19 pages • 38 minutes read
Sonnet 1
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Themes
Studying Versus Personal Invention
The crux of “Sonnet 1” is the tension between research and imagination. Sidney, who is the poem’s speaker, initially believes that absorbing the power of the written word includes finding inspiration. However, analyzing poetry written by other people does not result in the inspiration that Sidney is seeking. Instead, he has to consult his muse and return to the natural world.
The volta, or turn, of the poem is the moment when the speaker realizes that studying the works of other poets does not offer inspiration. Before Line 8, he is dedicated to learning the literary devices that his favorite authors use. He is futilely “[s]tudying inventions fine” (Line 6). Invention, here, refers to the creative use of language (not making something to be patented). The speaker’s research is taking apart poetry and exposing its craft. He wants to understand the mechanics, imagery, themes, and other elements of the craft of writing to come up with his own original verse. Sidney believes that this process of analysis will result in “fresh and fruitful showers” (Line 8). His research will bear the fruit of innovation—new ways to juxtapose words.
However, this turns out to not be the case. After all his research, “words c[o]me halting forth, wanting Invention’s stay: / Invention, Nature’s child, fle[es] step-dame Study’s blows” (Lines 9-10). Imagination retreats from the brutal demands of studying. Analysis does not produce personal and idiosyncratic creativity in poetry. Rather, the speaker has to find his own creative spirit in the natural world and his internal landscape. Nature, as a personified proper noun, is what gives birth to invention. The speaker is looking in the “leaves” (Line 7) of books but needs to instead look at the leaves on the trees, before they are made into books. Communing with nature will offer inspiration, which reflects the pastoral elements in Sidney’s major work of fiction, The Countess of Pembroke’s Arcadia. The pastoral is a representation of nature as positive and productive—nature benefits and inspires humans.
At the end of the poem, it is Sidney’s muse that guides him back to his own emotions and thoughts. The muse tells him to “look in thy heart and write” (Line 14). To find creative inspiration and new ways of using language, the speaker needs to explore his own feelings. Invention will come from his own mind, not the minds of others.
The Functions of Art
Channeling a muse is just one function of art in “Sonnet 1.” Art, specifically the arts of writing and painting, also functions as a method for conveying emotions and seducing the beloved. Sidney compares painting and poetry and argues that art is meant to come from one’s emotional state.
Sidney hopes that his poetry will cause the woman he loves to love him back. Through his “verse” (Line 1), he aims to first educate his beloved—that is, to offer “Knowledge” (Line 4). He uses the craft of writing to show her who he is, what he thinks of her, and why he thinks they should be together. This knowledge, he hopes, will win her “pity” (Line 4) and, through pity, “grace obtain” (Line 4). Here, his goal is to have his beloved grant him grace. The choice to use “grace” (Line 4) comes from medieval romances that argue for a secular religion of love. The beloved woman is situated high above her male suitor as a divine being who can extend grace. Granting grace is granting love, or consenting to a romance. Rather than grace being oneness with God, grace in this poem is the oneness of being in a romantic couple.
As art, poetry and painting also portray or represent an emotional state. Writing poetry is seeking “fit words to paint the blackest face of woe” (Line 5). The speaker is trying to find the best words to convey his sorrow and does so by using a metaphor to compare the craft of writing to how a painter tries to find the right shades. Poetry and paintings use faces, or how someone looks, to convey emotions—physical features convey emotional states. Sidney’s fictional Arcadia includes a painting of a woman causing men to fall in love with her. Reading and looking at paintings are visual activities, and in Sidney’s work, love is located in the eyes.
At the end of the poem, Sidney’s final function of art is channeling a muse. The words of his muse are the last line of the poem; his muse finally speaks to him, and he completes the first sonnet in Astrophil and Stella. The muse is the coauthor of Sidney’s poetry, offering the final rhyme and meter of the sonnet and creating a poem that can now be viewed as art.
Producing Poetry as Bearing Children
In “Sonnet 1,” Sidney presents the idea of the male poet giving birth to his creation. This is described as a natural act and set up in opposition with scholarly endeavors. In this view, male pregnancy is the condition of the poet (who is the speaker in “Sonnet 1”) being enlarged by creativity and invention. Scholar Katherine Eisaman Mauss writes about the phenomenon of male renaissance poets using birthing metaphors in her essay “A Womb of His Own.” Pregnancy and birth are seen as generative powers, ones that male renaissance poets identify with in their acts of creation (Eisaman Mauss, Katherine. “A Womb of His Own: Male Renaissance Poets in the Female Body.” Printing and Parenting in Early Modern England, Routledge, 2005). Sidney is one of many poets of his era who compared writing poetry to bearing children.
After the volta, when “Sonnet 1” moves between studying and creativity, the latter is associated with nature and children. The very concept of invention, or imagination, is “Nature’s child [who] fle[es] step-dame Study’s blows” (Line 10). Personified nature, with the capitalized “N” indicating that the name is a proper noun, gives birth to creative energy. That energy resists being beaten down by research. Invention must be free to frolic in the literal, rather than metaphoric, “fresh and fruitful showers” (Line 8), or play in the rain. Male poets becoming attuned to the natural world leads to innovating their craft. Furthermore, studying, the other personified proper noun, is a parent to invention by marriage, not by blood; Study is a stepmother—not someone who gave birth to creativity but who merely tries to rule it.
Like nature, male poets can be pregnant and give birth to invention. The speaker describes his state of being full of words and ideas as being pregnant: “Thus great with child to speak, and helpless in my throes” (Line 12). The speaker’s throes are akin to labor pains, indicating that he is ready to birth his ideas despite struggling. To bring his poetry into the world, his muse must aid in the delivery—and the resulting creation is birthed from “[his] heart” (Line 14).
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