Sonnets: the "substance" of beauty

Sonnets: the „substance“ of beauty

From fairest creatures we desire increase,

That thereby beauty’s rose might never die,

But as the riper should by time decease,

His tender heir might bear his memory;

But thou, contracted to thine own bright eyes,

Feed’st thy light’s flame with self-substantial fuel,

Making a famine where abundance lies,

Thyself thy foe, to thy sweet self too cruel.

Thou that art now the world’s fresh ornament

And only herald to the gaudy spring,

Within thine own bud buriest thy content,

And, tender churl, mak’st waste in niggarding.

Pity the world, or else this glutton be,

To eat the world’s due, by the grave and thee.

The first of the “Sonnets” and the first thing I read when I decided to read Shakespeare again after about twenty-five years. What led to it I remember distinctly, but without much explaining it probably doesn’t make any sense. Part of it is important though, so I’ll give the outlines here. The most important reason was certainly that I was desperate. I had just finished my strange “sabbatical” of writing for a whole year, one year of living in a completely different world – where, for once, I could be the person I always wanted to be. And then this was finished, the story was written. What would I do now? I think I was kidding myself, somehow, for some time, that I would just go back to my “old life”. Which I remembered, vaguely, even to have liked. But I didn’t remember why. At least, maybe, next week  or next month or so … Then came the day I realized I had been kidding myself and that I had to do something about it. I remember the date: it was January the 2nd 2014 when I got back to work – and to the internet – and, actually looking for something completely different, found this interview. Just once in a while “Google” knows better than myself what I am looking for … It was an interview with Richard Armitage on the occasion of the premiere of “The Desolation of Smaug”, by the way the best interview I have ever heard an actor give – and nothing at all to do with what I am writing about here. Apart from something that gave me quite a shock as it made me realize for the first time what had “happened” recently, in my own world. It was the answer he gave to the question what playing Thorin Oakenshield had meant to him:

I think it’s really made me reengage with what I want from my career. It’s not fame and fortune certainly. It’s the ability to investigate a character in this way, but at the same time it’s going to be really difficult to surpass this experience. I’ve got to maybe give up the idea of finding another character like this. But I had said that before. I played another character where I said, I’ll never find another character like that and then this one came along. It was John Thornton in “North and South,” which is something I did maybe eight years ago. But it was a book I loved and a great writer and a great director, just a small BBC four-part series but it had a real impact on me and again changed me as an actor. So I found this one eight years later. I hope it doesn’t take eight years. I know I will find it somehow. We’ll see.

For him it did happen, by the way, which is great! He got to play John Proctor in “The Crucible” not much later, which was something he felt had been in the making for 43 years: his whole lifetime. But at the moment he gave that interview nothing “pointed that way”, of course, and things didn’t look great, (which is in the interview as well.). And for me understanding this made me realize that what had happened in my own life wasn’t even something that might not happen again but something that would never happen again because this had been pure chance – if such a thing as this exists. In a way, it had just been the occurrence of too many unlikely “events”. But it made me realize something else as well. That I would never again “go off” this. Whatever it was, whatever it took. Never again. That is, I didn’t even know what it was for me, but I knew I had to take it seriously.

That it became reading Shakespeare, at least for now, had been pure chance again. But, in a way, it was on special recommendation. Although there must have been something “there” already that made me listen to it. And, as I said, I was desperate. I would have tried almost anything. In a way it was a big step to take, and I had too much respect, and probably some memories of failure, to take on any of the plays. But I remembered this lecture about the “Sonnets” I had liked and which had made me read some of them closely. And this experience I remembered as pleasant. Although I didn’t remember anything in particular, apart from the fact that 126 of them were “addressed” to a young man, the rest to a woman. Which, as it turned out, might in fact be all the information you need to read some of them “successfully”.

Anyway, the first thing I did was reading the first of the “Sonnets”. Which is not only the obvious thing to do but the “right” thing as well because it sets not only the theme but the exact “argument” of many of the sonnets that follow. I remembered this when I read it after twenty-five years, and I even remembered that it got more tedious reading “more of the same”. So I had covered a considerable part of the “Sonnets” already, reading the first one. To paraphrase it in plain words: There is this inconceivable abundance of  beauty in the world, “embodied” in one person, that adds so much to our own lives. But, as it is subjected to time, it will not last. And therefore this person should not stint with it and waste it by keeping it to himself but should make the most of it by producing an heir who might carry on his legacy. A very “sound” argument, very practical, considering that it is a “poem”, echoing the commercially-minded argument from the bible about not “sitting on” your “talents”, squandering them in that way, but spending them and making something productive of your life. But as, in this case, it is beauty not money we are dealing with I couldn’t help thinking that it makes kind of a silly argument …

Apart from the effect on me, I don’t remember much about my first reading. And, even though I used it as “therapy” already then, I think – just to fill the void with something meaningful, something “different” - I didn’t really believe in it. So the effect was totally unexpected and easy to state: It instantly made me feel better. This doesn’t sound like much, or very conclusive, and it lasted only as long as I was somehow occupied with the poem, but for me it is something that surprised me as maybe nothing else I have experienced reading Shakespeare, and still does. I still don’t understand it. How reading Shakespeare makes me feel better when NOTHING ELSE can!

And, writing about it now, I am making up an explanation for what happened then. I think it is important that I didn’t just read the poem but memorized it. Which took some time because I am rubbish at memorizing text. And, more important, it compelled me to understand EXACTLY what Shakespeare has written – not just the phrases I like and understand anyway but the whole content to the last word. Which means it was impossible not to notice when the poem contradicted the way I WANTED to understand it - which was practically all the time because I wasn’t interested in the “literal” and boring argument. Nonetheless the poem instantly “spoke” to me. And as the imagery is so powerful it sends all kinds of “flashes” in the “wrong” direction, in a way contradicting its own argument. Especially if I think of it as a gay context, and one where actual “fullfilment” is out of the question. As it was in my own case: There is the experience of all this beauty, and you own it, in a way, because you are the person that is able to understand it COMPLETELY. But, on the other hand, it is impossible to own it, to “hold” and use it the way you want, and likewise impossible to make it permanent. It will go away, is, in fact, slipping from your grasp already. And there is nothing you can do about it … And still you have to deal with it somehow.

Shakespeare came up with a “solution” that might not have been considered silly at the time but still, considering what is at stake, kind of inadequate? Because what is at stake is the essential thing, everything that’s “worth it”. Which is at the bottom of all the “Sonnets”, for all the “bloody-minded” argument and the way “living” beauty is constantly subjugated to the rules of “form”. Which, of course, already by itself creates a certain kind of beauty! And “BEAUTY” is the word for it. For what everybody craves. Beauty as a living thing … – Now, when I am thinking about it: I know exactly what “happened” when I read that poem!

And I had probably understood it twenty-five years ago but there was a difference. In a way, I had understood it “theoretically”, as everybody does, filling in for “beauty” whatever is at hand. If I recall how often I use this word, think of something as “beautiful” … But what had changed everything in the meantime is that I had actually looked on it. It was exactly the situation from my second favourite bit from the “Lord of the Rings” – which had been “my” context at the time. When Gimli, the dwarf (sorry for that!), says to his friend Legolas (the elf) after having met the “Lady of Lothlórien”:

“I have looked the last upon that which was fairest, (…) Henceforward I will call nothing fair, unless it be her gift.”

And that is the moment that makes all the difference: As long as it stays theoretical it is quite a beautiful thing, or a beautiful poem, or whatever … But as soon as this has happened, and you know that you have laid eyes on the absolute best, nothing is as it has been – and then you HAVE to do something about it.

And Legolas’ answer even contains some kind of solution:

“… the least reward that you shall have is that the memory of Lothlórien shall remain ever clear and unstained in your heart, and shall never fade nor grow stale.”

But it appears to be a solution that only works for elves. Because the “dwarvish” - and human! - memory is obviously different. At least I always felt with Gimli and understood his answer. (Even though I came to understand what Legolas meant when I heard Evangeline Lily as Tauriel say in “The Desolation of Smaug”: “it (=the starlight) is memory, precious and pure …”. I think I understood at that moment what elves are about for the first time.)

“I thank you for your words. True words doubtless; yet all such comfort is cold. Memory is not what the heart desires.”

There might be a “solution” of this kind if our memories, like those of the elves, were “more like to the waking world than to a dream”, as Gimli continues. Well, for elves there might not even be a difference, which, if you think it through, might not always be THAT great … And I have always held the belief that everything has to fade and die and make room for something new … only there should be exceptions? I don’t even believe in “tokens”, as Gimli does, even though I have quite a lot of them myself.

There is no “solution” for this kind of thing, it is impossible to “do” anything about it. Or so I thought. Until I came upon Sonnet 5:

Those hours that with gentle work did frame

The lovely gaze where every eye doth dwell

Will play the tyrants to the very same,

And that unfair which fairly doth excel;

For never-resting time leads summer on

To hideous winter, and confounds him there;

Sap check’d with frost and lusty leaves quite gone,

Beauty o’ersnow’d, and bareness every where.

Then, were not summer’s distillation left

A liquid prisoner pent in walls of glass,

Beauty’s effect with beauty were bereft,

Nor it, nor no remembrance what it was;

But flowers distill’d though they with winter meet,

Lease but their show: their substance still lives sweet.

I just “browsed” the sonnets that followed, but in this case I was taken in by the great imagery again. “A liquid prisoner pent in walls of glass”, and then, the ultimate moment of (beautiful) sadness: “Nor it, nor no remembrance what it was.” Because Gimli is right: there is no “living” memory of a living thing, there is no true remembrance of the “living” moment, of actually looking on it. It cannot be repeated. Of course I memorized the sonnet, and the same thing happened again that had happened with the first one, only much stronger. And this time I remember because it took me some time to “figure it out”. I understood the poem – it is not that difficult to understand, in a superficial way, quite like the first one. But I had the same feeling I had about the first one – as if there was something wrong with it. Not with the argument, in this case, but with the imagery. As if the logic of the metaphor was somehow faulty or insufficient. Or as if there was some necessary part missing …

And it took some time until I “nailed” it. It was that I had absolutely no idea what the “substance” of beauty was supposed to be. At first I had filled in something like the true beauty behind the outward “show”, the true content, the “real thing”. And this, I think, made the whole metaphor become heavy-handed and lame. Because there is “just beauty”. And this was the first thing I understood. There is just beauty, nothing more. Or, at least, the effect of beauty is the essential thing, independent of what it consists, what made it work in that way. And the “distillation” is not getting the “essential” thing out of beauty and shedding the superfluous. It is the transformation of THAT BEAUTY into something permanent. Something that somehow still contains this EXACT MOMENT of beauty. This special, unique living thing.

But what the hell is this supposed to be: the “substance” of beauty? Is it “just” a metaphor, or does it actually “point” at something “real”? I remember precisely that I thought about it, on and off of course, for a whole day. Then I slept on it, and, as it happens, waking up the next morning, I had the solution. Of course the “show” is gone, the living thing may have been killed by the frost, but there is something that can be made of THE EFFECT beauty had on “Shakespeare”, or on me, or anyone. And this is exactly why “living beauty” is in fact the most important thing – something I never wanted to admit because, until then, it would have been to admit deficiency. It is important that the “substance of beauty” could never exist without the “actual thing”! (And maybe stubbornly clinging to being a “realist” for a lifetime finally paid then!) But there is something that can be made of it, something permanent that will last, maybe not for ever but for a lifetime, or even as long as about 400 years! The “substance” of this actual instance of beauty that brought it about IS the poem. Or, more precisely: the “substance” of beauty is preserved in the poem because it produces exactly the same effect this actual instance of beauty had on the beholder.

So Shakespeare had not only “found” the solution by writing this poem – which has been found a million times in the same way, in other poems, songs, paintings and so on – he had even “understood” it and written it “into” the poem. Which enabled me to “distil” it from the poem and understand it. And which also has happened a million times already, I am certain, since it was written. But it doesn’t matter because there had been an actual problem, and the poem presents a “living” answer to it. Something that points to the future, not the past. Which can, somehow, happen again and again. And will always be experienced as something new, some kind of adventure, some kind of surprise.

As in the case of what I consider the most beautiful love poem I have ever read, Sonnet 33:

Full many a glorious morning have I seen

Flatter the mountain-tops with sovereign eye,

Kissing with golden face the meadows green,

Gilding pale streams with heavenly alchemy;

Anon permit the basest clouds to ride

With ugly rack on his celestial face,

And from the forlorn world his visage hide,

Stealing unseen to west with this disgrace.

Even so my sun one early morn did shine

With all triumphant splendour on my brow;

But out, alack! he was but one hour mine,

The region cloud hath mask’d him from me now.

Yet him for this my love no whit disdaineth;

Suns of the world may stain when heaven’s sun staineth.