Splendid stuff, reminder of wonderful writing. As a high-school junior reading Shakespeare, I wondered why he's so full of common phrases etc. as if he stole those well-known phrases, then I got it: He's the one who put them there in the first place.
Going back to yesterday, when a cultural heritage was common, especially in the Soviet Union of the 1930's, nearly a century ago. Boris Pasternak, a poet and author, had achieved the title of Head of the Soviet Writers Guild. It was time for the yearly meeting, Pasternak's name had been put on more than one list to be executed for some crime, which Stalin, himself, had repeatedly crossed out, had made sure there were KGB people at the meeting. Pasternak was to give the main speech. When he stood up, and looked at the crowd of writers, and guessing well some were not favorable to him, he uttered one utterance, "30". Those around the table knew what it meant, the KGB did not. He received a standing ovation.
Its worth a read, Pasternak is usually credited with being perhaps the best translator of Shakespeare, as well.
Yes, I think it’s that claim for poetry in the final couplet that determines how one ultimately feels about this sonnet. There have been times when I’ve thought it makes the speaker sound like a jerk, as though the speaker is basically saying “Your summer hotness won’t last, but this poem will.”
In Nomadland, we learn that Fern (Frances McDormand) and her late husband included this poem in their wedding vows. Does that seem like an odd choice, either for the characters or the screenwriter?
Fern recites the sonnet for a young drifter who says he doesn’t know any poems to send to a girl back home. I suppose there are any number of reasons to include this sonnet in a movie: the sheer beauty of its sound, or maybe the screenwriter (Chloé Zhao) just wanted to include it (coming to English from China, maybe she too fell for this sonnet), or maybe here it’s just to say don’t underestimate the power of the little things.
The final couplet also fits neatly with the movie’s themes (loss, grief, memory), as captured by an earlier bit of dialogue: “What’s remembered lives.”
Your discussion of cultural literacy reminds me of the experience of moving to France as a teenager and encountering the way the French share and value their literature. Everyone can quote from a fable by la Fontaine or a bit of Victor Hugo, every street name commemorates a person or an event from French history. i remember a schoolmate at the lycée asking me (imagine this in French) "Stéphanie what do you study in American school? You have no history, you have no literature." I don't agree that we have not history or no literature but it's sadly true that we don't have -- at least not to the same extent -- that sense of shared culture. I wonder how many of our children would immediately get "By the rude bridge that arched the flood....." or "When lilacs last in the dooryard bloomed....."
Thanks for what you are doing to keep at least some of us deepening our grip on culture!
On “Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May”: "darling" meant much the same to the Elizabethans as it does to us: a person who is very dear to one (the word derives from the same root as "dear"). But the Elizabethans had a related word which has fallen out of use, "werling", a person with whom one quarrels or fights. One of the "Proverbs of John Heywood" (1546) is "it is better to be an old mans derling than a yong mans werling". What I like about Shakespeare's line is that the winds are quarrelling with the buds of May: warling the darling, we could say.
The word also had another meaning, now obsolete: "a royal favourite, the intimate companion of a monarch or other royal personage, often delegated significant political power." If the Fair Youth was Southampton, I suppose this double-meaning would date the composition of the poem to before Elizabeth's disaffection with him.
Splendid stuff, reminder of wonderful writing. As a high-school junior reading Shakespeare, I wondered why he's so full of common phrases etc. as if he stole those well-known phrases, then I got it: He's the one who put them there in the first place.
Going back to yesterday, when a cultural heritage was common, especially in the Soviet Union of the 1930's, nearly a century ago. Boris Pasternak, a poet and author, had achieved the title of Head of the Soviet Writers Guild. It was time for the yearly meeting, Pasternak's name had been put on more than one list to be executed for some crime, which Stalin, himself, had repeatedly crossed out, had made sure there were KGB people at the meeting. Pasternak was to give the main speech. When he stood up, and looked at the crowd of writers, and guessing well some were not favorable to him, he uttered one utterance, "30". Those around the table knew what it meant, the KGB did not. He received a standing ovation.
Its worth a read, Pasternak is usually credited with being perhaps the best translator of Shakespeare, as well.
Yes, I think it’s that claim for poetry in the final couplet that determines how one ultimately feels about this sonnet. There have been times when I’ve thought it makes the speaker sound like a jerk, as though the speaker is basically saying “Your summer hotness won’t last, but this poem will.”
In Nomadland, we learn that Fern (Frances McDormand) and her late husband included this poem in their wedding vows. Does that seem like an odd choice, either for the characters or the screenwriter?
Fern recites the sonnet for a young drifter who says he doesn’t know any poems to send to a girl back home. I suppose there are any number of reasons to include this sonnet in a movie: the sheer beauty of its sound, or maybe the screenwriter (Chloé Zhao) just wanted to include it (coming to English from China, maybe she too fell for this sonnet), or maybe here it’s just to say don’t underestimate the power of the little things.
The final couplet also fits neatly with the movie’s themes (loss, grief, memory), as captured by an earlier bit of dialogue: “What’s remembered lives.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=15R_-hjx9jk
Your discussion of cultural literacy reminds me of the experience of moving to France as a teenager and encountering the way the French share and value their literature. Everyone can quote from a fable by la Fontaine or a bit of Victor Hugo, every street name commemorates a person or an event from French history. i remember a schoolmate at the lycée asking me (imagine this in French) "Stéphanie what do you study in American school? You have no history, you have no literature." I don't agree that we have not history or no literature but it's sadly true that we don't have -- at least not to the same extent -- that sense of shared culture. I wonder how many of our children would immediately get "By the rude bridge that arched the flood....." or "When lilacs last in the dooryard bloomed....."
Thanks for what you are doing to keep at least some of us deepening our grip on culture!
On “Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May”: "darling" meant much the same to the Elizabethans as it does to us: a person who is very dear to one (the word derives from the same root as "dear"). But the Elizabethans had a related word which has fallen out of use, "werling", a person with whom one quarrels or fights. One of the "Proverbs of John Heywood" (1546) is "it is better to be an old mans derling than a yong mans werling". What I like about Shakespeare's line is that the winds are quarrelling with the buds of May: warling the darling, we could say.
The word also had another meaning, now obsolete: "a royal favourite, the intimate companion of a monarch or other royal personage, often delegated significant political power." If the Fair Youth was Southampton, I suppose this double-meaning would date the composition of the poem to before Elizabeth's disaffection with him.
I can see a Petrarchan turn here after the eight line, perhaps the ghost of Petrarch, but the rhyme scheme is all Elizabethan.
This sonnet has special meaning for me and my family. My sister read it at my father’s funeral.