Mis/Reading

Randall,

Thanks for your analysis--you aptly crystallized the emotional flow I felt in this poem, and pointed toward some kind of parallel spiritual process.  I feel myself going through the senses of meaning Dante intended for the Divine Comedy:  the literal, the allegorical, the moral, the anagogical. 

I'd like to explore a bit further the way meaning unfolds in this poem.  Booth's commentary argues for leaving the first line unpunctuated to preserve three separate senses:  "(1) shame on you!  you should deny; (2) to avoid shame you should deny; (3) from a sense of shame you should deny."  Booth claims each of the three hits at a slightly different moment.  I think the same thing happens more generally with the first lines of the sonnet.  We first take the initial line in isloation:  Admit that you don't love anybody.  Then, surmounting the enjambment, I take the first two lines together:  Admit that you don't love anybody who doesn't care about you.  Admittedly, this may be a distinctly modern reading, as it relies on not realizing that 'art' is a second-person conjugation, and cannot be a third-person conjugation.  After failing by regarding lines in isolation, and then falling via the other extreme, of regarding the lines as a single unit, I reach a third, balanced sense:  Admit that you don't love anybody, you who don't even love yourself.  As I have argued before, I believe these misreadings are intentional.  To write such misreadings into a poem requires an extraordinary capacity for understanding language not just the way you understand it, but also the way others will understand it in idiosyncratically different ways.  One must at once be oneself and not oneself.

These questions of interpretation lead to questions of identity, which I'll explore a bit more if I find some time tomorrow.  In short, I see four ways this poem questions identity:  First, by insisting on integrity, stability, and consistency in who we are and who we claim to be.  Second, in asking about our relationship to our future selves.  Third, by asking how much we are individuals, and how much we are part of larger selves.  Fourth, by exploring extensions of self, into offspring and into other minds.  

Sorry about my premature post a couple of weeks ago.  I hope I didn't disturb anyone's enjoyment of your week off.  Finally, Randall, F. Scott Fitzgerald once got kicked out of your school.  He's buried across the street from the high school I attended.  CRAZY!!!

-Chris