touchstone :)

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:
- Shakespeare, sonnet 18 –




As soon as the professor said “pick your touch stone”, I thought of those lines which are above. I learn that sonnet a year before, and because of that sonnet I decided to study English literature actually. I was so attracted by Shakespeare. Therefore the professor’s mentioning about this poem last class was very coincident and also very meaningful to me. While I read that sonnet, what I first thought about is that “I want to be the person that Shakespeare wrote a poem for.” How somebody can be praised like that. After few minutes thinking about that, I was impressed again by the ability of literature. What literature is doing is making me think about a beauty of a woman who lived thousands years ago. She is still alive in the poem and nothing else could preserve her beauty but poem.

During the class I learned that literature is imitation of nature. And I felt like applying it in this poem too. When I read this poem in past, I just focused on how powerful the literature is. But now, I also thought about that this poem reflects reality. The desire which try to protect the beauty of one person would be occurred from the limit of reality. What I want to say is that in reality, time always destroys something and human cannot protect it from time. This would make the desire to preserve beauty which is something idealistic and soon disappeared.

In my point of view, this looked pursue “beauty” which is easily explained as a purpose of literature, but at the same time it looked contain dark side of reality.