We know that one of the strange abilities that can come about in writing sonnets is that we can tell stories with them, either in just a single sonnet or by linking them together, as Berryman proved. The earliest example is perhaps by the great Edmund Spenser who tells us a love story in his famous sonnet that is also about mortality but not any the less enchanting for it.
One day I wrote her name upon the strand,
But came the waves and washed it away:
Again I wrote it with a second hand,
But came the tide, and made my pains his prey.
"Vain man," said she, "that dost in vain assay,
A mortal thing so to immortalize;
For I myself shall like to this decay,
And eke my name be wiped out likewise."
"Not so," (quod I) "let baser things devise
To die in dust, but you shall live by fame:
My verse your vertues rare shall eternize,
And in the heavens write your glorious name:
Where whenas death shall all the world subdue,
Our love shall live, and later life renew."
— Edmund Spenser, Amoretti, Sonnet 75 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spenserian_sonnet)
This is a complete love story, besides foreshadowing Shakespeare's "so long lives this and this gives life to thee." Pushkin, influenced by Lord Byron and sonnets pushed this notion further by writing a whole novel in sonnets, the famed Eugene Onegin and this bred the Russian or Pushkin sonnet or Onegin sonnet as it is called. To think of writing a novel in sonnets is a mind-boggling idea and kudos to him for doing it proving it is not for nothing he is called the greatest perhaps of the Russian writers.
I quote a long section here out of my desire to explain what I mean which is Tatiana's dream as it explains the power that can be unleashed if sonnets are linked together into a narrative or for creating a narrative.
XI A dreadful sleep Tattiana sleeps. She dreamt she journeyed o’er a field All covered up with snow in heaps, By melancholy fogs concealed. Amid the snowdrifts which surround A stream, by winter’s ice unbound, Impetuously clove its way With boiling torrent dark and gray; Two poles together glued by ice, A fragile bridge and insecure, Spanned the unbridled torrent o’er; Beside the thundering abyss Tattiana in despair unfeigned Rooted unto the spot remained. XII As if against obstruction sore Tattiana o’er the stream complained; To help her to the other shore No one appeared to lend a hand. But suddenly a snowdrift stirs, And what from its recess appears? A bristly bear of monstrous size! He roars, and “Ah!” Tattiana cries. He offers her his murderous paw; She nerves herself from her alarm And leans upon the monster’s arm, With footsteps tremulous with awe Passes the torrent But alack! Bruin is marching at her back! XIII She, to turn back her eyes afraid, Accelerates her hasty pace, But cannot anyhow evade Her shaggy myrmidon in chase. The bear rolls on with many a grunt: A forest now she sees in front With fir-trees standing motionless In melancholy loveliness, Their branches by the snow bowed down. Through aspens, limes and birches bare, The shining orbs of night appear; There is no path; the storm hath strewn Both bush and brake, ravine and steep, And all in snow is buried deep. XIV The wood she enters—bear behind,— In snow she sinks up to the knee; Now a long branch itself entwined Around her neck, now violently Away her golden earrings tore; Now the sweet little shoes she wore, Grown clammy, stick fast in the snow; Her handkerchief she loses now; No time to pick it up! afraid, She hears the bear behind her press, Nor dares the skirting of her dress For shame lift up the modest maid. She runs, the bear upon her trail, Until her powers of running fail. XV She sank upon the snow. But Bruin Adroitly seized and carried her; Submissive as if in a swoon, She cannot draw a breath or stir. He dragged her by a forest road Till amid trees a hovel showed, By barren snow heaped up and bound, A tangled wilderness around. Bright blazed the window of the place, Within resounded shriek and shout: “My chum lives here,” Bruin grunts out. “Warm yourself here a little space!” Straight for the entrance then he made And her upon the threshold laid. XVI Recovering, Tania gazes round; Bear gone—she at the threshold placed; Inside clink glasses, cries resound As if it were some funeral feast. But deeming all this nonsense pure, She peeped through a chink of the door. What doth she see? Around the board Sit many monstrous shapes abhorred. A canine face with horns thereon, Another with cock’s head appeared, Here an old witch with hirsute beard, There an imperious skeleton; A dwarf adorned with tail, again A shape half cat and half a crane. XVII Yet ghastlier, yet more wonderful, A crab upon a spider rides, Perched on a goose’s neck a skull In scarlet cap revolving glides. A windmill too a jig performs And wildly waves its arms and storms; Barking, songs, whistling, laughter coarse, The speech of man and tramp of horse. But wide Tattiana oped her eyes When in that company she saw Him who inspired both love and awe, The hero we immortalize. Onéguine sat the table by And viewed the door with cunning eye. XVIII All bustle when he makes a sign: He drinks, all drink and loudly call; He smiles, in laughter all combine; He knits his brows—’tis silent all. He there is master—that is plain; Tattiana courage doth regain And grown more curious by far Just placed the entrance door ajar. The wind rose instantly, blew out The fire of the nocturnal lights; A trouble fell upon the sprites; Onéguine lightning glances shot; Furious he from the table rose; All arise. To the door he goes. XIX Terror assails her. Hastily Tattiana would attempt to fly, She cannot—then impatiently She strains her throat to force a cry— She cannot—Eugene oped the door And the young girl appeared before Those hellish phantoms. Peals arise Of frantic laughter, and all eyes And hoofs and crooked snouts and paws, Tails which a bushy tuft adorns, Whiskers and bloody tongues and horns, Sharp rows of tushes, bony claws, Are turned upon her. All combine In one great shout: she’s mine! she’s mine! XX “Mine!” cried Eugene with savage tone. The troop of apparitions fled, And in the frosty night alone Remained with him the youthful maid. With tranquil air Onéguine leads Tattiana to a corner, bids Her on a shaky bench sit down; His head sinks slowly, rests upon Her shoulder—Olga swiftly came— And Lenski followed—a light broke— His fist Onéguine fiercely shook And gazed around with eyes of flame; The unbidden guests he roughly chides— Tattiana motionless abides. XXI The strife grew furious and Eugene Grasped a long knife and instantly Struck Lenski dead—across the scene Dark shadows thicken—a dread cry Was uttered, and the cabin shook— Tattiana terrified awoke. She gazed around her—it was day. Lo! through the frozen windows play Aurora’s ruddy rays of light— The door flew open—Olga came, More blooming than the Boreal flame And swifter than the swallow’s flight. “Come,” she cried, “sister, tell me e’en Whom you in slumber may have seen.” XXII But she, her sister never heeding, With book in hand reclined in bed, Page after page continued reading, But no reply unto her made. Although her book did not contain The bard’s enthusiastic strain, Nor precepts sage nor pictures e’en, Yet neither Virgil nor Racine Nor Byron, Walter Scott, nor Seneca, Nor the Journal des Modes, I vouch, Ever absorbed a maid so much: Its name, my friends, was Martin Zadeka, The chief of the Chaldean wise, Who dreams expound and prophecies. XXIII Brought by a pedlar vagabond Unto their solitude one day, This monument of thought profound Tattiana purchased with a stray Tome of “Malvina,” and but three(56) And a half rubles down gave she; Also, to equalise the scales, She got a book of nursery tales, A grammar, likewise Petriads two, Marmontel also, tome the third; Tattiana every day conferred With Martin Zadeka. In woe She consolation thence obtained— Inseparable they remained. [Note 56: “Malvina,” a romance by Madame Cottin.] XXIV The dream left terror in its train. Not knowing its interpretation, Tania the meaning would obtain Of such a dread hallucination. Tattiana to the index flies And alphabetically tries The words bear, bridge, fir, darkness, bog, Raven, snowstorm, tempest, fog, Et cetera; but nothing showed Her Martin Zadeka in aid, Though the foul vision promise made Of a most mournful episode, And many a day thereafter laid A load of care upon the maid.
http://www.gutenberg.org/files/23997/23997-h/23997-h.htmNow if anyone read that carefully which I doubt they may have gathered exactly why Pushkin is great and also deliciously readable like his master Byron.
Pushkin predicts Lenski's death at Onegin's hands in Tatiana's dream and later Onegin kills Lenski in a duel but more tragically Pushkin himself died in a duel at the hands of a man Georges d'Anthes who loved his wife Natalya, in a duel, life mirroring art and making us mourn, as we mourn about another great poet, dramatist, and sonnet writer, Christopher Marlowe, for dying in a duel. If Pushkin has been immortalized by Tchaikovsky and later by Nabokov in translation it is no joke. That Vikram Seth was influenced by him and wrote the entire Golden Gate in Onegin sonnets is a worthy tribute. As Marjorie Perloff said if nothing else it drives us back to read Pushkin.
"After Eugene Onegin, I turned to Vikram Seth's novel in verse The Golden Gate (Random House, 1986), which is written entirely in the form of Onegin stanzas. And I mean entirely, from the dedication and table of contents to the "About the Author" note.
It's an astonishing homage from one writer to another, and an amazing performance in its own right. The Golden Gate's stanzas are fluid, witty, and follow the intricate Pushkinian rhyme scheme...while rarely landing with a thud on an obvious rhyme or stretching too far for a groan-worthy one, unless it's with an implied wink to the reader. (Seth does display a Nabokovian love of puns and wordplay, which he—just—manages not to overdo.) ...
Ultimately, despite its many virtues, The Golden Gate feels slighter than it should." https://exoticandirrational.blogspot.com/2013/10/reaching-end-of-line-vikram-seths.html
Seth might not be as great as Pushkin but he is great in his attempt. And for a poor Indian like me the dream of going to San Francisco and writing a novel about it in Onegin sonnets and being published by Faber and making it at one shot is all just that a dream, so he is someone I think many should look up to to aspire to be like.
But what is the Onegin sonnet? "Onegin stanza (Russian: онегинская строфа oneginskaya strofa), sometimes "Pushkin sonnet", refers to the verse form popularized (or invented) by the Russian poet Alexander Pushkin through his novel in verse Eugene Onegin. The work was mostly written in verses of iambic tetrameter with the rhyme scheme aBaBccDDeFFeGG, where the lowercase letters represent feminine rhymes (stressed on the penultimate syllable) and the uppercase representing masculine rhymes (stressed on the ultimate syllable). Score one for Seth for even attempting it, let alone pulling it off. Maybe I admire him being a small-town guy not being able to do anything of the kind.
Here is Seth trying to pull it off:
How ugly babies are! How heedless
Of all else than their bulging selves--
Like sumo wrestlers, plush with needless
Kneadable flesh--like mutant elves,
Plump and vindictively nocturnal,
With lungs determined and infernal
(A pity that the blubbering blobs
Come unequipped with volume knobs),
And so intrinsically conservative,.
A change of breast will make them squall
With no restraint or qualm at all.
Some think them cuddly, cute, and curvative.
Keep them, I say. Good luck to you;
No doubt you need to be one too.
(https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1986-04-06-bk-24942-story.html)
And what does MH Abrams say about sonnets?
"The stanza is just long enough to permit a fairly complex lyric development, yet so short and so exigent in its rhymes as to pose a standing challenge to the artistry of the poet. the rhyme pattern of the Petrarchan sonnet has on the whole favored a statement of problem, situation, or incident in the octave, with a resolution in the sestet. The English form sometimes uses a similar division of material, but often presents a repetition-with-variation of a statement in the three quatrains; the final couplet, however, usually imposes an epigrammatic turn at the end....
Following Petrarch's early example, a number of Elizabethan poets wrote sonnet sequences, or sonnet cycles, in which a series of sonnets are linked together by exploring the varied aspects of a relationship between lovers, or by indicating a development in that relationship which constitutes a kind of implicit plot."
https://web.ics.purdue.edu/~felluga/guide337.html#sonnet
It is this implicit plot that has been teased out by Pushkin and later by Vikram Seth and turned into not just explicit plots but whole novels, rewriting the meanings of sonnets, sonnet sequences, and the novel or narrative in verse, while also keeping in the international view Russian sonnets and Indian sonnets too, by way of their hard work and ingenuity, keeping the Aspidistra, to put it in a humorous manner, of sonnets, flying
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