Sonnet 59 A FORMER CHILD - If there be nothing new, but that which is

If there be nothing new, but that which is
Hath been before, how are our brains beguiled,
Which, labouring for invention, bear amiss
The second burden of a former child!
O, that record could with a backward look,
Even of five hundred courses of the sun,
Show me your image in some antique book,
Since mind at first in character was done!
That I might see what the old world could say
To this composed wonder of your frame;
Whether we are mended, or whether better they,
Or whether revolution be the same.
O, sure I am, the wits of former days
To subjects worse have given admiring praise.

Sonnet 58 GOD FORBID - That god forbid that made me first your slave,

That god forbid that made me first your slave,
I should in thought control your times of pleasure,
Or at your hand the account of hours to crave,
Being your vassal, bound to stay your leisure!
O, let me suffer, being at your beck,
The imprison'd absence of your liberty;
And patience, tame to sufferance, bide each cheque,
Without accusing you of injury.
Be where you list, your charter is so strong
That you yourself may privilege your time
To what you will; to you it doth belong
Yourself to pardon of self-doing crime.
I am to wait, though waiting so be hell;
Not blame your pleasure, be it ill or well.

Sonnet 57 SLAVE - Being your slave, what should I do but tend

Being your slave, what should I do but tend
Upon the hours and times of your desire?
I have no precious time at all to spend,
Nor services to do, till you require.
Nor dare I chide the world-without-end hour
Whilst I, my sovereign, watch the clock for you,
Nor think the bitterness of absence sour
When you have bid your servant once adieu;
Nor dare I question with my jealous thought
Where you may be, or your affairs suppose,
But, like a sad slave, stay and think of nought
Save, where you are how happy you make those.
So true a fool is love that in your will,
Though you do any thing, he thinks no ill.

Sonnet 56 SAD INTERIM - Sweet love, renew thy force; be it not said

Sweet love, renew thy force; be it not said
Thy edge should blunter be than appetite,
Which but to-day by feeding is allay'd,
To-morrow sharpen'd in his former might:
So, love, be thou; although to-day thou fill
Thy hungry eyes even till they wink with fullness,
To-morrow see again, and do not kill
The spirit of love with a perpetual dullness.
Let this sad interim like the ocean be
Which parts the shore, where two contracted new
Come daily to the banks, that, when they see
Return of love, more blest may be the view;
Else call it winter, which being full of care
Makes summer's welcome thrice more wish'd, more rare.

Sonnet 55 SLUTTISH TIME - Not marble, nor the gilded monuments

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 root out the work of masonry,
Nor Mars his sword nor war's quick fire shall burn
The living record of your memory.
'Gainst death and all-oblivious enmity
Shall you pace forth; your praise shall still find room
Even in the eyes of all posterity
That wear this world out to the ending doom.
So, till the judgment that yourself arise,
You live in this, and dwell in lover's eyes.

Sonnet 54 SWEET ORNAMENT - O, how much more doth beauty beauteous seem

O, how much more doth beauty beauteous seem
By that sweet ornament which truth doth give!
The rose looks fair, but fairer we it deem
For that sweet odour which doth in it live.
The canker-blooms have full as deep a dye
As the perfumed tincture of the roses,
Hang on such thorns and play as wantonly
When summer's breath their masked buds discloses:
But, for their virtue only is their show,
They live unwoo'd and unrespected fade,
Die to themselves. Sweet roses do not so;
Of their sweet deaths are sweetest odours made:
And so of you, beauteous and lovely youth,
When that shall fade, my verse distills your truth.

Sonnet 53 STRANGE SHADOWS - What is your substance, whereof are you made,

What is your substance, whereof are you made,
That millions of strange shadows on you tend?
Since every one hath, every one, one shade,
And you, but one, can every shadow lend.
Describe Adonis, and the counterfeit
Is poorly imitated after you;
On Helen's cheek all art of beauty set,
And you in Grecian tires are painted new:
Speak of the spring and foison of the year;
The one doth shadow of your beauty show,
The other as your bounty doth appear;
And you in every blessed shape we know.
In all external grace you have some part,
But you like none, none you, for constant heart.

Sonnet 52 BLESSED KEY - So am I as the rich, whose blessed key

So am I as the rich, whose blessed key
Can bring him to his sweet up-locked treasure,
The which he will not every hour survey,
For blunting the fine point of seldom pleasure.
Therefore are feasts so solemn and so rare,
Since, seldom coming, in the long year set,
Like stones of worth they thinly placed are,
Or captain jewels in the carcanet.
So is the time that keeps you as my chest,
Or as the wardrobe which the robe doth hide,
To make some special instant special blest,
By new unfolding his imprison'd pride.
Blessed are you, whose worthiness gives scope,
Being had, to triumph, being lack'd, to hope.

Sonnet 51 DULL BEARER - Thus can my love excuse the slow offense

Thus can my love excuse the slow offense
Of my dull bearer when from thee I speed:
From where thou art why should I haste me thence?
Till I return, of posting is no need.
O, what excuse will my poor beast then find,
When swift extremity can seem but slow?
Then should I spur, though mounted on the wind;
In winged speed no motion shall I know:
Then can no horse with my desire keep pace;
Therefore desire of perfect'st love being made,
Shall neigh--no dull flesh--in his fiery race;
But love, for love, thus shall excuse my jade;
Since from thee going he went wilful-slow,
Towards thee I'll run, and give him leave to go.



Obviously paired with S50.
That groan from the froward beast,
the reminds the Poet that his destination
he is ever traveling towards grief and away from joy.

S50 is an internal monologue
while S51 is the outward explanation to the YM

Lest, perhaps, the YM believes the Poet's delay
is calculated? What is the slow offense?

Speed used ironically.

Note the movement from dull bearer to poor beast

The beautiful passage:

Then should I spur, though mounted on the wind;
In winged speed no motion shall I know:

Seems modern: no motion shall I know
the effect of being on an airplane

And the loaded line the marks Q3:

no horse can keep up with my desire

priapic boasting. the poet has been away too long
his prick shall spur the horse beyond the limits of the dull flesh
and he shall like a cartoon comet
arc fiery across the sky back to the YM

Interesting in the couplet
no spurring is necessary
the horse desires to get back to the YM
as quickly as possible


Q1: slow offense of the dull beast in leaving

Q2: the promised return will be faster than the wind

Q3: because the poet's desire is stronger than any horse and will speed him back like fire

C: I will let loose the reins on the horse and give him leave to exercise his full powers of speed (and desire?)

Sonnet 50 BLOODY SPUR: How heavy do I journey on the way

How heavy do I journey on the way,
When what I seek, my weary travel's end,
Doth teach that ease and that repose to say,
'Thus far the miles are measured from thy friend!'
The beast that bears me, tired with my woe,
Plods dully on, to bear that weight in me,
As if by some instinct the wretch did know
His rider lov'd not speed being made from thee.
The bloody spur cannot provoke him on,
That sometimes anger thrusts into his hide,
Which heavily he answers with a groan,
More sharp to me than spurring to his side;
   For that same groan doth put this in my mind,
   My grief lies onward, and my joy behind.

It's a sweet image of a sullen Shakespeare
on a horse plodding down the road

You can feel the weight of time: the wait
heavy, weary, tired with woe, plods dully on...
The meter resounding like horse's hooves on the road
lugubrious lamentation in alliteration
when what weary woe weight wretch
mile measured
beast bears bear bloody
and those two bears!
wretched beastly bears
then the bloody spur
singing out in Q3
anger, what anger? where?
weren't we weary with woe?
but with the turn comes anger
perhaps for having to leave London
and travel back to Stratford
to the wife and kids
to the million little pricks
and that groan
this sadistic Shakespeare
full of such anger as to bloody a spur
in a horse's hide
seems incongruous and yet all too human
rationalized that the greater pain is his
that same groan
you wonder at the sound
the recalcitrant horse
Rocinante
the angry Poet
spurs jingling on his boots
wheels spinning
dripping with hot red blood
but which cause no difference in the horse's pace
there's a sonnet to be written about this horse
and his evocative groan

We each enact our own myths

source

Film offers an all too easy metaphor for memory which, while evocative, is not accurate. I think people born in the age of film and now smart phones will think of memory as a message aligned with those mediums: a slow motion panning shot of a walk to the altar, soundtracked with a favorite song, close up on the face, or, far worse, their lives as a series of posed/ not posed filter / no filter selfies.

The creative and interpretively demanding windows opened by a work of art with its constantly shifting meanings and aporia are traded for these more compressed representations of the experience - the plastic souvenir remembered instead of the experience itself.

The capacities of memory of enormous are vast and energized by immersion to the most profound depths. Borges said one of the most signal moments in the development of Western culture was when Aeschylus introduced a second actor onto the stage. No longer a single singer or priest addressing the crowd directly, but a re-presentation of reality, as two actors magically create a dramatic universe we view as non-participatory spectators. No wonder the earliest memory systems were memory theaters. Internal private stages where we each enact our own myths. Something Freud "discovered" as a unexplored country within.

OSSA 3 TRIGRAMS: I-CHING TRIGRAMS

source

source

source

source

SCRIPTUM 3 CASTLES: I learned this, at least, by my experiment

Walden 

Henry Thoreau (1817-1862)

I learned this, at least, by my experiment: that if one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours. He will put some things behind, will pass an invisible boundary; new, universal, and more liberal laws will begin to establish themselves around and within him; or the old laws be expanded, and interpreted in his favor in a more liberal sense, and he will live with the license of a higher order of beings. In proportion as he simplifies his life, the laws of the universe will appear less complex, and solitude will not be solitude, nor poverty poverty, nor weakness weakness. If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost; that is where they should be. Now put the foundations under them.

I learned this, at least, by my experiment:
that if one advances confidently
in the direction of his dreams,
and endeavors to live the life
which he has imagined,
he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours.

He will put some things behind,
will pass an invisible boundary;
new, universal, and more liberal laws
will begin to establish themselves
around and within him; or the old laws be expanded,
and interpreted in his favor in a more liberal sense,
and he will live with the license of a higher order of beings.

In proportion as he simplifies his life,
the laws of the universe will appear less complex,
and solitude will not be solitude,
nor poverty poverty,
nor weakness weakness.

If you have built castles in the air,
your work need not be lost;
that is where they should be.
Now put the foundations under them.

Synaesthetics

Composition VIII, 1923 - Kandinsky - source

I've been working to synaesthetically intertwine colors with letter, word and number. An age old Kandinskian effort, but solely for my own mnemonic purposes. For example. 0 = white. Seems natural to me, the white on a page around printed words is seen as silence. White is a kind of blank, an emptiness, a zero. The letter B is blue. It just looks like Blue. The two circles leaning against the wall, tired, drunk, squashed, blue. And 2 is also blue. Rhyme. But the image of the man on his knees, head bent over, in prayer or defeat, is blue. Blue smells like the sea, for obvious reasons. And the same: tastes like water. And so on... making myself into Pavlov's dog: 20 is blue on white, a drunk man kneeling on a white sheet, remembering the taste of rain, perhaps a sailor on a deserted island praying on a white sail, dying of thirst. This associative process of mnemonic creation, of cracking words open like oysters, searching for pearls amidst the labial folds.

SONNET 72 RECITE: O! lest the world should task you to recite

O! lest the world should task you to recite
What merit lived in me, that you should love
After my death,--dear love, forget me quite,
For you in me can nothing worthy prove.
Unless you would devise some virtuous lie,
To do more for me than mine own desert,
And hang more praise upon deceased I
Than niggard truth would willingly impart:
O! lest your true love may seem false in this
That you for love speak well of me untrue,
My name be buried where my body is,
And live no more to shame nor me nor you.
   For I am shamed by that which I bring forth,
   And so should you, to love things nothing worth.

SONNET 71 BELL: No longer mourn for me when I am dead

No longer mourn for me when I am dead
Than you shall hear the surly sullen bell
Give warning to the world that I am fled
From this vile world with vilest worms to dwell:
Nay, if you read this line, remember not
The hand that writ it, for I love you so,
That I in your sweet thoughts would be forgot,
If thinking on me then should make you woe.
O! if, I say, you look upon this verse,
When I perhaps compounded am with clay,
Do not so much as my poor name rehearse;
But let your love even with my life decay;
   Lest the wise world should look into your moan,
   And mock you with me after I am gone.


The CROW from Sonnet 70 collides with the BELL in the belltower
sits dazed and dizzy, stars around his head as in a cartoon,
Jeckle with his English accent, is tasked to RECITE...

Note lead words on the Qs and the C:

No
Nay, if you read
O! if, I say
Lest

Compare to it's paired sonnet 72:

O! lest
Unless
O! lest
For I am shamed

Note
vile world in L4
and wise world in L13

Names and memory

SONNET 70 CROW: That thou art blamed shall not be thy defect

That thou art blamed shall not be thy defect,
For slander's mark was ever yet the fair;
The ornament of beauty is suspect,
A crow that flies in heaven's sweetest air.
So thou be good, slander doth but approve
Thy worth the greater, being wooed of time;
For canker vice the sweetest buds doth love,
And thou present'st a pure unstained prime.
Thou hast passed by the ambush of young days
Either not assailed, or victor being charged;
Yet this thy praise cannot be so thy praise,
To tie up envy, evermore enlarged,
   If some suspect of ill masked not thy show,
   Then thou alone kingdoms of hearts shouldst owe.

The Crow, black stain, shadow, blot, eclipse
appearing suddenly in the clear blue sky of the sonnet
either Heckle or Jeckle, these talking magpies up to no good.

This ornament of beauty
a piece of foil, a shining object
attracts them in to enact their chaos
of idle amusement
for them, the purpose of the being
is to get a good laugh
at the expense of others

Or that mysterious, all powerful Minah Bird
from the early racist Looney Tunes cartoons.

"Minah is a small and seemingly almighty mynah bird. He has a blank emotionless face and personality, and he always walks to the tune of Mendelssohn's "The Hebrides" (http://youtu.be/FAXyj1dy-PE). Minah played a major role in every Inki cartoon short and has made several small appearances in Looney Tunes, Tiny Toon Adventures, Animaniacs, The Sylvester & Tweety Mysteries and Tweety's High-Flying Adventure. Minah in all cases appears in the middle of a conflict and proceeds to resolve it in his own unique way. Everything in the jungle is terrified of Minah apart from Inki and lions due to them being unaware of his reputation. In the shorts Minah always makes a huge, intimidating entrance which he doesn't seem to live up to having a small and non-intimidating appearance but he does live up to it in his abilities. Minah always gets in the middle of a conflict and causes physical pain to both sides (the amount of pain received is consistent to the size of their part in the conflict). Minah's abilities include escaping in a maze of holes, disappearing into thin air, reappearing out of seemingly anywhere whenever and wherever it is least expected or most convenient, and making other things disappear and reappear. Minah also delivers the pain personally through off-seen and sometimes onseen violence. It is true Minah cannot be defeated in a physical fight for he has regularly given brutal beatings to dogs, lions, and in one case a 28 ton dinosaur in all his cartoons but always comes out completely unharmed." - source


"Comics historian Don Markstein wrote that the character's racial stereotype "led to [the series'] unpopularity with program directors and thence to its present-day obscurity." He noted that, "The Minah Bird, which appears immensely powerful, [is] an accomplished trickster; and yet acts, when it acts at all, from motives which simply can not be fathomed...."[1] The series' director, Chuck Jones, said[where?] these cartoons were baffling to everyone, including himself. He had no understanding of what the bird was supposed to do other than walk around. But the shorts were well-accepted by audiences.[2] According to Terry Lindvall and Ben Fraser, Inki is an Everyman who encounters mysterious forces of life. He serves as a symbol of all humanity, "frustrated and rescued by the wonderfully inexplicable" - Wikipedia


Sense of "slander's mark" as the conman's mark.

SCRIPTUM 2 WHALE: He Tasks Me... Moby-Dick by Herman Melville

Moby-Dick

Chapter XXXVI - THE QUARTER-DECK

Herman Melville (1819 - 1891)

"Hark ye yet again, - the little lower layer. All visible objects, man, are but as pasteboard masks. But in each event - in the living act, the undoubted deed - there, some unknown but still reasoning thing puts forth the mouldings of its features from behind the unreasoning mask. If man will strike, strike through the mask! How can the prisoner reach outside except by thrusting through the wall? To me, the white whale is that wall, shoved near to me. Sometimes I think there's naught beyond. But 'tis enough. He tasks me; he heaps me; I see in him outrageous strength, with an inscrutable malice sinewing it. That inscrutable thing is chiefly what I hate; and be the white whale agent, or be the white whale principal, I will wreak that hate upon him. Talk not to me of blasphemy, man; I'd strike the sun if it insulted me. For could the sun do that, then could I do the other; since there is ever a sort of fair play herein, jealousy presiding over all creations. But not my master, man, is even that fair play. Who's over me? Truth hath no confines. Take off thine eye! more intolerable than fiends' glarings is a doltish stare!


Mnemonic breakdown:

"Hark ye yet again, - the little lower layer.
All visible objects, man, are but as pasteboard masks.

But in each event - in the living act, the undoubted deed -
there, some unknown but still reasoning thing
puts forth the mouldings of its features
from behind the unreasoning mask.

If man will strike, strike through the mask!
How can the prisoner reach outside except by thrusting through the wall?
To me, the white whale is that wall, shoved near to me.
Sometimes I think there's naught beyond.

But 'tis enough.
He tasks me; he heaps me;
I see in him outrageous strength,
with an inscrutable malice sinewing it.

That inscrutable thing is chiefly what I hate;
and be the white whale agent,
or be the white whale principal,
I will wreak that hate upon him.

Talk not to me of blasphemy, man;
I'd strike the sun if it insulted me.
For could the sun do that,
then could I do the other;
since there is ever a sort of fair play herein,
jealousy presiding over all creations.

But not my master, man, is even that fair play.
Who's over me? Truth hath no confines.
Take off thine eye!
more intolerable than fiends' glarings is a doltish stare!

ALTER CANTICUM JESUS: Jesus Gonna Be Here by Tom Waits

Jesus Gonna Be Here

Tom Waits (1949-    )

Well, Jesus will be here
Be here soon
He's gonna cover us up with leaves
With a blanket from the moon
With a promise and a vow
And a lullaby for my brow
Jesus gonna be here
Be here soon

Well I'm just gonna wait here
I don't have to shout
I have no reason and
I have no doubt
I'm gonna get myself
Unfurled from this mortal coiled up world
Because Jesus gonna be here
Be here soon

I got to keep my eyes open
So I can see my Lord
I'm gonna watch the horizon
For a brand new Ford
I can hear him rolling on down the lane
I said Hollywood be thy name
Jesus gonna be
Gonna be here soon

Well, I've been faithful
And I've been so good
Except for drinking
But he knew that I would
I'm gonna leave this place better
Than the way I found it was
And Jesus gonna be here
Be here soon

MATHEMATICA 1

Wikipedia: 

1 (one, also called unit, unity, and (multiplicative) identity) is a number, numeral, and glyph. It represents a single entity, the unit of counting or measurement. For example, a line segment of unit length is a line segment of length 1. It is also the first of the infinite sequence of natural numbers, followed by 2.

It is also the first and second number in the Fibonacci sequence (0 is the zeroth) and is the first number in many other mathematical sequences.

1 is neither a prime number nor a composite number, but a unit (meaning of ring theory), like −1 and, in the Gaussian integers, i and −i. The fundamental theorem of arithmetic guarantees unique factorization over the integers only up to units. (For example, 4 = 22, but if units are included, is also equal to, say, (−1)6 × 123 × 22, among infinitely many similar "factorizations".)

1 is the only positive integer divisible by exactly one positive integer (whereas prime numbers are divisible by exactly two positive integers, composite numbers are divisible by more than two positive integers, and zero is divisible by all positive integers). 1 was formerly considered prime by some mathematicians, using the definition that a prime is divisible only by 1 and itself. However, this complicates the fundamental theorem of arithmetic, so modern definitions exclude units.

1 is the atomic number of hydrogen.

In the philosophy of Plotinus and a number of other neoplatonists, The One is the ultimate reality and source of all existence. Philo of Alexandria (20 BC – AD 50) regarded the number one as God's number, and the basis for all numbers ("De Allegoriis Legum," ii.12 [i.66]).


The Express - Concerning One

1. The ancient Greeks did not consider One to be a number at all. A number, said Euclid, is an “aggregate of units”, so numbers began at Two.

2. They also considered One to be both male and female and both odd and even.

3. There is only one hiccup in the works of Shakespeare, uttered, appropriately enough, by Sir Toby Belch in Twelfth Night.

4. The Icelandic for “one” is “eitt”, which sounds just like “eight”.

5. Each hair on a human head grows one centimetre a month.

6. The word “girl” only occurs once in the King James Bible (in Joel 3:3). The King James Bible, incidentally, was first published on May 2, 1611.

7. In the UK, a first wedding anniversary is a cotton anniversary; in the USA it is paper.

8. Among the words Charles Dickens used only once are “kangaroo” (in David Copperfield) and “zoo” (in Martin Chuzzlewit).

9. A word that any particular author used only once in their works is called a “hapax legomenon”.

10. “One” is the 35th most commonly used word in the English language, just ahead of “all”.

OSSA 1 CROWN: The Sephirot

The Sephirot

King Casey's Bones Call God To Negate His Youthful Mystery

Wikipdedia: According to Gershom Scholem, the Ein Sof is the emanator of the ten sefirot. Sefirot are energy emanations found on the Kabbalistic Tree of Life. Ein Sof, the Atik Yomin ("Ancient of Days"), emanates the sefirot into the cosmic womb of the Ayin in a manner that results in the created universe. The three letters composing the word "Ayin" (אי״ן), indicate the first three purely intellectual sefirot, which precede any emotion or action.[5] The order of devolution can be described as:

000. Ayin (Nothing; אין‬)

00. Ein Sof (Limitlessness; אין סוף‬)

0. Ohr Ein Sof (Endless Light; אור אין סוף‬)

-.Tzimtzum (Contraction; צמצום‬)

The ten sefirot were preceded by a stage of concealment called tzimtzum, which "allows space" for creations to perceive themselves as separate existences from their creator. The sefirot exhibit reflection in sets of triads between more exalted states of being (or "non-being," when "otherness" does not yet exist) and the lower, more mundane levels of existence:

Ayin, Ein Sof, Ohr Ein Sof

Keter, Chokhmah, Binah

Chesed, Gevurah, Tiferet

Netzach, Hod, Yesod

1. Keter (Crown; כתר‬)

2. Chokhmah (Wisdom; חכמה‬)

3. Binah (Understanding; בינה‬)

4. Chesed or Gedulah (Loving Kindness or Mercy; חסד‬)

5. Gevurah or Din (Power or Judgement; גבורה‬)

6. Tiferet (Beauty or Compassion; תפארת‬)

7. Netzach (Triumph or Endurance; נצח‬)

8. Hod (Majesty or Splendor; הוד‬)

9. Yesod (Foundation; יסוד‬)

10. Malchut (Realm; מלכות‬)

22 Lines or Paths what are can be overlayed with the Major Arcana from the Tarot

0. Keter – Chokhmah : The Fool

1. Keter – Binah: The Magician

2. Keter – Tiferet : The High Priestess

3. Binah – Chokhmah: The Empress

4. Chokhmah – Tiferet: The Emperor

5. Chokhmah – Chesed : The Hierophant

6. Binah – Tiferet: The Lovers

7. Binah – Gevurah: The Chariot

8. Gevurah – Chesed : Strength

9. Chesed – Tiferet : The Hermit

10. Chesed – Netzach: Wheel of Fortune

11. Gevurah – Tiferet : Justice

12. Gevurah – Hod: The Hanged Man

13. Tiferet – Netzach: Death

14. Tiferet – Yesod: Temperance

15. Tiferet – Hod: The Devil

16. Hod – Netzach: The Tower

17. Netzach – Yesod: The Star

18. Netzach – Malkuth: The Moon

19. Hod – Yesod: The Sun

20. Hod – Malkuth: Judgment

21. Yesod – Malkuth: The World

SCRIPTUM 1: MOON Philosophies of India by Heinrich Zimmer

Philosophies of India

Heinrich Zimmer (1830-1943)

The moon, the stars, dissolve. The mounting tide becomes a limitless sheet of water. This is the interval of a night of Brahma. Vishnu sleeps. Like a spider that has climbed up the thread that once issued from its own organism, drawing it back into  itself, the god has consumed again the web of the universe. Alone upon the immortal substance of the ocean, a giant figure, submerged partly, partly afloat, he takes delight in slumber. There is no one to behold him, no one to comprehend him; there is no knowledge of him, except within himself. 

Mnemonic breakdown:

The moon, the stars, dissolve. 

The mounting tide becomes a limitless sheet of water. 

This is the interval of a night of Brahma. 

Vishnu sleeps. 

Like a spider that has climbed up the thread that once issued from its own organism, 

drawing it back into  itself, 

the god has consumed again the web of the universe. 

Alone upon the immortal substance of the ocean, a giant figure, 

submerged partly, partly afloat, 

he takes delight in slumber. 

There is no one to behold him, 

no one to comprehend him; 

there is no knowledge of him, 

except within himself. 

Notes:

Spider: resonance with Sinners at the Hands of an Angry God

Full text of "Heinrich Robert Zimmer, Myths And Symbols In Indian Art And Civilization"

Mnemonic Synthesis 1 - 10 Magician to Wheel

1. ROSE

א‬ - Aleph - Ox
Magician - Mercury - Mind

POESIS

SCAFFOLD

Straight Tip to Call Cross Coves

LYRICA

ROSE

From fairest creatures we desire increase

SCRIPTUM 

MOON

Philosophies of India

OSSA 

CROWN
The Sephirot

CANTICUM 

FACE

Man From Nod

ALTER CANTICUM 

JESUS

Jesus Gonna Be Here

MUSICA

GYPSY

Zigeunerweisen

IOCULARIA

PIG

MATHEMATICA

NUMBER 1 

CHRONOS

1962

2. TRENCH

ב - Beth - House
High Priestess - Moon

POESIS

DRAGON

Jabberwocky

LYRICA

TRENCH

When forty Winters shall beseige thy brow

SCRIPTUM

WHALE

He Tasks Me...

OSSA

GOD'S EXCELLENT LOVE
Books of Old Testament
MY MOTHER LOVES JESUS
Books of the New Testament

CANTICUM

HUMMINGBIRD

Hummingbird Lullabye

ALTER CANTICUM

DIRT

Dirt In The Ground

MUSICA

ELISE

Für Elise

IOCULARIA

CANNIBAL

MATHEMATICA

 Number 2

CHRONOS

1963

3. GLASS (MIRROR)

ג‬ - Gimel - Camel
Empress - Venus

source

POESIS

AIRPLANE
Funeral Blues

LYRICA

GLASS (MIRROR)
Look in thy glass and tell the face thou viewest

SCRIPTUM

CASTLES
I learned this, at least, by my experiment

OSSA

I-CHING
TRIGRAMS

CANTICUM

HOLE
40 Days in a Hole

ALTER CANTICUM

FIRE

Who By Fire

MUSICA

MOON

Moonlight Sonata

IOCULARIA

DESERT ISLAND

MATHEMATICA

NUMBER 3

CHRONOS

1964

4. EXECUTOR (DEATH)

ד‬ - Daleth - Door
Emperor - Aries 

POESIS

SPHINX
The Second Coming

LYRICA

EXECUTOR
Unthrifty loveliness, why dost thou spend

SCRIPTUM

WAR

Gettysburg Address

OSSA

SICKNESS
The Four Noble Truths

CANTICUM

CRYPTONITE
Cryptonight

ALTER CANTICUM

TOWER

Tower of Song

MUSICA

STRIPPER
Air on the G String

IOCULARIA

PIRATES

MATHEMATICA

NUMBER 4

CHRONOS

1965

5. FRAME

ה‬ - Heh - Window
Hierophant - Taurus - Congelation

POESIS

STAR
Bright Star

LYRICA

FRAME
Those hours, that with gentle work did frame

SCRIPTUM

TONGUE

The Portage to San Cristobal of A.H.

OSSA

SOPHIA
Five Intellectual Virtues

CANTICUM

EGGS
Transcendental Pretense

ALTER CANTICUM

HEAVEN

Just Like Heaven

MUSICA

SUNSET
The Trio in E-flat

IOCULARIA

HUNTER

MATHEMATICA

NUMBER 5 

CHRONOS

1966

6. HAND

ו‬ - Vav - Nail
Lovers - Gemini - Fixation 

POESIS

DAISY
And Death Shall Have No Dominion

LYRICA

HAND
Then let not Winter's ragged hand deface

SCRIPTUM

CLOCK

The Third Man

OSSA

CANTICUM

TRASHCAN
Ghosts

ALTER CANTICUM

POET

Drunken Poet's Dream

MUSICA

AIRPLANE
Poème

IOCULARIA

SHIT

MATHEMATICA

NUMBER 6

CHRONOS

1967

7. SUN

ז‬ - Zayin - Sword
Chariot - Cancer - Dissolution 

POESIS

PRAYER
Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night

LYRICA

SUN
Lo! in the orient when the gracious light

SCRIPTUM

CONSTITUTION

The Preamble

OSSA

SEVEN
LIBERAL ARTS, DEADLY SINS, HOLY VIRTUES
CHAKRAS

CANTICUM

TRAIN
Mayfield

ALTER CANTICUM

WINE

People Who Died

MUSICA

IOCULARIA

STRUDEL

MATHEMATICA

NUMBER 7

CHRONOS

1968

8. MUSIC

ח‬ ‬- Cheth - Fence
Strength - Leo - Digestion 

POESIS

KISS
Non Sum Qualis Eram Bonae Sub Regno Cynarae

LYRICA

MUSIC
Music to hear, why hear'st thou music sadly?

SCRIPTUM

SPIDER

Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God

OSSA

EIGHTFOLD PATH

CANTICUM

TOTEM POLE
Simple Head

ALTER CANTICUM

DIAMONDS

Snake Song

MUSICA

IOCULARIA

FISH

MATHEMATICA

NUMBER 8

CHRONOS

1969

9. SHAME

ט‬ ‬- Teth - Serpent
Hermit - Virgo - Distillation 

POESIS

SKULL
Hamlet Act 3, Scene 1

LYRICA

SHAME
Is it for fear to wet a widow's eye

SCRIPTUM

JONAH

Father Mapple's Sermon

OSSA

MUSE
9 Muses, 3 Graces, 3 Fates, 3 Furies

CANTICUM

RED ROCKS
63 Days in a God-haunted Haze

ALTER CANTICUM

GOLD
Mr. Mudd and Mr. Gold

MUSICA

IOCULARIA

PARROT

MATHEMATICA

NUMBER 9

CHRONOS

1970

10. HATE

כ‬ ‬- Kaph - Palm of Hand
Wheel of Fortune - Jupiter

POESIS

BARREL
The Congo 

LYRICA

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

SCRIPTUM

WHITE

The Whiteness of the Whale

OSSA

OX
Ox-Herding Sequence

CANTICUM

DOMINOES
Kingdom Come

ALTER CANTICUM

MOON

Simple Song

MUSICA

IOCULARIA

BLONDE

MATHEMATICA

NUMBER 10

CHRONOS

1971

SONNET 11 SEAL: As fast as thou shalt wane, so fast thou grow'st

source

As fast as thou shalt wane, so fast thou grow'st
In one of thine, from that which thou departest;
And that fresh blood which youngly thou bestow'st,
Thou mayst call thine when thou from youth convertest.
Herein lives wisdom, beauty, and increase;
Without this folly, age, and cold decay:
If all were minded so, the times should cease
And threescore year would make the world away.
Let those whom nature hath not made for store,
Harsh, featureless, and rude, barrenly perish:
Look whom she best endowed, she gave the more;
Which bounteous gift thou shouldst in bounty cherish:
   She carved thee for her seal, and meant thereby,
   Thou shouldst print more, not let that copy die.


SONNET INDEX

Mnemonic Image 

SEAL


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.

Death places his SEAL upon time...

source

Alexander the Great  - source

The Great Seal of the United States - source

Idiosyncratic Imagery

The Young Man and the Poet are at the Wedding Party, the sorrow inducing music of Sonnet 8 is heard off in the distance. The Poet has just requested in Sonnet 10 that if the Young Man wishes to continue his decadent lifestyle, (causing hatred, Sonnet 9, and shame, Sonnet 10); if he has no willingness to get married and produce a "tender heir," then perhaps he give, bestow, to the Poet the right to "an-other self," an idealized, Platonic, form which the Poet may immortalize in the language of the sonnets.

The Poet continues in Sonnet 11 to seduce and persuade the Young Man towards this immortalizing transaction. Per the Young Man's inclinations, and perhaps as a slight jab, he tells him: the duty you have to honor your beauty is related to your lust for sex. Through promoting and displaying your beauty, you draw the attentions of the world around you. Your charisma and charm seduces others to surrender to you, to offer themselves up to you for your pleasure. Thus you find your self, resplendent and full of pride, before the entrance to the Temple, doors spread open, inviting you deeper. You enter within and experience the Mystery, the transitory ecstasy, a oneness and completeness of being glimpsed in an tumescent ejaculation of pleasure. But immediately after, there is always the imminent sorrow of your separation, leaving, your departing, as you grow hollow, empty, flaccid - as you wane, slip and fall out of the interior of the temple / womb and reluctantly withdraw back into your self

The Poet continues: but that fresh blood, that distillation of your self, the essence of your self which you gave within, now grows as quickly, quickens, as an intaken breath, inspiration, finding a new life in poetic language. Hopefully, someday when you have exchanged, converted, the superficial pleasures of your youth for the more enduring endeavors of maturity, you will know the inspiration, the seed, as your own, recognizing the your own face, the semblance of your beauty, still radiant, within the temple of the language. You will recognize the more enduring substance behind the fleeting shadows you are so enchanted with now.

You should seek to cultivate within you and pass on to future generations the ideals of Truth, Beauty and Goodness which you unconsciously embody now in your radiant youth. Nature has given you a gift, an overabundance of being, store, which you should recognize and honor, cherish.

You have been carved out of the harsh, featureless and rude matter of being as a seal. And in the same way as the acorn should grown into the oak tree, you should use the seal of your beauty to print more reproductions of your self, to bring more beauty into the world.

White Rose, Dore. - source

Couplet Imagery

 She carved thee for her seal, and meant thereby,
   Thou shouldst print more, not let that copy die.

It is the sculptor’s power, so often alluded to, of finding the perfect form and features of a goddess, in the shapeless block of marble; and his ability to chip off all extraneous matter, and let the divine excellence stand forth for itself. Thus, in every incident of business, in every accident of life, the poet sees something divine, and carefully scales off all that encumbers that divinity, and permits it to be revealed in all its transcendent loveliness. - “The Methodist Quarterly Review," 1858 from https://quoteinvestigator.com/2014/06/22/chip-away/

Finally, I asked him: “Mr. M., what are you going to make out of that?” Looking up kindly into my face, he said: “My boy, I am not going to make anything out of it. I am going to find something in it.” I did not quite comprehend, but said: “Why, what are you going to find in it?” He replied: “There is a beautiful angel in that block of marble, and I am going to find it. All I have to do is to knock off the outside pieces of marble, and be very careful not to cut into the angel with my chisel. In a month or so you will see how beautiful it is.” - George F. Pentecost,  “The Angel in the Marble” from https://quoteinvestigator.com/2014/06/22/chip-away/ 

It's not the notes you play, it's the notes you don't play. - Miles Davis

Prisoners, Michelangelo. - source

Christ and Mary Magdalene, Rodin. - source

The couplet contains twinned allegorical imagery:

(1) Nature has carved "the extraneous matter" from the raw block of being to create (creation as revelation) the "transcendent loveliness" that is the Young Man; and

(2) the duty, responsibility (scared duty), of this carved seal of beauty is to reproduce itself, print more.

An amoral aura of Beauty as a sort of eugenic virus lurks between the lines of this sonnet. Encoded into essence of beauty is the necessity for it to reproduce itself - endlessly. Spheres of reproduction, replication, reflection, representation intersect, overlap and crowd tightly against each other. Narcissus in a room full of mirrors, tirelessly rearranging reflections of self to approximate the oncness of infinity, a calculus of differential annihilation.

An ambiguity cleaves to the figures of Nature carving the Young Man as a seal of beauty and Time carving its lines over the Young Man's face (S2, S19, S22, S100), undoing Nature's artistry. Nature carves away to reveal beauty, Time carves into to destroy this revelation. Beauty is that, "the something divine," which is envisioned within the uncarved, unordered, chaos of "raw reality." The creation of beauty, the vision of the angel in the stone, is conceived from the Transcendental Ideal. It is a Noetic Intelligence, the highest order of understanding. These are the archetypal patterns, axioms of order, that warp and weave to form our utmost conception of what is beautiful.

Note the teleology and implicit morality in the uncovering of what is latent within, as the oak tree unfolds from the acorn, the the truth is unconcealed from its hidden-ness.

"Aletheia (Ancient Greek: ἀλήθεια) is truth or disclosure in philosophy. It was used in Ancient Greek philosophy and revived in the 20th century by Martin Heidegger. 

"It is a Greek word variously translated as "unclosedness", "unconcealedness", "disclosure" or "truth". The literal meaning of the word ἀ–λήθεια is "the state of not being hidden; the state of being evident." It also means factuality or reality. It is the opposite of lethe, which literally means "oblivion", "forgetfulness", or "concealment". According to Pindar's Olympian Ode, Aletheia is the daughter of Zeus, while Aesop in his Fables said that she was crafted by Prometheus." - Wikipedia

Nature creates these patterns by exclusion, by removing that which is not beautiful from that which is. The beautiful is what is rare, separated from what is common, vulgar.

"All things excellent are as difficult as they are rare." - Baruch Spinoza

Nature has carved, unconcealed, un-hidden, the Beauty of the Young Man. As such, he stands forth, self-evident, true, as a pattern (S19: For beauty's pattern to succeeding men) to be reproduced or which should reproduce itself. And whereas previously in the sonnets, the injunction has been towards a genetic procreation, here the the metaphor of printing introduces the possibility that his beauty can be reproduced through the written word. The Logos as a living and breathing spirit in the eyes and breaths of men. The Flesh is made Word.

Printing more copies, the child is no longer the vessel, the printed word is.  The bequeathed transcendental self from Sonnet 10 is granted the power of infinite reproduction.


But thy eternal summer shall not fade,
Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow’st;
Nor shall death brag thou wander’st in his shade,
When in eternal lines to time thou grow’st:
   So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,
   So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.

"It is typical of Shakespeare's constantly analytical mind that he would press into use so many different inorganic as well as organic categories by which one thing "begets" another, and the he would discriminate tonally among (a) those happy instances which produce the new without themselves being diminished (e.g., the happy strings in their married concord); (b) the happier instances where the original is augmented (as in the loan repayment by which ten of thine ten times refigured thee, in sonnet 6); and (c) those elegiac instances which introduce nostalgia (as the mother's glass in 3 calls back the lovely April of her prime). "Vendler

Boulder with Daoist paradise, Qing dynasty (1644–1911) - source

Introductory

Perhaps it is folly to attempt to make a Shakespearian sonnet more memorable. But these poems are distant for many, museum pieces set under glass, ornate objects d'art in a curio cabinet. Most hear the name Shakespeare and either position themselves to listen to sacred scripture or to endure a pompous parade of elitist high culture. Few friends or family will happily assent to audience the recitation of a sonnet.

The sonnets are like those desiccated and dried roses found in a wooden box under old letters in a Grandmother's keepsake chest. There is a staleness, a closeness, an faint odor of decay and death. They are haunted by the dust of times long past. But there was once blood in those roses, beauty, radiance, love, fevered whispers and intoxicating kisses. Each of them perhaps had a story replete with scandal and betrayal and unrequited love. If they could only speak....

Of course, the sonnets still do. To those that are willing to listen, they sing, they are alive and pulsing with blood. The "hits" still have relevance, S18, S55, S105, even misconstrued and misunderstood, as touchstones of love. But there are 154 or them. Many sonnets seem in comparison to the "hits" to be filler or B-side. It is only later, in the larger scope of the overall series that they reveal a startling connectivity and currency.

If the intent is to memorize them - even in the most cursory manner - then it is easy to become exhausted. The sheer over-abundance of the Shakespearian language overwhelms. Many of the sonnets seem occluded, with intensely private centers, offering no easy handles. Others are deceptively forthright but upon closer readings resonate with ambiguity whose meaning suddenly multiplies.

In order to memorize this often kaleidoscopic array, there is a natural and necessary tendency to invent "ghost narratives," idiosyncratic stories, perhaps not entirely accessible on the conscious level.  These ghost narratives call upon personal biography, history, imagined and not necessarily true internal narratives within the sonnets themselves, "made-up" back-stories about the principal figures or the Young Man, the Poet and the Dark Woman. Balance is needed here between our own private mythologies and the consensually agreed upon intent of the sonnets. But one of the most wonderful and terrible qualities of the sonnets is they are so maddeningly ambiguous, offering themselves up to an extraordinary multiplicity of interpretations. As in the anachronism often believed to have designated the unknown on most old maps, the warning stands: "Here be Dragons." There is no limit to the number of brilliant lies and "perfectly reasonable" rationalizations that are propped up to stand in place of the truth, especially when the truth has been concealed.

This being stated, the contention here is that ANY method you might use to memorize a sonnet is acceptable. If at first, you refashion each sonnet to be about yourself, that's fine as long as it fixes the sonnet in the memory. Over time and with each newly memorized sonnet, there is a subtle transformation in mnemonic strategy. The plot of the sonnets thickens, the narrative reinforces particular themes, certain words and phrases echo, antagonists and protagonists emerge and the submerged structure of a vast and comprehensive philosophy seems to shimmer in the depths, just beyond the grasp of comprehension. Those sonnets that were initially invested with your own idiosyncratic mnemonics metamorphosize in the ever enriching web of the whole, the chrysalis of self-containment splitting apart to reveal an unsuspected beauty and meaning.

Obviously, that which has the most meaning for us is the most memorable. Why not suppose every sonnet is meaningful, that there is no filler, no b-sides, no tired repetitions? Of course, even Homer nods. But  instead of discounting a great number of sonnets, what if you were to imagine they were each written in a white hot paroxysm of blood and passion, packed full of philosophical meaning? Even it you were to err upon the side of insanity, the sonnet itself would become much more memorable. Certainly, it is easier to memorize 154 sonnets that cut and bleed, shed tears, shudder in ecstasy, joyfully ejaculate, burn with rage and hate and regret, and may be as insane as a red rose the size of the sun bleeding evening into the skies , than it is to remember the dead, dried petals of a once living thing on the verge of collapsing into dust. And the irony that is no irony here is that this is not an insane interpretation: the Sonnets are filled with this vital, overflowing, abundance of life and deep philosophical structure.

At the end of Sonnet 10, the Poet implored the Young Man,


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


The mnemonic strategy here to suppose that what the Poet was asking for was poetic permission to use the Ideal Self of the Young Man as a muse around which to build the monument of the Series. Shakespeare is writing these sonnets years after sonnet sequences were in vogue. You can imagine his overreaching mind dissatisfied with merely writing another typical sequence. Better to turn it inside out and animate it with a sophisticated and clever philosophical machine. Instead of writing to praise and "immortalize" a name - Laura, Phoebe, Delia, Shakespeare uses poetic language itself as a vessel to contain and transcendentalize beauty. In order to do this, there must be a radiant figure upon which the Poet can project his eternalizing language. The initial ten sonnets of the procreation series set the stage upon which the Young Man is unsuccessfully urged to reproduce in the form of a child. Sonnet 10  is a zero point, a re-turning, with the Poet introducing himself in order to midwife a new conception of the Young Man, no longer the petulant and tired rake, but an idealized conception.

Throughout the sonnets, Shakespeare wrestles with the physical presence, the sweating tangible beauty of the Young Man and the Idealized Self that he is celebrating in the language. As Auden remarked, there was the Poet's "glory of the vision" struggling with a person determined in "covering the vision with dirt." But is is precisely this tension, between the squalid aging beauty and the pure ageless ideal that give the sonnets their enduring Pulse.

Persistence of Memory, Dali. - source

Q1:

As fast as thou shalt wane, so fast thou grow'st
In one of thine, from that which thou departest;
And that fresh blood which youngly thou bestow'st,
Thou mayst call thine when thou from youth convertest.

After Sonnet 10, with it's injunctive tone of making another self for the Poet to use for his own purposes, Sonnet 11 begins at a seminal moment. The Young Man has just ejaculated his semen, his essence, into a new creative womb, the creative crucible of the Poet's imagination. After the tumescent posturing of the previous narrative, the Young Man is here figured waning, being emptied out, in a post coital refractory haze. His fresh blood - the Elizabethans believed semen was a distillation of blood - more, his essence, this seed of a new Neoplantonic Ideal Self, has been given fertile ground within the mind of the poet and endurance in language.

As quickly as the Young Man's erection fades, this new Ideal Neoplatonic Self grows "in one of thine," the womb that his flaccid, emptied, cock is now slipping sadly out of. That moment of blissful union, of oneness, has passed in a paroxysm of self-transcended ecstasy, and the self now gazes back into its own mirror, enfolding once again into a Narcissistic inward regression. This new seed is received by the poet - note the feminine rhymes - who is now tasked with giving birth through language to this Neoplatonic Child.

The Poet tells the Young Man, this fresh blood, this seminal essence of your beauty, you will know as your own only when you have converted from the profligate ways of youth and gained maturity and wisdom. In a sense, the Young Man is unable to comprehend the significance of the gift he has given. And he will not comprehend it until he changes the nature of his mind, until he grasps the stark fact that he is living in a world of shadows. Only when he turns away from the shadowplay of his nightly carousings and sees things in the true light of day, will he understand that he has sold his soul, his beauty,  to the Poet in exchange for an enduring and lasting fame.

Note the converest. Not grow out of youth, but to convert out of youth. It is not a matter that concerns time so much as a willingness to change, transform. Modern connotations of converting one currency into another - often with usurious with interest.


Q2:

Herein lives wisdom, beauty, and increase;
Without this folly, age, and cold decay:
If all were minded so, the times should cease
And threescore year would make the world away.

Herein... in these words, within the womb of language, the Neoplatonic Triad is elucidated. Wisdom is Truth, Beauty is Beauty and Increase is Goodness. Aristotle provides additional animating insight as Truth becomes Theoretical, Beauty is Productive and Increase is the Practical. If the Young Man had not impregnated the mind of the Poet with the essence of his beauty, his life would be absent of the aspects of the Triad: one of folly, foolishness, tired and fruitless aging, and cold - almost inanimate - decay.

The moral imperative rings true for the necessity of human procreation and for poetic invention.


Q3:

Let those whom nature hath not made for store,
Harsh, featureless, and rude, barrenly perish:
Look whom she best endowed, she gave the more;
Which bounteous gift thou shouldst in bounty cherish:

Nature's "store" here is that which is uncommon, rare and most beautiful - Miles Davis' "unplayed notes," the silence that adumbrates the meaning of the melody. The "store" is not an encompassing totality of goods, as you might imagine in a mercantile setting or a room full of supplies. Rather, is the selection from that totality of that which is best, most. Here is the Shakespearian sense. Nature gave the Young Man more, not in quantity, but in quality. Beauty is the essence refined from the crude, raw stuff of life. Beauty is like a Tibetan mandala which serves as a image pattern, (harmonizing mnemonic?), vessel for the Truth, a repository for meaning. Beauty is a mystical mnemonic for the meaning of life.


Couplet:

She carved thee for her seal, and meant thereby,
   Thou shouldst print more, not let that copy die.

"Printed copies do not die. "Copy" in this sense forcibly recalls its etymological root, copia, and thus puns on the semantic import of increase and bounty, those signs of nature's cornucopia." Vendler 

"With the introduction of the word print, we begin to approach the emphasis on the eternizing power of art which will, after sonnet 17, supplant breeding altogether." Vendler 

"There is also a play on the meaning of copy that has since become its only common one, "reproduction," and on copy in the equally common Renaissance sense of "abundance," the sense closest to the Latin root (copia: "abundance," "riches," "store," "ability," "power," "means"). (In context of seal, print and copy, a modern reader may hear a  logically casual pun on a "die," an engraved stamp for impressing a design upon metal; the pun is particularly inviting in this context of procreation since a die is often used in conjunction with a "matrix." However, OED gives no example of this sense of "die" before 1699 and none for the relevant sense of "matrix" before 1626.)" Booth

There is a mystery in the final phrase, "not let that copy die." If the Young Man is the carved seal of beauty, then the substance which this seal is made to print with is the copy, copia, abundance, semen. To let the copy die is to ooze an ink over the seal and not imprint it upon any matter that will receive its impression. There is a semantic tension, ambiguity, here in locating the precise matter of / for the copy. There is a potential resolution in understanding the copy as a reflection. It is this Ideal Reflection, this Representation of Beauty in the mind of the Young Man (perhaps) and the Poet (mostly) that is the copy that should not die. Here the process of printing is literally the creation of a language that will hold the impression of the Young Man's beauty; it is the monument of the sonnets themselves that the copies, the copia, abundance, that shall live on as enduring representations / reproductions of the Young Man's beauty.

Kerrigan (see below) attempts to un-puzzle some of the ambiguity. The crux resides in the distinction between physical reproduction and intellectual mimesis. See Plato.

"The trouble is, we have lost touch with the ideal of copiousness so dear to the Elizabethans. For is, the word 'copy', like 'reproduction' in art, implies debasement; but when Shakespeare says of Nature, elsewhere in the 'breeding group', 'She carved thee for her seal, and meant thereby | Thou shouldst print more, not let that copy die', the 'seal" which prints is a 'copy' because, in sixteenth century English, a 'copy' was something from which copies were produced. No original need be inferred, as it is with us, even when describing the printer's copy from which copies of this book are printed. A 'copy' was that wich might produce 'semblances' which could reproduce that 'copy'; so, in copying, 'identity' did, and yet did not, push 'resemblance' to Steven's 'vanishing point'. In other words, couplets on breeding like 'This were to be made new when thou are old, | And see thy blood warm when thou feel'st it cold' or 'Make thee another self for love of me, | That beauty still may live in thine or thee' advocate in life a plentitude, a copiousness, resembling that copia which renaissance rhetoricians thought texts should aspire to through a proliferation of eloquent 'ficgures'. Think of De Copia itself, where Erasmus writes, 'By your letter was I mightily pleased' one hundred and forty-six times, yet never quite repeats himself. Breeding promises an infinite extension of such 'increase', a proliferation of 'figures' in a human sense, where each is its other's 'copy'. " - Kerrigan

copy (n.)
early 14c., "written account or record," from Old French copie (13c.), from Medieval Latin copia "reproduction, transcript," from Latin copia "an abundance, ample supply, profusion, plenty," from com "with" (see com-) + ops (genitive opis) "power, wealth, resources," from PIE root *op- "to work, produce in abundance." Sense extended 15c. to any specimen of writing (especially MS for a printer) and any reproduction or imitation. Related: Copyist. 

copy (v.)
late 14c., from Old French copier (14c.), from Medieval Latin copiare "to transcribe," originally "to write in plenty," from Latin copia (see copy (n.)). Hence, "to write an original text many times." Related: Copied; copying. Figurative sense of "to imitate" is attested from 1640s. - https://www.etymonline.com/word/copy

Illustrations and Drafts

Mimesis (/maɪˈmiːsəs/; Ancient Greek: μίμησις (mīmēsis), from μιμεῖσθαι (mīmeisthai), "to imitate", from μῖμος (mimos), "imitator, actor") is a critical and philosophical term that carries a wide range of meanings, which include imitation, representation, mimicry, imitatio, receptivity, nonsensuous similarity, the act of resembling, the act of expression, and the presentation of the self.[1] In contradistinction to diegesis with its requirement of detachment, all this presumes involvement on the part of the participants. 

In ancient Greece, mimesis was an idea that governed the creation of works of art, in particular, with correspondence to the physical world understood as a model for beauty, truth, and the good. Plato contrasted mimesis, or imitation, with diegesis, or narrative. After Plato, the meaning of mimesis eventually shifted toward a specifically literary function in ancient Greek society, and its use has changed and been reinterpreted many times since. - Wikipedia

Diegesis (Greek διήγησις "narration") and mimesis (Greek μίμησις "imitation") have been contrasted since Plato's and Aristotle's times. Mimesis shows rather than tells, by means of action that is enacted. Diegesis is the telling of a story by a narrator. The narrator may speak as a particular character or may be the invisible narrator or even the all-knowing narrator who speaks from "outside" in the form of commenting on the action or the characters. 

In Book III of his Republic (c. 373 BC), Plato examines the "style" of "poetry" (the term includes comedy, tragedy, epic and lyric poetry): All types narrate events, he argues, but by differing means. He distinguishes between narration or report (diegesis) and imitation or representation (mimesis). Tragedy and comedy, he goes on to explain, are wholly imitative types; the dithyramb is wholly narrative; and their combination is found in epic poetry. When reporting or narrating, "the poet is speaking in his own person; he never leads us to suppose that he is any one else"; when imitating, the poet produces an "assimilation of himself to another, either by the use of voice or gesture". In dramatic texts, the poet never speaks directly; in narrative texts, the poet speaks as him or herself.  

In his Poetics, the ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle argues that kinds of "poetry" (the term includes drama, flute music, and lyre music for Aristotle) may be differentiated in three ways: according to their medium, according to their objects, and according to their mode or "manner" (section I); "For the medium being the same, and the objects the same, the poet may imitate by narration — in which case he can either take another personality as Homer does, or speak in his own person, unchanged — or he may present all his characters as living and moving before us" (section III). - Wikipedia