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영어

Up to the Nineteenth Century, critical comments on Shakespeare's sonnets tended to revolve around the identification of the poet's male and female lovers. This paper however attempts to appreciate each sonnet as aesthetic object in lieu of biographical accumulation. In other words, Shakespeare's sonnets are less an expression of personal complaints or wishes than an artistic project of immortalization, which endows the aesthetic objects like youth, beauty, love with Gestalt (Form) in Schiller's sense. Shakespeare's tour de force lies in his imagination to transform a legion of abstract ideas into concrete sense data fragrant of the odor of roses. The sense of touch is dominant in sonnet 19, where strong verbs associated with the act of devouring, grasping and attacking are dynamically adopted. Sonnet 54 is redolent of various odors as is well evidenced in the synesthetic words, “sweet ornament”. Visual senses permeates Sonnet 60, where abstract concepts like Time, Maturity, Aging, Fortune and Glory are clothed in the metaphors of concrete objects to be visibly perceived. For a Platonic Shakespeare, life is a series of Phenomena, flickering shadows cast on the wall of the cave; however, their Ideas such as youth, beauty in love are aesthetically tasted and perceived at the pinnacle of their existence. The artist's primary mission is to grasp those revelatory moments and eternalize them. Shakespeare thus immortalized the Idea of Beauty in his “eternal lines” so that the reader may relish it “so long he can breathe or eye can see” and can smell and hear.