I interpret this sonnet in a different way than probably it is intended by Shakes baby.
Not the procreation pitch as the first ten sonnets do impose upon the standard of the listener--an entreaty to someone to procreate and thus, with imploring compliments about "her" profound beauty, will beseech the listener to have a go at motherhood to recreate a brood of her beautiful bounty in future generations. Compliments and implied procreative requests and ponderings on the waste of not bearing children.
As I recall, Shakespeare did leave his wife, who bore him children in the end, with his wedding bed or something like that after he abandoned her and the kids to have flings with others--so the gossip goes. Flattery does lead to leechery but oh, how the words are so sweet and smooth on the tongue and on the listeners gilded presumptions of glorified spawning for inheritance's bounty. Life expectancy was far shorter than nowadays and spawning a host of kiddies was the in-thing back when lots of children were required for all kinds of household necessities.
Very glad for modernity and that women can perhaps have other avenues of empowerment other than being forced to abandon their bounteous beauty for the bearing of children--sometimes to forfeit life itself in the premature death of the body through childbirth.
=-------
a "post-feminist" interpretation of Shakes baby and his longing for immortality. His obsession was in his work, no doubt as his progenitor heritage.
On the other hand, as I am not doing any research on when these sonnets were written in relation to when Shakes was alive and living outside the reach of his first wife and that perhaps doomed relationship--perhaps he was trying his hand at other progenitors perhaps he was trying to sow his seeds to the fullest due to his theatrical lifestyle? Too lazy to look it all up, when the sonnet was written in relation to Shake's age or where or how he was living at the time.
Women without children, what good are they anyway? Their purpose purportedly was and is to have children, what else could they do? Could they act on stage? No, that was restricted to men playing the roles of women, at this Elizabethan era in old England.
Frailty, thy name is Woman. You must therefore spawn babies or you are nothing. Nada. Nichts.
this song by Einsturzende Neubauten, translated into English, has a far different interpretation at least in the words Ich Bin than what the translater transcribes. Ich Bin=I AM as in Ich Bin Ein Berliner (so said Jack Kennedy at the Berlin Wall, a famous speech. He did not say "It's ME! Berlin Wall".
Okay, I consider this a bad translation but take it in whatever context, because I cannot find another translation and I am very lazy due to the time spent on fighting hacking blocks so here is the bad translation which does not fit into the poetic context whatsoever--- maybe the rest is a good translation but I doubt it. This is one of the huge problems with translations and the difference between what the author really intended in the original text. Many arguments have been held over the authentic Greek and Latin of the Biblical texts in their original languages versus the interpretations that have been cannonized into the many various sects of religious programming via these texts. Just one example. Other tragedies of mis-interpretated translations abound and are a shame for the audience who is limited to understand the real context or meaning. So much alteration can thusly be introduced into otherwise more radical ideas.
Ich Bins--I am....although the lyrics in German do say "ich bin's" which is what you would say casually when someone asks, who is there? It's me! Ich bin's. But....the question remains unasked. The sense is of one person talking to him/herself. The glowing ember of solitary self-sufficiency is a comfort in times of cold blasts of unwelcomed chilling air if a stranger should knock on the door and tempt fate into bringing into another person in the void of the solitary but empty life filled with secure nothingness. If having a child, or bearing a child is supposed to bring the only meaning to enduring the cyclical inheritance of the beauty of the flesh, then the conquering worm as the inheritor has at least teeth that are understandable, in this post-romantic modern world perhaps the burning core of the self enveloping in it's own meaning would be the life-bud of the rose that can blossom if only left to not be burnt out by the cries of burdening male domineering wanting babies in endless diaper existences and hen left with only the 2nd best bed in the will, as the testament to a marriage that bore children but no inheritance except for a dusty piece of empty furniture, cold as death.
It's me, I AM, but what are you in this void wanting spawn from me?
Questioning, why should I have a baby? Zum kotzen!!!
Good old Nina Hagen who had a son and loved him. !!! Where was the father? A feminist appraisal of baby-making and the strength of women. She may have been burned as a witch in Shakespeare's time--or in this time as well! To be put down into a well of domestic domesticated drudgery and clean and cook for a man who, traditionally, could do whatever the funk he wanted. Shakes baby certainly went out for his career after having his seductive way with his wife. She was left in Strattford while Shakes baby wrote sonnets to his other lovers! Great deal for him, great deal for human kind. Bad scheissse for women and woman kind. Shake's plays are often containing women as victims, under the thumb of the rule of men's law, etc etc. Fit mostly to spawn and obey and die afterwards. Great love sonnets engraved on their tombs, after they played their spawning roles upon the stage that men set for them as minor roles and players.
Ich bin das letztes Biest im Himmel--I am the last beast in heaven. After ME there is no YOU to devour a child of the spawn of a Hell's Angel reborn into YOUR void of which you spawn cosmic nihilism. Rape in order to procure a cure to your ennui, a baby out of the wedlock of Love will exist in a vacuum so black it's hole will never achieve a holy roller ride. Otherwise, the matron the mother and the trinity of the rebirth of the female as a human being will be perhaps the reincarnation of human beings once your paradigm has reached it's unholy prime. See video below for reference to these symbols and visual clues. Otherwise, your demand for a baby just gives me the blues. The universe is a spectrum of the light of Love, and you bring it all down to a slaughtered Dove.
No comments:
Post a Comment