Sonnets 18
Sonnet 18, one of Shakespeare's most famous sonnets, is unforgettable because of its skillful and diverse theme, in which the poet's feelings have reached an ecstasy level never seen in the first sonnets. The poets here gave up the pursuit of young children and praised the beauty of young people.
At first, the poet asked a question-"Can I compare you to summer?" -then reflect and comment that the beauty of youth far exceeds the happiness of summer. Image is the essence of simplicity: "wind" and "bud" in the fourth Lin E, the legal term "summer lease" is introduced, which is in contrast with the common images in the first three lines. Also pay attention to the extreme usage of the poet in the phrases "cuter", "too short" and "too hot"; These phrases emphasize the beauty of this young man.
Although lines 9 to 12 have a broader tone and deeper feelings, the poet returns to the simplicity of the image at the beginning. As expected in Shakespeare's sonnets, the proposition put forward by the poet in the first eight lines-all nature has imperfections-is now contrasted with "but" in the next four lines. Although beauty will naturally decline at some point-"and every beauty will decline"-the beauty of young people will not decline; His unchangeable appearance does not conform to the stable development of nature. Even death can't resist the beauty of young people. Please pay attention to the ambiguity in "eternal poems": Are these "poems" poets' poems or young people's children of hope? Or are they just wrinkles representing the aging process? No matter what the answer is, the poet is full of joy in this sonnet, because nothing can threaten the beautiful appearance of this young man.
Then there is the ending couplet: "As long as people can breathe and their eyes can see,/As long as this is alive, it will give you life." What the poet describes is not what a young man is, but what he will be in a few years, which is captured in the poet's eternal poems-or in a hopeful child. No matter how people feel about the feelings expressed in sonnets, especially in the last two lines, people can't help but notice that the poet's own estimation of his poems has changed suddenly. After the poet contemptuously mentioned his "student pen" and "barren rhyme" in the 16 sonnet, it is surprising to find him boasting that his poems will be eternal in the 18 sonnet.
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2. Sonnets 18
abstract
The speaker began the poem by asking a question to his beloved: "Can I compare you to summer?" The following lines 1 1 are devoted to this comparison. In the second line, the speaker describes the main difference between this young man and summer: he is "cuter and gentler" and summer days tend to be extreme: they are shaken by "strong winds"; Among them, the sun ("Eye of the Sky") is often "too hot" or too dark. Summer is fleeting: its date is too short, which leads to the withering of autumn, because "every fairness sometimes falls." The last line of the sonnet tells us how different our beloved is from summer in this respect: his beauty will last forever ("Your eternal summer will not fade …") and he will not die. In the couplets, the speaker explains how the beauty of the beloved will accomplish this feat and will not perish, because it is preserved in the poem and will exist forever; "As long as human beings can breathe and eyes can see", it will exist.
comment
This sonnet is certainly the most famous in Shakespeare's sonnet sequence; This is probably the most famous lyric poem in English. In Shakespeare's works, there are only "to be or not to be" and "Romeo, Romeo, why are you Romeo?" More famous. This is not to say that it is the best, the most interesting or the most beautiful sonnet; But the simplicity and loveliness of its praise to the beloved ensure its position.
On the surface, this poem is just a compliment to the beauty of the beloved; Summer tends to be extremely windy and hot, but the beloved is always gentle and temperate. Summer is personified as "the eye of heaven" because of its "golden skin color"; The image that runs through is simple and unpretentious, and "May flower buds" give way to "eternal summer", which the speaker promised to his beloved. The language of sonnets is also relatively unpretentious; It doesn't have a lot of alliteration or rhyme, and almost every line has its own independent clause-almost every line ends with some punctuation marks, causing a pause.
Sonnet 18 is the first sonnet that does not explicitly encourage young people to have children. The "reproduction" sequence of the first 65 438+07 sonnets ends with the speaker realizing that young people may not need children to keep their beauty. He can live, too, and the speaker wrote at the end of the sonnet 17, "In my rhyme." Sonnet 18, then, is the first rhyme-the first time the speaker tries to preserve the beauty of young people forever. An important theme of this sonnet (because it runs through the whole sequence) is the power of the speaker's poem, which can fight against time and last forever, and pass on the beauty of the beloved to future generations. Love's "eternal summer" will not fade, precisely because it is embodied in this song: "As long as people can breathe, their eyes can still see," the speaker wrote in the couplet, "As long as it exists, it will give you life."