Let me not to the marriage if true minds (Sonnet 116)
In my opinion the speaker in the poem seems to be talking to another man. He is comparing how love make people act irrationally, "Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks", (line 9).
Love is hard once it gets tied to the minds of two people because it also can married their minds making them believe that they really love each other even after death.
The speaker wants to explain that sometimes love can cause death and therefore that it can be the end of that love which does not truly exists.
What lips my lips have kissed, and where, and why
I think that the speaker is remembering the loves she had when she was young. She also is remembering how much she like the physical contact, "What lips my lips have kissed, and where, and why", (line 1).
She knows that she is not young like before so she cannot attract young loves anymore.
When she says, "Thus in the winter stands the lonely tree",(line 9) she refers to the end of her young years and the beginning of her adult life. She just knows now that she cannot not join the passionate love of her youth either.
The speaker has good and bad memories of her youth, "And in my heart there stirs a quiet pain",(line 6).
I she remembers all the years that have already passed around her whole life.
LIVED DOMESTICITIES
Excellent observation! How do we know that the speaker in Shakespeare's sonnet is speaking to a man? So being in love is equivalent to being brainwashed?
ReplyDeleteDo you thinks this is a cultural stereotype that 'older' people "cannot [not?] join the passionate love of ...youth"? Or are you saying, since you use the double negative- cannot not- that in fact all people can be/are passionte?