[English] Appreciation of Shakespeare's Love Poem My Eyes and My Heart Are Fighting to the Death
[English] Shakespeare
My eyes and my heart are fighting to the death,
How to divide your good looks;
The eye should separate the heart from your image,
The heart is unwilling to give up this right.
The heart claims that you are hidden in its depths,
No bright eyes have ever broken into its treasure chest;
The defendant firmly denied this defense,
saying that your beautiful image was treasured in it.
In order to solve this unsolved case, I have to invite
all the residents in my heart-thoughts-to negotiate;
Their * * * same judgments finally determine
the weight that bright eyes and loving hearts deserve
as follows: Your appearance belongs to my eyes,
and my heart occupies the love in your heart.
(translated by Liang Zongdai)
Shakespeare believes that love is the union of two hearts. However, in love, looks are not useless. The mutual love of young men and women certainly includes the appreciation of each other's beautiful looks, especially in the early days of their contact. Then, which is more important, appearance and sincerity, and which is the main one, is often a puzzling problem for lovers, and it is also one of the contents that haunt them and make them have psychological contradictions.
in Shakespeare's 46th sonnet, the poet is ingenious and personified to turn this issue into a dispute and lawsuit. One side of the dispute is the poet's eyes, and the other side is the poet's heart. They all want to monopolize the beauty of the poet's lover. The two sides held each other's ground and had an argument. In the 1st-4th sentence of the poem, the dispute is extremely fierce. They are almost desperately fighting with each other. The eyes think that vision is their own specialty, and only it can appreciate the beautiful image of the girl. The heart thinks that since it loves the girl, it naturally has the right to appreciate her richness. They have their own opinions and it seems reasonable.
The dispute finally turned into a lawsuit. It seems that the plaintiff is Xin Er, who claims that she hides the girl deeply in her treasure chest, and her eyes can't see her, and she has never been seen by a pair of eyes. As the defendant's eyes plausibly denied the defense of the heart, saying that the beautiful image of the girl only exists in the eyes, and only the eyes can appreciate her future. It seems that they are all reasonable and the dispute is difficult to solve.
Finally, "Reason" had to be brought out as a judge. This is a series of "thoughts", which negotiate with each other and reach the final judgment. This leads to the conclusion of the poem: the girl's appearance belongs to the eyes, and the poet's heart occupies the love in the girl's heart. In terms of the argument between the mind and the heart, they all have their own place, but the idea of the whole poem is complete, and the appearance and sincerity should form a whole, just as for people, the heart and eyes should be combined.
The poet described a difficult problem in love life through an interesting and dramatic story, and wrote the abstract truth vividly. When the heart and eyes are evolved into concrete characters in the poem, they all have their own characteristics. The heart's love is sincere, so it deeply buries the girl's figure in its heart. For this reason, it believes that the eyes can't see it. The love of the eyes is fascinated, which is called "beauty is in the eye of the lover", so the beautiful image of the lover only exists in the eyes. It is precisely because of anthropomorphism that this fabricated lawsuit is vivid and vivid.
In Shakespeare's sonnets, the role of heart and eyes in love is personified in many places. The 24th poem compares the eyes to a painter, and paints the portraits of lovers on the poet's heart. In the 137th poem, the eyes are dominated by prejudice, which makes the heart make wrong judgments. In this way, they all lose their way and make love fall into false paste blindness. In the 47th song, I also wrote about the close cooperation between eyes and heart. My heart yearns for my lover, and my eyes feast on the portrait of my lover. When I think of my lover in my heart, my lover's beautiful image will appear in front of me, and my heart and eyes will enjoy the tender feelings. However, Shakespeare believed more in the importance of the heart, just as the French in the 24th song said, "The art of the eye is ultimately not brilliant: it can only draw the appearance, but it doesn't know the heart". Although the instrument is awarded to the eyes in the French of the 46th song, the love in a girl's heart belongs to her heart.