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Shakespeare's
Sonnets
Once
upon a time not so long ago, I decided I needed to commit
to memory all of Shakespeare's Sonnets. All 154 of them. There
were a couple of no good reasons for this compulsion, but
mostly it was propelled by a dream I had one night.
The
dream went something like this:
My
wife is sitting atop a very large mushroom, except she isn't
exactly my wife because she is a little girl, in an Alice
in Wonderland-like dress, with a very large book open on
her lap. Me, I'm standing at the foot of the very large
mushroom, except I'm a little kid too, dressed in some kind
of schoolboy uniform. My hands are clasped behind my back,
and I'm reciting the Sonnets in a clear yet oddly squeaky
voice, my eyes closed, my head tilted upwards. "And
so the general of hot desire/Was sleeping by a virgin hand
disarmed," I squeak. Except I'm not exactly saying
the words because in reality I don't know them yet. But
in the dream I know I'm reciting the Sonnets in sequence.
Anyway, at the end of each recitation, my wife who is the
little girl studiously scans the large book on her lap and
then says, "Correct!" Then she licks a finger
and flips the page, and I recite the next one.
Not
long after I had this dream, I found a book titled "The
Art of Shakespeare's Sonnets" by the venerable
Helen
Vendler. I took this as a sign. You never want to
disregard these kinds of things. I figured the book would
be perfect because Vendler offers commentary -- an analysis,
an explanation, an interpretation -- of each of the 154 Sonnets.
I theorized that knowing the why of each one might make memorizing
them a little easier. Then I came across sentences like this:
"The aesthetic value proposed here is a rigid isomorphism
(each of the four hectoring questions occupies two lines,
and three of the questions use the same phrase, why dost thou)."
As Shakespeare might have put it, WTFeth? I'm thinking, All
right, forget the frigging commentary. So instead I just launched
straight into the rote exercise of memorization.
At
first it seemed kind of easy, taking about three days to memorize
one Sonnet. Moments of the day that didn't require much thinking
were devoted to memorizing or reciting -- while shaving or
driving or riding my bike. My mind began to fill quickly with
thees and thous and dosts; with strange phrases like "Seeking
that beauteous roof to ruinate..." Drunk
at gatherings or by myself, lines would roll off my tongue.
"Thou of thyself thy sweet self dost deceive," (Sonnet
4, line 10). "Thyself thy foe, to thy sweet self too
cruel," (Sonnet 1, line 8).
But
around Sonnet 10, the process began to bog down. For one thing,
the memorizing started to take longer. Now it was a week or
more instead of just a few days. Retention of previously memorized
Sonnets began to slip. I found myself having to go back and
re-memorize the already memorized. In short, my memory began
to leak like a sieve. It occurred to me that at this rate
it could take like a hundred and fifty years or more.
Long
story short, my brain kind of imploded around Sonnet 21 ("So
it is not with me as with that Muse..."). Vendler had
warned that immersion in the Sonnets "is a mildly deranging
experience." Ha! That crazy old lady was only half right.
More like frothing, raving lunacy. Howling at the moon kind
of stuff. Booze didn't help. At all. Defeated and deranged,
I closed the book on Shakespeare's Sonnets. For good.
These
days, nothing of the Sonnets remains in my head. Amazing,
really, how it vanished faster than a Gypsy pickpocket on
the subway. Sad too, because I could've used that time memorizing
Spanish slogans I come across in public. You know, like:
¡Sí
se puede, y'all!
Posted
09.13.07|
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