84
PARTISAN REVIEW
sonnets-particularly such ones as CX or CXXIX-Shakespeare
speaks out whereas in the plays he just speaks-beautifully, divinely
of course. In
Macbeth
and
Hamlet
he is creating a world of language
but in the
Sonne'ts
he desperately tries to do that which is forbidden:
to create a human being, With the ardor of a Paracelsus (who in–
cidentally was a contemporary) he mixes words as if they were
chemicals that might bring forth a homunculus. Evidently he has
selected someone at a stage of possibility. He wants to make an
image so that the person will not be a dream but rather someone
he knows as he knows his own interest. He wishes the other to have
a free will yet his free will is to be the same as Shakespeare's. Of
course great anxiety and bad behavior result when the poet's win
is crossed as it is bound to be. This type of relationship needs a lot
of testing to see if the magic is working. Sonnets like the CXXXVII
show us that in this case the test did not work.
This
poem (begin–
ning "Thou blind fool, Love, what dost thou to mine eyes") per–
fectly illustrates the heart-eye dichotomy that figures in courtly-love
literature.
I: Oddly enough in mythology the eye symbolizes wisdom and
becomes the divine emblem of Juno.
A: It is natural for the early Greeks to err in this way. For then
a beauty, a glitter still adhered to the external world. The cult of
the gymnasium made the people fit and pleasant to the eye. H6lder–
in's lines "He values the best who has beheld the world l and the
wise in the end shalll often turn to the beautiful" are a hangover
of this old belief. The sight-wisdom association occurred by a curious
shift. "Sight" meant the physical view. Then metaphorically came
to be applied to judgment, intellectuality, etc. For clarity's sake it
should not be. We should use the word "insight" in regard to mental
questions. The Greeks tended to confuse physical with spiritual
beauty. That is why they found it paradoxical that the beautiful
Alcibiades should love the ugly Socrates. Along came Christianity
and with it a shift in emphasis. The Gospel was "good tidings" not
"good sights." One associates hearing with obedience and control;
one listens to advice.
I: In this connection I think of Van Eyck's
The Annunciation.
One
can make out no expression, no positive sign in the eyes of the
