Sonnet 55

Forget the sadder drabber cribs and lifeless paraphrases that may have passed you by in what you enjoyed/endured in the name of 'poetry education'. Abandon the lost contexts and barely-alive lives of poets. Instead, dive headfirst into the still-bleeding organs of a plot so audacious that you may find yourself an accomplice to its compiracy.

Our mission requires tools with the keenest edges:

- TRIZ: A Russian-engineered toolkit for sparking innovation

- Clean Language: Not strictly necessary, but if you want to bring TRIZ into your thinking life, Clean Language offers tricks you'll love

- Claude 3.5 Sonnet: Shakespeare, as we'll see, crafted a kind of pretend mind—an artificial intelligence, if you will. So, the latest AI could prove useful in our exploration

As you see the "intelligence" in artificial intelligence might mean many things, and so it is with "reading" in reading a poem. This reading is more akin to reading a palm, tea leaves, a room or a hidden poker hand . Keen attention is required or you'll miss what's important—and much is at stake, and the language looses something to the passage of time. So aid me in performing a delicate operation of revivify a 500-year-old conspiracy for maintaining the immortality of love.

If you don't know , some definitions.

A sonnet is a type of poem that usually has 14 lines, with a specific rhyming pattern. In Shakespeare’s sonnets, the first and third lines rhyme, the second and fourth lines rhyme, and so on. The last two lines are usually intended to surprise the reader and rhyme with each other. Many poets use the sonnet form as examples date back to ancient Greece, but Shakespeare invented his own unique way of writing them.

TRIZ (Теория Решения Изобретательских Задача which is usually translated as Theory of Inventive Problem Solving), Developed by G.S. Altshuller and colleagues in 1946, TRIZ is a systematic method for uncovering innovation and realising the change necessary to realise that innovation. It's like a Swiss Army knife for problem-solving, offering a set of principles and tools to tackle complex challenges.

Clean Language works great in all contexts where words are put into service, and we use it to keep from making assumptions of ourselves.

A case of brief micro digression

Imagine a speculative Doctor Which, this doctor approaches problems with TRIZ-inspired unconventional thinking. This doctor might ask:

1. "How is this 'illness' maintaining itself? What does it want?"
2. "What purpose might these symptoms serve?"
3. "How can seemingly unrelated systems inform our understanding?"
4. "What's the minimum change needed for improvement?"
5. "What if we briefly intensified the symptoms?"

These questions challenge us to break free from psychological inertia - our tendency to approach problems with familiar, often ineffective methods. As we analyse Shakespeare's Sonnet 55, let's adopt this mindset to uncover new insights and possibilities.

Long Story short: Psychological inertia is how you miss out on your innovative inheritance.

Psychological inertia - its tricky

Let's consider in a little detail just two:

1. The dangers and opportunity of clinging to 'outdated modes of operation'

New concepts hide in familiar terms:

• "Horseless carriages" for cars
• "The wireless" for radios of old
• Bluetooth wireless networks
• Skeuomorphic design for example in the calculator on iPhones (see above)

This "don't fix what ain't broke" approach can be useful:

• Aligns with NASA's principle of showing only essential information, brought into avoid catastrophic mistakes.
• Works well when innovation isn't required

However, relying too heavily on the familiar will keep you from innovative, because when innovation is required , tried and true won't do. Shakespeare makes this clear in the first two lines of Sonnet 55:

Not marble, nor the gilded monuments

Of princes, shall outlive this powerful rhyme

Here, Shakespeare takes the familiar (monuments) and immediately challenges our assumptions about their permanence. This is Shakespeare challenging psychological inertia, forcing us to reconsider everything.

A simple challenge to our basic assumption maybe all that is required

1. Just as Neo is asked to question the very air he breathes, Shakespeare asks us to question whether stone monuments are truly lasting.

2. Redefining Immortality: Shakespeare suggests that words (his "powerful rhyme") are more enduring than physical monuments. This is akin to Neo realising that "reality" is just simulation.

Want to do this in your own real life?

Try this Clean language trick for this. When someone says, "We need synergistic modulation approach," trying asking

"What kind of synergistic modulation is that approach?"

or

"If that synergistic modulation approach is at its best, it would be like what?"

and suddenly reality leans open just a little, presenting an opening for innovation.

The Power of Inverting Value Perceptions

Another challenge to psychological inertia is too see how place affects value, that is ,when we raise things up or put things down their value changes , similarly proximity and distance affects value. For example, consider the value of gold in different contexts:

- Gold in my hand

- Gold in a vault

- Gold on a microchip

- Gold on the nib of a pen

- Gold in a tooth

- Gold in a Pharaohs tomb in a video game

and so Shakespeare in the next lines makes the same point

But you shall shine more bright in these contents

Than unswept stone, besmear'd with sluttish time.

Monuments, typically viewed as valuable and enduring, are reduced even further to "unswept stone," tarnished rather than preserved by time. The use of "sluttish" in Elizabethan English, meaning unkempt or slovenly, further highlighting(?) this degradation.

In stark contrast, the intangible contents of his poem are elevated to something that "shines brightly" – a powerful reversal that challenges the reader's assumptions about permanence and worth. This inversion serves a dual purpose:

1. It breaks through the psychological inertia surrounding traditional forms of commemoration.

2. It positions poetry as a superior method of preservation.

Clean Language and Spatial Exploration

To further explore how value is created and perceived, Clean Language offers some useful questions. By asking "Where is...?" and "Where is...now?", we can uncover insights about how value is context dependent. These questions form the basis of a practice called 'Clean Space', a practice that uses physical movement of representations to elicit enlightening insights.

As George Clinton of Funkadelic aptly put it: "Free your mind and your ass will follow." Or, as we've discovered, the reverse works too.

But there's more!

But you shall shine more bright in these contents

Than unswept stone, besmear'd with sluttish time.

These lines contain exquisite joy that I can't help but share. The engine for this wonder lies in the unlikeliest words: 'But' and 'more'. Shakespeare, like a great chess player, that seals his opponent's fate by moving an unnoticed piece a single square. and as with the concept of ideality in TRIZ: making the least possible innovation with the most radical impact is understood as moving the system toward ideality.

Elizabethan English is not modern English, and common words are particularly likely to trip us up. The infamous example of Juliet's line 'O Romeo, Romeo, wherefore art thou Romeo?' is only mysterious until you know that 'Wherefore' means 'why' in modern English.

'But' in the sonnet means something like 'only' in modern English, with the sense of 'only you shall shine more brightly'. In more idiomatic modern English, we might say 'you alone shall shine more brightly in these contents'. The tying together of 'you' and 'these contents', raising a myriad of interpretations:

- 'Only you' as in 'you', the reader of this sonnet, are necessary for this 'rhyme' to last longer than marble and monuments to princes.

- 'Only you' the object of Shakespeare's affection, who shines more brightly, over whose shoulder are we, in effect, reading?

- And which shoulder is that? Shakespeares or his love, or mine as I write this?

Another brief case of micro digression

A poem is not a riddle requiring a solution, mere manifesto or guide to life it may pretend to be any of these but it is more helpful to consider a parallel example. It seems obvious that musicians explore the possibilities of new instruments, production techniques, or voice production or for that matter , painters, writers , sculptors and dancers exhaust the properties of their material, be that paint, their lives, stone or else bodies in motion.

given any medium - instruments, paint, chords, bodies, words, steel, or concrete - the essence of innovation: is to make the upmost of that stuff.

The poet Gerard Manly Hopkins in the sonnet Pied Beauty uses the same idea to praise God

Glory be to God for dappled things—

...

Landscape plotted and pieced—fold, fallow, and plough;

And all trades, their gear and tackle and trim.

All things counter, original, spare, strange;

Whatever is fickle, freckled (who knows how?)

With swift, slow; sweet, sour; adazzle, dim;

He fathers-forth whose beauty is past change:

Praise Him.

God by this reckoning, as the great inventor, is able to make the most of the full gamut of creation (who knows how?).

And there's 'more'

Let's not lose sight of Shakespeare's intention to create a 'powerful rhyme'. Why doesn't he use the word 'brighter'? The short answer is that he never does. Instead, 'more bright' is Shakespearian for 'brighter'.

So in As You Like It, Frederick says: "She robs thee of thy name; And thou wilt show more bright and seem more virtuous When she is gone"

You could swap 'more bright' for 'brighter', and the meaning is clear enough. But there is more.

'more bright' is trebly redundant when contrasted with 'unswept stone' and 'besmeared with sluttish time'. Coupled with 'but' or only, it's like Shakespeare's casting a verbal spell, stripping away all other comparisons. He's leaving us with no choice but to accept the idea transcendent brightness.

Think of 'more bright' as something akin to ultraviolet blue - a 'blue' beyond what a human eye can see. Or like the 'more perfect union' in the US Constitution. It's pushing language to its limits, and some.

Shakespeare is performing a magic trick by first telling you that you're about to be tricked and all while the lights are on. And remembering that 'you' could refer to the addressee of the poem or the reader 'More bright' is the ideal way to make a logically impossibility, possible . It shouldn't work, but it does, brilliantly.

Remember that line from As You Like It? "And thou wilt show more bright and seem more virtuous" - that's not a compliment. The 'seem' is the knife, and 'more virtuous' twists it. But in Sonnet 55, with "But you shall shine more bright", Shakespeare flips this on its head. He's inviting us to admire the trick while falling for it.

Why? without your willing consent, that is with you eyes open, you might object once you discover that you've been tricked, and this would risk the poem not working - he's foregrounding the act of poetic manipulation in the service of a 'powerful rhyme' that will outlive stone monuments and for this Shakespeare requires more than the passive assistance of the reader!

And let's not forget TRIZ - so many principles are captured in just the use of the words 'you' 'more' and 'but':

1. Principle of Universality: Shakespeare's multi-layered use of "But" makes the word perform multiple functions, aligning with the TRIZ principle of making a part or object perform multiple functions. It's not just a conjunction; it's a pivot point, a spotlight, and a spell-casting word all at once.
2. Principle of "Blessing in Disguise": The ambiguity in the word 'you' far from being confusing allows the ghost of other meanings to permeate the text, increasing its richness. And this isn't only in the service of writing 'good' poetry but making verse that pays back attention, a technique for ensuring its longevity, the whole reason for the poem!
3. Principle of Self-Service: Shakespeare's technique requires the reader's active participation to fully realise the poem's power. By inviting the reader to see the trick and fall for it simultaneously, he's making the reader an essential part of the poem's functioning. This aligns with the TRIZ principle of self-service, where the object of innovation participates in its own operation.

Greater heights

After these heights Shakespeare takes things up a notch:

When wasteful war shall statues overturn,

And broils root out the work of masonry,

Nor Mars his sword, nor war’s quick fire shall burn

The living record of your memory.

These lines are best understood not for their literal meaning, but for the vibe. Shakespeare orchestrates a metaphorical drum roll, piling on images of tumult and conflict. We see war overturning statues, violent quarrels (broils) uprooting masonry, the god of war Mars wielding his sword, and quick-spreading fire. This accumulation of destructive imagery serves a crucial purpose: it forcefully sweeps away our common preconceptions about time, memory, death, destruction and permanence. To introduce a innovation previously unimaginable. "The living record of your memory." Remembering that this was written any time between 1591 and 1599

Hold to your hats - we're going to talk full stops

And there it is, in the original a full stop after 'memory'. So you could reasonably read this as

When devastating war shall overturn statues, and conflicts destroy the mason's handiwork, the cause of war (Mars) nor the effects of war (fire) shall destroy: The living record of your memory (this poem).

But what if we take up Shakespeare's invitation to think innovatively to use our minds to make a 'living record' and reconsider that full stop. In some editions its rendered as a colon. But the original is clear enough. Elizabethans didn't have rules of punctuation exactly as we have them now, spelling wasn't regularised. So is Shakespeare inviting the reader to defy the full stop. As the next line reads:

'Gainst death and all-oblivious enmity

Maybe all we'll say here is that when innovation is required, nothing is off limits , that is the greatest innovators use the least means to achieve greatest effect. Also this is poetry, its what you're supposed to do - you've 14 lines of rhyme and a handful of punctuations what else is there if you goal is immortality?

Shakespeare's gift lies in how he invites the reader to do the poetry with him, much as he does in his play. By potentially challenging the finality of a full stop, he's might be pushing us to think beyond conventional boundaries - a fitting approach for a poem about transcending time and destruction. This is innovation at its finest: using the simplest tools (a mere punctuation mark) to provoke you into breathing interpretative life into the poem , that is feeling like you owning the means of production , in short through this poem you become the poet.

And why not compare Shakespeare's approach in Sonnet 55 to the Apple App Store. The sonnet functions much like Apple inventing the App Store to supply what's missing from the initial roll-out of their product. Whatever features were missing, developers could supply, earning and becoming invested in the whole enterprise, app developers become willing accomplices to the enterprise.

Similarly, Shakespeare's sonnet provides a framework - a poetic "platform," if you will - that invites readers to become active participants in the creation of meaning. Readers of Sonnet 55 are encouraged to work in their own interpretations, to challenge conventional readings (like the finality of a full stop), and to take the innovation invitation.

This approach ensures that the sonnet remains a "living record," constantly updated and refreshed by each new reader, each new interpretation. It's a self-perpetuating system of poetic innovation

Honestly the last micro digression , but its a doozy!

Shakespeare is all about innovation and often this is staged as an invitation:

1. Direct Audience Engagement: "Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears" (Julius Caesar) "Now entertain conjecture of a time" (Henry V) "Let us sit upon the ground / And tell sad stories of the death of kings" (Richard II)

These lines directly address the audience, inviting them into the narrative and making them active participants in the storytelling process.

1. Setting the Scene: "Two households, both alike in dignity, / In fair Verona, where we lay our scene" (Romeo and Juliet) "O for a Muse of fire, that would ascend / The brightest heaven of invention, / A kingdom for a stage, princes to act / And monarchs to behold the swelling scene!" (Henry V)

Or, Shakespeare invites the audience to imagine the setting, engaging their creativity from the outset.

1. Breaking the Fourth Wall: "If we shadows have offended, / Think but this, and all is mended, / That you have but slumber'd here / While these visions did appear." (A Midsummer Night's Dream)

This epilogue directly acknowledges the audience, inviting them to reflect on the play as a shared experience.

In Sonnet 55, we see Shakespeare employing a similar invitational technique, but in a more subtle, written form. The sonnet invites the reader to:

1. Engage with the text actively ("But you shall shine more bright in these contents")
2. Challenge conventional understanding (potentially defying the full stop)
3. Participate in the creation of meaning and the perpetuation of memory

This approach in the sonnet mirrors the theatrical invitations, but adapts them for the written medium. Just as theatregoers are invited to lend their ears and imagination, readers of the sonnet are invited to lend their minds and interpretative faculties.

Invitation as Innovation:

By consistently using this invitational approach across different mediums (stage and page), Shakespeare demonstrates a key principle of innovation: user engagement. Whether it's a play or a poem, Shakespeare understood that the power of his work lies not just in what he creates, but in how he involves his audience/readers in the creative process.

This technique ensures that his works remains a "living" entity, constantly renewed through active participation, whether that's an audience member hallucinating the Globe Theatre for the globe itself or a reader contemplating the meaning of a strategically placed full stop in a sonnet.

In essence, Shakespeare's art of invitation is a form of open-source creation, inviting co-creation and ensuring the enduring relevance and impact of his works across centuries.

Change as innovation invitation and everyone is invited

If its good enough for Apple and Shakespeare , why not your organisation? - change shouldn't be 'pushed through', or 'managed' it should be an innovation invitation.

...Your praise shall still find room

But Shakespeare's not content to leave it at that. What's better than a crescendo? Another one.

...your praise shall still find room

Even in the eyes of all posterity

This is some big talk - 'all posterity', really? The technical term for this in poetry is hyperbole. How is this to be achieved? Well, God 'who judges all' can be relied upon:

That wear this world out to the ending doom.

So, till the judgment that yourself arise,

But Shakespeare, being a great inventor, is not likely to leave things entirely to God 'till the judgement'. That's where "this" poem performs its last revelation by reversal, which happens fittingly enough in the final line:

You live in this, and dwell in lovers eyes.

In keeping with convention sonnets are imagined to be the poet's private words to their love. But something shocking happens. Instead of the reader peering ghostly and unseen from over the poet's shoulder as he corresponds with his love, the poet turns and acknowledges not just our existence but as a peer in the project.

The first four words of this last line, in effect switch on the system, something like the launching of a ship, as in 'I name this ship'. In linguistics this is called a performative. The poem becomes its ideal readers - which means, you and I, dear reader - are become part of its self-perpetuating system, revivifying with each reading what will "dwell in lovers eyes." that is our eyes.