I turn 73 at the end of the month,, so this sonnet takes on a personal, if arbitrary significance. When I was a young poet, I remember first noticing (or being told) that each stanza narrows the scope--from season, to dying day, to dying fire. This taught me something. Given the substitutions of trochees at the beginning of the 4th and 8th line, as pointed out by the fine analysis, I wonder if the first word of the 12th line were not pronounced CON-sumed, unlikely as that consummation may be.
Catholics always translate this wonderfully melancholic line as Shakespeare's covert lament for the Dissolution of the monasteries which he would have learnt about at his ardently Catholic mother's knee.
William Empson's "Seven Types of Ambiguity" opens with a discussion of the "bare ruin'd choirs" line:
“There is no pun, double syntax or dubiety of feeling in ‘Bare ruined choirs, where late the sweet birds sang’ but the comparison holds for many reasons; because ruined monastery choirs are places in which to sing, because they involve sitting in a row, because they are made of wood, are carved into knots and so forth, because they used to be surrounded by a sheltering building crystallised out of the likeness of a forest, and coloured with stained glass and painting like bowers and leaves, because they are now abandoned by all but the grey walls coloured like the skies of winter, because the cold and Narcissistic charm suggested by choir-boys suits well with Shakespeare’s feeling for the object of the Sonnets, and for various sociological and historical reasons (the protestant destruction of monasteries; fear of puritanism), which it would be hard now to trace out in their proportions; these reasons, and many more relating the simile to its place in the Sonnet, must all combine to give the line its beauty, and there is a sort of ambiguity in not knowing which of them to hold most clearly in mind. Clearly this is involved in all such richness and heightening of effect, and the machinations of ambiguity are among the very roots of poetry.”
I think he's referring in a guarded way to the homosexual attraction to young men implied in many of the sonnets. Or are the Sonnets now being seen as entirely heterosexual? Not how I read them.
I'm not sure. Narcissistic because so many of Shakespeare's sonnets are about Shakespeare and how the two women make him feel? But one doesn't generally think of choir-boys as narcissistic I think, nor are they cold.
Thanks for this. I'm woefully unread in Empson (among many other things), but this opening-out of that image --- which seems so obvious now that Empson says it --- expands that line's sense of elegy to a large cultural level that I really hadn't thought about in connection with that poem before. Many thanks again.
Empson is sometimes mad, and often wayward, but for my money he's the greatest English literary critic of his generation. "Some Kinds of Pastoral" is a brilliant book: the chapter on Alice in Wonderland particularly good. "Milton's God" is, in a word, wrong, but nevertheless manages to be brilliant at the same time. "Seven Types of Ambiguity" was his first book, which he started writing, precociously, as an undergraduate, and is a bit up and down.
Garry Wills tilted his book on post-Vatican II Catholicism "Bare Ruined Choirs," which suggests the sociological/historical sense was not completely lost.
I turn 73 at the end of the month,, so this sonnet takes on a personal, if arbitrary significance. When I was a young poet, I remember first noticing (or being told) that each stanza narrows the scope--from season, to dying day, to dying fire. This taught me something. Given the substitutions of trochees at the beginning of the 4th and 8th line, as pointed out by the fine analysis, I wonder if the first word of the 12th line were not pronounced CON-sumed, unlikely as that consummation may be.
It cuts way to near the bone, while still flesh is upon it. Still, you will not hear me moan, for the glory of the love denies all groans.
Yes, one of my favorites, and all the more so the older I become. Thanks for sharing it and for your explication.
Catholics always translate this wonderfully melancholic line as Shakespeare's covert lament for the Dissolution of the monasteries which he would have learnt about at his ardently Catholic mother's knee.
I love this poem. The last line makes it into a kind of Aubade, an anticipated Aubade if you will.
Would that he had lived until 1660.
Very cool in a "memento mori" sort of way. I like this one a lot. I had never heard it before-- we read (and I memorized) #116 in high school.
William Empson's "Seven Types of Ambiguity" opens with a discussion of the "bare ruin'd choirs" line:
“There is no pun, double syntax or dubiety of feeling in ‘Bare ruined choirs, where late the sweet birds sang’ but the comparison holds for many reasons; because ruined monastery choirs are places in which to sing, because they involve sitting in a row, because they are made of wood, are carved into knots and so forth, because they used to be surrounded by a sheltering building crystallised out of the likeness of a forest, and coloured with stained glass and painting like bowers and leaves, because they are now abandoned by all but the grey walls coloured like the skies of winter, because the cold and Narcissistic charm suggested by choir-boys suits well with Shakespeare’s feeling for the object of the Sonnets, and for various sociological and historical reasons (the protestant destruction of monasteries; fear of puritanism), which it would be hard now to trace out in their proportions; these reasons, and many more relating the simile to its place in the Sonnet, must all combine to give the line its beauty, and there is a sort of ambiguity in not knowing which of them to hold most clearly in mind. Clearly this is involved in all such richness and heightening of effect, and the machinations of ambiguity are among the very roots of poetry.”
I don't get "the cold and Narcissistic charm suggested by choir-boys." What's Empson out after there?
I think he's referring in a guarded way to the homosexual attraction to young men implied in many of the sonnets. Or are the Sonnets now being seen as entirely heterosexual? Not how I read them.
I'm not sure. Narcissistic because so many of Shakespeare's sonnets are about Shakespeare and how the two women make him feel? But one doesn't generally think of choir-boys as narcissistic I think, nor are they cold.
I thought that was kind of strange, too.
Thanks for this. I'm woefully unread in Empson (among many other things), but this opening-out of that image --- which seems so obvious now that Empson says it --- expands that line's sense of elegy to a large cultural level that I really hadn't thought about in connection with that poem before. Many thanks again.
Empson is sometimes mad, and often wayward, but for my money he's the greatest English literary critic of his generation. "Some Kinds of Pastoral" is a brilliant book: the chapter on Alice in Wonderland particularly good. "Milton's God" is, in a word, wrong, but nevertheless manages to be brilliant at the same time. "Seven Types of Ambiguity" was his first book, which he started writing, precociously, as an undergraduate, and is a bit up and down.
What about Dr Leavis?
Empson is a much better critic than Leavis, I'd say.
Garry Wills tilted his book on post-Vatican II Catholicism "Bare Ruined Choirs," which suggests the sociological/historical sense was not completely lost.