The Concept of Form in Sidney's Sonnets from Astrophil and Stella - Book Report/Review Example

 The Concept of Form in Sidney's Sonnets from Astrophel and Stella A reading of Astrophil and Stella in which the focus is shifted from the frustrations of earthly desire to the ideal of heavenly love is supported by the form of the sequence. Indeed, the form reveals a perspective that would render ridiculous any solely earth-bound strife. Just as the view from the heavens at the end of Chaucer Troilus and Criseyde recasts a human tragedy as divine comedy, so the profound semantic implication of the form of Astrophil and Stella makes the story of its lovers literally universal, and leads the reader from the body to the spirit. The web of numbers around which the poems of the sequence are organized connects the tribulations of the protagonists to the harmony of heaven the common source of all beauties from celestial music to the human soul. The number 108 is undeniably involved in the formal arrangement of the sequence, being the total for both sonnets and song stanzas (as well as the remarkable series of metrical and thematic groupings itemized by Professor Fowler in his short but impressively thorough treatment of Astrophil and Stella from a numerological perspective), but it is only part of an intricately interconnected scheme1. Both Professors Fowler and Roche, the only critics to have written on Sidney's form patterns in any detail, follow Adrian Benjamin's explanation of the presence of the many groups of 108 in the sequence--that the number is a further reference to Penelope, Lady Rich, dependent on an allusion to Homer's Penelope, her 108 suitors and a game that they played. The form of Astrophil and Stella is arranged according to a proportional scheme, one that incorporates within the groups of 108 a series of marked points that represent perfect musical intervals. The poems thus arranged would, according to Renaissance theories, achieve an intrinsic beauty, just as a face, song, or building that partook of the same harmonious ordering would shine out amongst those that clashed with this true source of all beauty. Since the harmonic intervals occur within groups of 108 units-a number which, as derived from Plato's calculations of the World Soul the individual manifestations of harmony, beautiful in themselves, are connected directly to the particular proportions of the fabric of the cosmos, and of the human soul constructed according to the same plan. Astrophil and Stella is, in effect, a map of the heavens, or of the soul its proportions both animate the poetic world displayed and frame the characters presented in their proper place within the divine scheme. The subject of the sequence, presented in such a manner, is not vanity but truth. Although Plato describes his World Soul as a three-dimensional construction, the ratios involved in its construction are those initially calculated on a Pythagorean monochord--clearly, it makes no sense to attempt a three-dimensional composition when one's medium is poetry and it was the proportions that were of most importance to Plato, rather than the direction or physical orientation of their components. One may conceive of the application of these proportional divisions to a sonnet sequence in two ways: the first is to consider a group of poems, differentiated at each end by some structural mark (the ends of the sequence, say, or the ends of a series of poems in the same stanzaic pattern) to be the stretched string of a monochord, the length of the string being the number of poetic units (sonnets, stanzas, or lines). This group of poems, or 'string', might be 'stopped' at a point along its length by, for example, the beginning of a song, or some metrical anomaly, which would then represent a particular pitch above the fundamental a musical fifth, for instance, being formed when the string is plucked while held one third of the way along its length. The second way to conceive of the harmonic divisions of the sequence would be to treat the differentiated group of poetic units as an octave that could be divided by similar means into tetrachords, or tones, by counting equal divisions of the whole--under this scheme, the fifth would occur seven-twelfths of the way through the group. This latter method is less in tune with the Platonic system since it requires adjustment according to the contemporary conception of modes and the regularity of the division of the octave; it does, however, yield some interesting results when applied to Astrophil and Stella, and--as we have seen Sidney appears to have been willing to alter traditional interpretations of Platonic lore in order to fit his scheme to contemporary music theory. Once a particular number has been identified as significant within the sequence according to its harmonic division, it is possible to demonstrate its significant occurrence elsewhere, and when these occurrences tally with other structural emphases, the importance of the number to the poet becomes more obvious. Sidney's thirty-two poems in Certaine Sonets, then, appear to have been arranged in a pattern involving the same set of numbers as that of Astrophil and Stella. Thirty-two, marked in Astrophil and Stella by the invocation to Morpheus, is the half-way point of sixty-three, and the thirteen true sonnets of the sequence reflect the frequent groups of thirteen in Astrophil and Stella also. These sonnets are irregularly divided on the page, and their divisions total thirty-five, a row total of the Lambda formula, subsequently to be distinguished by Robert Sidney in the total of sonnets in his manuscript sequence. Not counting the poem by Dyer that is added to make sense of Sidney's reply, but including the extra couplet added to the final stanza of Certaine Sonets 17 and counting the doubled stanzas of Certaine Sonets 23 as two units each, the unit total of the sequence is 108, matching the sonnet and stanza totals of Astrophil and Stella. The much smaller scale of Certaine Sonets, and its predominantly pre-composed poems do not lend themselves to a form of the elaboracy of Astrophil and Stella but some level of intricacy has been achieved most noticeably in the cumulative total of song stanzas that causes the key points of 54 and 63 to fall at the ends of consecutive songs. This connection of the form of Astrophil and Stella to that of Certaine Sonets has great bearing on the interpretation of the later sequence. First, it refutes once and for all the notion that the patterns of 108 in Astrophil and Stella exist to compliment Penelope Rich, since Certaine Sonets, arranged in 108 units, was complete before Sidney could have become friendly with her. Also, four of the poems are addressed to a woman who, if Ringler is correct in identifying her ailment as smallpox, could not have been Lady Rich. Second, the first two poems of Certaine Sonets describing the speaker's submission to, and subsequent domination by, love were written with the knowledge that the sequence ended with the rejection of worldly love, and the determination of the speaker to dedicate himself to the 'Eternall Love' of heaven. Although we should not seek the physical attachment of these final sonnets to Astrophil and Stella as was first suggested by Fox Bourne, the connection in form between the two sequences gives compelling evidence to support a reading of Astrophil and Stella that leads to the same conclusion. The repetition in the sonnet sequences of Fulke Greville and Robert Sidney of the elaborate system of proportions that governs the structure of Astrophil and Stella shows more than respectful imitation: it depends on precise formal analysis and the calculated restatement of sophisticated theoretical notions. Greville and Robert Sidney must have understood what Philip Sidney was doing, and why he was doing it. If we accept the existence of this system as witnessed by the forms of these sequences, then it remains for us to appreciate its import. Although such meticulous arrangements of poems that already bear witness to considerable lyrical and narrative complexity cannot have been recognized, without either guidance from the author or an awareness of what kind of pattern to look for, by all those with access to copies of the sequences, the form implies far graver concerns than can be bound by flirtatious wit or technical bravado. These readings propose an elevation in the status of the Renaissance sonnet sequence from that of an elegant accomplishment in a purely literary fad, to one of closer involvement in higher philosophical, and mathematical, concerns. Bibliography Philip Sidney, Mona Wilson, 1931. Astrophel & Stella; Nonesuch Press Read More