Sonnet 28: When day’s oppression isn’t eased by night. 20″x20″. Oil on linen

William Shakespeare. Sonnet 28

How can I then return in happy plight,
That am debarred the benefit of rest?
When day’s oppression is not eased by night,
But day by night, and night by day, oppressed?

And each, though enemies to either’s reign,
Do in consent shake hands to torture me;
The one by toil, the other to complain
How far I toil, still farther off from thee.

I tell the day to please him thou art bright
And dost him grace when clouds do blot the heaven:
So flatter I the swart-complexioned night,
When sparkling stars twire not thou gild’st the even.

But day doth daily draw my sorrows longer
And night doth nightly make grief’s strength seem stronger.

 

Sam Alexander reading this sonnet

This sonnet continues the previous one: another letter in an exchange in which we hear only one voice. Yet the first line of this sonnet implicitly invokes the other person’s response, the request to return in a happy plight. In my series, the two paintings are connected by continuation of the same color harmony, dominated by sorrowful blues.

Yet if the first letter tries to be optimistic, with the sorrow of distance between the lovers softened by the speaker’s imagination, which fills his nights with the shining shadow of his beloved, here it turns into the constant source of torture, which wouldn’t let the speaker to forget and have the benefit of rest. The dreamy vision of the first letter turns into a hopeless struggle with the combined forces of eternal powers of Day and Night.

And if my Sonnet 27 painting stayed very close to the specific imagery invoked by the sonnet, here the subject matter, irises, might seem entirely disconnected from the content of the sonnet. Yet irises, their twisted shapes and their range of blues, presented themselves to me as the right “anchor” for a depiction of the tortured sorrow of separation. My path to this painting lay through a series of different approaches to irises, described here. In this final painting of the series, the flowers nearly dissolve into pure abstraction, a woeful, broken world created by conspiracy between lights and darks, Day and Night.

Sonnet 27: Like a jewel hung in ghastly night. 20″x20″. Oil on linen

William Shakespeare. Sonnet 27

Weary with toil, I haste me to my bed,
The dear repose for limbs with travel tired;
But then begins a journey in my head,
To work my mind, when body’s work’s expired:

For then my thoughts, from far where I abide,
Intend a zealous pilgrimage to thee,
And keep my drooping eyelids open wide,
Looking on darkness which the blind do see

Save that my soul’s imaginary sight
Presents thy shadow to my sightless view,
Which, like a jewel hung in ghastly night,
Makes black night beauteous and her old face new.

Lo! thus, by day my limbs, by night my mind,
For thee and for myself no quiet find.

 

Sam Alexander reading this sonnet

Marc Chagall. The poet reclining. 77 x 77.5 cm. Oil on canvas. 1915

This is about as close to a straightforward illustration as the sonnet series has gotten so far; probably too straightforward – as of now, I am not quite sure whether this painting is going to survive in this form, or be transformed into something more abstract. For now, though, this is the twenty seventh sonnet painting.

It’s very straightforwardness owes much, I believe, to the fact that my sonnets series has significantly intersected with my Chagall studies project (not a coincidence, either: one of the things I wanted to learn from Chagall is his child-like directness and playful seriousness).

Marc Chagall. Self-portrait with muse (Dream). 157 x 140 cm. Oil on canvas. 1918.

That said, there are two Chagall paintings which are related to this sonnet painting more closely (albeit loosely). One is “The poet reclining” (1915, above), which emboldened me to try for a composition with the main character confined to the bottom of the painting (although my poet is, of course, much less serene. The other is “Self-portrait with muse” (1918, left), which according to Chagall’s autobiography, “My life”, represents an actual dream-like vision of his beloved, Bella, as a white angel. The motive is the same as in Shakespeare’s sonnet: it’s not a long way from a white angel to a jewel hung in ghastly night.