Sonnets

In my first year at University I took English Literature. I was young, hairy and sulky. My tutorial was with half a dozen other students in a small meeting room, and it was held after five o’clock. I remember that it was usually dark outside when we finished (I suppose that memory is from winter).

At the first tutorial the tutor asked us each to introduce ourselves and say an object that we thought represented us. I said:

“I am John-Paul and I am a stone.”

I was thinking of a smooth, round rock at the bottom of a stream. The tutor may have been thinking of her gravel driveway though, because she didn’t seem impressed.

Our first essay had to be about a short poem. I chose Sonnet 18 by Shakespeare. I chose it because I thought it was very beautiful. This is actually a good reason to choose a poem, but at the time I thought you needed more profound reasons.

My essay was quite poor. I rambled. Nowadays I might say something like:

Sonnet 18 is beautiful because it is romantic. Most of Shakespeare’s other sonnets are not romantic.

Actually I would probably say: go and read the damn poem.

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 dimm'd;
And every fair from fair sometime declines,
By chance or nature's changing course untrimm'd;
But thy eternal summer shall not fade
Nor lose possession of that fair thou owest;
Nor shall Death brag thou wander'st in his shade,
When in eternal lines to time thou growest:
So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,
So long lives this and this gives life to thee.

I believe in this idea that art can make “things” immortal or, if not immortal, at least it can make them far outlive their brief natural existence. When I write a poem for someone or play them a song I am attracted to two things in that act. Firstly, that the moment of the performance is so fleeting and ephemeral, and secondly, that the words on the page make that same moment enduring. In itself that double act is beautiful.