Arontius of Bygelswade

I’ve been fighting off a cold now for about three days. My head feels like someone stuffed it full of cotton balls and I’m finding it more difficult then usual to maintain focus. :-) It’s lunchtime here at work and I’m trying to clear my mind a little bit so that I can focus a little better this afternoon.
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Have about three sonnets in the works right now. But none are ready for posting as of yet. I’m trying to concentrate on ‘completing a thought’ before I move on. A lot of my past sonnets tend to meander somewhat. A neat sounding line distracts me and because I fall in love with it I let it stay and corrupt the piece rather than put it aside and concentrate on putting the right words in its place. Shakespeare’s best sonnets always followed a thought process directly through to completion. By reading the complete sonnet the intent captures the reader rather than having to be ‘guessed’. I want to work at attaining that level of competence.
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The conversation concerning Marquessa Laurellen’s sonnet has been a good one for me. I have always found it difficult to critique someone else’s work. How can you ‘critique’ someone’s expression of art if you are not them and cannot in reality KNOW or appreciate their motivations or how they see the world? But what I don’t think that I realized before was that the effort of taking a deep look at someone’s art can help you to appreciate their motivations more and understand your own to a better degree. This thought process has been stimulating.
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What was really exciting and inspirational to me was how the conversation went into the concept of Sonnetry as a ritual. On an intellectual level I always knew that ritual ruled the day in the world of the Middle Ages and even into the Renaissance, but I don’t think that I ever consciously made the connection between the ritual and the spiritual and the use of the medium of language to combine the two.
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Sonnetry is a ritual of language. It fits a pattern and rhyme, just as any church ritual would do. The meter and flow of a sonnet is a verbal and mental dance as complex as any hand or foot movements involved in a spiritual rite. It is even more intensely so because the rite involves the creation of beauty within the mind. It is more then just a rote performance or series of steps. I’m sure that it is no accident that the development of the sonnet developed directly upon the closing of the Middle Ages and into the Renaissance, where the artistic minds of the day took the rituals of church and attempted to blend them with their expanding artistic creationism.
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I would really like to jump into more research into the creation of Sonnets. Their magic and mystery. Just have to make it through June Faire and July Coronation. Between the Marketplace at June Faire and autocratting July Coronation, I’m not going to have time for anything until August. But I’m hoping that between Marquessa Laurellen and myself we can find someone who really knows what they are doing so we can take this to the next level. Brighid gave me some good suggestions on this subject.
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This month seems to be all about language. A couple of weeks ago I threw together a ceremony for Their Excellencies Cedric and Brighid. I took a couple of passages out of Beowulf and expanded upon them. Brighid and I have been working with the calligrapher, Aelianora, to get the final language down so that it sounds acceptable to the recipient. This led to an interesting conversation on the translation of Old English and Norse. Those of us who have studied the Norse on a surface level in the SCA may have been corrupted. Modern English translations of Old English like Beowulf and ‘Norse’ as used in like the Icelandic Sagas always sounds a bit ‘disjointed’. It doesn’t flow like English. But I’m wondering if the fact that we’ve been reading this ‘disjointed’ Norse translation for many years (MANY years) may have adjusted our mindset to only appreciate Norse or Old English in this disjointed translated format? In other words, does it sound ‘Norse’ if it isn’t disjointed? Which led me to wondering if you were to read these same passages in the Old English or ‘Norse’ would the verbiage ‘flow’ much better, similar to the way we read poetry today? Would the opening lines to Beowulf sound like an English Sonnet to our ears if read in its original English? The maddening part to me is that when I start digging into this my anal-retentive mind is going to tell me that I’ll have to study the original language to more appreciate what is written in it. :-)
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Her Excellency Brighid invited Marquessa Laurellen to June Faire. Let me add my voice in the sincere hope that she takes Her Excellency up on the invitation! :-) Please also accept my invitation to July Coronation. As the autocrat I can ensure that you have nothing but a good time. :-)