So you may still agree that this poem leaves a ‘bitter taste’. This doesn’t address Paterson’s objection that Shakespeare doesn’t leave room to say what he does like about his mistress, and instead works to negate existing descriptions of female beauty without bothering to put anything in their place.
#Sonnet 130 meaning skin
And ‘dun’, given the way the Dark Lady is described elsewhere in the Sonnets, is most likely a simple description of her skin colour (she may well have been ‘dark’ not just because she was elusive and mysterious, but because she was mixed-race), rather than a barbed contrast with the whiteness that was typically associated with feminine beauty.
Do we think that by merely rejecting such hyperbole, Shakespeare is doing down his mistress? ‘Nothing like the sun’ (stolen by Anthony Burgess as the title for one of his novels) may sound rather churlish and strong (‘Oh, don’t be silly, her eyes are nowhere near as marvellous as the sun!’), but then it doesn’t necessarily mean that her eyes are positively hideous to behold. How we respond to these questions will probably come as much from our own convictions on these issues as it will from the poem itself. What’s special about her, if he doesn’t think she’s much to look at? Or is it that she is just fine to look at – she’s not ugly, to his mind, in the slightest – but he’s just not prepared to make silly comparisons between her and roses and other hackneyed symbols of beauty? Don Paterson, in his analysis of Sonnet 130 in his Reading Shakespeare’s Sonnets, thinks the Bard leaves it too late to pay the Dark Lady a compliment: having rejected the ‘blazon’ (characterising the physical beauties of the poem’s subject) of traditional love poetry, revealing their similes as over-the-top, Shakespeare fails to say exactly why he does consider his mistress a ‘rare’ woman. Here we might begin to see why Sonnet 130 can prove a bone of contention for readers of the Sonnets, who disagree not so much over what the sonnet means – on that everyone pretty much agrees – but on whether it’s a good poem in terms of its message. In other words, Shakespeare is saying in Sonnet 130 that the Dark Lady is not exactly conventionally beautiful in any sense, but he still thinks she is just as fine as any other woman – only the Dark Lady, unlike these other women, isn’t having her beauty ‘talked up’ by excessive and ridiculous comparisons (‘you are rosy-cheeked’, ‘your eyes shine like suns’, ‘your voice is as sweet-sounding as music’, and the like). And yet, I think she is as rare a woman as any woman who has been falsely compared to these paragons of beauty.’ Don’t get me wrong, I love to hear her speak, but I know her voice isn’t exactly musical and I admit that I’ve never seen a goddess here on earth, but I can say with some certainty that my mistress, when she goes, walks on the ground like a very un-goddess-like woman. Perfumes smell sweeter than the breath that comes out of her mouth. I’ve seen roses of different colours, pink, red, and white, but my beloved’s cheeks don’t resemble these beautiful roses in any way. ‘My mistress’ eyes are nowhere near as bright and dazzling as the sun, and even pale pink coral is redder than her pale lips her breasts are hardly snow-white, and are more a dull brown colour and she has black hair on her hair (rather than, say, the fair hair of the traditional paragons of beauty). Okay, the paraphrase first, which will serve as a sort of summary of the poem’s meaning. My mistress, when she walks, treads on the ground:Īnd yet by heaven, I think my love as rare, That music hath a far more pleasing sound:
I love to hear her speak, yet well I know Than in the breath that from my mistress reeks. I have seen roses damasked, red and white,Īnd in some perfumes is there more delight If hairs be wires, black wires grow on her head.
If snow be white, why then her breasts are dun
My mistress’ eyes are nothing like the sun Ĭoral is far more red, than her lips red:
0 kommentar(er)
