The Art of Shakespeare's Sonnets by Helen Vendler (review)

Reviews Bloom has taken an admirable critical stance which he supports textually, referencing ideas from many other critics, and including many divergent opinions. Yet with his grand pronouncements, his self-assurance comes through far more clearly than any vulnerability. His humor is prominent, but often scathing. No one I have discussed this book with is willing to accept all ofBloom's concepts at face value, but, equally, no one has suggested that his insights can be dismissed. One point the critics might balk at is that, in contrast to many academics, Bloom is eminently readable, thought-provoking and enjoyable, ¿t? Helen Vendler. TheArt ofShakespeare's Sonnets. Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press ofHarvard University Press, 1997. 672p. and CD recording. Mary L. Hjelm Eastern Idaho Technical College TheArtofShakespeare's Sonnets investigates what Helen Vendler finds aesthetically most provocative in each individual Shakespeare sonnet as a "writer's project invented to amuse and challenge his own capacity for inventing artworks" (4). The ArtofShakespeare's Sonnets is comprised ofa single introductory chapter outlining Vendler's critical perspective and 1 53 individual "sonnet-commentaries" (sonnets 1 53 and 1 54 appear together in one essay). Her reason for employing such a format is to restore the "comprehension ofthe internal logic and 'old finery' ofElizabethan lyric" which has disappeared almost completely from today's examinations of the sonnet (8). The value ofVendler's book is not only that it can help readers better understand how to approach the language ofShakespeare's sonnets, but also that it will help them uncover evidential — or textual — clues in a clearer, more deliberate fashion, leading them to a greater appreciation of the power and permutations of language manipulated by a poet intent upon expressing the "inner life" ofa speaker. Envisioning this book as a supplement rather than a definitive examination of the sonnets, Vendler provides fresh and unexpected interpretations ofthe sonnets based on clear textual evidence rather than through a dominant theoretical perspective . Vendler mines linguistic strategies directly from Shakespeare's compositional acts and constructs upon them an interpretation ofthe poet's duty "to create aesthetically convincing representations offeelings felt and thoughts thought" (16). For example, she dismisses charges ofmisogyny in Shakespeare's sonnets by pointing out that if the speaker of the sonnets is "tormented by his self-enslavement to a flagrantly unfaithful mistress, we can scarcely expect from him at the moment, a judiciousness about women" (17). Such a judiciousness would violate SPRING 1999 * ROCKY MOUNTAIN REVIEW * IOS die poet's duty to represent accurately the "inner life" of his speaker. Vendler concentrates instead upon the poet's ability to convey accurately the speaker's "realness " (misery, torment, joy, wonder, or exuberance) to the listener/reader widiin a mere fourteen lines. She points out that it is in the "simultaneous marshalling of temporal continuity, logical discreteness, and psychological modeling that Shakespeare's Sonnets surpass diose ofother sonneteers. His enormous power [orders ] intellectually recalcitrant materials into lyrically convincing schemes" (1 68). Vendler asserts that Shakespeare, as sonneteer, was seeking as many ways as possible to manipulate die sonnet form already mastered by others. His orchestration of it results in vignettes, musings, and one-sided conversations with imagined listeners which do not reveal an extended hidden narrative or meaning but do "comprise a virtual anthology of lyric possibility — in the poet's choice of subgenres, in arrangements ofwords, in tone, in dramatic modeling of die inner life, [and] in speech acts" (12). She argues convincing that Shakespeare employs these multiple compositional strategies (temporal, emotional, semantic, conceptual , philosophical, perceptual, and dramatic) to represent a "motivated change in feeling in the speaker" (23) as he navigates his relationships with the Young Man and the Dark Mistress. Vendler's practice of fronting each commentary with its sonnet, in both the 1609 Quarto and modernized versions, invites her own readers to participate in her exploration of the sonnets. Unlike most critical treatises where the poems appear as a block in the front ofthe text followed by an analysis, here each sonnet and its analysis appear togedier. Because many of the sonnets are printed on the right-hand page, the pause for page-turning before moving into the analysis allowed time to speculate upon...