Sonnet
The sonnet, also translated as "sonnet" from the Italian sonetto, Sonnet in English and sonnet in French, is a strictly structured form of lyric poetry that originated in Europe. It first became popular in Italy, where Petrarch's work brought it to perfection, also known as the "Petrarchan sonnet", and later spread to other European countries. Composed of two quatrains and two tercets, each line typically contains eleven syllables with the rhyme scheme ABBA ABBA CDE CDE or ABBA ABBA CDC CDC. Another type is called the "Shakespearean" or "Elizabethan" sonnet, consisting of three quatrains and a couplet, each line having ten syllables with the rhyme scheme ABAB CDCD EFEF GG.
Contents
History of the Sonnet
Sonnets in Various Countries
Italian Sonnets
English Sonnets
Modern Sonnets
Chinese Sonnets
Gift of Love
Song of the Waterwheel
Valley of Dreams
Thanks
New Songs of Life
Thinking of You II
You and Poetry
Necklace I
Necklace II
Necklace III
Your Beauty
Monument
Shakespeare - Selected Sonnets
SONNET 1
SONNET 2
SONNET 3
Development of the Sonnet during the Renaissance period
Since the advent of the Renaissance in Europe, this poetic form lost its widespread use. However, the Italian poet Petrarch became the most important representative in utilizing the sonnet form. He wrote 375 sonnets throughout his life, compiled into a collection titled "Canzoniere", dedicated to his lover Laura. In his sonnets, each was divided into two parts: the first part consisted of two quatrains, and the second part consisted of two tercets, arranged as four, four, three, three. The rhyme scheme was ABBA ABBA CDE CDE or ABBA ABBA CDC CDC. Each line contained eleven syllables, usually in iambic meter.
Petrarch's sonnets were neatly structured, with exquisite rhymes, mainly singing of love and expressing humanistic ideas. His works paved new ways for the development of European bourgeois lyric poetry in both content and form. Poets from the same era in Italy and later poets from other countries regarded Petrarch's poems as the standard for sonnets, emulating them extensively. Therefore, they were also referred to as "Petrarchan sonnets".
In the early 16th century, the sonnet form reached England, becoming very popular by the end of the 16th century. It had become the most popular poetic form in England, producing famous sonneteers like Sidney and Spenser. Shakespeare further developed and enriched this form, composing 154 sonnets in his lifetime. Shakespeare's sonnets altered the Petrarchan format, consisting of three quatrains and a couplet, arranged as four, four, four, two. The rhyme scheme was ABAB CDCD EFEF GG, with each line containing ten iambic syllables.
Shakespeare's sonnets took another step forward from Petrarch's, with more prominent and diverse themes, intricate twists and turns in thought, and flexible use of transitions. The final couplet often encapsulated the theme. Later, poets like Milton, Wordsworth, Shelley, and Keats also composed some excellent sonnets.
Italian Sonnets
Italian sonnets are divided into two sections, the first eight lines and then six. The rhyme scheme for the first eight lines is a-b-b-a, a-b-b-a. For the last six lines, there are two types: c-d-e-c-d-e or c-d-c-c-d-c. The ninth line not only changes the rhyme but often changes the subject or feeling as well.
The rules for Italian sonnets were established by Guittone d'Arezzo (1235-1294), who himself wrote nearly 300. The most famous early sonneteer was Francesco Petrarca (1304-1374). Other Italian poets also wrote sonnets, such as Dante Alighieri (1265-1321) and Guido Cavalcanti (~1250-1300).
English Sonnets
See: Shakespearean Sonnets
After the Italian sonnet was introduced to England, its structure changed. English sonnets consist of three quatrains followed by a couplet. The couplet is usually quite different from the preceding lines, changing more dramatically than the ninth line in the Italian form. The typical rhyme scheme for English sonnets is a-b-a-b, c-d-c-d, e-f-e-f, g-g, or a-b-a-b, b-c-b-c, c-d-c-d, e-e.
Ancient Sonnets
After the popularity of vernacular literature, sonnets became less common, though they were still written in the 19th and 20th centuries by poets like Arthur Rimbaud and Stéphane Mallarmé in France. There are now websites dedicated to publishing sonnets.
Chinese Sonnets
Representative poets include Feng Zhi and Bai Ma
In the early 1980s, Bai Ma (real name Ma Shixin), a playwright and poet from Inner Mongolia, created over a hundred Chinese sonnets, which were published in 1997 by the Faraway Press in a collection titled "Monument of Love". The author combined this foreign poetic form with traditional Chinese poetic aesthetics to create a style suitable for appreciation by ordinary Chinese readers. His poems are in three segments with the rhyme scheme: abba, abba, cdc.dcd. The style is characterized by natural, simple language, clear and smooth rhythm, rich in rationality, insight, fun, and philosophy, suitable for readers at all levels.
Selected excerpts from Bai Ma's sonnets: Gift of Love
An ancient Italian love song
Passed through Master Petrarch's singing
Bearing the fragrance of native soil and wild grasses
Calmly ascended to the elegant seat of poetry
The waves of the Adriatic Sea during the Renaissance
Also made this timeless and charming masterpiece
Row with delicate beauty
Fly to every corner of the world
A song filled with various new lyrics
Also supplements patches of desolate hearts
One melody blends with myriad emotions
And melts millions of lonely hearts
This warm and sweet fourteen-line poem
Is a gift of love bestowed by heaven upon the world
Song of the Waterwheel
I am a waterwheel by the river
Rotating endlessly without pause
Bringing clear water into fertile fields
Day and night, I sing a passionate song
When the river suddenly changes course and abandons me
From then on, I blindly rotate in the wind
Despairingly lamenting in the rain
The passionate song turns into a sorrowful one
Thirty years west of the river, thirty years east
The river returns to my side again
Hugging green waves, accompanied by spring breeze
Filling my spinning wheel blades with joy
My song becomes even more melodious and vivid
Because the passion born out of melancholy flows
Valley of Dreams
I do not wish to tell you about my past
I fear my gloomy memories
Will gather into clouds in your heart
Turning into a storm of wind and rain
I do not wish to delve into your domain
I fear if your heart's bud blossoms
It won't withstand frost and sun
Turning into a withered chrysanthemum of autumn
I do not wish to take shortcuts
There is no color on shortcut roads
I hope you are my endless maze
I am your never-ending music
We, in our mutually infatuated dream valley
Never approach, yet never separate
Gratitude
I love you so strangely
Like loving a ray of morning light on window curtains
Like loving a yellow oriole in tree shade
Afraid of losing, unable to express
I can only love you this way
Like the sun caressing the earth
Like the spring rain nurturing seeds
Spreading light and mist
Yet I still sincerely thank you
For awakening my dormant love
Recalling those days without love
What's the difference between living and dying
I love you so persistently, genuinely
Even if forever unattained, still wholeheartedly
New Song of Life
It is you who lifted me from despair
Casting light and heat into my cold heart room
Making my withering youth sprout green
How could I easily forget you
It is you who gave me inspiration for life
And handed me a new song for living
Filling my sorrowful life with joy
How could I love you just for myself
Love should be happiness in pursuit
Rather than satisfaction in attainment
Two lotus flowers blooming together
Rather than two grapevines entwining each other
It's sincere understanding, trust, and respect
It's happiness nurtured within each other's happiness
Thinking of You II
I think of you with my exploring instinct
Like an organism's need for air
Like the ocean embracing rivers
Like the earth orbiting the sun
I think of you with unwavering devotion
Like a believer praying before a sacred image
Like a scholar bowing before truth
Like a soldier fighting for justice
Thinking of you makes me wise and diligent
Changing the long-formed habit of laziness
Thinking of you makes me brave and confident
Encouraging me to open new paths and create wonders
This is love, the call and guidance of love
It surpasses the combined power of money and position
You and Poetry
Gazing at the night sky, I seek your wise eyes
The moonlight flows with poetic sentiment
The starry river flashes with poetic spirits
My heart ripples with poetic waves
At my desk, I cultivate poetic inspiration
Your graceful figure walks out of word fields
Your beautiful face appears between lines
Your laughter echoes in my mind
I cannot distinguish what is you and what is poetry
You and poetry have become one entity
Poetry has you, you have poetry
Like water and milk blended inseparably
Poetry beautifies you, you beautify poetry
Together they constitute a perfect unity
Necklace I
Each of my poems is like a pearl
Shining with holy glory
Embodied with loyal sentiments
Each is a token of love
I daily craft these pearls of poetry
Regardless of fatigue, never tired
Even neglecting daily life routines
Each records an act of love
I carefully inspect while crafting
To ensure no disharmonious colors mix
I reflect while crafting
To ensure no undiscovered flaws remain
I calculate while crafting
To determine when you will return
Necklace II
My friend, do you understand
What materials compose these pearls of poetry
And how they have been refined and processed
Let me explain to you
Your truth, goodness, and beauty are the basic elements
I fuse them with my blood and sweat, ignited by fiery love
Then place them all into the mold of art
If I had not met you
The flame of love would not have ignited
If I had not fallen in love with you
These raw materials would not have been refined
If there were no you in this world
There would be no pearl-like beautiful poems
Necklace III
I craft one pearl of poetry each day
Each is pure and bright
Each possesses unique characteristics
One more enchanting than the other
I aim to craft a hundred such pearls
Then use my ceaseless longing for you
To twist into a fine, resilient golden thread
Stringing them together in order
This will be an unparalleled necklace
Even the rarest treasures of ancient and modern times can only be its subordinates
Even if offered a hundred dazzling gold medals, I wouldn't exchange
Unless for your kind and beautiful heart
When the flowers bloom in spring
I will hang it around your neck with my own hands
Your Beauty
I always want to compare you to the moon
But how could the moon possibly match your beauty
Its beauty is external, not internal
Your beauty is consistent inside and out
I also want to compare you to the sun
But where is the sun's kindness compared to yours
It always burns people's skin dark
While you make people's inner strength burst forth
I'd best use a realistic brush
Faithfully record your sincerity and beauty
All things in the world change with time
But your beauty will spread day and night through my poems
Because the earth is a constantly rotating sphere
Where the sun sets here, it is people reading in daylight elsewhere
Monument
I am building a monument for you
Not made of bronze or white stone
Nor steel or cement
But of the essence of my lines of poetry
I am building a monument of beauty for you
Not built in squares or palaces
Nor on famous mountains or sacred places
But in the hearts of hundreds of thousands of people
Physical monuments may be solid
But will eventually be moved by the universe's rotation
Mental monuments may seem intangible
But will be inherited due to humanity's continuity
As long as life exists on Earth
My poems will carry your beauty forever
The sonnet, after being introduced to England and France from Italy in the mid-16th century, gradually became popular in many countries, transcending national and linguistic boundaries. As early as the 1920s, Wen Yiduo promoted it in his works "Research on Poetic Rhythm" and "Study of Regulated Verse", translating it as "sonnet". Later, poets of the Crescent Moon School borrowed and innovated upon it, with Xu Zhimo believing that borrowing the sonnet was "a convenient path to explore the flexibility of the Chinese language and examine the completeness and density of vernacular writing as well as another kind of pure 'verbal music'." Poets of the Crescent Moon School found congruence between Chinese and Western poetic forms in the sonnet, providing new insights for the creation of new poetry forms.
William Shakespeare - Selected Sonnets
SONNET 1
by William Shakespeare
From fairest creatures we desire increase,
That thereby beauty's rose might never die,
But as the riper should by time decease,
His tender heir might bear his memory;
But thou, contracted to thine own bright eyes,
Feed'st thy light's flame with self-substantial fuel,
Making a famine where abundance lies,
Thyself thy foe, to thy sweet self too cruel.
Thou that art now the world's fresh ornament
And only herald to the gaudy spring,
Within thine own bud buriest thy content
And, tender churl, mak'st waste in niggarding.
Pity the world, or else this glutton be,
To eat the world's due, by the grave and thee.
SONNET 2
by William Shakespeare
WHEN forty winters shall besiege thy brow
And dig deep trenches in thy beauty's field,
Thy youth's proud livery, so gazed on now,
Will be a tattered weed of small worth held:
Then being asked where all thy beauty lies,
Where all the treasure of thy lusty days,
To say within thine own deep-sunken eyes
Were an all-eating shame and thriftless praise.
How much more praise deserved thy beauty's use
If thou couldst answer, 'This fair child of mine
Shall sum my count and make my old excuse,'
Proving his beauty by succession thine.
This were to be new made when thou art old
And see thy blood warm when thou feel'st cold.
Shakespeare - Sonnet: Sonnet #3
SONNET 3
by William Shakespeare
LOOK in thy glass, and tell the face thou viewest
Now is the time that face should form another,
Whose fresh repair if now thou renewest,
Thou dost beguile the world, unbless some mother.
For where is she so fair whose uneared womb
Disdains the tillage of thy husbandry?
Or who is he so fond will be the tomb
Of his self-love, to stop posterity?
Thou art thy mother's glass, and she in thee
Calls back the lovely April of her prime;
So thou through windows of thine age shalt see,
Despite of wrinkles, this thy golden time.
But if thou live remembered not to be,
Die single, and thine image dies with thee.
The Development of Sonnets during the Renaissance Period
The first poet to adopt this poetic form and give it a strict structure was Jacopo da Lentini (birth year unknown, died approximately between 1246 and 1250), a member of the Sicilian School in medieval Italy. The sonnet has a fixed format. It consists of two parts: the first part includes two quatrains, and the second part includes two tercets, totaling fourteen lines. Each line typically contains eleven syllables in iambic meter. The end rhyme follows the pattern ABAB, ABAB, CDE, CDE. Along with ballads and short lyric poems, it was one of the popular forms of Italian lyric poetry at the time.
By the end of the 13th century, the use of sonnets expanded from lyrical poetry to narrative, didactic, political, and satirical poetry, and the rhyme scheme gradually changed to ABBA, ABBA, CDC, DCD, or ABBA, ABBA, CDC, EDE.
During the Renaissance, the poet Petrarch was the main representative of this form. He wrote over 300 sonnets in his lifetime. He carried on the traditions of the Sicilian School and the Dolce Stil Novo, expressing romantic feelings with harmonious sounds and rich colors, reflecting the changing emotions and ups and downs of characters, and infusing them with the spirit of the new era's humanism. Petrarch's sonnets were artistically more perfect and became an important poetic form emulated by poets in other countries, significantly influencing the development of European poetry. Therefore, the Italian sonnet is also known as the Petrarchan sonnet.
The sonnet flourished during the Italian Renaissance. Poets like Medici, Michelangelo, Boiardo, and Tasso were all outstanding sonnet writers. Later, it became a favored form among the Marinist and Arcadian schools. Early Romantic poets abolished traditional frameworks and pursued free and unrestrained poetic forms, causing the sonnet to fall out of favor for a time, but it revived in the latter half of the 19th century with poets like Carducci and D'Annunzio leaving behind excellent works. In the 20th century, it continued to be popular in poetic creation.
Under the influence of Italian Renaissance literature, the sonnet was introduced to France, England, Germany, and Spain, adapting to the characteristics of each country's language and producing different variants. Marot was the first to transplant the sonnet to France. The works of Lyon school poets such as Rabelais and the Pleiade poets Ronsard and Du Bellay made the sonnet one of the main poetic forms in France during the 16th century.
In the early 16th century, Surrey and Wyatt introduced the sonnet to England. The structure evolved into three quatrains and a couplet, with the rhyme scheme ABAB CDCD EFEF GG. Besides this type, other variations also emerged. By the end of the 16th century, the sonnet became one of the most popular poetic forms in England, producing famous sonneteers like Sidney and Spenser. Shakespeare further enriched and developed this form. His sonnet form (also known as the Elizabethan sonnet) consists of three quatrains and a couplet, characterized by vivid imagery, ingenious structure, strong musicality, and smooth transitions. The content is often summarized and the theme highlighted in the final couplet, expressing the ideals and sentiments of the emerging bourgeoisie. Later, poets like Milton, Wordsworth,