Alright well I absolutely, 100% DID NOT write this myself. But I couldn't help reading it and muttering a silent "amen" to myself.
"What can I say? He loves her, or thinks he does. She tries to be kind, or at least he thinks she does. He pushes his luck--that he admits (in the Fourth Song). And she dumps him (in the Eleventh Song). If you see no ironic, self-mocking humor in his descriptions of his struggles with desire and reason, in his description of love's effect on his performance in combat (#41 and #53), in his claims about his poetic inspiration (#1 and #74), you aren't reading carefully enough. If these poems are read with no ear for that irony, "Astrophil" comes off as a pompous fool. If read with sensitivity, the cycle shows how the whole medieval doctrine of "courtly love" and the courtier's ability to rise to the stars by love (Bembo) may be appreciated even while it is subjected to an enormously entertaining and subtle critique. Perhaps love's "ladder" has agendas of its own, independent of its "climbers"? And what of the Beloved, in Bembo, that useful mortal starting point whose beauty soon is left behind by the Lover as he (always "he") rockets into union with the Divine? What does she get out of all of this? More importantly, what does it cost her?"
Anyway, I took this excerpt off of the following site from Goucher College:
http://faculty.goucher.edu/eng211/sir_philip_sidney_.htm
Take a look at it if you're interested!
I would have to agree with it entirely in the way that I percieved the entire text as somewhat ironic and almost . . . well, pathetic. :)
Thanks for reposting, Jessica. I'd encourage you to drop a link into the comments section of my Bloffice post, where I ask the question whether or not Sidney thinks Astrophil is a sap. I think the others who commented there would enjoy reading this post.
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