Sunday, October 22, 2017

SONNET 10 HATE: For shame deny that thou bear'st love to any

Lucifer - Dore - source


For shame deny that thou bear'st love to any,
Who for thyself art so unprovident. 
Grant, if thou wilt, thou art beloved of many,
But that thou none lovest is most evident; 
For thou art so possess'd with murderous hate 
That 'gainst thyself thou stick'st not to conspire.
Seeking that beauteous roof to ruinate 
Which to repair should be thy chief desire.
O, change thy thought, that I may change my mind!
Shall hate be fairer lodged than gentle love? 
Be, as thy presence is, gracious and kind, 
Or to thyself at least kind-hearted prove: 
    Make thee another self, for love of me,
    That beauty still may live in thine or thee.


SONNET INDEX

Mnemonic Image 

HATE

Again, like Shame, how do you figure Hate? Anger seems the obvious go to. But often, Hate is a quiet and hidden thing. Chaucer's "Smiler with the knife under his cloak." Hamlet's "one may smile, and smile, and be a villain." There are obscene hand gestures in all cultures for hatred. But what does the face of hatred, here a murderous hatred, resemble? What does self-hatred look like?


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Guy Fawkes - source


Memory Passage 

Beauty's ROSE solitary in a muddy World War I TRENCH. Reflecting in a GLASS (mirror) the face of the EXECUTOR, Death, who admires the FRAME of bone, adjusts it with his HAND to catch the SUN. Suddenly, the world is full of MUSIC (infinite octave) that fills Death with SHAME and then  HATE

Idiosyncratic Imagery

See the beautiful innocent child. Now the beautiful guilty Young Man, who sees himself as the portrait of Dorian Grey. The wretched image lies within. He alone sees it every day. He knows the ugliness of the true face of his soul. Now see the Poet, the Poet like no other. He is known through all time and place and the One Who Knows, who can see most clearly into the dark interior of all men, into their own private Heart of Darkness. The Poet is hired by the parents to persuade the Young Man to marry and conceive a child. The Poet is commissioned to write a series of sonnets urging procreation. This all goes well for seven days and seven sonnets until the Poet and the Young Man attend a wedding together. The Poet sees the Young Man is moved to sorrowful tears by the music of the ceremony. He speaks Sonnet 8 to the Young Man, singing of harmony, of a higher musical reality to the world, tells him this world, the superficial social world that so fascinates and enchants the Young Man, it is merely a world of shadows. But there is hope in that the Beauty which the Young Man contains within him, as a glass bottle contains a distilled perfume, will not be lost or wasted with his death, but will live on in the faces of his children. The Young Man makes no response and only continues to cry as the sorrowful music continues to fill the world around he and the Poet. The Poet now looks closer, deeper into the Young Man's soul. It is as if the Poet is now gazing upon the ruined inner portrait of the Young Man, the visual document of his secret depravities. The Poet, recoiling from the loathsome image of Beauty so defiled and defaced, speaks Sonnet 9. The Young Man has committed a murderous shame upon the image of his own beauty. The Young Man argues with the Poet. Who cares? What does it matter to you what I do with my own beauty? The Poet now speaks Sonnet 10 saying, the Young Man is now possessed with such a murderous hatred for himself and for what seems everyone in the world, that there may be no hope for him. But perhaps, the Young Man still has a measure of love for the Poet. And, if the Young Man will strive to make another Self, and to surrender this Ideal Self, Platonically, to the Poet to use as an Image of Beauty, then a monument might be built which will honor this Beauty and endure the degradations of Time.


Picture of Dorian Grey - Ivan Albright - source


Couplet Imagery

Make thee another self, for love of me,
    That beauty still may live in thine or thee.


The superficial and procreational interpretation is the encouraging of the Young Man to change his ways and produce a child-heir so his beauty shall endure. However, this sonnet is twinned closely with the previous which called the Young Man out for committing a murd'rous shame. The source of this shame was located in the Young Man's self-hatred (Vendler), that he must hate his own beauty if he does not want it to endure. Perhaps this self-hatred is due to a libertine lifestyle, where he engages in self-destructive (monstrous) behavior which he later regrets, or to a more profound sense of incompleteness and alienation, meaninglessness, in regards to the Neoplatonic One, the Godhead. Regardless, the Poet here steps onto the stage of the Sonnets for the first time to announce his own imperative request. Significantly, the numerological moment here is 10, marking completion and a new beginning. The Poet says, if you wish to persist in your decadent life-style and continue to wallow in your narcissistic self-hatred, then I insist that you make (the etiology here is strained) another self, a Platonic Self, for me. Allow me to use your Beautiful Self as an Ideal which I will celebrate through these sonnets, which shall act as vessels to contain this Beauty (much better than any spoiled fat child) and ensure their endurance for future times to conceive - denied as they will be of direct perception of you after your death.

Introductory

Consider the Edenic primal shame which is located in the act of disobedience to God's word: do not eat the Forbidden Fruit from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. After the act, Adam and Eve experience shame and cover their genitals. Here is the sudden birth of conscience, a super-egoic creation, better or worser angels on our shoulders, that remind, chastise, goad, prod, whisper the mysteries of what is right and wrong. Here is the torment of temptation, of knowing what the right thing to do is and then to be tempted into doing the wrong thing. After surrendering to temptation, to defying conscience, comes shame's twin brother, guilt.

Consider the first murder, of Cain killing his brother Abel. Because Cain believed that God had turned away from him in favor of Abel, he betrayed his own blood, his own kind, and killed his brother. When God asked him where Abel was, Cain then lied to God.
And He said, "What have you done? Listen! your brother's blood cries out to me from the soil. And so, cursed shall you be by the soil that gaped with its mouth to take your brother's blood from your hand. If you till the soil, it will no longer give you strength. A restless wanderer shall you be on the earth." And Cain said to the Lord, "My punishment is too great to bear. Now that You have driven me this day from the soil I must hide from Your presence, I shall be a restless wanderer on the earth and whoever finds me will kill me." And the Lord said to him, "Therefore whoever kills Cain shall suffer sevenfold vengeance." And the Lord set a mark upon Cain so that whoever found him would not slay him." - Wikipedia
Both of these mythical acts sit with immense gravity as dark stars at the core of Western Culture. And both of these acts, of shameful disobedience and murderous betrayal, gave birth to a primal shame. All who were born even into the most nominal of Christian families, inherit this distant legacy of shame. We are Cain's children, "restless wanderers on the earth," hiding from God's presence, fearful of being killed and more fearful of being recognized for who we truly are: fallen creatures thrown away (Heidegger), forlorn from God, filled with anxiety, abandonment and despair (Sartre).

I quote again from Nussbaum's Hidden From Humanity, the Andrew Morrison passage, my emphasis:
"The essential narcissistic concern is a yearning for absolute uniqueness and sole importance to someone else, a "significant other." This yearning ... is signaled in patients by such statements as, "If I am not the only person important to [therapist or another], I feel like l am nothing." Such a feeling reverberates with primitive fantasies of symbiotic merger, omnipotence, and grandiosity, what Freud referred to as primary narcissism. Its emphasis is on the state and status of the self, and yet, paradoxically, it implies as well the prescience of an object for whom the self is uniquely special or who offers no competition or barriers to the self in meeting needs for sustenance.... Inevitably, shame follows narcissistic defeat. Patients have described the torment they have suffered from a perceived lack of specialness. "This humiliation is the most painful feeling I have ever experienced." ... [S]uch a yearning for uniqueness - by its very nature - can never be satisfied fully or for long."

What must it have been like to have William Shakespeare writing sonnets about you? The greatest writer of his day celebrating your beauty? Even admitting that Shakespeare wasn't as appreciated in his day as he is now (which is almost deified), it still must have been a tremendous honor to know you were the source, the inspiration, of such sublime poetry. But there is a dark side to this honor: the danger of being placed upon a pedestal by a mind now universally acknowledged to have had a uncannily singular, profound and a penetrating insight into the the inner workings and mysterious impluses of human nature. If there were anything false in your self, any pretense to your beauty, any cosmetic over your psyche, Shakespeare was sure to quickly detect it. Shakespeare certainly must have know this about himself. How many times had he already been disillusioned by others, by the great and powerful persons they pretended to be and the sad and weak beings they actually were? His understanding and insight into the motivations of duplicity inform almost all his plays in one way or another. So what chance does the Young Man have under the all seeing eye of Shakespeare's intellect? 

None. He is human all to human, like everyone else. Looking through the lens of time, there were few, if any, that could claim to be Shakespeare's equal, that could withstand the probing depth of that penetrating gaze. Perhaps, Marlowe. Edward de Vere. Raleigh. But all the evidence for any of the contemporary candidates for the Young Man shows no indications of superior intellect or spirituality. They are all models of physical beauty, but otherwise, somewhat hollow men, typical Elizabethan aristocrats of their time. (Of the Dark Lady, more might be said.) 

"Though the primary experience from which they started was, I believe, the Vision of Eros, that is, of course, not all they are about. For the vision to remain undimmed, it is probably necessary that the lover have very little contact with the beloved, however nice a person he (or she) may be. Dante, after all, only saw Beatrice once or twice, and she probably knew little about him. The story of the sonnets seems to me to be the story of an agonized struggle by Shakespeare to preserve the glory of the vision he had been granted in the relationship, lasting at least three years, with a person who seemed intent by his actions upon covering the vision with dirt." - W. H. Auden, Introduction to the Sonnets.

Following Auden's remarks here, Sonnets 9 and 10 mark the moment in the Sonnet narrative where Shakespeare perceived the Young Man has no idea of the meaning of his own beauty. His lifestyle even works to negate it. He has no sense of any sacred duty, whether that be in procreation or to any manner of union to a Neoplatonic One. He is merely a mindless entitled aristocratic hedonistic Narcissist who naturally takes it for granted the greatest living writer of his time would be inspired to invent sonnets about him. Shakespeare had to have been aware of this. So the Young Man's beauty became the occasion for Shakespeare to write a sonnet sequence exploring the nature of beauty and enduring fame over time, masterfully using the tools of poetry to construct a sublime monument to the beauty of the Young Man, ensuring its endurance for as long as human's are able to see and breathe, and at the height of philosophic irony, never mentioning the Young Man's name. (At least, un-cryptically.)

Here at Sonnet 10, Shakespeare as the Poet overtly enters the narrative drama of the Sonnet sequence. And under the guise of continuing to promote the procreation theme, he says, make another self for me to build a poetic monument to, so that Beauty, transcendental Beauty, may still find a living presence for those shall live after you. 


Q1:

For shame deny that thou bear'st love to any,
Who for thyself art so unprovident. 
Grant, if thou wilt, thou art beloved of many,
But that thou none lovest is most evident; 

So the scene here continues: the Wedding Party with the sorrowful music plays on. The Poet has just illustrated the source of the Young Man's tears as he listened to the merry music in Sonnet 8. Then as the Young Man seems to sink even deeper into sorrow, self-pity and adolescent self-hatred, dramatically predicting the fate of any wife of his would be to soon become a widow, the Poet adds some fire to his language, telling him he is guilty of a murd'rous shame upon himself. Why do you say that? asks the alarmed Young Man. Because you do not even know your own Beauty, you hate your own Beauty, replies the Poet. You are hatefully turning away from your sacred duty to the transcendental idea of Beauty, from a union with the One, the Godhead.

Note here, Q1 begins, significantly with Shame. The tendency is to glide past this same as a component of a colloquialism, Shame on you! But the murd'rous shame is still ringing in the ear. This is the primal shame of disobedience and betrayal. Hear it loud and angry in the Poet's voice: Shame on you, you Adam, you Cain, who disobey and betray and lie! Just try to deny that you love anyone! You can barely bear the music's harmony. You show no care for that divine beauty which you now hold, perhaps tenuously, in your heedless possession. You are an ignorant fool who holds the greatest treasure in his hands and treats it like dirt. Sure, it is granted that many love you, charmed as they are by your outward beauty. But you are so Narcissistically enwrapped within your self, it is impossible for you to love anyone.

Q2:

For thou art so possess'd with murderous hate 
That 'gainst thyself thou stick'st not to conspire.
Seeking that beauteous roof to ruinate 
Which to repair should be thy chief desire.

Now, here in Q2, murderous shame is alchemized in an alembic of adolescent resentment to murderous hate. Kerrigan glosses possess'd as "though invaded by devils." These devils, daemonic voices of dark conscience, whispering inside the Young Man's mind, that he has no cause to suffer shame. He screams back at the Poet: "Cain had good reason to kill Abel. He shouldn't have been ashamed of what he did. Damn the God that cursed him and sent out to wander in the wilderness! Shame is an emotion more suitable for peasants, as means for the nobility to control the masses. I takes pride in my birth and title! I was born with more gifts than others! I am beyond shame!"

The Poet replies: "You are not beyond shame, you selfish ignorant child, through your wrath and resentment, you have merely turned it into hatred. Hatred for others and yourself. You waste your time in ruining yourself in idle pleasures, carousing and drink. And you dishonor not only your own beauty, but the honor of your House, your family, that which granted you birth and whose lineage you now have petulantly chosen to end. Your utmost desire should be to repair, to become a father, (re pere, Booth), the roof of your House, your Family Name. Instead, your desire is common, vulgar: more wine, more women, more song."

Q3:

O, change thy thought, that I may change my mind!
Shall hate be fairer lodged than gentle love? 
Be, as thy presence is, gracious and kind, 
Or to thyself at least kind-hearted prove: 

O, cries the Poet in a sudden change of tone here at the volta, moving from argument to lament, change your thinking about this! Your beauty is still radiant and shows no sign of the abuse you have heaped upon it in your youthful indiscretions. Change your thought and I will happily change my mind about you. I don't want to think of you as full of a shame that has mutated to hate! I don't want to see that hatred has found a home in you. Close your eyes and realize that within you, the source of all that is beautiful in you, is a presence of the Divine, the One, of God. Tune yourself to this presence and be gracious and kind, honoring your family and friends. And most especially, be kind (kith and kin) to yourself, do not hate and resent the sacred and familial duties of the beauty that is within you, but practice acceptance and love towards your innermost self. Here is where you will find true harmony.

Couplet:

   Make thee another self, for love of me,
    That beauty still may live in thine or thee.

Know how much I love you, how I honor the Beauty which you manifest as an emanation of the Neoplatonic One. Work with me to construct an Other, an Ideal Imago, a Platonic Self, to endure through time, an incorruptible representation of Beauty that will continue to instruct and inspire me in the making of this poetic monument and others in their desire for beauty in their lives, now and throughout all the ages to come.



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