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#64 When I have seen by Time's fell hand defaced
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And not just the philosophical musings of mortality...this feels so real. Last night I heard news of my oldest and best friend, we've been friends since we were 10...her bother is sick. And you know, you think of this person, I knew him almost all my life. He was her bog brother, popular in school, gorgeous looking, larger than life....and it just hurts. She said last night how this shock could be that he wouldn't be here any more. You know....some news just triggers you.....
I believe it's a terrible mistake to think of the young person in these sonnets as a boyfriend, sexual lover, or some fetish of Shakespeares....to me it is obvious this is youth in general. Possibly at times, Shakseseare younger self...or his son....as an allegory or metaphor as well as actual loss. Loss of youth and energy.
I can say I relate to the feeling of loss...when you are a writer or artist....sometimes one can have doubts that the same vigor or infinity of images, ideas will come to you, as they might have when you began. Artists don't retire....retirement is something that happens in other professions. But writing and creating is something done well all the way to death. "Musicians don't retire they stop when there's no more music in them" Louis Armstrong.
I see this poem also as a poem about the loss from terrorism.
The descriptions are all places taken apart by the contemporary terrorists.
The churches have been destroyed by the Protestants. People have salvaged the metal....apparently they melted it down for resale. Terrorist scraped off images and art from church walls. Very similar to what the Taliban did to the Buddhist sculptures in March 2001.
"They were dynamited and destroyed in March 2001 by the Taliban, on orders from leader Mullah Mohammed Omar,[5] after the Taliban government declared that they were idols."
He sad later, "I did not want to destroy the Bamiyan Buddha. In fact, some foreigners came to me and said they would like to conduct the repair work of the Bamiyan Buddha that had been slightly damaged due to rains. This shocked me. I thought, these callous people have no regard for thousands of living human beings -- the Afghans who are dying of hunger, but they are so concerned about non-living objects like the Buddha. This was extremely deplorable. That is why I ordered its destruction. Had they come for humanitarian work, I would have never ordered the Buddha's destruction."
I think this is a good insight into the seemingly extreme nature of loss...of political decisions that seem so destructive.
It's part of the story that people felt oppressed by Catholics rules and dogmas...and likely the kinds of money that would be kept in Catholic churches, or sent to vatican.
The election in the U.S. was a vote by people who are living very very poorly...many without any incomes in rural America. They voted for Trump because they see the cities spending money on what they consider decadent choices....while their families are starving. It's so bad in the U.S. that even with education compromised....and possibly rights threatened...the rural communities can not feed their kids with "rights". Who cares about school when you can not buy clothes for your kid to attend school. This is in part why home-schooling because so popular in rural areas....the pressure for conspicuous consumption is avoided. Your kids don't have to have the influence to buy trendy clothes or toys.
"increasing store with loss, and loss with store"
is such an interesting line...as is "state confounded to decay"
This ties in with the ideas of the Green World....of a return and healing of one King removed....and the country restored.
This is such a depressing poem because Shakespeare seems t have captured a real sense of depressions...where depressed people conflate and globalize...their own grief, their own loss of a lover or social life....with bigger concerns...like politics, or doom and gloom views. Globalizing all the personal sadness...is a classic depressive state.
There is also the feeling that al this war, conflict between religions....the terrorism...the battle of the philosophical...is such a loss and waste. For what? To win an argument? To win power?
The connection between loss of meaning (the churches being ruined) and a sense of meaninglessness and depression also is so well captured here. Shakespeare seems to be describing how this shift and fragmentation, the destruction of art, myth also breaks the spirit and hope...one can only see the sadness.
Candy, thanks for expanding so powerfully on your reaction to this poem. It's always twisted a knife in my gut, too.
Gosh, Candy, that was a long post!But I read the poem a bit differently: if there is a terrorist at work here, for me it is Time with a capital T. (Actually, the capitalisation of the 1609 quarto is rather different, and I'd like to get David's view on that.)
In other words, slow decay rather than violent change. After the complete inversion of the first two lines, which we understand as "The rich proud cost of outworn buried age defaced by Time's fell hand", there is the puzzle of,
"brass eternal slave to mortal rage"
Remembering that bronze and brass are different alloys of copper, and nowadays museums tend to reduce both to "copper alloy" in their descriptions of material, it puts me in mind of Vasari's famous story,
"He [Michelangelo] was employed to make a bronze statue of Pope Julius, five braccia high, for the city of Bologna . . . . This statue was afterwards destroyed by Bentivogli, and the bronze sold to Duke Alphonso of Ferrara, who made it into a cannon called the Julia."
The people of Bologna threw off the Roman yoke, and celebrated the event by turning the statue of the hated Julius II into a cannon. In other words mortal man, in his rage, transforms his slave-metal, brass, to other shapes, almost as if it were wax.
"brass eternal slave" Does it mean eternal brass is the slave of man, who is mortal, or that brass is eternally man's slave? Both perhaps. I like the idea of brass as slave, as if this noble and imperishable material deserves a better master.
Candy says, "I believe it's a terrible mistake to think of the young person in these sonnets as a boyfriend, sexual lover, or some fetish of Shakespeares....to me it is obvious this is youth in general. Possibly at times, Shakseseare younger self...or his son....as an allegory or metaphor as well as actual loss. Loss of youth and energy." -- I really think that is the clue to reading the sonnets. In this poem, "my love" could be read to stand for S's own works, and these sonnets in particular. The sonnets as "self-referential" again. In fact the imperishable brass of some monument could be seen as referring to these works -- not imperishable after all.
By linking 'interchange of state' with the 'hungry ocean' he seems to be saying that even human politics falls into some sort of natural, inevitable cycle of decay. But I don't understand the image in the middle, where the 'interchange' seems for a moment to be gain as well as loss: 'And the firm soil win of the watery main,Increasing store with loss, and loss with store;'
How does the soil win and increase store? And why doesn't that console him?
It's another "inversion" isn't it? So "And the firm soil win of the watery main" has to be read to mean "And win the firm soil of the watery main", and then "increasing store with loss, and loss with store" has to be a compressed way of saying that the ocean increases its store with loss by the land, and the land increases its loss with store by the ocean. As you say, there is a linking of this natural process with changes in the state. You can see the image of the conflict between "main" and "kingdom" as standing for rival states trying to increase empire at the other's expense. And yet it is very striking as just a description of change in nature, and one very familiar to people living in the flat east of England (like me, though S lived in the west.) See next post . . .
The end of the old Dunwich village on the East Anglian coast, "The last standing church, All Saints, fell into the sea between 1904 and 1919, with the last major portion of the tower vanishing under the waves in November, 1919."
See http://www.urban75.org/photos/suffolk...
This sonnet shows how S and his contemporaries were fully aware of the landscape being changed by geological processes, long before the rise of modern geology as a science.
Mod
I believe all of the posts here...delving into the meaning of "main" and "state" and erosion....identify the meanings in the poem....therefore supporting my sense of decay, literal and Time's erosions.
I very much agree with Time as a terrorist...and that is what memento mori portrays.
But the ebb and flow of politics changing...that Time decays politics...Time decays meaning too. So the ideologies of politics, or Monarchy is also something seen as decaying or being diffused.
I see the metaphor of Time as describing the changing beliefs, religious and political. Time is a force...and time goes by...newer beliefs and religions...and borders justify the destroying of copper/brass.
I think the use of brass here is to be interchangeable with other metals.
The allegory of metal melting is also alchemical. That the metaphor of alchemy for practitioners...wasn't just about metal changing....but that the human mind could be changed. Alchemy is a metaphor for developing and transforming the human into a self aware being.
In some ways this idea supports an indictment of changing beliefs. That beliefs may or may not be victims to Time. When beliefs and ideology are victims of Time...then we must question how "solid" are our own beliefs...especially when we justify defacing a church (as in this sonnet are the "lofty towers the state or church or both?) we might be justifying a fickle attitude to spiritual beliefs.
I guess I see this poem as an indictment to how we change our politics and beliefs and it is destroying human values. Are human values so "strong"? No, not when they can be victim to Time. (Time changing beliefs and Monarchy)
Two things that strike me about this sonnet: 1) I enjoy Shakespeare's periodic syntax that structurally supports the concept of time's endless and inexorable march. The repetition of "when I have seen..." and his refusal to allow the sentence to end until line 14 makes the total effect of time seem longer and more like it is hammering away at the world.
2) Personally, I'm a little frustrated with the speaker's sorrow at the end of the sonnet. All that he has witnessed teaches him that "Time will come and take my love away." So his only recourse, he says, is to weep for what he will eventually lose. The frustrating part is that he is not rejoicing that he has his love NOW. This is a pretty resounding contrast to the 17th century Carpe Diem poems of Marvell and Herrick, where the argument is "someday we will be dust; but not today, so let's make the most of the moment."
To me this reminds me of the carpe dorm poets- by standing in fully opposite contrast to so many of their messages. You kind of get the "for the same bud which smiles today, tomorrow will be dying" feeling. What really strikes me is how this man who has outlasted time is writing a sonnet on the brevity of things- but he doesn't talk about words. He discusses how everything falls down, how people die, but he doesn't mention writings in this context. It makes me wonder what Shakespeare must have thought of himself at the time.
I also see Time as the terrorist in this poem, but this is one time when I believe he is talking specifically about someone he loves, someone who Time will take away from him. This is the most difficult thing of all about falling in love and deciding to commit to someone, because of course at some point you are going to lose them... if only because in the end, one of you will die - the ultimate separation.
The idea of that kind of loss is unbearable and devastating, and I see a lot of devastation in this poem. "To have which it fears to lose" is such a universal pain, because of course it is easier to run away and avoid the fear than it is to stay and love, and lose.
I also wonder if he isn't talking about war. The type of violence he describes could take place in war.
The quote about the ocean,
When I have seen the hungry ocean gainI see that the watery main has the win of the firm soil... a "firm soil win" like a second quarter win or a 7th inning win. But I'm not at all certain about the "increasing store with loss, and loss with store" line, or what it might have to do with sand? erosion? replacement?
Advantage on the kingdom of the shore,
And the firm soil win of the watery main,
Increasing store with loss, and loss with store;
Martin wrote: "It's another "inversion" isn't it? So "And the firm soil win of the watery main" has to be read to mean "And win the firm soil of the watery main", and then "increasing store with loss, and loss wi..."Thanks for pointing that out, Martin. The line had puzzled me.
In answer to your earlier query about the 1609 edition, this link should take you to it:
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fi...
As you can see (I hope), the word "times" is not capped. There's no apostrophe, either, but that's not unusual. I find it a little unusual that Time is not capped in that the same word IS capped in line 12. But when I look at the 1609 quarto I am heavily influenced by the speculation that the quarto was not published with Shakespeare's permission and it's not very likely he had much to do with such niceties. And, anyway, the kind of typographical and punctuation consistency we grew up with simply didn't exist in Shakespeare's time. My general argument is that one must heed the sound of the words, not how they show up on a printed page.
(What I had in mind, David, was the capitals on Kingdom and Ocean, but any explanation would be very speculative, I guess.)"Ruin hath taught me thus to ruminate"
With the echoing -ru- sound this seems almost comic today, but in S's time "ruminate" was not quite yet a fossilised metaphor, I would guess. In fact I was surprised to find the dictionary confirming that even in the 16th century it had acquired its non-literal sense.
Why is it that if someone is chewing endlessly on a piece of tough meat they look thoughtful, but if they are chewing gum they just look stupid?
Mod
Brass rubbing became so popular it would wear down the adored item to be commemorated. I have heard that some places make replicas so people can get a brass rubbing without damaging an original.
Yes, the brass rubbing craze became a real nuisance in English churches. I think brass could stand for various things, militaria, big 3 dimensional monuments, and as you say, and perhaps most particularly, for church brasses.I'm not certain of this, but I think the image destroyers attacked these monuments little or not at all. They were after images of the angels, saints, jesus, and especially Mary -- so the lady chapel at Ely was smashed to bits (you can still see the ruined remains when you visit Ely -- not a happy sight.) Brasses suffered more through theft. A big slab of brass is worth a lot of money. Anyway, you can see holes in the flooring of churches where brasses used to be, often among the survivors still there.
All this fits in very well with line 4 of the sonnet of course.
Candy wrote: "I also meant to say...that one image that popped into my mind was brass rubbing. I am not sure why....maybe just the erosion combined with word brass.Brass rubbing became so popular it would wear..."
Oh yes, of course! That is a perfect analogy to Time's erosion... thanks for pointing that out.
Mod
When I have seen by Time's fell hand defaced
The rich proud cost of outworn buried age,
When sometime lofty towers I see down razed
And brass eternal slave to mortal rage;
When I have seen the hungry ocean gain
Advantage on the kingdom of the shore,
And the firm soil win of the watery main,
Increasing store with loss, and loss with store;
When I have seen such interchange of state,
Or state itself confounded to decay,
Ruin hath taught me thus to ruminate,
That Time will come and take my love away.
This thought is as a death, which cannot choose
But weep to have that which it fears to lose.