Global Visions of the Shakespearean Sonnet
by Erika Greber
The quatercentenary celebration of the quarto edition has prompted not only the
reappraisal of Shakespeare’s sonnets and their translations into so many of the
world’s languages but it has also inspired the re-creation of his sonnets in a special form: the visual sonnet – a form that transcends languages and seems globally
understandable at a glance. For the first time in its long history, the Shakespearean sonnet has become ‘concrete’ (on a par with the Petrarchan visual sonnet,
which has a slightly older tradition). The visual Sonnet 66 printed as the frontispiece of this anthology is a prominent public indication of this vividly emerging
subgenre, together with an earlier specimen and the other visual sonnets created
on the occasion of the quatercentenary which are anthologised and presented
here (fig. 1-9). They will be discussed in relation to the discourse of visual poetry
(vispo) stretching from the ancient ‘carmen figuratum’ to modern ‘concrete poetry’ and today’s ‘new media poems’, including the question of cross-medial
transposition and translation.
***
Interplay between the classical European sonnet tradition and the tradition of
visual poetry has been rare, and those scarce examples are absent from the canon.
Sonnet anthologies as well as sonnet criticism neglect the phenomenon of the
visual sonnet, dismissing it as a mere curiosity.1 It is therefore well worth casting
a critical eye over the history of the visual sonnet (for illustrations, see the DVD).
Visual sonnets are far from being a post-modern invention, for already in the
early stages of the genre’s development sonnets appeared in special visual gestalt
– just a handful, first in Italy, then in England and Germany, the earliest two
pieces dating from the era of handwritten manuscripts, followed by another two
in the early age of print. The series comprises a sonnet in the shape of a star with
several circles and 14 centripetal verse lines, and another sonnet in the shape of
an episcopal throne, a cathedra, both by the Venetian priest, poet and jurist Nicolò
1 With the noteworthy exception of a new sonnet anthology: Jeff Hilson (ed.), The Reality Street. Book
of Sonnets (Hastings: Reality Street Editions, 2008), and the sonnet chapter in my book Textile Texte.
Studien zur Tradition des Wortflechtens und der Kombinatorik. Pictura et Poesis 9 (Köln/Weimar/Wien:
Böhlau, 2002) with a rich choice of illustrations.
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de’ Rossi (Canzoniere, 1317/1328)2; a rebus sonnet from an influential writing
manual by the Italian calligrapher Giovanni Battista Palatino (Libro nuovo d’imparare a scrivere, 1540)3; a sonnet in the shape of an opened book by the Nuremberg poet Sigmund von Birken (Guelfis oder Der Niedersächsische Lorbeerhayn, 1669)4;
in Shakespeare’s own time, his contemporary Joshua Sylvester had a garland of
sonnets printed in the shape of antique columns or pillars, labelled with the
names of the Muses – as a solemn dedication to the newly crowned King James I
(Corona Dedicatoria, in his widely received translation of the works of the French
poet Guillaume du Bartas, 1605).5 These sonnets had elaborate verbal, metrical
and visual designs, as the contour of the pattern poems had to be produced by
appropriately varying lengths of isometric lines. The verse lines had to form a picture, sometimes in multi-linear constellations, as in the star sonnet. Additional
graphic elements (such as sketched or ruled lines or some simple ornament)
would help to outline the contours. The rebus method replaces parts of the verbal text with pictograms representing the respective sounds. These sonnets share
typical traits of the venerable tradition of carmina figurata and resemble mannerist
art. They foreground the aesthetic value, displaying ornate style, sophisticated
rhetorics, calligraphic or typographic refinement, and playfulness; and they are
meant simultaneously to serve social or religious functions such as praise of God
or paying homage to the sovereign or the patron or the beloved.
The fact that only very few visual sonnets were created in pre-modern times is
certainly due to the additional restriction the visual figure imposes upon the sonneteer. (And vice versa: sonnet rules restrict freedom in creating picture and pattern poems.) Only with the post-classical dissolution of rules does the visual sonnet thrive. To write a regular sonnet is demanding enough, and the genre has often been compared to a “Procrustean bed”. So we still await a canonical sonnet
that fits itself into the visual shape of a Procrustean bed...
2 Sonetto figurato n° 247, sonetto figurato n° 248 Codex Colombianus, in: Furio Brugnolo (ed.), Il
Canzoniere di Nicolò de’ Rossi, 2 vols. (Padova: Antenore, 1974), vol. 1, 143–145. Cf. also Greber,
Textile Texte, fig. 52.
3 Cf. Greber, Textile Texte, fig. 118. Online facsimile provided by the Getty Research Center
<http://www.archive.org/details/librodimgiovamba00pala (seen July 2009)>, pp. 92f, 96-98.
4 Cf. Greber, Textile Texte, fig. 80. Online facsimile provided by the Digital Library at Universität
Halle <http://digitale.bibliothek.uni-halle.de/content/pageview/6507 (seen July 2009)> p. 36.
5 The Complete Works of Joshuah Sylvester, 2 vols, ed. Alexander B. Grosart (New York 1967, repr.:
Kessinger Publishing, 2006); Joshua Sylvester, Divine Weeks and Works of Guillaume de Saluste Sieur du
Bartas, ed. Susan Snyder, 2 vols. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1979), vol. 2, 888ff.
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All of these figured sonnets rely on the synthesis of both media, poetry and picture, which are closely intertwined or combined so that text/script turns into image – an image in which the sonnet’s image, its typographical shape, is lost: these
sonnets no longer look like sonnets. There may be correspondences between
form and content, triggered by thematic reference to the chosen visual figure and
underlined by an explanation, but the correspondences tend to be very loose. In
this respect, the most perfect example is Birken’s book sonnet: It mirrors the
book motif at a well calculated position in the last hemistich, just before the caesura, and thus exposes self-reflexively the division into hemistichs and book
halves, i.e. it demonstrates the iconic congruence of the alexandrine metre and
the chosen visual figure. Of course, this would apply to any alexandrine poem
and thus the sonnet’s generic qualities are not really rendered in the visual medium. In the three other cases, the choice of the respective visual look is motivated by exterior conventions rather than by the poetic necessities of the sonnet
form. All in all, in these pieces the visual aspect gains dominance over the poetic,
‘sonnetic’ aspect.
The very fact that the visual sonnets play down their ‘sonneticity’ accounts for
their surprise effect. Because one wouldn’t suspect a sonnet behind these forms,
readers are astonished to discover regular and perfect sonnets. Thus, visual sonnets have to be read even more carefully than others, classical ones...
***
If the early visual sonnets possess no visible sonneticity this is of course related
to genre development, because in its early periods, before the canonisation of
certain sonnet models and the petrifaction of graphic conventions, the sonnet
had no common typographic characteristics other than the 14 lines (and, as the
history of the book and ‘mise en page’ shows, even the line break was not obligatory, the notion of ‘end rhyme’ notwithstanding). Only gradually did rhyme
scheme and internal composition become graphically represented by line spacing,
stanzaic division, and/or indentation. Only from that point on, can one speak at
all of the possibility of visually representing the sonnet form as a form, a gestalt.
This process had been accompanied by the evolution of certain ideal types which
are often ascribed to the classic sonneteers and their countries (“Italian”, “English”, “French”). Of course, such an oversimplified conception of limited alternatives is highly problematic with respect to literary historiography and has been
criticised for its obsolete normative conception of genre. Nevertheless, there can
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be no doubt that there did or do exist such simple ideas about reputedly strict
sonnet rules6 – something that I have called the ‘myth’ of the strict form.7
In any case, the process of regulation and canonisation, reinforced by widely cherished ideas about the exemplary classic sonnet and classic sonneteers, also led to
a differentiation of distinct types of graphic(al) patterning. The genre lends itself
to visual typologisation because its 14 lines form certain combinations of quatrains, tercets, couplet, octave or sestet, as well as septet. Thus it is no coincidence
that the principal types can be outlined by a set of diagrams.8
***
What is interesting with regard to the formation of the modern vispo sonnet is
that only a few variants are recognizable enough to represent a sonnet (i.e. sonneticity) at first glance. These are, as I will argue here, (1) the classical ‘Petrarchan’
type, with quartets and tercets set apart, and (2) the ‘Shakespearean’ type, printed
as one unit with an indented couplet. Any other possibility needs additional “sonnet” labelling; only these two sonnet shapes may stand per se, without title, even
without words.
Indeed, the possibility of representing the sonnet idea in pure form, as a gestalt,
facilitates the birth of the purely visual sonnet. The nonverbal sonnet: a paradox
if ever there was one.
Historically, the Petrarchan vispo sonnet is older (an invention of German Romantics, see below). Unmistakeable and unique, the 4-4-3-3 distribution paradigmatically symbolises sonnet composition and has thus become the predominant model of the visual sonnet. It is now part of the sonnet’s representational
6 A negative example is the chapter about “Sonnet legislation” (!) in a recently reprinted study of
1917 by T. W. H. Crosland, The English Sonnet (Norwood: Norwood Editions, 2006) where Crosland
declares, in all seriousness, that “any poem in any measure other than the decasyllabic is not a sonnet” and that therefore the “poem which figures as Sonnet 145 in the Shakespeare Series” is not a
sonnet (p. 37).
7 Erika Greber, “Wortwebstühle oder: Die kombinatorische Textur des Sonetts. Thesen zu einer
neuen Gattungskonzeption”, in: Susi Kotzinger / Gabriele Rippl (eds.), Zeichen zwischen Klartext und
Arabeske (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1994), 57-80, here 58. See also Erika Greber, “La texture combinatoire du sonnet: Pour une redéfinition du genre”, in: Alain Chevrier / Dominique Moncond’huy
(eds.), Le sonnet contemporain. Retours au sonnet (Paris: Formules. Revue des créations formelles N° 12, 2008),
281-298, here 281.
8 François Jost, “Le sonnet: sens d’une structure”, in: Yvonne Bellenger (ed.), Le sonnet à la Renaissance des origines au XVII siècle, Paris 1988, 57-65. Cf. also “Evolution de la structure du sonnet”
http://membres.lycos.fr/jccau/ressourc/sonnet/dec/sonevolu.htm (seen July 2009).
708
code, an emblem of sonneticity. This is proved by the fact that virtually all recent
sonnet anthologies and collections of sonnet criticism utilise the 4-4-3-3 figure
(partly existing concrete sonnets, partly new designs) as an emblem on their frontispiece, though without elaborating on it.9
Thanks to such abstraction and symbolisation, the sonnet has become translatable
into nonverbal media. We can speak here either of “intersemiotic translation” (in
Roman Jakobson’s terminology10) or of “intermedial transposition” (in the terminology of current media studies, e.g. Werner Wolf11). For a visual representation
of sonneticity, it is sufficient to recognize combinatorial texture, number, and
proportion. It goes without saying that this concept of sonneticity plays with the
limits of the genre and tends towards parodic exaggeration and defamiliarisation.
Appropriately, the very first nonverbal sonnet appeared as a parodic weapon in
the so-called Romantic “Sonettenkrieg”, the heated debate about the pros and cons
of the sonnet form, a kind of dispute between Romanticism and Classicism projected onto this genre which was en vogue in the decade after 1800. This sonnet
battle produced numerous meta-sonnets and most sophisticated anti-sonnets (for
the adversaries had to show their sonnet mastership in order to prove that their
opposition was not caused by mere incompetence). A group of anti-sonnetists
launched a wicked almanac full of mock sonnets, with a nonverbal sonnet as
frontispiece, a sonnet which was intended to debunk the “sacred, mystical, divinatory sonnet” as a mere series of empty signs (Karfunkel or Klingklingel Almanach,
9 In chronological order: Andreas Böhn, Das zeitgenössische deutschsprachige Sonett (Stuttgart: Metzler,
1999) with Karl Riha’s Taxidriver Sonnet of 1990; José Esteban (ed.), Un soneto me manda hacer Violante.
Sonetos del soneto (Madrid: Colección Visor de Poesía, 2000); Jesús Munárriz (ed.), Un siglo de sonetos en
español (Madrid: poesía Hiperión, 2000); Hirsch, Edward/ Boland, Eavan (eds.), The Making of a Sonnet (London: Norton, 2008); Jeff Hilson (ed.), The Reality Street. Book of Sonnets (Hastings: Reality
Street Editions, 2008; and Chevrier/Moncond’huy, Le sonnet contemporain, with Eduardo Kac’s Pictogram Sonnet of 1982. The only Shakespearean image is on the front page of the new sonnet journal
Sixty Six http://www.bostonpoetry.com/66/ (seen July 2009).
10 Roman Jakobson, “On Linguistic Aspects of Translation” (1959), in: Lawrence Venuti (ed.), The
Translation Studies Reader, New York: Routledge, 2004, 138-143, here 138.
11 Werner Wolf, “Intermediality Revisited: Reflections on Word and Music Relations in the Context
of a General Typology of Intermediality”, in: Suzanne M. Lodato, Suzanne Aspden and Walter
Bernhart (eds.) Word and Music Studies. Essays in Honor of Steven Paul Scher (Amsterdam: Rodopi,
2005), 13-34. Available online (seen July 2009):
<http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/rodopi/wms/2002/00000004/00000001/art00003>
709
1809).12 It possesses a self-referential and metapoetic (meta-‘sonnetic’) quality – a
baffling little example of Romantic irony.
This casual vispo sonnet is the first nonverbal sonnet (much older than the sonnet known from Concrete Poetry which critics believe to be the first one). It may
be called the prototype of all those later vispo sonnets which display the quartet/tercet structure.
The sonnet stripped down to a bare sequence of formal and algebraic signs instead of meaningful words – this picture does, indeed, bring to the fore the problem that many readers and critics have with a visual sonnet: Isn’t it the embodiment of sheer nonsense?
***
One sonnet in particular figures in standard editions of Concrete Poetry: the
Moonshot Sonnet (1964) by poet-critic Mary Ellen Solt, one of the international
movement’s American leaders.13 The enigmatic black signs on white paper allude
to raster techniques used by NASA photographers to mark moon shots. The only
aspect reminiscent of a sonnet is the 4-4-3-3 formula. The joking defamiliarisation of the sonnet and negation of canonic poeticity draws attention, in accordance with the movement’s aims, to the sign as a concrete element and to signifying processes as such. Obviously, Solt’s primary target was not the sonnet discourse. Similarly, Eugen Gomringers constellation SCHWEIGEN had a powerful
impact on Concrete Poetry – though it was recognized only with considerable delay that its 14 elements form a cryptic sonnet.14 Only in the later phases of Concretism did poets begin to experiment systematically with the visual possibilities
of the sonnet (from the 1980-s on, esp. in Brazil/Portugal and Germany). Again,
I have to restrict myself here to only a few remarks.
The most outstanding names are Karl Riha and Avelino de Araújo, who independently of each other developed sets of highly innovative visual sonnets – verbo-
12 Cf. Greber, Textile Texte, fig. 134.
13 In: Mary Ellen Solt (ed.), Concrete Poetry: A World View (Bloomington, London: Indiana U.P.
1970), 242.
14 Cf. Erika Greber, “Sonett-Fäden: Zur Poetologie des Sonetts bei Leonid Aronzon”, in: Wiener
Slawistischer Almanach 62 (2008), 181-194, here 185f. Cf. the English translation:
http://www.educationdigitalmedia.com/view/13 (seen July 2009).
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SILENCE
visual and nonverbal – and published them in the form of artist’s books.15 In addition to experimenting with script and space, both authors began to use objects
(more precisely, drawings or photographs of objects) as constructive elements,
accompanied by witty titles suggesting unexpected interpretations. A case in point
is the motif of the forks, which coincidentally appears in both oeuvres, taken, so
to speak, from real life, assembled from two four- and two three-tined forks.
Araújo presents rather rough forks in reverse order (sonnet renversé) under the title
Soneto América Latina, while Riha displays neat table-forks and dessert-forks
matching the title gourmet-sonett16 – the dinig tables of the poor and the rich. Thus,
the supposedly formalistic vispo sonnet becomes political. Karl Riha, a German
literature professor and neo-avant-garde writer, published a brief manifesto of the
sonnet-object and coined a special term: the “Dingsonett” (‘thing sonnet’, sonnet-object). The idea of the Dingsonett (certainly a breakaway from the Rilkean
notion of Dinggedicht) was explicitly meant to revise the classical sonnet conception. This claim reinforced the earlier attack on the sublime sonnet in Robert
Gernhardt’s ingenious “sonnet critique” (1981/1984)17, and both provocations
led to an increase of non-canonic as well as canonic sonnets and a new sonnet
battle (which is still being fought on internet platforms). As each parody also reconfirms the parodied object, the classical sonnet form has survived in witty
mock sonnets, a special path of the sonnet’s liberation.
The crucial invention was what I would call the ‘ready-made sonnet’. The poetartist works with an ‘objet trouvé’, trying to find an object suiting the desired
sonnet proportions. Riha strives to remotivate the 4-4-3-3 formula through the
chosen images and takes objects which have an intrinsic relation to these numbers and proportions: musicians in quartets and trios; playing cards or dominoes
bearing just these numbers; four-leafed and three-leafed clover. An illustrative
comparison is again provided by the forks: where Araújo cuts off the fourth
prong in order to simulate three-tined forks, Riha chooses table forks (4-4) and
dessert forks (3-3) of refined cuisine. Both images are surprising: the one because
15 Karl Riha, so zier so starr so form so streng. 14 text- und 9 bildsonette (Bielefeld: Pendragon, 1988); Karl
Riha and Barbara Ullrich, 16 ding-sonette. zur revision des sonettbegriffs, Vienna: herbstpresse, 1992); Avelino de Araújo, Livro de sonetos (Natal: Gráfica e Editora Casa Grande, 1994).
16 In the aforementioned books of 1988 and 1994, both non-paginated.
17 Within German speaking countries, Gernhardt’s raging sonnet on the sonnet is probably the
best-known post-modern sonnet (published in his Wörtersee. Frankfurt/M.: Zweitausendeins, 1984,
313, and in several poetry anthologies). A congenial English translation is available at <http:
//dict.leo.org/forum/viewWrongentry.php?idThread=736268&idForum=3&lp=ende&lang=de>
(seen July 2009).
711
it is fittingly manipulated, the other because it is fitting per se. While in Araújo’s
work the sonnet’s 14-ness is arbitrarily imposed on topics which have nothing to
do with 14 or 4 or 3 nor with poetry, many items in Riha’s manifesto book are
immediately iconic. When the imitation of the sonnet form is combined with the
imitation of reality one can speak of a double mimesis.
The ancient numerological sonnet tradition of Dante and Petrarch is, in a way,
transformed here into a modern minimalist numerology – whose visual emblem
remains the Petrarchan sonnet. The 4-4-3-3 formula prevails in all of these visual
sonnets, in all countries. This may be ascribed to the perfect asymmetric balance
which makes it an interesting and immediately pleasing visual pattern. The Shakespearean sonnet has different conditions and potentialities, as will be shown in
our little anthology of global translations.
***
The invention of the global Shakespeare sonnet is directly connected to the idea of translation: The first
Shakespearean visual sonnet, to my knowledge, was
created in 2001 for a talk about the latest sonnet translations18 and was intended to demonstrate the possibility of ‘translating’ rhymed verse lines into images (cf.
below fig. 4). It has been used as a model for the frontispiece (fig. 1), undergoing another medial transposition.
Wilhelm Föckersperger’s pencil drawing (fig. 1) gives a
puzzling picture of sonnet 66 which is barely recognizable because we normally concentrate on the rhetorical
structure with the repetitive anaphora And...And... The
pencil sonnet suggests a total revision by placing the
rhymes in initial position and blackening the couplet’s
rhymes. The apparent irregularity of the verse lines is
based on a consistently visual logic: instead of metre,
fig.1: Sonnet 66 by
the poem measures typographical verse length and thus
Wilhelm Föckersperger, 2009
ends up with varying lengths. It does not represent the
quarto print, which looks different, but a modern print standard (as for example
on the rear page of the anthology Shakespeare sechsundsechzig), and thus it follows
18 Erika Greber, “‘Varying to other words’ – Neue Übersetzungen von Shakespeares Sonetten”.
Symposium “ZwischenSprachenRäume” at the Lyrik Kabinett and Institute of Comparative Literature, Munich, October 2001.
712
the ‘route’ of modernisation – quite in accordance
with the motif of the pencil. If somebody should
want to create a period style variant, it would have
to be a goosequill sonnet, preferably written with
a quill... Exhibiting its own materiality, the pencildrawn pencil sonnet implies a writing scene – all
the more so as the pencil tips are carefully and
individually sharpened.19 The rightward direction
of the tips seems to underline the flow of script
and verse. Script and books, by the way, are a frequent motif in the Bavarian artist’s oeuvre.
Much the same apfig. 2: Crayon Sonnet by Regina
plies to the Crayon
Wahl and Erika Greber, 2009
Sonnet (fig. 2) that
happened to be designed (admittedly with less artistic
sophistication) elsewhere at the very same time and
sparked by the same model. Here, too, the sonnet
rhyme scheme does not stick to end rhymes but takes
over the entire lines, entire pencils. As the coloured
pencils are made from digitally duplicated photographs and this process cannot be mirrored in the
item as such, the digital media weaken self-reference
to the verse writing process. On the other hand, this
sonnet has to offer a special highlight in the couplet:
the broken tips form a genuine visual conceit.
fig. 3: Fish’s Sonnet by
Michael Mertes, 2009
Both pieces, the pencil sonnet and the crayon sonnet,
can be read as intertextual comments and post-texts
to Shakespeare’s poetry. The pencil tips pointing at
the written pretext also give a hint as to the nature of
“the hand that writ it”: it must be a left hand. In other
words, here we see the authentic metonymic portraits
of the Old Bard as a left-handed artist.
While most visual sonnets have a generic relationship to their paragons, there are
the predictable exceptions in Shakespeare’s case, and indeed, along with the sixty-
19 The first element even looks like a hybrid between pencil and candle, a pyromaniac motif which
would mark the affiliation to the Shakespyromaniac Sonnet. The pencils’ sharpness corresponds, as
Manfred Pfister has remarked, to the sharply-worded aggressiveness of sonnet 66.
713
sixth it is the eighteenth sonnet which has attracted
mimesis. Michael Mertes uses the conventions of
metrics and punctuation for a subtle remake (fig. 3).
This is a fine example of combining semiotic systems
and fusing intertextual layers in minimalist style.20
Shakespeare meets Christian Morgenstern and his
Fisches Nachtgesang! Fish’s Sonnet 18 can’t be a night
song because it deciphers, in full daylight, the strange
punctuation of the first edition, and for many readers
it will come as a surprise that in fact the sonnet terminates with a comma. To be continued, indeed.
Within our anthology, the two visualisations of sonnet
18 and sonnet 66 happen to be the only ones in blackand-white. This may well be a material trace of their
fig. 4: Shakespyromanisches
close connection to a particular text and a classical
Sonett by Erika Greber, 2001
concept of textuality. The other visual sonnets are
based on a more generalised idea of textuality and sonneticity as they are dedicated to Shakespeare’s sonnets in general or to the Shakespearean sonnet as a type.
The essence of the collection of vispo sonnets presented here is their intertextual
and intermedial play. This is noticeable right from the beginning. As mentioned
before, the earliest specimen is the Shakespyromaniac Sonnet from 2001 (fig. 4). It
was created in response to a visual sonnet of Petrarchan type, setting free surplus
potentialities made available by the reference to Shakespeare. Quite literally it was
sparked by one of Karl Riha’s ‘Dingsonette’ from 1988, his Pyromaniac Sonnet 21
which featured large and small match-boxes in a proportion of 4-4-3-3. The
black-and-white photograph of the life-size matchsticks directed my attention to
the absence of colour: The use of different colours would turn the matches’
heads into rhymes, most desirably with seven rhymes/colours. Coloured rhymes
were actually not a new idea but had been invented by the German poet Eduard
Mörike around 1860: In a joking sonnet for family communication, he marked
20 The re-use of punctuation marks as visual elements is known from Concrete Poetry. An interesting case is the Sonnet of the omnipresent nothing (1987) in which Armando Macatrão combined punctuation with the black bar technique known from Man Ray’s visual poem of 1924; cf. Soneto do nada
ubíquo, in: Fernando Aguiar, Gabriel Rui Silva (eds.), Concreta. Experimental. Visual. Poesia Portuguesa
1959-1989 (Lisbon: ICALP, 1989), 52.
21 Both pictures are published in the inaugural number of Sixty-Six. A Journal of Sonnet Studies No.1
(2008), 100-101. That first, decidedly intertextual version of the Shakespyromaniac Sonnet emulated
the slanted pattern of the Pyromaniac Sonnet, which would be misleading in the present context.
714
the rhyme scheme in five colours – replacing the rhymes themselves, which had
to be guessed at.22 The same riddle applies here: which words will match the
wooden lines? 18 or 66 or 130 or...? Thus the Shakespyromaniac Sonnet responds to
classic sonneteers as well as to modern visual poetry and object art. It is an ‘objet
trouvé’ found in the match-boxes of cultural memory. Spontaneous wordplay
created the title – which, incidentally, sounds in the German original even more
punning because the syllables -peare- and -pyr- are
closer: Shakespyromanisches Sonett.
With the title’s conceit, the visual sonnet was inscribed into the venerable sonnet tradition. The
matchsticks turned out to be the incendiary for a
new vispo tradition, for other ‘shakespyromaniac’
sonnets followed and developed a dynamic of their
own, as we shall presently see. This was the decisive
point at which the canonical formula 4-4-3-3 was
challenged. The Shakespearean allusion allowed the
generation of a new interesting visual form, promising more than algebraic proportionality. 4-4-4-2
means the specific indented gestalt that promises a final conceit. In other words, the cult of wit and conceit – which characterizes wide parts of the sonnet
tradition – is being cast in a vispo mould. While the
Petrarchan gestalt lacks its concetto, the Shakespearean
gestalt contains its conceit.
Possibly the visible couplet functions as an abbreviated stimulus for ingenuity, as a call for “the rewriters’ wit” (as Manfred Pfister states in the introduction). All of the sonnet-objects presented here
have been created with an acute awareness of their
twofold status: a double affiliation to the Shakespearean sonnet discourse and to visual art, with a
certain claim to innovative visual strategies. Accordingly, they are distinguished by a strong dialogic
character: responding to the sonneteer and responding to each other. In an ongoing
fig. 5: Shakespyromanisches Sonett, gegrillt und
process of imitatio and aemulatio, a
fränkisch verfeinert (Hommage an Erika Greber)
group of loosely connected sonnet
by Alexander Zimbulov, 2007
22 Cf. Greber, Textile Texte, fig. 117.
715
lovers in five cities have been exploring the
possibilities of visualising the Shakespearean
sonnet and of further translating those sonnet objects into other categories and other
cultures.
This dialogicity is reminiscent of an old poetic practice, the tenzone or tenso. The idea of
responding to another’s sonnet is known
from the early Sicilian and Occitan origins of
the genre, when the troubadours and itinerant poets held poetic contests and even debates in versified and rhymed form. The
Italians invented the sonetti di proposta e di risposta, an exchange of sonnets wherein the
answering poet had to use the same rhyme
words. Which resembles recycling the
matches found in a match-box.
fig. 6: Fish‘n’Chips Sonnet by Stefan
Schukowski and Alexander Zimbulov, 2009
When the vispo sonnet is transferred to another place/culture it undergoes considerable changes, not to say transmogrifications.
The little series of food sonnets (fig. 5-8) is
based on such a ‘cultural translation’. At first
sight, they may seem arbitrary but all of
them are ‘pyro’ sonnets with grilled/heated
food. As a matter of fact, the idea was born
as translation in its literal, original topographic sense. The incredible Shakespyromaniac
Sonnet Franconian Style (fig. 5) was triggered
by moving to a university in Franconia, a region which is famous for its small grilled
sausages with mustard. The German title of
Alexander Zimbulov’s sonnet-object (literally: grilled and refined à la franconienne) preserves traits of the artistic action – a veritable happening, reminiscent of Futurist cookery. In the translated title, the phrase Franconian Style evokes a pertinent association to
the notion of style in sonnet writing.
After translating the sonnet into a local dia716
lect, Shakespyromania had to provide
translations for global use. First and
foremost for use in the Bard’s own
land, in contemporary Britain – which
meant a new happening, another cuisine
photo session, and lo and behold: the
Fish’n’Chips Sonnet (fig. 6). As chance
would have it, Alexander Zimbulov and
Stefan Schukowski (the young artists at
the sonnet grill) used a copy of the Sun
to wrap the iconic British dish, little
suspecting that the inventor of the
fish&chips motif, the poet Michael
Mertes, had had this very tabloid in
mind. Shakespeare himself couldn’t
have had it in mind, as neither
fish’n’chips nor tabloids existed in his
day. Rather, the visual sonnet participates in the post-modern trend of recasting Shakespeare’s topics in clearly
proletarian, up-to-date settings. Particularly noteworthy is the temporal logic of
the composition – a feature which is
rare in visual poetry, let alone in visual
sonneteering. Here, we have not only
the assembled ingredient of a recipe but
also the telling of a culinary tale. This
sonnet possesses a lively narrative character and a densely concentrated miniature plot culminating in a perfect punch
line. Here, the Shakespearean sonnet gestalt which envisages a conceit to be
placed at the indented couplet does indeed fulfill itself completely.
A similar plot structure is aimed at in
the parallel action, the translation from
British English into American English,
which naturally resulted in the Hot Dog
Sonnet (fig. 7). This is a visibly short
story at high speed (fast food) with a
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fig. 7: Hot Dog Sonnet by Alexander
Zimbulov and Stefan Schukowski, 2009
distinctive ‘last sentence twist’. The comparatively regular and longish shapes of
the individual ingredients serve well as an
analogy to verse lines. Thus special attention is directed to this lucid visualisation
of the Shakespearean rhyme pattern
which begins with a series of alternating
elements and leads to the paired lines.
This couplet undoubtedly hosts a couple.
In the interest of true globalisation, the
vispo sonnet had to be translated into a
non-Western system, and so a Sushi Sonnet was ordered (fig. 8), partly for culinary, partly for aesthetic reasons... and of
course, for the sake of defamiliarisation:
the Western genre in the Asian style provokes a second and deeper look – which
will reveal that the sushi sonnet is in
iambic pentamenter and has a unique
ending. It is the only vispo sonnet where
the couplet offers an image which is not
two, but one: a pair. A pair of chopsticks
for one person. (The sushi meal was
produced in teamwork, yet could have
been served to only one eater – but anyfig. 8: Sushi Sonnet by Evi Zemanek,
way it had been made from inedible phoJacqueline Klusik and Michael Mertes, 2009
tographs, at different places, with the
help of the global Internet.) A further
conceit probably lies in the suggestion that the chopsticks will be used to eat the
sushi – so that the sonnet terminates, so to speak, in consuming itself.
This provides a happy ending for the series of food sonnets. The pattern is now
clear, more would be boring. Stunning new inventions can be left to the imagination (image-making) of playful sonneteers and parodists all over the globe.
***
There have to be limits to designing Shakespearean vispo sonnets, for they
should have a strong, motivated relation to the Bard and sonnet writing. It does
not suffice just to arrange any 14 elements in indented 4-4-4-2 form; likewise, the
analogy of thin and longish objects to verse lines is not sufficient. There must be
either a thematic connection – above all, metapoetic and self-reflexive motifs
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such as the pen, the metrical signs (or, the spines of fourteen sonnet books). Or
there must be a connection created by metaphor or rhetoric – e.g. by wordplay
such as the paronomasia in “Shakespyromaniac”. Without its punning title the
matchstick sonnet would not qualify as genuinely Shakespearean. Likewise, the
exotic sushi sonnet qualifies only inasmuch as it stems from cultural translation.
Such symbolic and mimetic relations set the Shakespearean vispo sonnet apart
from the Petrarchan type. The formula 4-4-3-3 is, so to speak, the default set for
vispo sonnets and simply indicates sonneticity. The Shakespearean gestalt, as we
have seen, has different potential, a potential for plot and wit.
The last word, nay, the last image therefore belongs to the Old Bard himself: the
Schüttelspeer-Sonett or Shaken Spears Sonnet (fig. 9). Closing the book and opening
the DVD, let us shake spears!
fig. 9: Schüttelspeer-Sonett / Shaken Spears Sonnet by Stefan Schukowski and Erika Greber, 2009
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