Deconstructive Reading of Sonnet 18

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Here is my new blog on Deconstructive reading of sonnet 18. This blog given by Dr. Dilip barad sir. Click here the some information about this blog.

What  is the meaning of Deconstruction:

Although Deconstruction has roots in Martin Heigegger's concept of Destruktion, to deconstruction is not to destroy. Deconstruction is always a double movement of simultaneous affirmation and undoing. It started out as a way of reading the history of metaphysics in Heidegger and Jacques Derrida, but was soon applied to the interpretation of literary, religious, and legal texts as well as philosophical ones, and was adopted by several french feminist theorists as a way of making clearer the deep male bias embedded in the European the deep male bias embedded in the European intellectual tradition.

To deconstruct is to take a text apart along the structural “fault lines” created by the ambiguities inherent in one or more of its key concepts or themes in order to reveal the equivocations or contradictions that make the text possible.  For example, in “Plato’s Pharmacy,” Derrida deconstructs Socrates’ criticism of the written word, arguing that it not only suffers from internal inconsistencies because of the analogy Socrates himself makes between memory and writing, but also stands in stark contrast to the fact that his ideas come to us only through the written word he disparaged (D 61-171).  The double movement here is one of tracing this tension in Plato’s text, and in the traditional reading of that text, while at the same time acknowledging the fundamental ways in which our understanding of the world is dependent on Socrates’ attitude toward the written word.  Derrida points out similar contradictions in philosophical discussions of a preface  and a picture frame which are simultaneously inside and outside the respective works under consideration.

Since the distinction between what is inside the text (or painting) and what is outside can itself be deconstructed according to the same principles, deconstruction is, like Destruktion, an historicizing movement that opens texts to the conditions of their production, their con-text in a very broad sense, including not only the historical circumstances and tradition from which they arose, but also the conventions and nuances of the language in which they were written and the details of their authors’ lives.  This generates an effectively infinite complexity in texts that makes any deconstructive reading necessarily partial and preliminary.

Deconstruction of a poem:

A poem comes by fate or by chance. lt ‘befalls the one who receives it, like a benediction, that is, like words that confer a blessing or that invoke a blessing. Benediction means, literally, speaking well, usually of some person, not of some thing. A benediction invokes what comes from the other or is the coming of the other, subjective and objective genitive at once. The ‘other’ in question here is that wholly other about which Derrida writes, tautologically, in The Gift of Death: ‘tout autre est tout autre’. This means, among other possibilities, ‘every other is wholly other’. We usually think of the ‘other’ as just somewhat different, for example someone from a different culture. For Derrida the other in question in a poem’s benediction is entirely different, ‘wholly other’. The consequences of accepting such a notion are not trivial. Something wholly other is frighteningly alien, unassimilable. Nevertheless, Derrida argues that a poem comes from such a wholly other and speaks for it. Just what that might mean this essay will try to show.

William Shakespeare's Sonnet 18 - 'Shall I Compare Thee to a Summer's Day' -

Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?

Thou art more lovely and more temperate:

Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,

And summer’s lease hath all too short a date;

Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,

And often is his gold complexion dimm'd;

And every fair from fair sometime declines,

By chance or nature’s changing course untrimm'd;

But thy eternal summer shall not fade,

Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow’st;

Nor shall death brag thou wander’st in his shade,

When in eternal lines to time thou grow’st:

   So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,

   So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.

 

 In popular love-sonnet. In this video, the speaker attempts to read the meaning of the sonnet with reference to the critical theory of deconstruction.

Here is an one famous poem sonnet 18: Shall I compare thee to a summer's day? This poem written by William Shakespeare. As we know that poet's thinking and readers thinking is different. We all are understand what is poet saying but some time we can look binary opposition. Some thimes different meanings of word so poet is used word in context of releted to poem but reader think different and understand in his own way. Above we can see Derrida's concept.

The speaker begins the poem by asking if he should compare his friend to a summer's day. He panders over the thought and remarks that his friend is more beautiful and gentle than summer. Strong summer winds often threaten the newly formed buds of the beautiful flowers of may. Summers are too shart and goes by quickly.

Sometimes the sun shines with all its might and we feel too hot. Often the golden colour of the sun is overshadowed by dark clouds. All the beautiful things are eventually destined to fade away, either by chance or due to the ever changing course of nature.

But his friend's eternal beauty shall neither fade away nor would he lose the gifts of youth that he possesses. Death shall nat boast about his conquest over the speaker's life as the speaker will make his friend immortal in the eternal lines af his poem. The youthful beauty of his friend would be preserved forever in the poet's immortal lines.

As Iong as people live and breathe on this earth, as long as eyes can see, the poem would survive and give life to his friend, thereby making his youthful beauty immartal.

Thank you..