WITCHCRAFT BY A PICTURE

WITCH:

noun

1 a woman thought to have evil magic powers. Witches are popularly depicted as wearing a black cloak and pointed hat, and flying on a broomstick.

• a follower or practitioner of modern witchcraft; a Wiccan priest or priestess.

• informal an ugly or unpleasant old woman; a hag.

• a girl or woman capable of enchanting or bewitching a man.

CRAFT:

noun

1 an activity involving skill in making things by hand : the craft of bookbinding | pewter craft.

• ( crafts) work or objects made by hand : the shop sells local crafts | [as adj. ] ( craft) a craft fair.

• a skilled activity or profession : the historian's craft.

• skill in carrying out one's work : a player with plenty of craft.

• skill used in deceiving others : her cousin was not her equal in guile and evasive craft.

• the members of a skilled profession.

• ( the Craft) the brotherhood of Freemasons.

WITCHCRAFT:

noun

the practice of magic, esp. black magic; the use of spells and the invocation of spirits.

PICTURE:

noun

a painting or drawing : draw a picture of a tree.

• a photograph : we were warned not to take pictures.

• a portrait : have her picture painted.

• archaic a person or thing resembling another closely : she is the very picture of her mother.

• figurative an impression of something formed from an account or description : a full picture of the disaster had not yet emerged.

• an image on a television screen.

• a movie : it took five honors, including best picture.

• ( the pictures) the movies : I'm going to the pictures with my buddies.

TRANSLATION

Io fisso il mio occhio nel tuo, e lì

compiango il mio ritratto che arde nel tuo occhio;

il mio ritratto annegato in una lacrima trasparente,

vedo quando guardo più in basso;

tu avesti la dannata capacità

di uccidere con ritratti fatti e distrutti

in quanti modi potresti realizzare la tua volontà?

Ma adesso ho bevuto le tue dolci lacrime salate,

e anche se tu ne spandessi di più,io me ne vado;

scomparso il mio ritratto ,scompare la paura

che io possa essere ferito da quell'arte;

nonostante tu tenga di me

un'altra immagine, pure essa sarà,

essendo nel tuo cuore, libera da ogni danno

In all the sonnet there are frequent alliterations.

Starting from the first line the alliteration of [ai] sound is present; moreover there is also the alliteration of the sound [th] (in words "thine" and "there") at the end of the line.

The word "thine " is repeated again at the end of the second line; the poet's aim is to stick into the reader's mind the importance of the word because it refers to the lady whom the sonnet is dedicated. In this line and in the third one are present also the alliterations of [pi] sound.

From the fourth to the seventh line the main alliteration is the repetition of [l] sound (in the seventh line also of [w] sound); moreover the last words of each line are rhyming ("skill", "kill", "will").

The position of these words is not chosen casually: thanks to the assonance they stick into the reader's mind.

The same structure is present also in the other seven lines; also the alliterations are very similar.

The poet uses once again alliterations of [th] and [p] sounds, adding [s] ("sweet salt teares")and [e] sounds.

The last words of the last three lines are also rhyming ("mee","bee", "free"), like the previous stanza,and they have the same function.

In the tenth line there is a particular  rhetoric figure: a chiasmus that strongly underlines the sentence: "My picture vanish'd, vanish feares".

The word "picture" is the most important word in the whole sonnet, as a matter of fact, it is repeated five times but the poet refers each time to a different type of picture.

It can be an image reflected in the eyes of the lady (line 2), an image reflected through the tears of sorrow of the mistress(line 3),an image used in magic rituals with the aim of killing the person the image portraits (line 6) or an image that can be found in the heart of a faithful mistress (line 13).

In England the structure of the sonnet is different from the Petrarchan's because it is organized into three quatrains and a rhyming couplet. 

In the quatrains the problem was explained and in the couplet the poet gave  a possible solution to it.

But Donne plays with the form by forcing the poem into two stanzas of seven lines each, structuring the stanzas with alternatingly rhymed quatrains followed by singly-rhymed tercets.

Furthermore, each stanza comprises two main independent clauses, marked by semi-colons at the ends of the quatrains. Both stanzas subdivide their quatrains into similar independent clauses, though they function in apposition more so than to further the thought.

In the poem, the rather melodramatic burning in the eyes and drowning in the tears is parodied by the oxymoronic conflation of burning water.

Donne is parodying classical themes perhaps showing the exaggerated artificiality of the lover, who is ironically a lover attempting to get away from his mistress rather than trying to attain her.

We can understand this desire to escape from her by the concluding comment that the picture will be "free" from her "malice," the same ill-intentions that would supposedly have her murdering the persona by drowning and burning him.

The mistress of the sonnet is a would-be artist or one who would like to control more powerful artistry, for the persona leaves it in a conditional clause that she lacks the "wicked skill / By pictures made and mard, to kill" (5-6), though according to the persona she has the will to do so. Her skill, her artistry, aims to become "wicked" witchcraft, involving the burning of his picture in her eye, and the drowning of his picture in her tear.