Poems of the Week: March 13, 2012
Let us now have a look at the so-called Italian or Petrarchan sonnet. It was popularized by the great Aretine poet Petrarch, and early examples of the sonnet are often overt imitations of the master. The problem for the English poet is that Italian is a language in which rhyme comes so easily as to be virtually natural. Italian is also a naturally melodious language, whereas in English, the Anglo-Saxon bones of our language too often stick through the soft skin and supple flesh of the Latin and Norman French. On the other hand, it is the very difficulty of writing English sonnets that often makes them more ambitious.
This form falls into two parts, an octave of 8 lines and a sestet of 6. The octave has a complex rhyme scheme that seems to hold the section together: abbaabba.
The sestet may take a number of different forms. Among the more common are: cdecde or cdcdcd or, as below, cdcdee
Here is an early and deservedly famous example by the Elizabethan courtier and soldier, Sir Philip Sidney, from his cycle, Astrophel and Stella:
With how sad steps, O Moon, thou climb'st the skies !
How silently, and with how wan a face !
What, may it be that even in heavenly place
That busy archer his sharp arrows tries?
Sure, if that long with love-acquainted eyes
Can judge of love, thou feel'st a lover's case;
I read it in thy looks; thy languisht grace
To me that feel the like, thy state descries.
Then, even of fellowship, O Moon, tell me,
Is constant love deemed there but want of wit?
Are beauties there as proud as here they be?
Do they above love to be loved, and yet
Those lovers scorn whom that love doth possess?
Do they call virtue there, ungratefulness?
Here is a slightly later poem by the Scottish poet William Drummond, remembered today mostly for his reminiscences of Ben Jonson who visited him, but not a bad poet in his own right who had more than a few happy thoughts.
TO HIS LUTE.
My lute, be as thou wert when thou did'st grow
With thy green mother in some shady grove,
When immelodious winds but made thee move,
And birds their ramage did on thee bestow.
Since that dear Voice which did thy sounds approve,
Which wont in such harmonious strains to flow,
Is reft from Earth to tune those spheres above,
What art thou but a harbinger of woe?
Thy pleasing notes be pleasing notes no more,
But orphan's wailings to the fainting ear;
Each stroke a sigh, each sound draws forth a tear;
For which be silent as in woods before:
Or if that any hand to touch thee deign,
Like widow'd turtle still her loss complain.
A few notes on Drummond. He was a devoted lute-player, as this poem suggests. Ramage is a lovely word, meaning originally the branch-work of a tree but later the sounds of birds you hear in the branches. The turtle, as all readers of the Authorized Version known, is the turtle dove, not the amphibian. I first came across this poem in Palgrave's once widely popular Golden Treasury, a fine anthology that reflects Palgrave's taste for melodious verse.
Sonnets have also been used for quite serious purposes, as the sonnets of Milton and Wordsworth show. Here is a once-famous poem of the novelist George Meredith, which in its short compass has some of the majesty of an epic.
Lucifer in Starlight
On a starred night Prince Lucifer uprose.
Tired of his dark dominion swung the fiend
Above the rolling ball in cloud part screened,
Where sinners hugged their spectre of repose.
Poor prey to his hot fit of pride were those.
And now upon his western wing he leaned,
Now his huge bulk o'er Afric's sands careened,
Now the black planet shadowed Arctic snows.
Soaring through wider zones that pricked his scars
With memory of the old revolt from Awe,
He reached a middle height, and at the stars,
Which are the brain of heaven, he looked, and sank.
Around the ancient track marched, rank on rank,
The army of unalterable law.
As a special treat, here is a sonnet of Petrarch. Note how the music and structure of the verse does not sound contrived or insincere. A good translation by Bernard Bergonzi follows:
Padre del ciel, dopo i perduti giorni,
dopo le notti vaneggiando spese,
con quel fero desio ch'al cor s'accese,
mirando gli atti per mio mal sí adorni,
piacciati omai col Tuo lume ch'io torni
ad altra vita et a piú belle imprese,
sí ch'avendo le reti indarno tese,
il mio duro adversario se ne scorni.
Or volge, Signor mio, l'undecimo anno
ch'i' fui sommesso al dispietato giogo
che sopra i piú soggetti è piú feroce.
Miserere del mio non degno affanno;
reduci i pensier' vaghi a miglior luogo;
ramenta lor come oggi fusti in croce.
Father in heaven, after each lost day,
Each night spent raving with that fierce desire
Which in my heart has kindled fire
Seeing your acts adorned for my dismay;
Grant henceforth that I turn, within your light
To another life and deeds more truly fair,
So having spread to no avail the snare
My bitter foe might hold it in despite.
The elventh year, my Lord, has now come round
Since I was yoked beneath the heavy trace
That on the meekest weighs most cruelly.
Pity the abject plight where I am found;
Return my straying thoughts to a nobler place;
Show them this day you were on Calvary.
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All's I can say, because I'm behind the curve on this poetry'thang and its techniques is, it never ceases to amaze me how the timeless always speaks to the moment. Interesting that English is a bit ambitious for poetry, and yet the language of Tarzan, or no wonder.
For what it's worth, I've also heard that English has more words than the Romance languages because its not just of Anglo-Saxon origin but includes a dash of French from the Normans. As a result, there are often two different words with the same meaning. Not being a linguist or historian or a linguistical historian I have no idea how accurate this is, but the example I was given was "Liberty" and "Freedom" are both English words with the same meaning, one tracing itself toFrench the other tracing itself to the Germanic side.
As a result, while it may not be as "rhyme-prone" as Italian, English does give the poet more words to work with. A sort of trade off that allows the poet more raw material but forces him to work harder to make that material come together melodiously.
And, speaking of the butchering of English & Tarzan, did you ever see the old Saturday Night Live sketch that had Tarzan, Tonto, and Frankenstein's Monster singing Christmas Carols together? I have to confess that was a favorite of mine.
Sonnets have also been used for quite serious purposes, as the sonnets of Milton and Wordsworth show. Here is a once-famous poem of the novelist George Meredith, which in its short compass has some of the majesty of an epic.
Lucifer in Starlight
On a starred night Prince Lucifer uprose.
Tired of his dark dominion swung the fiend
Above the rolling ball in cloud part screened,
Where sinners hugged their spectre of repose.
Poor prey to his hot fit of pride were those.
And now upon his western wing he leaned,
Now his huge bulk o'er Afric's sands careened,
Now the black planet shadowed Arctic snows.
Soaring through wider zones that pricked his scars
With memory of the old revolt from Awe,
He reached a middle height, and at the stars,
Which are the brain of heaven, he looked, and sank.
Around the ancient track marched, rank on rank,
The army of unalterable law.
I'm very much enjoying all 3 sonnets. I noticed that in "To His Lute" Drummond does not follow the normal rhyme scheme for the first octave. It goes abba baba (and then cddc ee). Is it the consistency of the rhymed sounds and not necessarily their order that defines the octave?
I understand better the part about these lending themselves to having a dramatic "turn". I'm assuming that the structure itself, the grouping of the 8 and showing them as distinct from the 6, that almost forces some sort of dramatic shift to help keep the groups distinct. "Lucifer in Starlight" brought to mind "Paradise Lost" - up until the end, and the "unalterable law" made me think of Dante. It seems that the abba rhyme scheme really suits itself to dramatic action - the octave is thrilling! And the breaking of the rhym scheme at lines 9 & 10 suits the halting of his flight.
Naturally I've not heard of any of these poets and am thankful for the introduction. It seems that the Palgrave Golden Treasury would be a good investment. Are there any other anthologies worth picking up (on a side note my wife & I were rummaging through some old Literature text books we'd acquired and were appaled at finding numerous edits to the actual original text, changing phrases and words or simply omitting entire paragraphs from stories and speeches - either because the original language was "too difficult" or "too religious" - so I have more kindling for next Winter).
I believe that all three sonnets posted so far have all the lines end stopped. Is there, in general, less of that variation and speaking-voice type of style in these Italian sonnets than what we saw with Shakespeare & co. last week?
Right, English struggles to get back into the body and the emotional realm as part of its divinely-natural home and out of the cortex of the brain alone 'as if ' its exclusive domain, or no wonder, i.e. no Actual wonder until that integration happens. In the meantime... meanwhile back at the ranch [exclusively] or too much in the head, as it were, since bodily needs met, emotional avoidance par for the course, it's Satan's realm, a head trip. That's why those who strive to be too-intellectual or the misguidedly 'purely rational' (an impossibility) that type are often the worst monsters. On the other hand or extreme, Tarzan may butcher the language but he's very much with the body in barefeet swinging thru the trees close enough to his emotions native intelligence integrated as well and so with a good heart, he's often the one saving mother Nature and her creatures human and otherwise from civilized, overly-cerebral butcheries. Civilization itself can be good, but like everything it can be bad. Tarzan herein is a metaphor for the integration of all of man's realms within himself; not that there's any such thing as a paradigm of the 'noble savage.'
There's some raw material Cornell, makes'us a sonnet, and e-Mail it to Tom who then if with your permission he can e-Mail it to me. At least we'd then be externally, vertically integrated, outside of the virtual...meanwhile back at the ranch.
Tarzan vs. Robespierre? Sounds more like a cheesy Hollywood flick than a sonnet.
As a special treat, here is a sonnet of Petrarch. Note how the music and structure of the verse does not sound contrived or insincere. A good translation by Bernard Bergonzi follows:
Padre del ciel, dopo i perduti giorni,
dopo le notti vaneggiando spese,
con quel fero desio ch'al cor s'accese,
mirando gli atti per mio mal sí adorni,
piacciati omai col Tuo lume ch'io torni
ad altra vita et a piú belle imprese,
sí ch'avendo le reti indarno tese,
il mio duro adversario se ne scorni.
Or volge, Signor mio, l'undecimo anno
ch'i' fui sommesso al dispietato giogo
che sopra i piú soggetti è piú feroce.
Miserere del mio non degno affanno;
reduci i pensier' vaghi a miglior luogo;
ramenta lor come oggi fusti in croce.
Father in heaven, after each lost day,
Each night spent raving with that fierce desire
Which in my heart has kindled fire
Seeing your acts adorned for my dismay;
Grant henceforth that I turn, within your light
To another life and deeds more truly fair,
So having spread to no avail the snare
My bitter foe might hold it in despite.
The elventh year, my Lord, has now come round
Since I was yoked beneath the heavy trace
That on the meekest weighs most cruelly.
Pity the abject plight where I am found;
Return my straying thoughts to a nobler place;
Show them this day you were on Calvary.
To answer the questions, no, I do not believe that the choice of sonnet type would much influence versification. If anything, the Italian sonnet encourages more of a continuous train of thought in the octave and thus a tendency toward enjambement, though what a poet does with that encouragement really derives more from his own style and the age in which he lives. The Golden Treasury is a very enjoyable anthology. I also like Quiller Couch's old Oxford Anthology of English Verse because of the author's willingness to indulge his own taste. Robert Bridges' Spirit of Man is also worth carrying around.
Although the first language Tarzan learned to write was English, the first human language he learned to speak was French. He never said, "Me Tarzan, you Jane."
What I do not understand is how he signed himself as "Tarzan of the apes" in his first notes. His name is a translation of "white skin" from the language of the Great Apes, his first first spoken language. What reference did he use to arrive at Tarzan for the English translation? This is only one of the credibility gaps one must leap in reading Burroughs. Obviously, I know much more about Tarzan (and John Carter) than I know about poetry. Now you know how I mis-spent my youth. It is never too late to learn new things, though, which is why I frequent this site.
I'm sorry, but I simply can't resist. My dad was a great swimmer in his youth. So good was he that he became swimming buddy and sidekick to a fellow Hungarian/German and St. Michael student. They swam in the North Side youth clubs and the great lake, but dad's friend, a golden haired god of a youth, was of an altogether different order of talent. It was not long before he set national and then Olympic records, and then Hollywood called Johhny Weismuller to fame and legend. The youth club where they swam is now a private club.