to refute, instead of ten minutes. It's like swatting midges.
If only . . .
> Buffalo
What an idiot -- no wonder he has to
hide behind such a moniker.
Paul.
Tom Reedy
news:ko0sr0d8sro8vvoeg...@4ax.com...
I agree. You'll have to chastise the web site I copied this from,
http://www-tech.mit.edu/Shakespeare/. My only purpose was to illustrate my
point.
TR
bookburn
"Paul Crowley" <slkwuoiut...@slkjlskjoioue.com> wrote in
message news:4zqvd.43883$Z14....@news.indigo.ie...
If Crowley does continue with parody, in keeping with Oxford's
elevated attitude and who knows what idiosyncrasies, he could at least
be on firm ground in the sonnets where the poet puns about superficial
fashions, euphemism and "guilding the lily," compares his mistress to
a fair maiden in earthy terms, etc.. A case might be made that the
poet is sometimes using one version of the pastoral tradition in
contrast to another. Probably numerous other instances of parody
recognizable as caricature, burlesque, lampoon, and even satire or
ridicule as he holds up the mirror to nature. But it seems we
struggle to understand the poet's real meanings, however complicated,
and Crowley may have to advise us from his vantage point when we are
supposed to be comically amused instead of soberly impressed.
Problem of differentiating parody from good old imitation, however,
which we know the playwright made extensive use of in borrowing
sources. I don't think it's constructive to suppose the borrower then
parodies himself as borrower, unless there is a consistent management
as one or more of the comic styles, like burlesque or caricature
Didn't the universities consider imitation more than flattery, even
correct and necessary, according to Aristotle and Plato? Something
about Plato insisting that depending on the senses requires imitation
to get a version of the real/ideal form; Aristotle in the Poetics. I
read that Spenser in The Bower of Bliss and The Garden compares the
"artifice of the garden" as opposed to innate beauty, describing art
as imitation; at:
http://www.english-literature.org/essays/spenser.html
Similarly, I seem to remember that, at one time, Oxford University
actually required adherence to Plato's doctrines such as "imitation";
which, if it did, might occasion parody of it.
bookburn
Paul Crowley
> On Thu, 9 Dec 2004, Paul Crowley wrote:
>
> > "Terry Ross" <t...@bcpl.net> wrote in message
> > news:Pine.GSO.4.61.0412081621120.1104@mail...
> >
> >> Why is the poem so alliterative? I don't agree with Paul that this is
> >> a sign of a parody, exactly, but there is some distance between the
> >> overstatement of grief and what we guess the speaker's true emotion
> >> must be.
> >
> > You completely fail to deal with my claim that the poem, taken as a
> > whole, is a parody of Raleigh's style.
>
> I do indeed; your claim is not well supported.
Bullshit. My claim is either true or it's
ridiculous. To say that it's "not well
supported" is to perform the patented
Terry-Ross-evasive-shuffle" which
will fool only the very stupid.
> I do indeed; your claim is not well supported.
The notion that there is a wicked parody
of Raleigh in this sonnet implies that there
was a particular relationship between Shake-
speare and Raleigh -- and, indeed, strongly
hints that he was probably the 'rival poet'.
Yet his name is never considered for that
role by Stratfordian 'scholars' -- for some
very good reasons.
> I do indeed; your claim is not well supported.
Note what I wrote:
> > the poem, taken as a whole, is a parody of Raleigh's style.
I do NOT (as you seem to think) rely solely
on the frequency of the word 'woe'.
> You quote lines in which
> the word "woe" appears -- how rare is that?
'Rarity' is not the issue. You should have looked
at the relative frequencies of the word in what
we have the work of contemporary poets.
> Here is a single line (not by
> Raleigh) that is fuller of woes than any line by Raleigh you posted:
>
> "Then WOE, and WOE, and euerlasting WOE,"
Is this an attempt at humour?
<snip>
> > This is a very simple YES/NO question. If the answer is 'yes' then all
> > that Vendler and you (and the traditional commentators) write on the
> > sonnet is nonsense -- or largely so. If the answer is 'no', then you
> > should have no difficulty in showing it. Why do duck the challenge?
>
> The answer is "no." A high "woe" count would not be enough;
No one has claimed that it would be
enough. It's a useful start, though.
[..]
> > It does not imitate his style, nor does it echo his vocabulary, nor any
> > of his favourite hobby-horses. And likewise for Sidney, Dyer, Surrey,
> > etc. But there is one poet whose work it does fit -- and fits
> > perfectly.
>
> Excessive grief reminds me more of Spenser than of Raleigh.
'Excessive 'grief' is your phrase, not mine.
Grief normally has a genuine basis, and so
is rarely an object of parody. It could
become so, if taken to extremes, but that is
clearly NOT happening here. This sonnet
is about the type of self-pitying moaning
in which Raleigh liked to indulge (about
unrequited love, his poor fortune, missed
opportunities, blah, blah.) and which our
poet delights in ridiculing.
> *Daphnaida* is an elegy that wallows in grief
Elegies are supposed to express grief.
Ordinary poetry does not, as a rule --
except Raleigh's, which moan on and
on (although not much about grief).
> and then denies us the consolation we
> expect. The lamenting shepherd disappears at the end of the poem, and the
> speaker tells us he does not know "what became of him."
>
> That does NOT mean Shakespeare's sonnet is a parody of *Daphnaida* or
> anything else by Spenser;
This sonnet does not pretend to be an elegy.
'Grief' here is a strawman, as is your notion that
someone might claim Shakespeare was parodying
Spenser. You seem to have fun setting them up
and then knocking them down. But they are
irrelevant to the argument.
> the grief in *Daphnaida* is relentless; the
> grief in Sonnet 30 is relived intensely but (for the reader) briefly.
What genuine cause of 'grief' is there in
Sonnet 30? Who has died -- apart from
those 'precious friends' (presumably dead
long ago) ?
9. Then can I greeve at greevances fore-gon,
Note the monstrosities in line 9, where the
poet pretends to grieve at 'grievances fore-
gone' ! (1a) When did you, Terry, last grieve
at a grievance? (1b) Can you give an example
from public life of someone doing that?
(1c) What is a 'grievance foregone'?
(1d) Can you provide an example from public
life? (1e) Finally, can you quote an instance
-- from public life, or from your own private
knowledge -- of a person grieving at a
grievance foregone?
Usually Shakespeare packs his verse with
layers of dense meaning. Here he goes to the
other extreme, and packs it with layers of
dense nonsense.
Anyone who takes this kind of Jabberwocky
nonsense seriously can neither read, nor has
a sense of humour, nor possesses a poetic
corpuscle in their body. Oops -- that about
covers all Strats, including you and Vendler.
> > a) Is much of its poetry of an appalling standard, and full of the
> > crudest errors?
>
> You have not accurately described Sonnet 30; it's a better poem than you
> know.
And it is ALSO a far worse one than you
can imagine (being deliberately 'bad').
But when you haven't the first clue as to
what it's about, your words on it have all
the vapidity of the best of John Edwards
(was that his name?).
> > b) Was our poet intelligent and competent enough to be able to see those
> > crudities for what they were?
>
> There may be certain "crudities" in your approach to poetry, but I
> wouldn't blame Shakespeare for them.
Are you really claiming to see no crudities
in Sonnet 30?
How about
a) Sessions of sweet silent thought?
(What's a thought session?)
b) Why the alliteration in line 1?
What points does it help the poet to make?
c) How can thought be other than silent?
d) What's 'sweet' about the silence?
e) I sommon up remembrance of things past,
(Is he going to remember things future?)
f) Why the clumsy legal image of sessions
and summoning simply to say that 'he
remembers'?
g) I sigh the lacke of many a thing I sought,
(Are you really going to defend 'sigh . . sought'?
h) Why the alliteration in line 3?
What ideas or images does it emphasise?
i) Do you approve the metrical nature of this line?
j) Does the use of monosyllabic words
remind you of anyone?
k) Do you think that they add to the quality
of the verse?
l) Does the grammatical complexity of the line
strike you as Shakespearean?
m) And with old woes new waile my deare times waste:
(No doubt you find this another profoundly
Shakespearean line, full of complex grammar
and expression)
n) Why the alliteration in line 4?
What ideas or images does it emphasise?
o) Do you approve the metrical nature of this line?
p) Does the use of monosyllabic words
remind you of anyone?
q) Do you think that they add to the quality
of the verse?
That's just on the first four lines of the sonnet.
The questions I ask are of the nature that
any teacher would set to young teenagers
to help them read the poem. No Strat (such
as yourself) would even think of asking, let
alone answering them. The only answers
you could give would destroy your
pretensions.
> > c) Are those crudities typical of Raleigh?
>
> Your crudities are your own responsibility.
So you really CANNOT see the crudities in
this sonnet? The alliteration? The appallingly
leaden metre (of most lines)? The monosyllabic
words? The pathetic (and bathetic) banality of
the thoughts and emotions expressed? The
outright nonsense of most of it?
> > d) Does the poem echo the topics on which Raleigh continually harped?
>
> It's not at all clear that there is any "echo" of Raleigh in the sonnet at
> all.
"It's not at all clear . . . " doesn't cut it, Terry.
Either the poet intended a parody or he didn't.
If he did, then it would be quite clear to any
mildly competent reader -- especially after it
has been pointed out. Correspondingly, if he
had no such intention, then an appearance
of parody is not going to arise by accident.
So, in other words, you can't decide. And
what a surprise! What else would anyone
expect? As a Strat, you will never begin to
approach a level of even mild competence in
the reading of this poet's verse. At least, you
seem to be aware of that fact. You would not
exhibit such dithering about the work of any
other poet.
> There IS a clear echo of this verse from the Wisdom of Solomon:
> "Whether they were absent or present, their punishment was alike: for
> their griefe was double with mourning, & the remembrance of things past."
Yeah, yeah. Quick, don't panic, just change
the subject, don't panic, don't panic.
> > e) Does it emphasise words favoured by Raleigh?
>
> You mean "does it emphasize words that were peculiarly favored by Raleigh"
> -- the answer is "no." There are words that Shakespeare used that many
> other poets (including Raleigh) also used, but Raleigh did not control
> access to that common storehouse.
The words peculiarly favoured by Raleigh are
'woe', 'wail', 'moan', 'grief', 'grievance', 'expense',
'sad', 'pay', 'loss', 'death', ;'drown' . . .
[..]
> Sonnet 30 is a different matter. Shakespeare sketches in a few lines the
> kind of thing that might be embarrassing if it went on at great length,
> but there is always more than self-pity; there is self-awareness.
The kind of 'self-awareness' in phrases like
'sad account of fore-bemoned mone' is of a
completely different nature from whatever
you imagine. Apart from the final couplet, it
is entirely tongue-in-cheek. It is so 'bad' that
it cannot be otherwise. Yet you must deny
that -- partly because no Strat up to now has
been capable of thinking that the Great Bard
ever had his tongue in such a position.
> The recognition that exaggerated woe may be unconvincing is common among
> poets of the time, and they may leaven such exaggeration with a bit of
> self-mockery, or some other acknowledgement of the exaggeration.
Where in this sonnet do you detect self-
mockery? Where has ANY Stratfordian
commentary on this sonnet ever suggested
ANY self-mockery?
> Astrophil "sought fit wordes to paint the blackest face of woe"; Spenser
> in *Amoretti* says at times "I waile and make my woes a Tragedy." We do
> not find these strategies embarrassing because we know the speaker of the
> poem knows that they are strategies.
A weak poet, such as Raleigh, is unlikely
to do that. He adopted his style more as
the result of incompetence than from any
kind of 'strategy'.
> > And what contemporary poet made a speciality of doing that -- to the
> > exclusion of nearly everything else?
>
> Nobody that I know of; certainly not Raleigh. Raleigh does not wallow in
> excessive grief in his first published poem, his commendation of
> Gascoigne's *Stelle Glass*.
Sure, sure. He's hardly likely to wail
his woes in a commendation.
> He does not do this in his commendatory poems
> for *The Faerie Queene*. He does not do this in "The Shepherd's
> Description of Love" or in "The Shepherd's Praise of his Sacred Diana" or
> in "A Poesie to Prove that Affection is Not Love" or in a number of other
> poems I could cite. While there certainly are poems of grief, it is not
> accurate to say he "made a speciality of doing that -- to the exclusion of
> nearly everything else."
OK, I was overstating a little. Big deal.
> > [..]
> >> The last word of the poem is "end"; while thinking on the dear friend
> >> makes "sorrows end," such an end is temporary and conditional. Only in
> >> death's dateless night is the end itself endless.
> >
> > God help us. "Deaths dateless night" is not meant to be taken
> > seriously. It's a piss-take -- like most of the other way-over-the-top
> > phrases in the sonnet.
>
> Do you really think so? It sounds like echt Shakespeare to me.
Your sense of tone is poor. Shakespeare was
especially careful in his sonnets to use words
in a meaningful way. What non-banal meaning
could 'deaths dateless night' possess?
> > The Victorian Bardolators (and especially the academics) would never
> > have conceived of the possibility of the Great Bard taking the piss from
> > anyone. But we should not follow them so stupidly.
>
> Do you believe that Victorian academics devoted no effort to tracing
> Shakespeare's sources and influences?
They devoted intense efforts -- almost invariably
hopelessly misdirected -- since their conceptions
of the man, his work, and of his social, political,
and poetic context were so misplaced. Their
ability to sense his tone of voice, especially in
his sonnets, was beyond the hopeless.
> > Vendler's analysis MAY have some validity. PERHAPS the poet did follow
> > some kind of scheme along the lines she sets out -- but, if so, it would
> > have been largely subconscious.
>
> That's an interesting concession.
Not really. Read my capitalized words as
though pronounced with extreme scepticism.
> If Vendler has pointed out features of
> the poem that you would not have noticed without her help, then you are in
> her debt.
Not so. If someone was to count up the 'a's
and the 'e's you used in your last substantial
piece of work, would you be in that person's
debt for pointing out something that you
would not have noticed without their help?
> As for whether Shakespeare's craft was unconscious -- well, you
> certainly don't seem to believe that. If you think the poem is a parody,
> then you must think Shakespeare knew what he was trying to do.
Indeed. But there are always unconscious
processes at work. Very often they are trivial
and inconsequential. Vendler MAY have
identified something of that nature. I would
not want to waste my time thinking about it.
Since she misses everything of consequence
about the sonnet, the 'points' that she finds
(IF she finds anything at all) are unlikely to
be other than trivial.
> > However, any such analysis is pointless when you miss the entire purpose
> > of the sonnet.
>
> If you take from it only a "point" then you have cheated yourself. Why
> bother with poems at all, if all you want from them is a "point"? Why
> bother with them if they are only the excuse for a Kinbotian allegory?
Eh? When you miss the sense of almost
all that the poet says, you do not
appreciate the poem. You might still
enjoy its sound, as though it were
nonsense verse, or in the way children
love nursery rhymes. And there's no
harm in that _as_such_. It is about the
sum total of the Stratfordian conception
of Shakespeare's poetry (and probably
the Stratfordian conception of ALL
poetry).
Yet you (and other Strats and quasi-
Strats) do great harm when you claim to
have an understanding of poetry, and
when other people believe you. You
place insuperable obstacles to all
appreciation of poetry and literature
in their way
Paul.
Terry Ross
> "Terry Ross" <tr...@bcpl.net> wrote in message
> news:Pine.GSO.4.61.0412131857010.12682@mail...
>
>> On Thu, 9 Dec 2004, Paul Crowley wrote:
>>
>>> "Terry Ross" <t...@bcpl.net> wrote in message
>>> news:Pine.GSO.4.61.0412081621120.1104@mail...
>>>
>>>> Why is the poem so alliterative? I don't agree with Paul that this
>>>> is a sign of a parody, exactly, but there is some distance between
>>>> the overstatement of grief and what we guess the speaker's true
>>>> emotion must be.
>>>
>>> You completely fail to deal with my claim that the poem, taken as a
>>> whole, is a parody of Raleigh's style.
>>
>> I do indeed; your claim is not well supported.
>
> B*llsh*t.
When I said to Paul, "your crudities are your own responsibility," I did
not expect him to reaffirm my point so rapidly and emphatically. I didn't
care to look at anything Paul might have said after this.
bobgr...@nut-n-but.net
I'm relieved we seemed close on Graham and Vendler. Of late, I've been
taking abuse at New-Poetry and getting to feel like everbuddy's agin
me, so I wasn't sure about your Vendler post.
The Vendler crap didn't make me explode--I laughed a lot at it, though,
particularly the parts you mention. Wittgenstein makes an appearance
in a lot of this kind of stuff. Too busy to say much back about it,
though. And now I just HAVE to concentrate on my Shakespeare book.
Haven't yet taken it up again. MUST today!
--Bob