Pablo Neruda’s “My ugly love” and William Shakespeare’s “Sonnet 130” are commonly well-known to describe beauty in a way hardly anyone would write: through the truth. It’s a popular fact that many modern-day poets compose poems that make love seem perfect and use phrases that often costume the truth by masking true beauty with words. Yet, Shakespeare and Neruda, both sincere people, chose to write about what love really is, it matters more what’s on the inside than what is found on the outside. The theme of true beauty and love are found through Shakespeare and Neruda’s uses of reflection of imagery, uses of organized structure, and uses of sensory devices to describe the meaning of beauty and love.
The imagery, shown in both Shakespeare and Neruda’s poems, contain similarities between negative and positive imagery. To start off, Neruda’s poem is constantly interchanging between negative and positive verses. For example, the first quatrain of Neruda’s poem entirely depicts the mentioned juxtaposition with “My ugly, you’re a messy chestnut./ My beauty, you are pretty as the wind./ Ugly: your mouth is big enough for two mouths./ Beauty: your kisses are as fresh as melons.” This example uses two different types of poetic devices: metaphor and simile. Here, the metaphors are used to describe the ugly, while on the other hand, the simile is used to describe beauty. These two devices add to the understanding that the metaphors for the ugly are meant to make readers realize an over exaggerated view of the speaker’s reality in regards to his lover, and the similes for the beauty are meant for readers to show how the speaker really sees love. In contrast, Shakespeare’s sonnet contains twice as much negative imagery; however, there is h...
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...en’t 100% flawless. However, if it is meant to be, its possible to look over the imperfections and have a true love story.
Today some people say that love is blind, but in William Shakespeare’s “Sonnet 130” and Pablo Neruda’s “My Ugly Love,” they understand and see its honesty. Inside their poems they tell love like it is: imperfect and full of flaws. Needless to say, Shakespeare and Neruda had no apparent trouble conveying the true meaning behind beauty and love through their usage of reflection against positive and negative imagery, the usage of an orderly structure, and usage of sensory devices. If there is one thing that someone could learn through the work of these poets, it’s that beauty lies further than just the appearance on the outside; once someone else can realize this, only then will they discover the true significance that beauty brings to love.
Thus the illusion of beauty is still possible and even Gorgeous displays emotion despite knowing this “she adores her work from a distance for such a long time and it makes her cry”. Therefore, the irony in this story still exists for Gorgeous to end up being in a relationship with an artist. The personification of beauty continues as Wels’ remarks “Their relationship is the usual kind in which beauty and appreciation are dancing partners”. As she becomes a ‘model’, again ‘stillness’ is idealised as the trademark of beauty. As a result, the humour in Wels’ story also becomes tragic with Gorgeous’ realisation that beauty is fabricated and that the most beautiful are those that are
Can a simple emotion such as love be regarded as one of the greatest weapons to create or attain power? It’s a renowned fact that human beings are by nature designed to need, crave, and even require love as part of their survival mechanisms. It comes to no surprise that one of the first accounts of antique poetry maintains love and the craving for it as its main theme; thereby, reinforcing the deep importance that it upholds in the lives of many individuals. Sappho’s “Deathless Aphrodite” clearly epitomizes the suffering and bitterness that arises from an unrequited love. In Sappho’s case, which portrays the case of many, she constantly finds herself in loneliness and despair for though she tries repeatedly, she is only let down recurrently as no one reciprocates the love she gives. It is only the Greek goddess Aphrodite, who holds
Love has the power to do anything. Love can heal and love can hurt. Love is something that is indescribable and difficult to understand. Love is a feeling that cannot be accurately expressed by a word. In the poem “The Rain” by Robert Creeley, the experience of love is painted and explored through a metaphor. The speaker in the poem compares love to rain and he explains how he wants love to be like rain. Love is a beautiful concept and through the abstract comparison to rain a person is assisted in developing a concrete understanding of what love is. True beauty is illuminated by true love and vice versa. In other words, the beauty of love and all that it entails is something true.
As the last speaker, and the most important one, Socrates connects his ideas with Diotima of Mantinea’s story of Love’s origin, nature and purpose. Different from the earlier five speakers who regard Love as an object and praise different sides of it, Socrates, referring to Diotima’s idea, considers Love as a pursuit of beauty gradually ranging from “physical beauty of people in general” (Symposium, Plato, 55) to the “true beauty” (55). The first five speeches bond with each other. Each of them mentions the opinions of the former in order to either support or against them. However, just like the elements of a beautiful picture, they fail to show us the integration of love.
Some may say love is just an emotion while others may say it is a living and breathing creature. Songs and poems have been written about love for hundreds and thousands of years. Love has been around since the beginning of time, whether someone believes in the Big Bang or Adam and Eve. Without love, there wouldn’t be a world like it is known today. But with love, comes pain with it. Both William Shakespeare and Max Martin know and knew this. Both ingenious poets wrote love songs of pain and suffering as well as blossoming, newfound love. The eccentric ideal is both writers were born centuries apart. How could both know that love and pain work hand in hand when they were born 407 years apart? Love must never change then. Love survives and stays its original self through the hundreds and thousands of years it has been thriving. Though centuries apart, William Shakespeare and Max Martin share the same view on love whether i...
...uty which is impossible for any woman or man to match. Campion's poem reflects this impossible ideal that society inflicts on us. This woman in There is a Garden in Her Face could never really live up to the image that the speaker has created of her. The image is false, and so is his love because he is only focusing on her outward appearance. The speaker in Shakespeare's sonnet clearly is not in love with his mistress' looks. Everything about her is contrary to society's standards, but he understands the absurdity of these standards and rejects them. There is more to his mistress than meets the eye, and that is why he truly loves her.
That means, the approaches of poet’s love remain the same. In one place, he portrays beauty as conveying a great responsibility in the sonnets addressed to the young man. The poet has experienced what he thinks of as "the marriage of true minds," also known as true love, that his love remains strong, and that he believes that it’s eternal. Nothing will stop their love, as in the symbols like all the ships, stars and stormy seas that fill the landscape of the poem and so on what can affect to their love. The poet is too much attracted with the young man’s beauty, though this indicates to something really bad behavior. But in another place, Shakespeare makes fun of the dark lady in sonnet 130. He explains that his lover, the dark lady, has wires for hair, bad breath, dull cleavage, a heavy step, pale lips and so on, but to him, real love is, the sonnet implies, begins when we accept our lovers for what they are as well as what they are not. But other critics may not agree with this and to them, beauty may define to something
While Lord Byron's poem enhances the beauty of love, Keats' does the opposite by showing the detriments of love. In “She Walks in Beauty,” the speaker asides about a beautiful angel with “a heart whose love is innocent” (3, 6). The first two lines in the first stanza portray a defining image:
Sonnet 130 openly mocks the traditional love sonnets of the time. This is, perhaps, made most apparent through the use of subversive comparisons and exaggerated similes. The intention of a subversive comparison is to mimic a traditional comparison yet highlight the opposite purpose. Whereas his contemporaries would compare their love’s beauty to alabaster or pearls, Shakespeare notes, “If snow be white, why then her breasts are dun” (3), therefore intentionally downplaying the beauty of his mistress. Later he states, “...in some perfumes there is more delight / than in the breath that from my mistress reeks” (7-8). Both of these exemplify that Shakespeare ridicules the traditional love sonnet by employing the same imagery to convey opposite intentions.
The Symposium, The Aeneid, and Confessions help demonstrate how the nature of love can be found in several places, whether it is in the mind, the body or the soul. These texts also provide with eye-opening views of love as they adjust our understanding of what love really is. By giving us reformed spectrum of love, one is able to engage in introspective thinking and determine if the things we love are truly worthy of our sentiment.
The speaker uses metaphors to describe his mistress’ eyes to being like the sun; her lips being red as coral; cheeks like roses; breast white as snow; and her voices sounding like music. In the first few lines of the sonnet, the speaker view and tells of his mistress as being ugly, as if he was not attracted to her. He give...
In this essay I would like to emphasize different ideas of how love is understood and discussed in literature. This topic has been immortal. One can notice that throughout the whole history writers have always been returning to this subject no matter what century people lived in or what their nationality was.
Neruda begins his sonnet in a most unusual manner. He states in the first few lines ways in which he does not love his companion. He does not love her as if she were “the salt-rose, topaz, or arrow of carnations.” These are all examples of beautiful things that are to be admired. Each one is a bright and colorful breed of rose. The poem is not implying that this person is unattractive. Rather, it is simply stating the unimportance of her appearance in relation to his love for her. The beauty within her soul charms him. The narrator is completely captivated with this person. Neruda uses emotions to portray love in his poem. “Sonnet XVII” does not describe a love for someone who has done kind things or someone who has been there emotionally, mentally, and physically for another. It describes a love that is illogically based on intense affection alone.
Will's beloved is "more lovely and more temperate (18.2)" than a summer's day; "the tenth Muse (38.9);" "'Fair,' 'kind,' and 'true' (105.9);" the sun that shines "with all triumphant splendor (33.10)." We've heard all this before. This idealization of the loved one is perhaps the most common, traditional feature of love poetry. Taken to its logical conclusion, however, idealized love has some surprising implications.
Firstly Neruda uses contrasting Images as a key expression of his similarly contrasting feelings and emotions of love and horror. This is presented by the use of diction in the quotation “How terrible and brief my desire of you! How difficult and drunken, how tensed and avid.” From the words “terrible” and “brief” showcasing the feeling of an abysmal experience, one which was short. This is paired with the word “desire” which suggests a want, or longing for, and can possibly be used to