Number 43 of Sonnets from the Portuguese is very familiar. "How do I love thee? Let me count the ways..." is perhaps one of the most famous lines from a sonnet ever. But less well known is the rest of the poem, which is beautiful in its own right. It talks about loving, "thee to the depth and breadth and height My soul can reach," this is a love so compete and consuming that rarely is it experienced. In fact, I would say that Browning was lucky to have been so inspired by love that she needed to record it forever in a sonnet that would be endlessly quoted by those trying to emulate the same feeling of love, but without the eloquence and originality she possessed.
Number 21 also has a theme of love, though its message is more clear and common. Browning says, "Say over again, and yet once over again, That thou dost love me. Though the word repeated should seem "a cuckoo song," as thou dost treat it," which really conveys the fact that the more something is said, the less meaning it has. It makes sense to me, because while the love talked about in Number 43 is true and rare, the problems with love talked about in Number 21 is more common, flawed, and something that probably a lot more people experience. It seems that people either love you more than you love them, or they try and be earnest, but end up saying the words so frequently that they lose all meaning.
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6 comments:
Jennifer,
Much better focus and attention to detail in this post. You do a nice job of focusing on specific lines and analyzing them. You seem to have gotten a lot out of these two sonnets from Barret Browning's sonnet sequence.
This could very well be the original valentine! You are right about the author being lucky to have felt this level of love. We can only wish to be that lucky!
This was such a beautiful peome don't you think. I absolutely felt that love was in the air when i read this.
I really liked how you "gutted" the poems meanings. I agree with your ending comments on Sonnet 21 and how saying the word love too frequently does in some instances strips it of its meaning
Browning's poetry is beautiful. It is so intimate and her passion is so strong. I love her and Robert's love story, and their poems reflect such deep emotion.
I love the sonnets. 43 is interesting because it reminds me the most of Shakespeare. I'm not sure why, but I like how you took the latter part of the sonnet deeper than the first part. Most people don't think to go any farther than the pretty part at the beginning
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