Sonnet 62

Sonnet 62

Sonnet|62
Sin of self-love possesseth all mine eye,
And all my soul, and all my every part;
And for this sin there is no remedy,
It is so grounded inward in my heart.
Methinks no face so gracious is as mine,
No shape so true, no truth of such account,
And for myself mine own worth do define,
As I all other in all worths surmount.
But when my glass shows me myself indeed,
Beated and chopped with tanned antiquity,
Mine own self-love quite contrary I read;
Self so self-loving were iniquity.:'Tis thee (my self) that for myself I praise,
:Painting my age with beauty of thy days.

Shakespeare's Sonnet 62 is one of the poems in his sonnet sequence addressed to the young man with whom Shakespeare shares an intimate but tormented connection. This sonnet brings together a number of themes that run through the cycle: the speaker's awareness of social and other differences between him and the beloved; the power and limitations of poetic art; and the puzzling sense in which love erases the boundaries between individuals.

Paraphrase

I am an extremely vain person; I am proud both of my outward form and of my personality. This sin, furthermore, is so deeply rooted in my soul that I do not believe it can ever be removed. However, when I look at my own real face in the mirror, I am disgusted, and I realize that to love such a face would be a sin. In fact, what I love about myself is my possession of you, and my beauty derives from the part of you that I possess.

ource and analysis

The conceit of the poem is derived most nearly from Petrarch; however, the idea of lovers who have in some sense exchanged souls is commonplace and proverbial. The connected theme--the speaker's unworthiness compared to his beloved--is likewise traditional.

Line 7 has posed some problems. Edward Dowden hypothesized that "for myself" meant "for my own satisfaction," and certain editors suggest that "do" be amended to "so." Consensus, however, has settled on some version of the gloss of Nicolaus Delius: "I define my own worth for myself," with "do" as an intensifier.

For "beated" in line 10, Edmond Malone suggested "bated," and George Steevens "blasted." Dowden speculated, without accepting, the possibility that "beated" referred to a process of tanning; John Shakespeare was a glover. Stephen Booth notes that the use of "bating" in this sense is not attested before the nineteenth century.

Helen Vendler sees the speaker of the poem as harshly criticizing his own weakness and foolishness, but for most critics the poem is lighter in mood. Though it echoes other poems in the sequence which present the connections created by love as painful, in this poem, the presence of the beloved is more comforting than terrifying.

References

*Alden, Raymond. "The Sonnets of Shakespeare, with Variorum Reading and Commentary". Boston: Houghton-Mifflin, 1916.
*Baldwin, T. W. "On the Literary Genetics of Shakspeare's Sonnets". Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1950.
*Booth, Stephen. "Shakespeare's Sonnets". New Haven: Yale University Press, 1977.
*Vendler, Helen. "The Art of Shakespeare's Sonnets". Boston: Belknap Press, 1999.

ee also

Shakespeare's sonnets

External links

* [http://www.shakespeares-sonnets.com/62comm.htm Analysis]
* [http://www.cliffsnotes.com/WileyCDA/LitNote/id-169,pageNum-65.html CliffsNotes]


Wikimedia Foundation. 2010.

Игры ⚽ Поможем написать реферат

Look at other dictionaries:

  • SONNET — SONNE Poème à forme fixe de quatorze vers répartis en quatre strophes, le sonnet tient dans la littérature européenne, et notamment française, une place extrêmement importante. On sait qu’«un sonnet sans défaut vaut seul un long poème» (Boileau) …   Encyclopédie Universelle

  • Sonnet 18 — sonnet|18 Shall I compare thee to a summer s day? Thou art more lovely and more temperate: Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May, And summer s lease hath all too short a date; Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines, And often is his… …   Wikipedia

  • Sonnet 55 — Sonnet|55 Not marble, nor the gilded monuments Of princes, shall outlive this powerful rhyme; But you shall shine more bright in these contents Than unswept stone besmear d with sluttish time. When wasteful war shall statues overturn, And broils… …   Wikipedia

  • Sonnet 1 — sonnet|1 From fairest creatures we desire increase, That thereby beauty s rose might never die, But as the riper should by time decease, His tender heir might bear his memory: But thou, contracted to thine own bright eyes, Feed st thy light st… …   Wikipedia

  • Sonnet 30 — Sonnet|30 When to the sessions of sweet silent thought I summon up remembrance of things past, I sigh the lack of many a thing I sought, And with old woes new wail my dear time s waste: Then can I drown an eye, unused to flow, For precious… …   Wikipedia

  • Sonnet 63 — Sonnet|63 Against my love shall be, as I am now, With Time s injurious hand crush d and o er worn; When hours have drain d his blood and fill d his brow With lines and wrinkles; when his youthful morn Hath travell d on to age s steepy night, And… …   Wikipedia

  • Sonnet 2 — sonnet|2 When forty winters shall besiege thy brow, And dig deep trenches in thy beauty s field, Thy youth s proud livery, so gazed on now, Will be a tatter d weed, of small worth held: Then being ask d where all thy beauty lies, Where all the… …   Wikipedia

  • Sonnet 29 — Sonnet|29 When, in disgrace with fortune and men s eyes, I all alone beweep my outcast state And trouble deaf heaven with my bootless cries And look upon myself and curse my fate, Wishing me like to one more rich in hope, Featured like him, like… …   Wikipedia

  • Sonnet 13 — Sonnet|13 O! that you were your self; but, love, you are No longer yours, than you your self here live: Against this coming end you should prepare, And your sweet semblance to some other give: So should that beauty which you hold in lease Find no …   Wikipedia

  • Sonnet 3 — Sonnet|3 Look in thy glass, and tell the face thou viewest Now is the time that face should form another; Whose fresh repair if now thou not renewest, Thou dost beguile the world, unbless some mother. For where is she so fair whose unear d womb… …   Wikipedia

  • Sonnet 60 — Sonnet|60 Like as the waves make towards the pebbled shore, So do our minutes hasten to their end; Each changing place with that which goes before, In sequent toil all forwards do contend. Nativity, once in the main of light, Crawls to maturity,… …   Wikipedia

Share the article and excerpts

Direct link
Do a right-click on the link above
and select “Copy Link”