Seth\'s the Golden Gate --

Seth's the Golden Gate -- Sonnets in the modern making

Although it uses a prosaic and modern setting, fictional contemporary characters, and addresses issues of present-day concern, the novel by Vikram Seth, the Golden Gate, is still located squarely in the sonnet-writing tradition of poetry and personal revelation. From the first Italian sonnets penned by Petrarch to Shakespeare's conflicts between his Golden Boy and Dark lady to Elizabeth Barrett Browning's Sonnets from the Portuguese to Robert Browning, the use of sonnets have often been deployed by poets to convey either thwarted and longing or triumphant and redemptive love.

Sonnet sequences like Seth's and Shakespeare's alike strive to balance the fictional elements of narrative with the lyricism of poetry. Sonnet sequences usually take the form of a loosely told plots, but the use of poetry rather than prose allows the author to look inward, into the narrator's feelings, rather than outward as might be more typical of prose. Prose provides a world of conflict, plot, and physical objects, poetry the world of inward reflection.

True, the sonnet sequence found in Vikram Seth's 1986 novel, although it makes primary use of the poetic medium, also has the quality of prose in that it relates a relationship between four fictional people, rather than simply the musings of a romantic, lyric self like an ode or a eulogy, or even Shakespeare's sonnets. But the notion of romantic conflict is at the heart of the sonnet sequence as well, and even individual sonnets take the form of an argument, as the first quatrain poses the problem, the second amplifies the internal or romantic conflict, and the final couplet poses an answer, however imperfect. Thus, the sonnet is a romantic and a rational form of romantic poetry. Seth uses the rational as well as the romantic elements of the sonnets to juxtapose many different dramatic and internal worlds within and without his major characters. Although he uses many modern words, he is also able to delicately balance the traditional uses of the sonnet, both the rational as well as the feeling aspects of this form of poetry.

Seth's novel consists of 690 sonnets, rhyming a-b-a-b-c-c-d-d-e-f-f-e-g-g. If this seems very long, it should be noted that its plot takes place between four individuals, rather than the customary two lovers, or three, at the most, in the form of the 'romantic triangle' of Shakespeare's sonnet sequence. Thus, the scope of the Seth's sequence is more sprawling in its emotional and territorial geography than many of his predecessors, even while he alternates rational but poetic musings about politics with sonnet-based written arguments between lovers.

The main characters are all Californians in various stages of identity conflict. The title of the poetic sequence refers to both the Golden Gate of California's famous cityscape, as well as the envisioned gates of paradise and love. The first character the reader is introduced to is named John, a technical 'yuppie' executive, looking for love. His ex-lover, Janet an artist and musician, fixes him up by placing a personal advertisement. Janet acts more out of boredom than altruism. Otherwise, "only her cats provide distraction," in her selfish and inward-looking life, "twin paradigms of lazy action."

After the advertisement is placed, then Liz, a lawyer, enters into the picture and poetry of John's life. Liz Donati attracts John by writing him two sonnets, and of course, the use of a personal advertisement as a meeting place provides even more evidence of how individuals still connect, even in the sterile and technical modern world, through prose. Even the most prosaic individuals such as Liz and John find ways to express their lust and then their love in the form of a verbally astute dance.

The other couple that dominates the text is Liz's brother, Ed. Ed is gay and is involved with John's old college roommate, Phil. The conflicts created by homosexuality destroy Ed and Phil's tryst, making their coupling in poetic terms the more traditional of the two that are depicted in the Golden Gate, in terms of the sonnet medium's frequent depiction of unhappy lovers as pulled together by force of character, but pulled apart by faith, family, and societal obligations. Ed pens to Phil: "I have to trust my faith's decisions, / Not batten on my own volitions." Politics and conflicts over animal husbandry pull John and Liz apart, more humorously than tragically.

The fact that religion and politics dominate the sonnets highlight the rational aspect of the sonnet's constrained form as well as the sonnet sequence's prosaic aspects, as it narrates a romantic plot. The presence of the characters falling in and out of love in a 'real' structure of written poetry, however, also shows the 'written' quality of the sonnets, another typical aspect of the form's immediacy. Like the modern lovers, and Seth's literary sonnet-writing predecessors, the conceit of the sonnet is that sonnets are written 'in the moment,' and then suddenly and subsequently delivered. Sonnets are not like a ballad, a poem that merely talks about character's outer lives, a sonnet is both of the inner character's love, as well as is driven by the outer actions of the characters in the form of writing.