I finally found the courage to read your sonnets and... well, they're easier on me than I thought. The point, apparently, is that I'm so familiar with the sonnet form. Poetry in English still feels weird. It's in a sense like singing in German - all those consonants, like hurdles in your way. Plus when you come to a vowel sound you sometimes end up realizing it doesn't rhyme, and it's like a broken promise - and then it's clear that you mispronounced another word a few lines before, so you have to go back and do it again.
Upon re-reading, these problems faint. And yet, the sonnets become more, not less, weird. One problem is graphical: in Italy, there's always a blank line after each quartet or tercet. Here you have to do all the effort and keep counting in your head. But finally what's upsetting is the meter - ten syllables per line, and the accent is always on the last. Unnatural for some who's used to sonnets being composed of endecasillabi in a language where words ending with an accent are called tronche, like a cut tree, while those with the accent one syllable before the last are called piane as in flat, right, normal. We even have sdrucciole (slippery), words whose accent is on the syllable before the penultimate one, and bisdrucciole, well I guess you can imagine what those are.
It's like French, except the majestic ring of the alexandrine with his two half verses is missing. Or maybe it's just I'm not used to this meter, while a fascination with seventeenth century French playwrights has made me face a large doses of alexandrines.
Sorry, back to your sonnets. The first was even too true. It broke my heart that there was no Wilson in it, not even as Judas, but that's canon for you. The second raised a number of interesting questions - as did the Dibala episode. But yes, it isn't House's fault. The third... I don't know. I wasn't so impressed by Chase's choice to kill Dibala, and I am appalled by people seeing parallels between that and Cameron, House, Wilson and Thirteen helping dying people find a decorous death (and Thirteen even goes to prison for it, while Wilson risks his career until House de-pants him). You respect canon, and it's a canon I find difficult to accept - a very American canon, born in a country where killing murderers is viewed as justice and not as a bloody, useless crime belonging to a barbaric past, like torture.
I hope you aren't too bothered by the too-long and mostly OT comment, I always like what you write and am impressed that you can write sonnets at all. I find it so fiendishly difficult ven in Italian.
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branchandroot
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Date: 2011-06-21 06:20 am (UTC)Upon re-reading, these problems faint. And yet, the sonnets become more, not less, weird. One problem is graphical: in Italy, there's always a blank line after each quartet or tercet. Here you have to do all the effort and keep counting in your head. But finally what's upsetting is the meter - ten syllables per line, and the accent is always on the last. Unnatural for some who's used to sonnets being composed of endecasillabi in a language where words ending with an accent are called tronche, like a cut tree, while those with the accent one syllable before the last are called piane as in flat, right, normal. We even have sdrucciole (slippery), words whose accent is on the syllable before the penultimate one, and bisdrucciole, well I guess you can imagine what those are.
It's like French, except the majestic ring of the alexandrine with his two half verses is missing. Or maybe it's just I'm not used to this meter, while a fascination with seventeenth century French playwrights has made me face a large doses of alexandrines.
Sorry, back to your sonnets. The first was even too true. It broke my heart that there was no Wilson in it, not even as Judas, but that's canon for you. The second raised a number of interesting questions - as did the Dibala episode. But yes, it isn't House's fault. The third... I don't know. I wasn't so impressed by Chase's choice to kill Dibala, and I am appalled by people seeing parallels between that and Cameron, House, Wilson and Thirteen helping dying people find a decorous death (and Thirteen even goes to prison for it, while Wilson risks his career until House de-pants him). You respect canon, and it's a canon I find difficult to accept - a very American canon, born in a country where killing murderers is viewed as justice and not as a bloody, useless crime belonging to a barbaric past, like torture.
I hope you aren't too bothered by the too-long and mostly OT comment, I always like what you write and am impressed that you can write sonnets at all. I find it so fiendishly difficult ven in Italian.