MORE FIRST ROUND “ROMANTIC” MADNESS IN THE EAST: SHAKESPEARE V. DOWSON

The tragic Ernest Dowson thinking: Can I really win this thing?

Genius finds the singularity that is universally true in that which the ordinary mind thinks is a mere particular. The singularity is usually overlooked not because it is hidden, but because it is so very obvious. Shakespeare’s Sonnet 56 states the issue immediately with its title phrase, ”Chronicle of Wasted Time.”  The all-too-obvious-truth is: All poems, all writing, all memory, is a “chronicle” or record of that which is gone, or “wasted.”  No matter how accurate or “realistic” the record, it can never be reconciled to its subject—which belongs irrevocably to “wasted time.”   And this is not a fact to be considered by the poet; it is the fact to be considered by the poet: the poem records what no longer exists.  

This is bad news and good news, for the poet, and finally, because of the way Shakespeare entertains it, good news.

It is finally good news because Shakespeare’s insight is good news: which is why we recognize Shakespeare as a genius (a genius always means good, not bad)—not to merely use the word, “genius,” because some authority tells us Shakespeare is a genius, but because we ourselves are really impressed with what we read. 

The bad news is that everything articulated belongs to “wasted time;” everything in the past is gone.  Not just partially gone.  Gone.  “Wasted.”  Time has eaten it up.  It is no more. 

The good news is that the “chronicle” is extremely important—because it’s all we’ve got.  The poem may not be much, but it is all.  The “chronicle” (poem) is everything.  The poem is the reality.   And to the poet, that’s got to be thrilling.

Here’s the sonnet, in full:

Shakespeare positions himself in the present by twice saying, “I see” (lines 2, 7). 

The poet is looking at a recorded past: ”in the chronicle” at “descriptions of the fairest,” but is quick to remind the reader that the past, because it is “wasted,” does not exist as the past, but, in the poet’s words, (the “chronicle”) in the present: “beauty making beautiful old rhyme.” 

Past and present are collapsed into each other; we have two “chronicles”—the one which Shakespeare sees (the “descriptions” lost to “wasted time”) and the one which is Shakespeare’s (present) sonnet itself. 

Implied, of course, is Shakespeare’s awareness that his sonnet (“chronicle”) records (and is thus a present disappearing into a past) the past “chronicle,” and, in so doing, replaces it as a past “chronicle,” too.  And yet the present tense of line 3, “making” presents for the reader a present presence: “beauty making beautiful old rhyme” which is “beautiful” in the present, even as it refers to ”old” rhyme—”rhyme” which cannot be ”wasted,” since Shakespeare is rhyming now in his sonnet, and about beauty!  Shakespeare’s sonnet is literally refuting “wasted time” by keeping ”beauty” alive with ”rhyme” that is both “new” (in his sonnet) and “old” (the past “chronicle” he is looking into). 

Shakespeare uncouples the past from the present, suddenly, right in the middle of the sonnet, lines 7 & 8.   Note how, while introducing, for the first time, ”you,” the person in the poem he is praising, Shakespeare wrenches the present from the past:

I see their antique pen would have expressed  
Even such a beauty as you master now.

And Shakespeare continues in this same vein:

 

So all their praises are but prophecies
Of this our time, all you prefiguring

 

The “chronicle” Shakespeare sees is not merely a record of the “wasted” past;  it “prefigures” the future.

 

With the introduction of “you,” the collapse of past and present now gives way to collapse of past and future, which is a logical and natural progression:

 

First, past takes present into it (Shakespeare’s sonnet becomes the past “chronicle” to which it refers, since we, the present readers, are reading Shakespeare’s sonnet—which now belongs to the past).

Second, past takes the future into it (the past “praise” vaults into the future as “prophecy” which leap-frogs over Shakespeare’s “present” to we, the readers of the “future,” currently/in the future? reading Shakespeare’s sonnet.

 

The reason why “we” (in a present/future now forever blended) “have eyes to wonder, but lack tongues to praise” is because “tongues to praise” would merely start the “chronicle” sequence all over again—unnecessary because Shakespeare has sketched out the whole issue already: “eyes to wonder” is the speechless fact that stands apart from all “chronicles” and the “chronicle of praise/prophecy” unites past, present, and future, which would otherwise be “wasted.”  

 

There is both a dead record of death and a dead record of life, but the best, Shakespeare, maintains, is a living record of life: which requires praise that must become prophecy.

 

If we are correct that the past/present trope in Shakesspeare’s Sonnet 56 is crucial to all poetry, we should find it to be true for any poem called on to examine.

 

We do see its importance. 

 

True, time is not Dowson’s conscious subject, as in the Shakespeare, but look how crucial it is: the poem begins, “Last night…” and the key turning is, “when the feast is finished…then falls thy shadow…”

 

NON SUM QUALIS ERAM BONAE SUB REGNO CYNARAE—Ernest Dowson