Justification of the relevanceof the sonnet form to articulation of challenges of global governance

Coherence of Sustainable Development Goals through Artificial Intelligence (Part #2)

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Noting the capacity of AI to compose poems, early reports regarding ChatGPT contributed to controversy in this regard (Joe Santamaria, Poetry, ChatGPT, and AI: Can it Create ‘Great’ Poetry? Poem Analysis; Daniel Soufi, ChatGPT vs Poetry: can artificial intelligence write in verse? El Pais, 17 March 2013). On the occasion of UNESCO's World Poetry Day (2023), a test was presented to determine whether people were capable of distinguishing between poems generated by ChatGPT and those of human poets (World Poetry Day: Can you tell which poem was written by ChatGPT? Al Jazeera, 21March 2023). However a reason why AI is claimed to write pretty awful verse was addressed by Walt Hunter (What Poets Know That ChatGPT Doesn’t, The Atlantic, 13 February 2023). This avoided the question as to why a high proportion of human poetry is far less engaging than the sonnets of Shakespeare.

Following the explorations of the potential role of poetry in policy-making (as noted above), particular consideration was subsequently given to the possible relation between the much-studied 14-fold organization of sonnets (Variety of Rhyming Patterns in Standard 14-line Sonnets, 2021) and the separately studied 14-fold patterns deemed significant to organizational management and policy articulation. The latter tendency is evident from the range of web resources on the matter (Pattern of 14-foldness as an Implicit Organizing Principle for Governance? 2021). The question was the nature of the potential interplay between the two perspectives (Potential for Coherence through Engaging Strategic Poetry, 2021)

The potential relationship highlighted the possibility of a relative unexplored correspondence between perceived patterns of organization in seemingly disparate, if not supposedly incommensurable domains. This was previously explored (and discussed further below) in the light of a 14-fold pattern of logical connectives (Embodiment of logical connectives in sonnet form, 2021). These connectives are otherwise considered as fundamental to the operation of computer algorithms.

As noted in the earlier argument, there is seemingly little insight -- or interest -- in the justification for a 14-fold pattern, any more than that for other common preferences of strategic significance. The early commentary in this respect by William Sharp is therefore unique (The Sonnet: Its Characteristics and History, Sonnets of This Century, 1887):

The structure of the sonnet is arbitrary in so far that it is the outcome of continuous experiment moulded by mental and musical influences: it is not a form to be held sacred simply because this or that great poet, or a dozen poets, pronounced it be the best possible poetic vehicle for its purpose. It has withstood the severest test that any form can be put to: it has survived the changes of language, the fluctuations of taste, the growth of culture, the onward sweep and the resilience of the wave of poetry that flows to and fro, "with kingly pauses of reluctant pride," across all civilised peoples: for close upon six hundred years have elapsed since Guittone and Dante and Petrarca found the perfected instrument ready for them to play their sweetest music upon....

The Guittonian limitation of the sonnet's length to fourteen lines was, we may rest assured, not wholly fortuitous. The musical and poetic instinct probably, have determined its final form more than any apprehension of the fundamental natural law beneath its metrical principles.... It became necessary, then, to find a mould for the expression of a single thought, emotion, or poetically apprehended fact, which would allow sufficient scope for sonority of music and the unfolding of the motive and its application, and which yet would not prove too ample for that which was to be put into it.

Repeated experiments tended to prove that twelve, fourteen, or sixteen lines were ample for the presentation of any isolated idea or emotion; again, that the sensitive ear was apt to find the latter number a shade too long, or cumbrous; and still later, that while a very limited number of rhymes was necessitated by the shortness of the poem, the sixteen reverberations of some three or four terminal sounds frequently became monotonous and unpleasing. Ten or twelve-line poems were ascertained to be as a rule somewhat fragmentary, and only worthily served when the poet was desirous of presenting to his readers a simple pearl rather than a diamond with its flashing facets, though here also there was not enough expansion for restricted rhyme, while there was too much for merely two or at the most three distinct terminal sounds.

Again, it was considered advisable that the expression should be twofold, that is, that there should be the presentation of the motive, and its application; hence arose the division of the fourteen-line poem into two systems. How were these systems to be arranged? Were seven lines to be devoted to the presentation of the idea or emotion, and seven to its application: seven to the growth of the tree, and seven to its fruitage: seven to the oncoming wave, and seven to its resurge? The sensitive ear once more decided the question, recognising that if there were to be a break in the flow of melody -- and the necessity of pauses it had already foreseen -- it could not be at a seventh line, which would bring about an overbalance of rhyme.

Experience and metrical music together coincided to prove that the greatest amount of dignity and beauty could be obtained by the main pause occurring at the end of the eighth line. Here, then, we arrive at the two systems into which the sonnet is divided -- the major and the minor: and because the major system consists of eight lines, it is called the "octave," and correspondingly the minor system is known as the "sestet." It soon became evident, however, that something more was wanted: it was as if a harpist had discovered that with another string or two he could greatly add to the potential powers of his instrument. This was the number and the true distribution of rhyme-sounds. How many were to occur in the octave, how many in the sestet? or were they to pervade both systems indiscriminately? ... Again, Guittone had definitely demonstrated that in length each sonnet-line should consist of ten syllables, the decasyllabic metre permitting a far greater sonority than the octosyllabic; and that acute experimentalist probably quite realised that continuous sonority and unbroken continuity of motive were two of the most essential characteristics of the sonnet. No one who has any knowledge of the laws both of music and of poetical forms would be surprised if it were proved, as has been asserted, that Fra Guittone or his predecessors perceived and acted in accordance with the close analogy existing between their chosen metrical form and the musical system established by Guido Bonatti in the eleventh century. Throughout Fra Guittone's work it is evident that he is no blind blunderer, but a poet striving to make his vehicle the best possible, working upon it with a determinate aim. [emphasis added]

With respect to Shakespeare's sonnets, for Harold Bloom and Brett Foster:

The sonnets stand as the record of a mind working out positions without the help of any pantheon or any systematic doctrine. Shakespeare's speaker often considers, in rapid succession, any number of intellectual or ideological positions, but he does not move among them at random. To the contrary: in the first quatrain of any given sonnet he has a wide epistemological field in which to play, but in the second quatrain he generally queries or contradicts or subverts his first position (together with its discourse-field). By the third quatrain, he must (usually) advance to his subtlest or most comprehensive or most truthful position (Q3 therefore taking on, in the Shakespearean sonnet, the role of the sestet in the Petrarchan sonnet). And the couplet -- placed not as resolution (which is the function of Q3) but as coda -- can then stand in any number of relations (summarizing, ironic, expansive) to the preceding argument. The gradually straitened possibilities as the speaker advances in his considerations give the Shakespearean sonnet a funnel-shape, narrowing in Q3 to a vortex of condensed perceptual and intellectual force, and either constricting or expanding that vortex via the couplet. (The Sonnets, Infobase Publishing, 2009, p. 294) [emphasis added]

Given the improbability that the literature on the 14 to 16 logical connectives would either make any reference to poetry or consider the possibility of their articulation in sonnet form, it is quite surprising to note the various references to "logical connectives" in discussion of sonnets. Thus for Helen Vendler:

Many quatrains, taken singly, could well be called conventional, and paraphrases of them by critics make them sound stultifying. What is not conventional is the sonnet's (invisibly predicated) set of relations -- of the quatrains to one another and to the couplet; of the words and images to one another; of the individual grammatical and syntactic units to one another. Even though the appearance of logic is often smoothly maintained by a string of logical connectives (When... When... Then), some disruptive or contradictory force will enter the poem to pull one quatrain in two directions at once -- toward its antecedent quatrain by one set of words, toward its consequent by another; toward the couplet by its temporality; toward a preceding quatrain by its spatiality. Since quatrains often participate in several patterns simultaneously, their true "meaning" is chartable only by charting their pattern-sets (The Art of Shakespeare's Sonnets, Harvard University Press, 1999, p. 29) [emphasis added]

The argument with respect to Shakespear's "summer's day" by Timothy Hampton is subtitled as: A sonnet contains an emotional drama of illusion and deception, crisis and resolution, crafted to make us think and feel (The Sonnet Machine, Aeon, 25 May 2023). A case can be made for the inclusion for such subtlety in the articulation of a strategic pattern like the SDGs.

As explained by Hampton, the composition of a sonnet evolved through combining stanzas of six and eight lines.

The sonnet involved putting two of these stanzas together to produce a little poem of 14 lines, divided into eight lines and six lines – an octave and a sestet – with a break in the middle called a volta. These numerical groupings may seem abstract, but they are what makes the sonnet work. They allow the writer to divide the poetic world in two – to depict two versions of the same event, or two emotional states that can co-exist only in a kind of tension.

Hampton argues:

To read through a sonnet is to be faced with an aptitude test, a questioning of your cognitive and moral capacities. It articulates the flexibility of the self... We start to worry that being compared favourably to a summer’s day might not be such a great compliment after all. 'Shall I compare thee? Well, OK, I will – but be aware that these days are not all perfect and that, in any case, autumn is coming and they won’t last long'. The change wrought by the passage of time is, however, stopped short right at the volta, which recasts everything that has come before... A poem that first appeared to be about good weather, warm days and the rhythms of nature now turns out to be a celebration of the power of verse.

In the current period in which reality and illusion stand in challenging relationship rendering governance especially problematic, there is particular relevance to Hampton's argument:

The theme of illusion versus reality, I suggest, is virtually built into the sonnet. It’s why sonnets have been particularly popular in contexts shaped by social anxiety – Renaissance Europe, with its elaborate courtly rituals, being one example.

Such indications can be understood as justifying experiment with transformation of the SDGs into sonnet form -- given the facilities offered by AI.

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