In the technological age of anti-intellectualism and instant access, Susan Sontag’s essay “Against Interpretation” advocated for her readers to look no deeper than the words on the page. Sontag was an accomplished author, made famous by her 1996 essay which demands that readers give up any attempts at finding meaning within art—especially text—and instead interact exclusively with an artwork’s physical form. She argues for a method of consumption where one may entirely forgo art’s content in favor of its form when measuring its value to the consumer. Several hundred years before Sontag’s metaphorical literary bomb, William Shakespeare wrote one final love poem to a mysterious man. He highlighted his many virtues and detailed how the personified forces of Time and Nature appeared to bend to his young lover’s will, preserving him unnaturally until his eventual decline. “Sonnet 126” is a 12-line sonnet comprised entirely of rhyming couplets; it acts as both a summary and a farewell to a long series of romantic sonnets written about an unnamed love. Sontag’s ironic essay should be examined as a piece written with the goal of forcing its readers to think more deeply about their consumption of media—examining her stance through the lens of Shakespeare’s infamous “Sonnet 126” highlights the intentionally-inflammatory nature of her assertions by demonstrating that, while form may demonstrate something special about art, shunning the interpretation of content robs the viewer of the answer to the question: why is this special?
Susan Sontag was a brilliantly intentional author, whose pointed language choices continue to inform the true meaning of her content. However, quite contradictory to its apparent intention, “Against Interpretation” fails to live up to the inspirational call-to-action it appears to be. Rather, the text pointedly alienates its readers. Throughout the essay, Sontag chooses abrasive, inflammatory language that only succeeds in destroying bridges between herself and her audience. On page four, her assertion that interpreting artistic content is no more than “the revenge of intellect upon the world,” draws a hard line in the sand between her view and that of any self-respecting intellectual (Sontag 4). “Against Interpretation” does not read like an attempt at changing its audience’s mind, but rather an antagonistic piece of text compiled quite intentionally to set its audience on the defensive. This attack on the basis of intellect does nothing to inspire agreement. Later, Sontag’s tone turns accusatory, further solidifying her audience’s disagreement by declaring that interpretation “violates art” (6). The effect of Sontag’s words on her readers cannot be written off as accidental. Rather, this scathing review of any and all who seek to find meaning and beauty beneath an artwork’s surface must be understood as an intentional campaign against the majority school of thought. Sontag’s implication that intellectuals seek to “violate” art with their “revenge” allows her audience to retreat into their own feelings of self-righteousness, sheltering behind the need to justify oneself in the face of an anti-intellectual onslaught (4-6).
The observation that “Against Interpretation” is a pointedly-inflammatory essay does not discredit Sontag’s validity as an author. Rather, it exemplifies her literary genius. Sontag is not trying to convince her audience, but rather so thoroughly offend the reader that are forced to reexamine artistic consumption through a reactionary justification of their own behavior. Once the audience is thoroughly enraged, she delivers the final nail in the coffin through a mocking attempt at connecting with her dissenters, stating that imitation is “simply the compliment mediocrity pays to genius” while simultaneously allowing that, yes, occasionally there exists a purpose for such a primitive exercise (5). She antagonizes the reader, but why? She answers this question later when she identifies the great downfall of artistic interpretation as behavior that “tames the work of art,” by making it “manageable, comfortable” (5). “Against Interpretation” combats this taming of art. By incensing her readers to defend the way they choose to love and interpret art, she influences her audience to consume art more passionately. “We need an erotics of art,” and Sontag refuses to let her readers forgo that vision in favor of comfort by forcing them to rethink where one finds true beauty in art (10). By threatening to take that away, she allows her readers to see “the luminousness of the thing in itself” (9). Sontag reaches the ideals she outlines in “Against Interpretation” not by convincing her readers to agree with her, but rather by giving them the space and the motivation to defend their own methods of interpreting art. The lens of “Sonnet 126” reveals the process Sontag emulates through her writing: one that allows its reader to slowly unpack the true beauty hidden behind imperfect form.
For the most part, Shakespearean sonnets follow a strict form. Each poem is composed of three quatrains and a final rhyming couplet—fourteen lines of perfect iambic pentameter. Deviations from this prescribed verse—ten syllables per line, with alternating unstressed and stressed syllables—are amongst scholars as Shakespeare directing from beyond the grave. For example, the dropped syllable in line nine of “Sonnet 126” may indicate a hitch in the speaker’s voice as he warns his lover to “fear” the personified figure of Nature (Shakespeare 9). The final line showcases a reversal of syllabic emphasis on the word “quietus,” matching the poem’s darker ending as the speaker turns to fixate on his lover’s eventual decay, juxtaposing the perfect, jaunty rhythm of any preceding lines focused on his lover’s ability to supercede the destructive powers of Nature and Time (8-9). Aside from these more routine anomalies, “Sonnet 126” disobeys the traditional norms set out for a Shakespearean sonnet through its form: instead of fourteen lines, the sonnet is an abridged twelve, and comprised entirely of rhyming couplets. By the standards Sontag lays before her readers, “Sonnet 126” is a failure of an artwork. Shakespeare strays from his own format, piecing together a rhyming ode to a dying relationship with a sonnet that is barely recognizable as such. Shakespeare’s unusual authoring decisions create an artwork that is both beautiful and unconventional, reflecting the nature of the love he describes. The beauty lies in its otherness. By shortening “Sonnet 126,” the author leaves his reader with a sense of unfulfilment—a life cut short. If the reader only assessed “Sonnet 126” by its form, they would garner very little aside from the belief that it is a poorly-formatted sonnet. However, Sontag’s essay impassions its readers not to agree with her assertion, but rather to rethink their consumption of textual art as a reaction to her antagonistic stance and language choices, which illuminates the true beauty of a poem’s form as a reflection of its content.
Sontag drives her audience to reframe how they understand the beauty of art, because she recognizes that art decays exponentially in a static world. “Sonnet 126” declares a love so strong that it allows its subject to outlast the decline of Time, but even Shakespeare admits that this phenomenon “(though delay’d) answer’d must be,” and one cannot outrun fate forever (11). Both artworks acknowledge this fact of impermanence. By writing a piece of textual art that is deceptive in form, Sontag encourages her reader to do the very thing she disparages: examine how the form exposes and informs the true content of her artwork. In this case, guiding her readers to examine how the essay’s inflammatory form provides insight into her true message by calling them to pick apart its flaws. Sontag wants her readers to disagree with her. She wants them to be so offended that, in their protest, they happen upon the very point she intends to raise: one must continuously reexamine their consumption of art in order to preserve its significance. By stirring a defensive passion for artistic beauty, Sontag makes room for the appreciation of artworks such as “Sonnet 126,” even while appearing to rage against them. The reader who fails to interpret the sonnet’s content loses the uniquely beautiful tragedy of taboo love hidden within its truncated form, and the reader who refuses to examine form misses the simplistic beauty of a poem shortened and altered in its longing for a similarly abridged love. Art must be reexamined to keep it alive. Sontag takes an unusual approach by incensing her readers to passionately defend the merits of holistic artistic consumption in their anger, thereby ensuring that stories such as the one depicted in the deceptively simple “Sonnet 126” are not lost to the stagnation of Time.
Sontag outlines a controversial and inflammatory method of artistic consumption that focuses solely on artistic form, rather than form as a reflection of content, in order to drive her readers to reexamine their consumption of media in defense of a more well-rounded approach. Her goal allows readers to appreciate the complexity of art such as “Sonnet 126,” whose beautiful story may only be fully appreciated by an interpretation of all artistic elements. Sontag’s methods are unconventional, but effective. She recognizes that beauty decays when critical thought stagnates, so she makes choices with the purpose of sparking a reaction from her readers and reviving the sphere of critical artistic thought. She inspires her readers to seek out their own methods of interpretation to discover the true meaning woven through both form and content, as exemplified by both “Sonnet 126” and the deceptively narrow-minded “Against Interpretation.” Sontag’s impassioned essay spurs her readers to go forth and consider more deeply how one chooses to consume art, both relics of the past and the new artworks growing and decaying before their eyes each and every day.
Works Cited
Shakespeare, W. (1609). Sonnet 126. The Sonnets (Lit2Go Edition). Retrieved October 26, 2025, from https://etc.usf.edu/lit2go/179/the-sonnets/4186/sonnet-126/
Sontag, Susan. Against Interpretation and Other Essays. Penguin, 2009.