Alas, what eyes did love put in my head?
Don't recognize the real scene at all?
I don't know, where did reason go?
I misjudged what I saw with my eyes?
If what I'm obsessed with is really beautiful,
Why does everyone say no with one voice?
If it is really not beautiful, it is absolutely undeniable.
The eyes of love are not as real as those of ordinary people;
Of course, how could it like eyes?
Really, is it tears day and night?
So, I'm not sure how it can be rare.
The sun won't shine until it clears up.
Cunning Cupid! You blinded my eyes with tears,
I am afraid that the discerning person will expose your ugliness.
(translated by Liang)
Sonnet was very popular in Renaissance England, and it was the most popular form of poetry for lyric poets at that time. Love is the most common theme, and Shakespeare's sonnets seem no exception. But in the arty second-and third-rate poets, writing sonnets is just a fashion, the content is nothing more than love, and the poetic style is exaggerated and artificial. Shakespeare is completely different from them. He writes about love in sonnets, which is not only profound and sincere, touching, but also contains profound philosophy of life, which is thought-provoking.
This poem describes the poet's confusion and final epiphany when facing the "practical joke" of love (that is, Cupid). The whole poem is roughly divided into two parts.
In the first twelve lines, the poet described his complicated psychological activities on the issue of love step by step: at first, he was confused and lamented why he often misjudged love and why his impressions and opinions were always different from others. Then I tried to find out the reason, guessing that love might have blinded me, or that although my eyes could still see clearly, I couldn't accept the correct witness facts because I lost my mind. Then the poet comforted himself that it is not surprising that the eyes of love can't see clearly, because even the sun shining everywhere in the sky often has to wait until the clouds clear and the rain clears.
The last two sentences can be said to be the sublimation of the first part, as if the poet suddenly realized and saw through Cupid's ulterior motives. God's love makes people who fall in love all day, their eyes blurred, where they can see the real situation clearly and distinguish beauty from ugliness. The meaning expressed here seems to be somewhat similar to China's idiom "Beauty is in the eye of the beholder".
In this poem, the poet probably wants to tell people that love is often blind, subjective and one-sided, and we should take precautions not to let our feelings get out of control and not be led by the cunning God of Love. In addition to this poem, Shakespeare also revealed such a philosophy of life to readers in different ways in his sonnets 137 and 150.
This poem is very distinctive in writing. The poet can't see the real scene clearly from his eyes, and uses a series of interrogative sentences to describe his psychological changes, which is both meticulous and tortuous. The last two lines seem to question God's love, pushing the emotion of the whole poem to * * *, and at the same time containing philosophy, which can arouse readers' * * sound and aftertaste. According to (Xu)