“William Shakespeare - Sonnet 130” & "Pablo Neruda - Love Sonnet XVII”

[küçükkarabalık]

You can read sonnets at the bottom of page.

What is love ?With ancient Egyptians' comparison, is it illness? Or is it the most beautiful and strongest of the emotions that helps to the most talented poets to write their most beautiful poems? And if we are lucky, we can find an answer to this question. If you think you are done, after finding an answer like love is kissing or living is a serious matter just as loving you (Nazım Hikmet),you are totally wrong. Because the questions just start, Why and How are waiting for you. Why do we love? Without a doubt it will be interesting to study on this question.(and probably while we will be doing this, we will notice that we won't need the result.)But now, I will mainly study on how do we love? How do we describe our lover? And while doing this, I will get help from Shakespeare and Neruda, with their loveful poems. We will look at lover from a realistic point of view, far away from exaggerated typical way and of course talk about pure love. We'll discuss what love is based on. Is love bounded by superficial things, like appearance or is there something deeper? Without a worry for finding a reason, we'll study on these.


"And yet, by heaven, I think my love as rare, As any she belied with false compare." Shakespeare says like this. Isn't he right? Aren't we used to hear or read comparisons like, "her eyes were shining like sun" or "golden wires grow from her head". Does love need these? Do you need a perfect appearance to love someone or something? Is what makes Romeo fall in love with Juliet just a superficial thing? I don't think so. Love is much more than that. Love is much more than that what eyes see, nose smells, hands touch or ears hear as just as Shakespeare states; "I love to hear her speak, yet well I know That music hath a far more pleasing sound;" If it isn't mainly a superficial thing, it should be something maybe hidden, maybe in deepness of lover; something that comes from heart. "I love you as the plant that never blooms but carries in itself the light of hidden flowers" As it is seen, we are agreed with Neruda about that love is much more than that. Of course, it is not a complete denial; appearance has an effect on love, but not the main part. If we study on the love that from human to human, we can clearly see that human is the one of the most complicated creatures in the universe, of course in creatures that we know. But real love, surprisingly , is far away from being complicated.(It is possible for me to express love as not complicated, because of I can't see its complexity because it is really complicated, like other humans do the same thing about god and universe relationship.) "I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where. I love you straightforwardly, without complexities or pride;" Yes, that is it. Of course there are scientific definitions about love that talks about hormones, brain's parts .And I am sure most of them are right, but love doesn't need a definition, again you don't have to understand that. This is how we love. Real love doesn't give a chance to ask why I love, how I love. You just love, its pureness is here. I don't think lovers who may live or die for each other have question marks about their love in their minds. And another power of real love is to prevent you from to stuck things. "Coral is far more red than her lips' red;" People in these days have some criteria, obsessions to "love" somebody, mostly superficial things. If there is something makes all these things nonsense, it is the pure and real love. Shakespeare is aware of realities and he is okay with that. He is not searching a lady that has coral red lips or a goddess walk. I am sure this is the power of love, accepting a person as she is. "than this: where I does not exist, nor you," This is the moment that ego doesn't have a place here. A person that can tell this surely destroyed his/her ego. Where two lovers are purified from their egos, there are no lies, no complexities ,no obsessions there. And I don’t know anything that can do these, expect love.


Realism.. The main theme in Shakespeare's sonnet.. He is slightly mocking with other poets and their exaggerated comparisons. He really gives us enough examples to understand that his lover is not a unbelievable beauty for him. His love's base is far away from coral red lips, sun shining eyes or golden wires. He can't settle his love on them, on a something that he knows that is not true, that does not have to be true. Maybe he doesn't openly states that his love is mostly independent from appearance, he implies it. And if we accept that it is not mainly about the appearance ,we can think that Shakespeare is, like Neruda, looking to deepness of his lovers. And I think, their beauty concept is "beauty is on the eye of beholder". Shakespeare's realism allows him to love her as she is, so finding her beautiful. It is also questionable that lovers find each other beautiful because they are in love or they are in love because they find each other beautiful. What we get from Shakespeare is he is agreed with first idea, I think Neruda also is. Because, as we said before, love is mostly independent from superficial things for them.


We tried to understand how we love, how we describe our lover. We study on ways of loving, without complexities with pureness, without ego. And our feet hit the ground, with Shakespeare's realism. We see that to express our love we don't need fancy comparisons.. Or we don't need perfect appearance. We just need to know how to look to see hidden beauties. Like Neruda, to see the light of hidden flowers. Than we decided we don’t need to understand why we love or how, where love comes from.. Just Love. Of course, we had some examples about love's power like destroying egos, obsessions and accepting people as he/she is. I think we are all agreed love is powerful. As a lyric says, "Love is gonna save us".

Artena




Sonnets;



Sonnet XVII: Love'


I don't love you as if you were the salt-rose, topaz
or arrow of carnations that propagate fire:
I love you as certain dark things are loved,
secretly, between the shadow and the soul.
I love you as the plant that doesn't bloom and carries
hidden within itself the light of those flowers,
and thanks to your love, darkly in my body
lives the dense fragrance that rises from the earth.


I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where,
I love you simply, without problems or pride:
I love you in this way because I don't know any other way of loving


but this, in which there is no I or you,
so intimate that your hand upon my chest is my hand,
so intimate that when I fall asleep it is your eyes that close.


Pablo Neruda


SONNET 130

My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun;
Coral is far more red than her lips' red;
If snow be white, why then her breasts are dun;
If hairs be wires, black wires grow on her head.
I have seen roses damask'd, red and white,
But no such roses see I in her cheeks;
And in some perfumes is there more delight
Than in the breath that from my mistress reeks.
I love to hear her speak, yet well I know
That music hath a far more pleasing sound;
I grant I never saw a goddess go;
My mistress, when she walks, treads on the ground:
And yet, by heaven, I think my love as rare
As any she belied with false compare.


William Shakespeare

[EoS]

I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where,
I love you simply, without problems or pride:
I love you in this way because I don't know any other way of loving

These sentences are really excellent!Loving is very hard but some words enough to describe " i love without problems and not know any way to have loving"I remember a sentences about love which is not being come together,belongs Asik Veysel.

[Manon]

Sonnet 138

When my love swears that she is made of truth,
I do believe her, though I know she lies,
That she might think me some untutor'd youth,
Unlearned in the world's false subtleties.
Thus vainly thinking that she thinks me young,
Although she knows my days are past the best,
Simply I credit her false-speaking tongue:
On both sides thus is simple truth supprest.
But wherefore says she not she is unjust?
And wherefore say not I that I am old?
O, love's best habit is in seeming trust,
And age in love loves not to have years told:
Therefore I lie with her and she with me,
And in our faults by lies we flatter'd be.

Shakespeare

[Manon]

Sonnet 18

Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate:
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
And summer's lease hath all too short a date:
Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines
And often is his gold complexion dimmed;
And every fair from fair sometimes declines,
By chance or nature's changing course untrimmed;
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.

Shakespeare

[ophelia]

sahkespeare's love concept is simply different from the other Elizabethan poets..he doesn' like using classical images,and commonly used metaphors..instead..he depends upon contradictory sentences and paradoxes..

miss ophelia,
I do not think so, Shakespeare uses all elements of figurative language, and his plays are full of conceptualised metaphors,
however, as they befit our concepts, we hardly recognise them as a "figure of speech",
but they actually metaphors of commonly used concepts

[il_bilge]

Here I want to point out that I agree with what Helena says.. When we take an elaborated look at the writings of Shakespeare (sonnets, plays.. etc) we can realize the great and sophisticated usage of figurative language. His wit and genius perhaps appears when trying to comprehend his deeper meanings. Especially I want to mention his usage of "puns", you can come across in his both sonnets and plays. A bright mind is necessary for one trying to understand what he tells us.. Personifications, allegories, paradoxes, conceptualized metaphors... Anyway, no matter what, Shakespeare is different from every other English poets (Victorian, Elizabethian, Neo-Classical, Modernist...) Or I may say, from all poets..

[ophelia]

Thanks for your comments.. But I can't agree with you on this point miss Helena.. You know Elizabethan poets used classical images to describe their love and loved ones ... They had mostly been concerned with the expression of simple and conventional themes in a fairly elaborate and artificial manner. They idealized ladies in gentle and courtly language.. For example: many poets describe their lover's eyes as the sun.. Lips are cherries.. Cheeks are strawberries..and so on..
But Shakespeare is different.. I mean he knew that her lover doesn't like such kind of false comparision.. He's realistic.. He doesn't use classical images.

Take this poem by Shakespeare..

My mstress' eyes are nothing like the sun
coral is far more red than her lips' red
if snow be white why then her breasts are dun
if hairs be wires, black wires grow on her head
i have seen roses damasked, red and white
but no such roses see i in her cheeks
and in some parfumes is there more delight
than in the breath taht from my mistres reeks
i love to hear her speak,yet well i know
that music hath a more pleasing sound
i grant i never saw a goddess go
my msitress when she walks treads on the ground
and yet by heav'n i think my love as rare
as any belied with false compare

Miss,
Of course Shakespeare does not use the conventional tricks of literary language
but the point is that metaphor is a different aspect of language, we, even at such a platform, use many coventional metaphors, Shakespeare uses novel metaphors.
What makes him different is that he applies all the afore mentioned figures in an unusual way.

[ophelia]

I think ..I have enough knowledge of what a metaphor is but now..we have mentioned the same things..
You've said "he doesn't use conventional tricks of literary language".. That's exactly what I want to say..

It's worth to add.. As far as I have studied many works of Shakespeare at school.. contrary to general belief.. Shakespeare is not a poet.. but a playwright; he has actually a few poems and sonnets.. but very important ones..


thanks..