materiály ke zkoušce

, starvation, lack of provision for posterity. abundance - presumably a reference to the youth's rich qualities, in contrast to the famine which he threatens to create. Famines and glut were part of the usual cycle of life in the Elizabethan world. A poor harvest could mean starvation for many, as the storage facilities which we take for granted were unknown in those times.

8. Thy self thy foe = being an enemy to yourself. to thy sweet self too cruel = by refusing to procreate, hence denying a future to yourself. 'You are being cruel to yourself in seeking your own extinction'.

9. the world's fresh ornament = a fresh and youthful glory to the world.
10. only = most important, chief, unique. herald = one who announces, a messenger. Shakespeare elsewhere calls the lark the herald of the morn, and the owl the herald of night.
gaudy = bright, colourful (not necessarily vulgar).

11. content = substance. Also, probably, pleasure, also content = semen, and probably there is secondary meaning of masturbation, self-pleasure, as opposed to the pleasure of procreation. Content(s) even today has the double meaning of a) happiness, pleasure, and b) that which is contained in something.

12. tender churl - probably a phrase indicating affection, rather than criticism, rather like 'silly fool', or 'yer daft idiot'. The context makes all the difference to such forms, which spoken angrily can be insulting, spoken tenderly are terms of endearment. churl countryman, rustic; mak'st waste = creates waste; lays waste, makes a desert; spills semen. niggarding = being miserly, stingy.

13. Pity the world = take pity on the world, which otherwise will be deprived of the continued beauty of your existence. this glutton = a glutton like this, i.e, such as I am about to describe, one who eats his own share as well as the world's.

14. by the grave and thee =probably, a duty owed to the world because the grave is all devouring, and therefore to be fought; and a duty owed also to yourself, because it is in the nature of things that beauty should procreate, otherwise 'three score years will bear the world away', and so on. You purpose to be such a glutton as to consume both what the world and you yourself should have as a right.


II
1.When forty winters shall besiege thy brow,2. And dig deep trenches in thy beauty's field,3. Thy youth's proud livery so gazed on now,4. Will be a totter'd weed of small worth held: 5. Then being asked, where all thy beauty lies,6. Where all the treasure of thy lusty days; 7. To say, within thine own deep sunken eyes,8. Were an all-eating shame, and thriftless praise.9. How much more praise deserv'd thy beauty's use,10. If thou couldst answer 'This fair child of mine11. Shall sum my count, and make my old excuse,'12. Proving his beauty by succession thine!13. This were to be new made when thou art old,14. And see thy blood warm when thou feel'st it cold.

Čtyřicet zim až oblehne tvé skráně,
až surově ti zryje hebkou líc,
až zbudou ti jen hadry rozedrané
z livreje mladých let – a jinak nic,
pak ptej se, kam jsi tu svou krásu dal,
kam poděla se mladost bujará:
do vpadlých očí jsi ji pochoval
marnost ji spolkne, skončí na marách.
Oč větší chválu by sis zasloužil,
moci tak říct: “Mám syna a ten srovná
můj účet se smrtí – čím já jsme byl,
tím je teď on – hle, ve všem se mi rovná.”
Ve stáří děti navrátí nám mládí,
svou achladlou krev v nich ohřejem – a rádi.
The 40 year-old person was a sign of advanced age for Elizabethian people. The winter was a traditional sigh of old age and death. Elizabethian people believed that the blood of a young man is warm and mettlesome, while the blood of an ald man is cold and shallow.

The poet looks ahead to the time when the youth will have aged, and uses this as an argument to urge him to waste no time, and to have a child who will replicate his father and preserve his beauty. The imagery of ageing used is that of siege warfare, forty winters being the besieging army, which digs trenches in the fields before the threatened city. The trenches correspond to the furrows and lines which will mark the young man's forehead as he ages. He is urged not to throw away all his beauty by devoting himself to self-pleasure, but to have children, thus satisfying the world, and Nature, which will keep an account of what he does with his life.

1. besiege = lay siege to. A term from warfare. Forty winters (forty years) when added to the young man's present age, would make him about 60. At such an age he would have many wrinkles, although it is generally reckoned that in Elizabethan times, owing to dietary inadequacies and disease, people aged much more rapidly, and even a forty year old could be deemed to have reached old age. So the poet could be referring to the youth as he might be when he reaches forty.

2. dig deep trenches = the besieging army would dig trenches to undermine the city's walls. But the reference may also be to furrows dug in a field when ploughing. The metaphor, either military or agricultural, is applied to the youth's face, which will be lined and wrinkled with age as the years pass.

3. livery = uniform worn by servants in a nobleman's house. It could be quite sumptuous, if the person wished to make a show of wealth.

4. totter'd weed = a tattered garment. Tottered is an old spelling of tattered. weeds - often refers to clothing in Shakespeare.

5. being asked = if you were to be asked; in the future, when you might be asked. lies = is; is buried; is hidden.
6. lusty days = the days of youthful exuberance; days of lustful behaviour. Note that treasure contains a sexual innuendo, implying sexual parts, or semen, depending on context

7. to say = to reply (to the question posed in the two lines above). within thine own deep sunken eyes = the treasure of days long gone would show nothing surviving other than hollow eyes, caused by the process of ageing. Possibly also a hinted reference to the supposed effect of sexual excess (too much masturbation?).

8. all-eating shame = a shame which devours all sense of right and decorum
thriftless praise = praise which produces no result or advantage. A praise of yourself which is clearly misplaced and damaging to you. thriftless = showing no sense of thrift, or economy.

9. thy beauty's use = the use which you make of your beauty, the profit you derive from it.
lines 6-9 = undoubtedly a sexual meaning to these lines, especially in treasure of thy lusty days, thy beauty's use. (See notes above) The youth is accused of expending his sexual energy upon himself, with the result of shame, exhaustion, sunken eyes and failure to point to any lasting result.

10. If you could reply in response to their questions, 'This child of mine, etc., etc.'

11. sum my count = add up the balance sheet of my life; probably a bawdy pun on count, pronounced cunt. Hence, 'give a reckoning for all the cunts I have enjoyed'.
make my old excuse = justify my life when I am an old man; or, satisfy the arguments advanced of old, that I should produce heirs; or make my habitual, frequently repeated excuse.

12. Proving, by his beauty, that he succeeds you as an heir to your beauty.
proving also has the meaning of 'testing, trying out' which may be relevant here.

13. This were to be new made = this would be as if you were being newly created.

14. Cold and freezing blood was thought to be the traditional accompaniment of old age. The message of the couplet is that a child made in his image would invigorate and effectively renew him when he reached old age. His blood would flow warm in his veins again.







III
1.Look in thy glass and tell the face thou viewest2. Now is the time that face should form another;3. Whose fresh repair if now thou not renewest,4. Thou dost beguile the world, unbless some mother.5. For where is she so fair whose unear'd womb6. Disdains the tillage of thy husbandry?7. Or who is he so fond will be the tomb8. Of his self-love, to stop posterity? 9. Thou art thy mother's glass and she in thee10. Calls back the lovely April of her prime;11. So thou through windows of thine age shalt see,12. Despite of wrinkles this thy golden time.13. But if thou live, remember'd not to be,14. Die single and thine image dies with thee.

Zrcadlo vem a vyřiď té své tváři,
že přišel čas dvě z jedné udělat,
jen ten, kdo s krásou dobře hospodaří,
světu i matkám může požehnat.
Ukaž mi krásku, která nechtěla by
tvou setbou si dát lůno oplodnit,
a jenom blázen dopustil by, aby
měl se rád tak, že bez dětí chce žít.
Tvá matka v tobě zálibně se zhlíží,
jak v zrcadle svých nejkrásnějších dní,
až tebe také budou léta tížit,
skrz vrásky na své mládí pohlédni.
Jestli však chceš žít sám, pak do hrobu
sám odneseš si svoji podobu.
The youth is urged once more to look to posterity and to bless the world by begetting children. No woman, however beautiful, would disdain to have him as a mate. Just as he reflects his mother's beauty, showing how lovely she was in her prime, so a child of his would be a record of his own beauty. In his old age he could look on this child and see an image of what he once was. But if he chooses to remain single, everything will perish with him.

1. glass = mirror; glass in the Sonnets usually means mirror. Mirror is seen like a “breeder” of beauty.the face thou viewest = your reflection. Speak to yourself and tell yourself that 'Now is the time etc'.

2. It is time to have a child. another = another face
3. If you do not undertake now the repair (= condition) and renewal of your face, since it is fast decaying. whose refers back to the face thou viewest.

4. beguile = cheat, deceive, deprive of its due rights. unbless = make unhappy, deprive of fruitfulness, and the pleasure of being married to you. some mother = some woman whom you might marry and cause to be a mother.
= unbless some mother – deprive some woman of the blessing of motherhood

5. For where is she so fair = what woman is so beautiful, where is the woman in the world that would be too proud to sleep with youunear'd = unploughed. To ear is the old term for 'to plough', and often it is used meatphorically.
unear'd womb = the reference here is to sexual intercourse. Ploughing the womb, (as the plough enters into the soil so does the man enter into the woman), and sowing it with seed (semen) leads to children, as ploughing and sowing the land leads to crops. According to the physiology of the time, the male seed was the substance which created a child, and the woman was simply a carrier of the developing embryo. The biological details of reproduction were not understood.

6. Disdains = is contemptuous of. tillage of thy husbandry = the farming and ploughing metaphor continues. Tillage is cultivation, working of the land; husbandry is farm and estate management, with a pun on 'being a husband' – sexual resposibilities of a husband.

7. fond = foolish
7-8 the tomb of his self-love in this context self-love leads to death, since there is no issue (no children). to stop posterity = to ensure that there are no descendants, to bring an end to future generations. The sentence has an additional sexual meaning, relating to masturbation. Onan was the biblical figure who was destroyed by God for spilling the seed 'that he might not have children'.

9. Thou art thy mother's glass = you are effectively a mirror in which your mother can look to see a reflection of herself as she was in her youth.

10. Calls back = recalls, remembers, brings back to mind. the lovely April of her prime = her springtime, when she was most beautiful, youth. April was the beginning of Spring, and was thought to be the most colourful of the months.
11. through windows of thine age = this suggests not only looking back from old age, upon the past, as if through a window, but also looking at a child, one's own, as if seeing it through a window. The window can be both a barrier to and a point of contact with the world beyond.
-or also: children who in his old age will enable him to see what he used to be when young

12. Despite = in spite ofthy golden time = the time of your golden youth, the time of your glory

13. remember'd not to be = determined not to be remembered, not being remembered. Only to be forgotten. It ties in with the theme that the consequence of dying childless is to be erased from the book of memory.

14. image = memory, fame, potential child
If you die, as a single man, with no children, there will be no image to carry on your memory. The line could be read as a sort of tetchy imperative - 'Die as a single person then, if you must be so stubbornly inclined!'.


IV
1. Unthrifty loveliness, why dost thou spend2. Upon thy self thy beauty's legacy?3. Nature's bequest gives nothing, but doth lend,4. And being frank she lends to those are free:5. Then, beauteous niggard, why dost thou abuse6. The bounteous largess given thee to give?7. Profitless usurer, why dost thou use8. So great a sum of sums, yet canst not live?9. For having traffic with thy self alone,10. Thou of thy self thy sweet self dost deceive:11. Then how when nature calls thee to be gone,12. What acceptable audit canst thou leave?13. Thy unused beauty must be tombed with thee,14. Which, used, lives th' executor to be.

Proč půvabem svým plýtváš marnotratně,
proč krásu svou en v sobě utrácíš,
když dary Přírody jsou všechny splatné
jak dlužní úpisy – a ty to víš.
Proč schraňuješ, co štědře měl bys dát,
proč stal se z tebe lichvář vlastní krásy,
co skrblením chce jenom proělat
a přijít o všechno, co nastřádal si?
Když jenom sama sebe miluješ,
sám sebou plýtváš, zrazuješ svou krásu –
pak přijde smrt – a řekni, z čeho chceš
vystavit účet dotěrnému času?
Kdo nemá dědice, ten zaživa
svou krásu v sobě navždy pohřbívá.
The youth is urged once again not to throw away without regard the beauty which is his to perfection. It is Nature's gift, but only given on condition that it is used to profit the world, that is, by handing it on to future generations. An analogy is drawn from money-lending: the usurer should use his money wisely. Yet the young man has dealings with himself alone, and cannot give a satisfactory account of time well spent. If he continues to behave in such a way, his beauty will die with him, whereas he could leave inheritors to benefit from his legacy.

Financial metaphore is very strong here. Beauty is again seen in both physical and spiritual things as well. The “author” of that sonnet is beauteous niggard.

1. Unthrifty = unsaving, wasteful, unprofitable loveliness = this is personified as the youth. The youth is beauty itself. 1-2. Why dost thou spend/ upon thyself = as well as the financial sense of squandering wealth and resources, this also has a secondary sexual reference of emitting semen .

2. upon thy self - see the note above. The implication is that all his pleasure is wasted upon himself. thy beauty's legacy = the riches that your beauty should leave to the world when you are gone (your children). The legacy of beauteous children should be created by his semen which he is wasting instead in frivolous self pleasure.

3. Nature's bequest = the qualities, talents, attributes, which are provided by Nature at birth. Nature, however, does not give outright, but only makes a loan. She expects repayment of the loan with interest (in the form of gifts to the world).

4. frank = generous, liberal; to those are free = to those who are open hearted, free spirited. Nature expects a reciprocal response to her gift.

5. niggard = miserly person; stingy and selfish individual. abuse = ill treat. Also with a suggestion of self-abuse, masturbation. The use of niggard(ing) here suggests a slang meaning of tosser, wanker.

6. The inheritance (of beauty etc.) which was given to you so that you might pass it on.
largess = generous bestowal of good qualities.

7. The comparison of the youth with a usurer (money-lender), albeit a profitless (unsuccessful) one, is not very flattering. Perhaps it was meant to stir him into action which would remedy the situation. Use is intended both in the technical sense of lending money as a usurer, as well as that of making use of (his beauty) by procreating.

8. So great a sum of sums = usurers had large sums of money at their disposal. They performed financial services which are nowadays done by banks. yet canst not live = the poet here compares the usurer who makes a comfortable living from the interest he charges, with the youth who has so much wealth of beauty, yet cannot live (survive) into the future. It also suggest – you will not be remembered after deth (you will die childless).

9. By not dealing in the commodities which nature has bestowed upon you (nobility, beauty, wealth). The sexual meaning of masturbation is fairly explicit. Also suggest a single life (avoiding sex)
10. You deprive yourself of children, who are, in a sense, yourself; you deceive, cheat yourself. of thy self could mean 'by your own action'. deceive = cheat.

11. Then how = the question is taken over by What acceptable audit in the next line. The compound question may be read as “How will you give an account of yourself and your behaviour to Nature when she calls (when you die) and what audited record of yourself will you provide”

11, 12. Taken together the two lines seem to mean 'How is it that, when your time of death comes, you will not be able to render a satisfactory account of yourself?' Strictly speaking the term audit is applied to a check which is made on accounts after they have been presented, but also, by extension, it appears to mean the accounts themselves.

13. Here there is also a sexual meaning. Your beauty (seed) should be used for procreation. If used in such a way, it would create progeny, a child who would be the inheritor of that beauty. But if unused, by being spilt and wasted then etc. must be tombed = cannot avoid being entombed. (Your seed would be buried uselessly in your lap). Your children would be unborn, forever entombed.

14. Which refers to 'thy beauty'. If it is used, it creates children, who would interpret and present you as you were to the world. lives th'executor to be = lives in the future as your children, as the inheritor and administrator of your beauty.








V
1. Those hours, that with gentle work did frame2. The lovely gaze where every eye doth dwell,3. Will play the tyrants to the very same4. And that unfair which fairly doth excel;5. For never-resting time leads summer on6. To hideous winter, and confounds him there;7. Sap checked with frost, and lusty leaves quite gone,8. Beauty o'er-snowed and bareness every where:9. Then were not summer's distillation left,10. A liquid prisoner pent in walls of glass,11. Beauty's effect with beauty were bereft,12. Nor it, nor no remembrance what it was:13. But flowers distill'd, though they with winter meet,14. Leese but their show; their substance still lives sweet.
Ty přičinlivé, něžné prsty času,
co s láskou tkaly líbezný tvůj vzhled,
barbarsky servou tvoji křehkou krásu,
své vlastní dílo, nad nímž žasne svět.
Neboť čas nemá špetku slitování,
ohyzdné zimě vydá léto v plen,
mráz jak dech smrti vnikne do kořání
a rubáš navlékne si pustá zem.
A nebýt potom vonné tresti léta,
co v lahviččce jak v cele přebývá,
po kráse byla by – a navždy – veta,
a ani vzpomínka by na ni nezbyla.
Ale květ, který v tresť jsi překapal,
Ač sám už není, pořád voní dál.
This and the following sonnet (VI) are written as a pair. Bot are so called flower-metaphores sonnets.
The poet laments the progress of the years, which will play havoc with the young man's beauty. Human life is like the seasons, spring, summer, autumn's maturity and fruition, followed by hideous winter. Nothing is left of summer's beauty except for that which the careful housewife preserves, the essence of roses and other flowers distilled for their perfume. Other than that there is no remembrance of things beautiful. But once distilled, the substance of beauty is always preserved. Therefore the youth should consider how his beauty might be best distilled.

1. The time of your growing up, which made you what you are. with gentle work = Nature is portrayed as a gentle artificer, making things with kindness, but later becoming tyrannous and harsh. frame = make, but contains the suggestion of making into a structure, or scaffolding.

2. where = whereon, on which. The youth's beauty is typified by his gaze, which perhaps stands for his eyes, or his appearance, or his manner of looking at the world.
dwell = linger

3. play the tyrant = will be tyrannical, will be like a tyrant. Tyrants traditionally behaved with cruelty, or: oppressthe very same = must refer to 'the lovely gaze'.

4. unfair = make ugly. Unfair is used here as a verb. which fairly doth excel = which excels in beauty, fairness.

5. leads summer on = this suggests duplicity, as for example in the modern phrase 'to lead up the garden path'.

6. hideous winter = winter was often depicted as a hag dressed in filthy clothing. and confounds him there = and destroys him (summer) there, where winter reigns. Confounds = destroys, ruins

7. checked = stopped, held back; Frost prevents the sap from rising.
lusty = vigorous, full of growth and youthful energy.

8. o'er-snowed = covered with snow

9. were not = If (summer's distillation – the distillation of summer flowers perfumes) had not been preserved. This refers to the distillation of perfume from fragrant flowers, such as roses. Rosewater was much in demand for sweetmeats, confections and kissing-comfits.

10. The distillate would be kept in a glass vessel, a vial.
pent =