16 Jan 2013
Snaphanen.dk
I'snt that a warning against lust and lists the consequences of giving in to lustfulness ?
16 Jan 2013
Hugh Fitzgerald
Yes, of course it is. It's one of the best-known lines from Sonnet 129 ("Th'expense of spirit in a waste of shame"), a sonnet analyzed to death by Roman Jakobson and Lawrence Jones in one of those light-blue productions from Mouton, 's Gravenhage, "Shakespeare's Verbal Art in 'Th'expence of spirit'" --which light-blue pamphlet I can't find now on any shelf but I vividly remember the manic ingenuity of Jakobson -- whom I knew, and once had as a neighbor -- and Jones in squeezing that sonnet dry, with that poetry of grammar, grammar of poetry.
I took the liberty -- call it the Liberty of the Clink -- of taking that line, and applying it -- so fitting is every single one of the adjectives -- to Muslims.
I was not misapplying the line. I was re-applying it. Shakespeare has assured me, in so many different ways, that he's on our side and has no objection. .