Sonnets from the Portuguese 43
How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.
I love thee to the depth and breadth and height
My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight
For the ends of being and ideal grace.
I love thee to the level of every day’s
Most quiet need, by sun and candle-light.
I love thee freely, as men strive for right;
I love thee purely, as they turn from praise.
I love thee with the passion put to use
In my old griefs, and with my childhood’s faith.
I love thee with a love I seemed to lose
With my lost saints. I love thee with the breath,
Smiles, tears, of all my life; and, if God choose,
I shall but love thee better after death.
By Elizabeth Barret Browning
As you know, this is one of my all time favorites. I am sure this has appeared on our blog a few times yet and it continues to excite me when I see it listed. To me, Browning is my truest definition when I think of the sonnet. A master at the craft of grace, but yet so much thought and experience. Unlike a lot of the descriptions of love we have read this, to me, is one of the purest, most honest and simplistically romantic. The reader feels the love she describes as a deeper, more wise type of love as she passes over the stage of cliché norms that we often criticize other poets for (the fleeting love...!). It is a love that carries her into another time.
ReplyDeleteAJ, I have to respectfully disagree with you here.
ReplyDeleteI don't believe her, or I don't want to believe. I keep looking for a clue. The childhood faith? the love she seemed to lose? or God's choice? Do men freely strive for right? (Atwood writes novels about how they don't, The Handmaid's Tale I'm currently reading.) She will love thee better after death. I love the ambiguity at the end! After he dies or after she dies?
It feels too cliche, like she knows it, as Shakespeare knew it. She knows her love will know it too. Maybe that is my clue. She knows her lover will know she is messing with him. Is that the purity? A joyful and playful love. I'll love you ever more if you would just die.
AJ, I'm probably wrong, but i still like my interpretation.
Deletecontent://media/external/file/30107
The more and more I reread this poem the more I love it for the exact reasons that you do not. I was just listening to The History of Literature Podcast, as you recommended, and finished the episode on Emily Dickinson (listening to EBB now!) and he talked about how a lot of the power of Dickinson's writing is contained in the first line or question of her poems. They are the titles that we come to know her poetry by, but she only actually "titled" about 10 out of the 1800 poems that she wrote. If we stopped reading at this first line or question that is all we would really need to know about the entire poem- the power lies in the summarical (just made that word up, I think) nature of these lines and here, with EBB, you see exactly the same thing. "How do I love thee? Let me count the ways."
DeleteIt is so perfect...and I think it is the question that drives so much of what lives inside of us on a daily basis. How do I love poetry, how do I love fitness, how do I love my lover...well, let me count the ways by showing you how I live me life. It's so utterly fascinating and unlike Shakespeare, I don't FEEL the cliché when I read EBB. Maybe this is simply a lack of understanding, research or mere relatability (word?) from the woman's perspective versus a man's or sexual orientation or language...I'm not really sure.
EBB and Robert Browning were well into their middle age when courting and marrying (just looked up- she was 38 years old when she met RB who was 6 years younger) and I think that, for me, also takes a different form of understanding within the poetry. At that point in their lives there is no need to feel the falsity of adolescent love like so many of us experience...there is just the simple need to understand more, explore more about something so simply honest; "I love thee to the level of every day’s Most quiet need"...although I just read that their courtship was carried out in secret from her father still, so maybe my point loses validity lol.
I thought of our talks on freedom and liberty when going over the middle of the poem and how it could relate to cultural perspective and choice. "I love thee freely" without limitations or expectation...because what we have is a singular choice day after day after day....and I read "as men strive for right" as the right or self honesty, self teacher/Divine within that is truth versus thinking of right in terms of a society morality. More the morality of the Self. Probably one of me current favorite topics of interest.
We see the mention of "God" here and "childhood's faith" and it makes me want to read her biography to see how her life defined these terms for her. I think that is so much of the majesty of my interest lately and why I yearn to get to know the person behind the writer (or podcasts!) because the perspective makes all the difference in the world...even if we can or cannot always know the truth of it.
I cannot click on the link you sent in your message above. And remember- there are no rules to poetry, so you can't be wrong or write, but I can absolutely still be in massive love with this poem and EBB.