Sonnet 18 : Deconstructive writing

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             Before I begin the main phrase of my deconstructive writing of the poem sonnet 18, I want to share another blog that is also on deconstructive writing. ( Thinking activity on Derrida ) click here…..

        Here I would like to share a link that through you get an idea about this blog and also you can learn through the video and the multiple choice test and the discussion by Dr. Dilip Barad sir. That  is in Ed. Ted platform.

( Click here........

        And also it was an amazing experience to learn the platform like Ed. Ted. The features help us to make them learn more better with videos, tests and also discussion and also the task. It was a good experience.

       As we know the theory Deconstruction and Post - structuralism coined by famous philosopher Jacques Derrida.  What is the meaning of Deconstruction ? In the criticism of literature, Deconstruction is a theory and practice of reading which questions and claims to 'subvert' or ' undermine' the assumption that the system of language provides grounds that are adequate to establish the boundaries and the coherence or unity, and the determinate meaning of a literary text. Basically it is involved in structuralism but he carries this structuralist movement to its logical extreme and his reasoning is original and startling. 

          Deconstruction is an approach to understanding the relationship between text and meaning. But also he talked about free play of meaning and undecidability. There is also a concept of decentering the center. That is to say that according to Derrida there is no presence or truth apart from a language. There is no reality other than textuality. In Deconstruction we find that one of the important things is Binary opposition.

                     We know the concept of the Deconstruction but sometimes it is difficult to apply it to any literary work.  Normally that is happening in our education. So let's begin the Deconstructive writing of the poem, that is the poem by the most famous English poet and dramatist none other than The great William Shakespeare. The whole poem is given below :

Sonnet 18: Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?

BY WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE

Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?

Thou art more lovely and more temperate:

Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,

And summer’s lease hath all too short a date;

Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,

And often is his gold complexion dimm'd;

And every fair from fair sometime declines,

By chance or nature’s changing course untrimm'd;

But thy eternal summer shall not fade,

Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow’st;

Nor shall death brag thou wander’st in his shade,

When in eternal lines to time thou grow’st:

   So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,

   So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.

             This sonnet is certainly the most famous in the sequence of Shakespeare’s sonnets; it may be the most famous lyric poem in English.

             The opening line of the sonnet is one of the most quoted Shakespearean lines. It is also one of the most eloquent statements of the power of the written word. Shakespeare preserves his friend in the lines of the poem. Here we are making textual analysis of the language. 

           This is a much debatable poem among Scholars because of many scholars who said that the series of poems is about his beloved  and others who said that the first 126 sonnets were originally addressed to a young man, who is the friend of Shakespeare. That is sparking debates about Shakespeare’s sexuality. The nature of the relationship between the two men is highly ambiguous and it is often impossible to tell if Shakespeare is describing platonic or erotic love.

       If we try to understand the poem then the first line of the poem :

 

Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?

            In which Shakespeare talks about his beloved or his male friend  that is not clear. If we put his beloved here then this poem must have become a love poem.  The poem is  simply a statement of praise about the beauty of the beloved. And if we put as a friend then also the poem means differently. 

              And also here we can see that the opening line through it looks like a nature poem because  of the description of summer days, rough wind, buds,etc.

          If we read a whole poem and understand the deep context then the poem is not about nature or beloved that is more than that.

By chance or nature’s changing course untrimm'd;

In the opening line the poet compares his beloved with the summer's day but in the 8th and 9th lines he turns his view like nature changed with time and  if he compares his beloved with nature then there should be changes. So whether should he compare or not that is the question. Again we can see how this poem's center is decentered by its own.

     

But thy eternal summer shall not fade,

      Here we can say that eternal summer is not possible because of nature's cycle. Then the last lines of the poem  though we get an idea that here he was not praising his beloved but praising himself.  We can say that he sings a song by himself. That is self-reflexivity,  is the process by which an artist refers to his own art. 

So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.

That is exactly what Shakespeare does in the last line of this sonnet by referring to his poem as “this”. He is intensely aware of the value that his own poetry can accord to something. He knows that his poetry can, in fact, make his beloved immortal. That way we may assume that the poem is about immortal love. The poetic speaker asserts that she cannot be thus compared because she shall be eternal through the power of his poetic lines.

        Interestingly, not everyone is willing to accept the role of Sonnet 18 as the ultimate English love poem. As James Boyd-White puts it:

What kind of love does 'this' in fact give to 'thee'? We know nothing of the beloved's form or height or hair or eyes or bearing, nothing of her character or mind, nothing of her at all, really. This 'love poem' is actually written not in praise of the beloved, as it seems, but in praise of itself. Death shall not brag, says the poet; the poet shall brag. This famous sonnet is on this view one long exercise in self-glorification, not a love poem at all; surely not suitable for earnest recitation at a wedding or anniversary party, or in a Valentine. (142)

               The ending couplet finalizes the theme of eternal beauty and youth caught in the poet's immortalizing lines by saying she will live as long as "men can breathe or eyes can see."

       To conclude we can't exactly say what the poem means by. Because the center is decentered there is also a free play of meaning. So this is how the poem is . Deconstruction is  not in order to reject or discard them, but to reconstitute them in another way.

Boyd-White, James. The Desire for Meaning in Law and Literature. Current Legal Problems. Volume 53. Ed. M. Freeman. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2000.

Shakespeare, William. "Sonnet 18: Shall I Compare Thee to a Summer's..." Poetry Foundation. N.p., n.d. Web. 15 July 2020. <https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/45087/sonnet-18-shall-i-compare-thee-to-a-summers-day>.