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#88 When thou shalt be disposed to set me light
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Quite a sacrifice - the ego loses as the heart wins.
Can anyone think of any other passage in Shakespeare where the word "light" is used the way it is in line 1 here (apparently to mean something like "in a negative way")?
It seems to me this is "light" in the sense of "lightweight", as in a lightweight novel for beach reading. It is negative only in the sense then, that the beloved does not take the poet as a serious man.And I do remember something similar (no concordance lookup here!) from our reading of Comedy of Errors, especially because the line puzzled me so much at the time,
"Let Love, being light, be drowned if she sink!"
The line switches between two meanings of "light". Love is light because it is like the light of the sun (the fire element), so then, taking it to mean lightweight, it will prove not to be love if it sinks when you drop it in water (it will be the earth element). Of course, A of S is here declaring his love for Luciana (which means "of the light") when he is supposed to love Adriana ("of Adria"). (The Adriatic suggests the water element, and Adria on the coast the earth element).
S is on trial here, and he is himself the chief witness for the prosecution, and so the vocabulary of the law courts,prove: to pass probate
forswear: to lie on oath
attaint: to convict, or to convict a jury of bringing in a false verdict
(This last meaning thanks to the COED)
Again I am reminded of L.C. Knights' observation, "in many of the Sonnets in which the friend is given something more than perfunctory recognition it is hard to resist the conclusion that Shakespeare is addressing his own conscience."
Mod
I really like all the ideas of Martins here about Lucinda, light and Ariana for water.
"Upon thy side against myself I'll fight"
I felt that that reminded me of this struggle the narrator has with the youth. the youth being that he has lost youth....that youth is the separation and threat to love and to art, by losing that energy. His competition is his own youth...not another person.
Sonnet 88 is significant for me because of the number 88.
None of us have said anything about whether the numbers themselves might have significance.
88 is a number that for me is a number worth opening dialogue on the numbers of the sonnets.
88 is a double infinity sign.
there are doubling suggestions in this poem. He is fighting himself (hey the Star Wars clip is relevant again !)
"double vantage"
88 is divisible by the count of it's divisions or a "retractable number"
88 is a hexadecagonal number, which means if it was stones or pebbles then it could be laid out as a hexagon. Some numbers represented by stones, beads, can be laid out in shapes of triangles or squares. This is of interest as I believe there is a relationship between pictograms and words in Shakespeare.
The number 8 is anthropomorphic. Looks like a body, so two 8's is another doubling not just of number but of figure.
88 days is the orbit of Mercury.
Mod
I believe that this jury of himself...of him looking at himself is the significance of the doubling...of mirroring.
Mod
It' might have been really loud rain.
I'm trying to be quiet the whole world is asleep over here right now.
Hopefully I'll fall back asleep in a few minutes
:)
Magic sonnet numbers: Candy, I think you'd really enjoy the intro to the sonnets by Katherine Duncan Jones in the Arden edition 3rd series, skipping the 1st half (standard stuff) and reading pp 50-100 or so. The book should be in a library somewhere in Chicago. KDJ is a believer. So sonnet 12 echoes the clock face, sonnet 60 minutes (in an hour), 52 the "long year" (with its weeks). The "years of man's life are threescore and ten" says the bible, i.e. 70, and sonnet 71 follows the year of S's death, etc etc.If the numbers have this significance, it is impossible to believe the numbering was done by pirate printers, and KDJ is insistent that the Sonnets of 1609 were not a pirated work. (She gives lots more evidence that they were not pirated.)
The "magic numbers" idea is intriguing, but I must say that I do remain sceptical. Further down the trail the numbers seem to get very far-fetched, and it does imply a master plan for the whole sequence, that to me seems much less structured than it is commonly taken to be.
Mod
However...I would have hoped for something really juicy to be associated with 154. Like number of constellations. Actually, 88 is the number of official constellations.
Candy wrote: "I'll try to find it. Interesting.However...I would have hoped for something really juicy to be associated with 154. Like number of constellations. Actually, 88 is the number of official constella..."
That is fascinating information about the number 88, and your idea of the doubling in the poem is a nice synchronicity. I am a fan of numerical symbology, but not very knowledgeable, and I hadn't known those insights about 88, other than that it is one of those master numbers by being a multiple of 11. I know that Arabic utilizes numerical symbology in its alphabet, but that's about all I know.
It seems that while S would probably not assign numerical meanings to all the poems or the sequence of the poems, he could have decided to couple a few of the poems with some of the more obvious and / or meaningful numbers in the sequence. That sort of thing would have entertained and intrigued his readers, or at the least, allowed him the secret sense of layers of meaning behind the obvious... which is always fun for the artist.
I find KDJ's book is accessible online, thanks to that well-known copyright violator, google. Go tohttps://books.google.co.uk/books?id=r...
and read pages 97 to 101. There is something about the possible significance of number 154 as well.
KDJ sees significance in 63, because it is the "grand climacteric number", and in 126, because it is double 63.
(I note that 154 is double 77, which, I guess, is a master number.)
Martin wrote: "I find KDJ's book is accessible online, thanks to that well-known copyright violator, google. Go tohttps://books.google.co.uk/books?id=r...
and read pages 97 to 101. There is something ..."
Hmmm... I can't seem to get more than the first 30 pages, or first chapter... which is the sampler free eread.
Mod
I'll have to get those other pages from the library....as soon as I can...
Mod
And here is the definition....(most of us are probably familiar with the idea we change every 7 years. The movies "21 Up" "49 Up" play on that by interviewing people every 7 years)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climact...
There are not just climacteric numbers but the sonnets seem to be thematically planned...even on the most superficial google of this I came up with this which is a fairly mainstream source....that those specific numbered sonnets share motifs and themes. This is crazy!
"Sonnet 77 continues the theme of the demise of love, youth, and beauty, either of the poet, the fair lord, or both. This theme is addressed in a sequence of sonnets: 49, 63, here in 77, 81, 126, and 154. All these "climacteric" sonnets have numbers that are multiples of 7 or 9, so there is evidence that they were placed purposefully. However, the tone of Sonnet 77 is not as dramatic as the others, since rather than focusing on how horrible it will be when youth is lost, it is hopeful. In recording one's youthful thoughts, one can relive them in old-age by reading the book."
Candy and Janice, your inability to read the pages must be due to a regional difference imposed by google. I've posted pages 98 and 99 as group pictures. click on the last two thumbnail images here,https://www.goodreads.com/photo/group...
(This gives a taster: digging the pages out of google's presentation of them is very hard work . . . )
Well, I'm coming round to the idea that the number-magic (or whatever it should be called) is deliberate!
Increasingly the Sonnets are beginning to look like Finnegans Wake (FW). This sounds crazy, but, --FW constantly uses Joyce's "magic number" 1132. 32 stands for man's fall (32 feet per second per second) and master number 11 for man-and-woman, Adam and Eve, if you will. 4, 7, 12, 28 and others have special meanings. But the whole work has hidden numbers. To give you an idea, here's a bit from an online discussion of FW I was involved in twelve years ago,
from my post (FW p.467),
"Twas the quadra sent him and Trinity too". This seems to contain 4 (quadra), 3 (Trinity) and 2 (two). The 3 and 2 suggest the ever popular number 32, while Trinity and quadra suggest "We've had our day at triv and quad", or the central chapter about learning and study. McHugh points out that a quad is the name for a college courtyard. (Actually that is true for Oxford but not Cambridge.) Joyce uses the standard abbreviations cantab (cantabrigiensis) oxon (oxoniensis), but takes "cantab" to mean singing ("cantabile" etc), and "oxon" as a cow: "any oxon I ever mood (mooed or met) with".
and a reply,
Well spotted Martin.
Your discovery is even better than that: 432 is the generally accepted date of Saint Patrick's arrival in Ireland. See for instance a few pages back, 462.35.
Eamonn
The respondent was Eamonn Finn, clearly Irish, and it's interesting that T.P. Roche was Irish (see http://avidly.lareviewofbooks.org/201... ).
And like FW the sonnets are self-referential. Both works have as a major theme, the author writing those works. If you ask what is FW about, there are two possible answers, (1) it is about everything, and (2) it is about FW itself, and the act of writing FW.
FW has twin characters, Shem and Shaun. The idea of twinning runs throughout: the very location, Dublin, suggests doubling. Shem has written a letter (the letter is FW itself), Shaun is the postman delivering it. Shem is the abject, low character. Shaun is the golden boy, by turns priest, or lover of women. Students of the book see that Shem is Joyce, but seem to miss the point that so is Shaun. They are both projections of Joyce's ideas of himself. Shem is a sinner, the real self that Joyce too well recognises. Shaun is the fantasy Joyce, the Jesuit priest he never became, or the man of success.
Actually, sonnet 77 seems a perfect half way point, drawing together all the themes of doubling, time and the sonnets themselves through the symbols of mirror, clock and book. "Mouthed graves" is interesting because it seems to connect with sonnet 126: KDJ's fanciful idea is that the two pairs of brackets at the end of 126 stand for two coffins. 77 is a numerical half way point; 126 is a half way point in that it closes the sequence 1-125. 126 is also special in not being a sonnet.
Mod
I find her writing to be very difficult to understand...and my style would be to discuss this quite differently with different metaphors. So whats interesting to me...is her language and approach is a format you could understand. I am glad.
However....I feel I have much more learning to do on how to communicate as I seemed to have failed over and over in trying to find a way to talk about poetry and art in the discipline I have come up in as an artist. It's a technical language that even other artists do not necessarily learn.
Of course FW is such a good comparison. I always try to use something less intellectual....as a metaphor or comparison. this has been a humbling experience for me. But even if it wasn't me trying to inspire I feel such a great relief that maybe this argument by Duncan Jones has convinced you...thats terribly exciting and gives me a lot of hope.
Candy, you do yourself an injustice. It is talking about the sonnets with people in this group that has made me think KDJ's ideas are right after all.
Speaker of sonnet 88 can be personified sonnet 88 itself, and the addressee the personified Sonnets. The 154 sonnets are disposed (arranged) to dispose (put away) sonnet 88.Keys are disposed in line 1, thy side in line 3, and thy right in line 14. Sonnet 88 is being put away on the right side of the 1-17-pyramid. To break this riddle alone is nearly impossible without sonnet 117.
Line one’s “set me light” can mean to outstand the speaker under a light, and to look down on him (which hides another story).
Sonnet 88
When thou shalt be disposed to set me light, [01]
And place my merit in the eye of scorn,
Upon thy side, against my self I’ll fight,
And prove thee virtuous, though thou art forsworn:
With mine own weakness being best acquainted, [05]
Upon thy part I can set down a story
Of faults concealed, wherein I am attainted:
That thou in losing me shall win much glory:
And I by this will be a gainer too, [09]
For bending all my loving thoughts on thee,
The injuries that to my self I do,
Doing thee vantage, double vantage me.
Such is my love, to thee I so belong, [13]
That for thy right, my self will bear all wrong.
When thou shalt be disposed to set me light,
And place my merit in the eye of scorn,
Upon thy side against myself I'll fight,
And prove thee virtuous, though thou art forsworn.
With mine own weakness being best acquainted,
Upon thy part I can set down a story
Of faults concealed, wherein I am attainted,
That thou in losing me shalt win much glory.
And I by this will be a gainer too,
For bending all my loving thoughts on thee:
The injuries that to myself I do,
Doing thee vantage, double vantage me.
Such is my love, to thee I so belong,
That for thy right myself will bear all wrong.