Chapter 3 - The English Sonnet 1
Everything has to find its way into a place from another through a conduit. In the case of the sonnet, it came to England via Wyatt (not Earp) and Surrey. Thomas Wyatt is the originator of the English sonnet. Though he used Italian models he introduced the sestet with a new rhyme scheme of cdcd ee mostly that was significant as it led to the development of the English sonnet as a variant on the Petrarchan one into three quatrains and a couplet. Influenced by Petrarch, Dante, and others he wanted to raise English to the same level as Italian and other European languages and introduced personal experiences into his poetry. He also wrote of unrequited love but his sonnets could also be satirical. The iambic pentameter was not yet in fashion and Wyatt tried terza rima and ottava rima in English, not to mention the alexandrine ( and the poulter's measure of twelve syllables) and the iambic tetrameter, and the fourteener, as well as many other forms like the Rondeau from France and Italy but his sonnets found their mark and were welcomed hugely to the nation's bosom although he was the bridge and came before the Elizabethan Age and made English poetry for the first time perhaps, under the influence of Chaucer, both readable and clear. He was supposed to have had a love affair with Anne Boleyn - the same one who was Henry VIII's paramour and a brunette put in prison for adultery with five men who were all executed with her except for Wyatt who was one of them, fortunately for him, and the juicy part of this section is he may have seen her being executed from his jail window - and was imprisoned several times but also was an ambassador and man of the court under kings, as well as Cromwell's trusted employee, all of which worked both in his favour and against him; a very interesting life, in short. He became famous through the landmark anthology Tottel's Miscellany, and for his work on Petrarch, letting loose in England a torrent or storm of sonnets thenceforth that created a great set of poems, if ever there was one.
I find no peace and all my war is done,
I fear and hope, I burn and freeze like ice,
I fly above the wind, yet can I not arise,
And nought I have and all the world I seson;
That loseth nor locketh holdeth me in prison;
And holdeth me not; yet can I scape nowise,
Nor letteth me live nor die at my devise,
And yet of death it giveth me occasion.
Without eyen I see; and without tongue I plain:
I desire to perish, and yet I ask health;
I love another: and thus I hate myself;
I feed me in sorrow; and laugh in all my pain:
Likewise displeaseth me both death and life,
And my delight is causer of this strife.
The English comes from the first half of the 16th century so is a bit strange to us and in some parts not fully clear but on the whole it is a delightful sonnet. To make it clear I have tried my hand at making it modern for all of you. But it also arrests our attention as it talks of his prison stints.
I find no peace and all my war is done,
I fear and hope, I burn and freeze like ice,
I fly above the wind, yet can I not arise,
And nought I have and all the world I (seize on);
That losses nor locks hold me in prison;
And holds me not; yet can I escape in nowise,
Nor lets me live nor die at my device,
And yet of death it gives me occasion.
Without eyes I see; and without tongue, I complain:
I desire to perish, and yet I ask health;
I love another: and thus I hate myself;
I feed me in sorrow; and laugh in all my pain:
Alike displeases me both death and life,
And my delight is the cause of this strife.
A delightful sonnet, to repeat, about his "Delight" or mistress/love all in oxymoron with a classic cddc ee ending in terms of rhyme and mostly in iambic lines of ten or eleven or twelve syllables of two lines each. What I mean is in the couplet if the first line has ten syllables the second will too and if the third has eleven the next one will too and if one has twelve the next one will have twelve too. It also arrests us by bringing in the knowledge of how he felt about his prison stints.
I love the history of the sonnet and am indebted to Dante, Cavalcanti, Rafael's lost sonnets for his mistress Margherita, Michaelangelo and Wyatt and many, many others as these chapters will gradually unfold and it would not have been possible for me to come to my own experiments with the form if not for ALL of them.
Wyatt wrote only 31 sonnets and ten are more or less translations from Petrarch, if I remember rightly, which was his tribute to the master, but the mark he left is deep and still felt even in Kerala from which it will spread again to India and the world due to some key Indian sonneteers ending with me, as of now.
http://www.shakespeares-sonnets.com/Archive/Wyatt2.htm
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