razed oblivion (Sonnet 122)

Thumbing through the sonnets, I ran across Sonnet 122 and was immediately arrested by the imagery.

Thy gift, thy tables, are within my brain
Full character'd with lasting memory,
Which shall above that idle rank remain
Beyond all date, even to eternity;
Or at the least, so long as brain and heart
Have faculty by nature to subsist;
Till each to razed oblivion yield his part
Of thee, thy record never can be miss'd.
That poor retention could not so much hold,
Nor need I tallies thy dear love to score;
Therefore to give them from me was I bold,
To trust those tables that receive thee more:
     To keep an adjunct to remember thee
     Were to import forgetfulness in me.

After mulling it over throughout the day, and re-reading it several times, I've come to realize that it is less a love poem to the Fair Youth and more a meditation on memory itself.

What completely staggered me about 122 is its foreshadowing of modern media and modes of memory. Memorize originally meant to commit to writing. I sometimes feel that I am at the vanguard of a dying civilization, with the waves of an endless ocean of information lapping at my feet. Sometimes, the Internet is simply too much. An actual photograph is an object which we can imbue with meaning. A digital photograph is more like a signifier—pointing to something else.