I am fairly sure I have never received a ‘compliment’ in which I believed that formed itself in words and metaphors, for these things are essentially fictive and their truth at the same remove from simple belief as anything else significant that is still composed of fictions. We can’t live without fictions but we should not rely on them. This thought the incomparable Shakespeare built in Sonnet 130, in one of those playful run of sonnets in which he addressed a female lover – his love sonnets addressed to a male are more shifty than playful, as is the male lover (‘prick’d out for women’s pleasure’). I give the text of Sonnet 130 below, though it is one of his best known – such that many used to recite it, when teaching Shakespeare was considered necessary.This queer translation of that sonnet raises so many more issues than the playful original. Well here goes with my attempt at queer translation:
My hot man's eyes are nothing like the sun;
Rhinos are far more red than his lips' red;
If snow be white, why then his chest is dun;
If hairs be wires, black wires grow on his head.
I have seen lilies damask'd, varied white,
But no such lilies see I in his cheeks;
And in some odours is there more delight
Than in the scent that from his deep pit reeks.
I love to hear him speak, yet well I know
That bagpipes hath a far more pleasing sound;
I grant I never saw a gay god go;
My man's feet, when they walk, tread on the ground.
And yet, in humans, I think my love as rare
As any they belied with false compare.
Some of the tricks change the ambiguities entirely. The non-binary ‘they’ in the last couple seems as likely to nominate the endless class of those who use overweight edition metaphorically comparisons and similes, as speak of the object I love, yet the ambiguity in ‘my love’ stays where it is. Does it speak of the person I love or the feeling of love within me and hence mine. It is therefore still the biggest most fictive hyperbole in the poem. But I think the wiry hears on this lad’s head are delightful, in ways not so on the woman in Sonnet 130.
The man I imagine is, moreover, more crudely human than Shakespeare’s ‘mistress’: perhaps the male equivalent of Swift’s Stella.
But the best compliment anyone can give is their love and stay true to it. My husband is nothing like the man in the joke-poem above, but I value his love so. IT IS THE BEST COMPLIMENT I WILL EVER RECEIVE.
With love
Steven xxxxxxx
Appendix: Sonnet 130
My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun;
Coral is far more red than her lips' red;
If snow be white, why then her breasts are dun;
If hairs be wires, black wires grow on her head.
I have seen roses damasked, red and white,
But no such roses see I in her cheeks;
And in some perfumes is there more delight
Than in the breath that from my mistress reeks.
I love to hear her speak, yet well I know
That music hath a far more pleasing sound;
I grant I never saw a goddess go;
My mistress, when she walks, treads on the ground.
And yet, by heaven, I think my love as rare
As any she belied with false compare.
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