I had decided to write a post on Tumblr about this when I realized that it deserved to be converted into a literary analysis article instead.
I am reading the first sonnet of Astrophel and Stella by Philip Sidney for the test I’ve got in 2 hours and I’m too much of a writer to actually focus on it.
Astrophel and Stella, Sonnet 1, by Philip Sidney
Read the full sonnet 1 of Astrophel and Stella here.
Literally, Stella means a star. Literally, Astrophel means a lover of stars, or a star-gazer.
He loves her but he cannot have her. The whole point of being a star-gazer is that you’re far away from the star itself, meaning you can only look at it from far away and be an admirer, never really a lover.
That’s the first thing that hits me.
The first four lines of the first stanza are mind-blowing.
Let me just say it here:
Loving in truth, and fain in verse my love to show,
That she, dear she, might take some pleasure of my pain,—
Pleasure might cause her read, reading might make her know,
Knowledge might pity win, and pity grace obtain,—
He’s compelled in his verse to show his love for her, hoping she’d derive pleasure from the pain he goes through to confess such a divine and selfless love. This pleasure might lead her to read his verse, which will ultimately lead to her acknowledging him.
Who knows, it might make him win her over.
His win might end up receiving the love and grace he was looking for.
And now, with his hope of this verse leading somewhere, he begins writing.
Sonnet 1 ends with him trying to find the words to say, with the desperate need to get his inner turmoil out in front of her, comparing this mental and emotional pain to the physical stress of undergoing labor pains.
Look at how the sonnet 1 ends:
Thus great with child to speak and helpless in my throes,
Biting my truant pen, beating myself for spite,
"Fool," said my Muse to me, "look in thy heart, and write."
Let the words sink in.
Astrophel’s love can be called self-deprecating in the sweetest sense there is. He loves her and he’s ashamed of himself because she’s married to somebody else already.
He also feels the pain in his heart, the emotional uproar of wanting to have her look at him just once.
She’s the star, after all, and he, a mere star-gazer.
What more is he than someone who is spending nights awake in her wait?
It hurts him to write this. And yet!
And yet, isn’t love the one thing that makes us pick up the pen and put the unspeakable, uncommunicable into words. Isn’t that why all who have ever written, ever written? Because there is something in this world worthy of the scrutiny that a writer gives to their Muse.
It must’ve hurt Philip Sidney to write this, too, as I can expect. Kenneth Muir writes, connecting the story of Astrophel and Stella to Sidney himself:
“Sidney was creating a work of art, even if he was also expressing his love. Although the poems doubtless reflect his real feelings, there is certainly an element of fiction, of dramatization. Some of the scenes may well be imaginary.”
/
I think every piece of art is autobiographical.
“The only requirement,” to be a writer, said Stephen King, “is the ability to remember every scar.”
So I try to remember every bad experience along with all the good ones, so that I can write about them more realistically, you know.
Let’s not drift away too much from Astrophel and Stella, though.
“Loving in truth, fain in verse my love to show.”
Astrophel is compelled to show his love for Stella in the verse he writes, hoping that “dear she” would take some pleasure from the pain he goes through to write this.
“Pleasure might cause her read, reading might make her know,”
Beautiful.
The thought of wanting that one person to read your writing and know your feelings and hopefully, thankfully, understand what your feelings truly are, that thought supercedes all.
“I sought fit words to paint the blackest face of woe;”
Words are truly the best fit to decorate your sorrow and your turmoil, as unusual as it sounds. Whatever you feel, putting it into words is better than keeping it anywhere else. Words end up sharing the feeling with others, you try your best to make others understand it too, be wary of it, avoid it, sympathize with it.
When you can’t put it into words, you should know it’s out of bounds now.
“Some fresh and fruitful showers upon my sunburn’d brain,”
By calling his brain sunburn’d, the speaker truly hits it home for all the writers who suffer from desperate blocks of creativity and art. When we can’t seem to be able to do our art, out minds feel completely drained. There are times when even the beauty all around fails to inspire the kind of passion inside that can be poured onto paper.
These few middle lines from the sonnet 1 of Astrophel and Stella are the poet describing how hard it is for him to get the words out of his mind in a state of such a tumultuous creative block.
The sonnet ends with the lines I love the most:
Thus great with child to speak, and helpless in my throes,
Biting my truant pen, beating myself for spite,
“Fool,” said my Muse to me, “look in thy heart, and write.”
It’s like Sidney is speaking to me! (Including the part where he calls me a fool.)
I like this idea, us, as artists, looking for inspiration in others and then our own divine Muse coming up to save the day and reprimand us for doubting ourselves so much, and then telling us that the answer doesn’t lie anywhere else, not outside; the answer is inside of us.
We can look everywhere, read all the books one can read, travel all over the world in search for inspiration, but unless we try and look inward, no solution will present itself.
The answer is inside our heart. It is within which the love pours out of. It is within where one must seek to find the treasure of words, of the world.
I’m gonna study now.
Check out more literature guides:
Letters in Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
Idea of Love in the Story of Orpheus and Eurydice
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