Sonnet 9: The world will wail theeIs it for fear to wet a widow's eye That thou consumest thyself in single life? Ah! if thou issueless shalt hap to die, The world will wail thee, like a makeless wife; The world will be thy widow and still weep That thou no form of thee hast left behind, When every private widow well may keep By children's eyes her husband's shape in mind. Look what an unthrift in the world doth spend Shifts but his place, for still the world enjoys it; But beauty's waste hath in the world an end, And kept unused, the user so destroys it. No love toward others in that bosom sits That on himself such murderous shame commits.William Shakespeare |
March 2012 |
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This translation into painting relies on Helen Vendler's observation (pp. 84-85) that the linguistic charm of the poem focuses on the symmetry of the word widow (widdow in the Quatro spelling), strengthened by the inherent symmetry of w, and plays with a flurry of related letters w, v and u and corresponding fluid sounds (some of these graphic relationships have been lost in the modern spelling: v used to be internally printed as "u", and initial u, as "v"). For the painting, I've replaced widow with willow, the only other word with similar properties – or even better, since it retains the double l in the middle, a sound almost as "liquid" as w and u, and playing as important a part in the overall sound of the sonnet. This change has two more advantages for my translation. On the semantic level, it gives me the image of weeping willow, naturally rhyming with the image of weeping, wailing, mournful world central to the poem. On the formal level, which really links language and imagery, the weeping willow's shape is, in essence, a w turned upside down, with an additional play on the idea of symmetry. |
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