POETICA : 10                           

 

‘Most people ignore most poetry because most poetry ignores most people’.

-          Adrian Mitchell

On the Sonnet

By John Keats

If by dull rhymes our English must be chained,  

And, like Andromeda, the Sonnet sweet            

Fettered, in spite of painéd loveliness;                

Let us find out, if we must be constrained,         

Sandals more interwoven and complete              

To fit the naked foot of poesy;                            

Let us inspect the lyre, and weigh the stress        

Of every chord, and see what may be gained       

By ear industrious, and attention meet;                

Misers of sound and syllable, no less                     

Than Midas of his coinage, let us be                     

Jealous of dead leaves in the bay-wreath crown;  

So, if we may not let the Muse be free,                 

She will be bound with garlands of her own.        

 Theme

 Poetry of Sonnets

 The sonnet is one of the oldest, most fascinating, challenging, teasing forms of poetry in the European literary tradition. It can best be described as a beloved beauty adorned from head to foot in ornaments from hair-pins, tiaras, earrings, nose-pins and necklaces, to armlets, waist-chains down to the anklets, and foot-rings. It is an example of poetry of exquisite embellishment. Not only in its tinkling sounds of embroidered rhymes, but also in its other musical effects of assonance and alliteration, with all its vivid and colourful imagery. Although laden with all this ornamentation, it’s the meaning that happens to be most manipulated in most sonnets.

 Besides the strictest formulation of fourteen lines, with each line, generally, – an iambic pentameter, woven into stanzas of intricate patterns of rhymes, it has, lastly, stanzas divided into (1) eight (octet) and six lines (sestet) in the traditional Italian model, or (2) three quatrains followed by a couplet in the English variation. The most traditional rhyme scheme for (1) is ABBAABBA + CDECDE or some variation in the sestet like CCDDEE.

 When the sonnet crystallized its traditional form in Italy around the 13^th Century with Petrarch the rhyme scheme and stanza division of (1) was nearly fixed and even when the form was imported in England, the traditional Petrarchan form (1) was considered to be classically pure.

But Italian being a romance language was more fluid and flexible for rhyming than English which was a Germanic tongue with less flexibility and lesser amplitude of rhymes. Hence, whereas in the traditional Petrarchan mode the total number or rhymes was five (ABCDE), in English it was increased to at least seven (ABCDEFG).

 Even in its modern totally rhymeless form of verse, poetry is marked by rhythm (rise and fall of intonation), much more palpably than in prose, and by regular repetition of sounds through sound devices like assonance, alliteration, etc or words, phrases, and even whole lines repeated as refrain. When we speak of iambic we are speaking of this rhythm. Iambic is a set of two syllables in which the first syllable is unstressed followed closely by a stressed syllable – like aBOVE, aROUND. A full set of five such alternately stressed syllables in a row are called iambic pentameters.

 But all this rigmarole of technical terms of prosody is needed only when you are analyzing the texture of the verse, like a doctor looking at an X-Ray plate. To the common reader it is the sweetness and lilt of the sonnet as a song which it is basically seen as.

 All this anatomy of a sonnet can be discussed in much greater detail elsewhere, but my purpose here is only to suggest that writing a sonnet has been a teasing challenge for most poets – right from Spenser, Shakespeare and Keats to the modernist poets like Robert Frost, W.H. Auden and Sylvia Plath. The more important question here in my POETICA series is what do we do if we try to write a sonnet today. The predominant theme of a sonnet has always been love – the ever youthful emotion in life. So why not try and write a sonnet, with all its traditional trappings, to express this elemental emotion as we experience it in our lives today?

 Trying to answer this question, I started a new venture of attempting to write a sonnet in the easier mode of the Shakespearean sonnet with seven rhymes. I started re-reading all his masterful creations in this form. And then decided to try writing a Shakespearean sonnet taking the cue from the first lines of some of his simpler sonnets. First I selected some of his sonnets with easier opening lines which strike a theme more familiar to the modern reader. Here is one example from about a dozen I have done so far (which you can read here on this blog soon). It’s from the earlier part of Shakespeare’s sonnet-sequence ; sonnet no, 22. See, only the first line is taken from Shakespeare; on the continuing thirteen lines I try to build a fresh structure upon that. Here is the first example.

 

My glass shall not persuade me I am old

It has always beguiled me, made me believe –

I’m always less or more than what they hold

Though I always wear my face on my sleeve.

 

Mirrors are clever dissemblers all the time

Turning your left cheek mole curiously on right

Enwrinkling soft-cheeked maidens still in prime

Gainsaying all that they say, or may or might.

 

Let my glass belie; with my beloved in my arms

It can never dissuade me of my eternal youth

With me sipping her nectar lips, as my bed she warms,

And playing all our luscious games of the mouth.

 

The glass will only distort reality, most of all love,

So let’s forget it for good, all its mischief to prove.

 

The rhyme scheme is strictly of a Shakespearean sonnet  - three quatrains of three sets of alternating rhymes (ABAB, CDCD, EFEF) followed by a rhyming couplet (GG). The theme is the universal theme of love presented with the mirror as its metaphor of enigma. The rhyme words are familiar and simple. The flow of thought is more akin to modern thinking. Even the opening line could have been changed to – “My mirror shall not convince me to be old”.  Or even in a totally different phrasing – “ Believe not your mirror if it says you are old.” In fact, this germinating idea can be developed into an entirely different poem even under the framework of the set rhyme scheme.

 We shall continue this discussion on one of the most loved poetic forms in the European poetic tradition, with a variety and expanse that is astounding, in our continuing POETICA episodes soon.

 © Dr BSM Murty

 Please read my first ten SHADOW SONNETS on this blog tomorrow.