Against the Light: Divine Radiance and Religious Experience

[Glenn Scheper]

David Payne unearthed a treasure: Permit me to interpret.

> I searched The Bard for The Phrase. The closest match I
> found I found was Sonnet 13, which is the first sonnet in
> which the narrator (presumably speaking for Shakespeare)
> openly declares his love for the Young Man (unless you
> count Sonnet 10).

> Anyhow, Shakespeare uses the phrase in a Biblical sort of
> "prepare yourself for the Judgement Day" way ("against this
> coming end"), though the metaphor is complex, literally
> drawing the image of bracing your house against the
> winter's day and figuratively suggesting (to me) that
> having children protects the estate of your lineage (or
> your beauty) against the "barren rage of death's eternal
> cold."

> Despite the Christian Judgement Day undertones, "the day"
> feels like an impending reckoning of unavoidable evil --
> although there is a suggested escape, almost magically
> through reproduction: "then you were Yourself again, after
> yourself's decease, When your sweet issue your sweet form
> should bear."

> It's really a lovely (though dark) sonnet if you go for
> that sort of thing, though I'll admit that I have some
> trouble untangling all the "you"s and "your"s in the first
> couple of lines.

> Sonnet 13 (William Shakespeare):

> O! that you were your self; but, love, you are
> No longer yours, than you your self here live:
> Against this coming end you should prepare,
> And your sweet semblance to some other give:
> So should that beauty which you hold in lease
> Find no determination; then you were
> Yourself again, after yourself's decease,
> When your sweet issue your sweet form should bear.
> Who lets so fair a house fall to decay,
> Which husbandry in honour might uphold,
> Against the stormy gusts of winter's day
> And barren rage of death's eternal cold?
> O! none but unthrifts. Dear my love, you know,
> You had a father: let your son say so.

If you had no other referents by which to decode it,
it seems it is surely a paen to pro-creation.

Yet I know Shakespeare is an autofellatio fellow.
His words are all smithed on that soteriology that:
I am the son of my self. The Father and I are one.
I came in the name of the Father, and died to the
world (yet I am here), when I first blew myself,
which is the baptism, confession, and eucharist.


Here, he laments his being untrue-to-self which
is being true-to-his-wife, a third in his tryst:

XLI.

Those pretty wrongs that liberty commits, When I am sometimes absent from thy 
heart, Thy beauty and thy years full well befits, For still temptation follows 
where thou art. Gentle thou art, and therefore to be won, Beauteous thou art, 
therefore to be assail'd; And when a woman woos, what woman's son Will sourly 
leave her till she have prevail'd? Ay me! but yet thou mightst my seat forbear, 
And chide thy beauty and thy straying youth, Who lead thee in their riot even 
there Where thou art forc'd to break a twofold truth;- Hers, by thy beauty 
tempting her to thee, Thine, by thy beauty being false to me.

XLII.

That thou hast her, it is not all my grief, And yet it may be said I lov'd her 
dearly; That she hath thee, is of my wailing chief, A loss in love that touches 
me more nearly. Loving offenders, thus I will excuse ye: Thou dost love her, 
because thou know'st I love her; And for my sake even so doth she abuse me, 
Suffering my friend for my sake to approve her. If I lose thee, my loss is my 
love's gain, And losing her, my friend hath found that loss; Both find each 
other, and I lose both twain, And both for my sake lay on me this cross: But 
here's the joy; my friend and I are one; Sweet flattery! then she loves but me 
alone.
  -- http://www.lovesonnet.com/


Yours truly,
Glenn Scheper
http://home.earthlink.net/~glenn_scheper/
glenn_scheper + at + earthlink.net
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