John Donne and metaphysical poetry.

Metaphysical poetry is based upon concept, a fanciful thought, idea or expression. the phenomena of reality acquire meaning in the form of complicated figurative conceit. This poetry is unusually metaphorical; particularly typical is its extended metaphor. Sometimes the whole work is nothing but one single extended metaphor. Sometimes it consists of a number of metaphors like waves running one after another, so that it would be hard to determine where one ends and the next begins; and sometimes it is even impossible to understand the complicated meaning of all this piling up of metaphors.

Taken as a whole, the style of metaphysical poets creates an impression of an unusual intellectual complexity. Not only the lyrics of the Renaissance but also the allegorical poetry of Spencer seems simple in comparison with the complicated play of images of John Donne and his followers. But this complexity in form does not mean great richness in the subject-matter of the metaphysical poetry compared with poetry of the Renaissance.

The poets of the Renaissance created a fluent and harmonious verse, while the representatives of metaphysical poetry consciously, destroyed any harmony and set up as their ideal a broken rhythm by introducing different metres in one and the same piece of work.

The originator of metaphysical poetry and its greatest representative was John Donne. He was a younger contemporary of Shakespeare and coeval of Ben Johnson with whom he maintained friendly relations; but he belonged to another epoch. During his lifetime his works circulated in manuscript form and were known only to his friends and a small circle of literary men. He became better known after his death when in 1633 the first edition of his collected poems was issued.

He was born in London, the son of a wealthy iron monger. Among his ancestor in the maternal line were Thomas More and John Heywood.

Brought up as a Catholic, he was sent to Oxford and Cambridge, and afterwards entered Lincoln’s Inn with a view to taking up law. Later he joined the Chirch of England, and then traveled on the continent. he became secretary to Sir T. Egerton, keeper of the great Seal, but he ruined his favours by a secret marriage with his niece. he joined sir Raleigh and took part in expeditions of Essex and Cadiz.

On the suggestion of James I, he took orders, and after executing a mission to Bohemia he was in 1621, made Dean of St. Paul’s and soon became a famous preacher. His poetical works consist of elegies, satires, epigrams, religious and miscellaneous pieces, in which there is some noble poetry and imagination of the highest order. They were not published till four years after his death.

His first works sing of ideal and sensual love. They are full of hedonism, glorifying pleasures in life. His relation to religion is at last skeptical, as for example is expressed in his third satire. Gradually, however, the Epicurean motives give place to melancholic meditation on the perishibility of earthy life.

Well-known is his “Anatomy of the world” (1611) and “Progress of the Soul” (1612).

In the last period of his life Donne created a number of spiritual hymns and poems of which Holy Sonnets (1618) are particularly interesting.

The progress of the Soul which Donne’s admirers value as one of his best works, is a typical model of metaphysic style:

“I sing the progress of a deathless soul

Whome fate, which God made, but doesn’t controle

Placed in most shapes; all times before the law

Yoak’d us, and when, and since, in this I sing.

And the great world to his aged evening

From instant morne, through manly noone I draw …”

Donne rejects the loftiness which was characteristic of Renaissnace poetry. That is clearly observed in his love poems. Contrary to the inspired Platonism of the Renaissance love lyrics, he writes verses which sometimes are rude and cynical. In the “Flea”, for instance, the poet uses this unpleasant insect to create a very peculiar “conceit”. Addressing his beloved woman who evidently rejected him, he speaks of the flea, which has bitten both of them and in which their blood mixed.

Another typical piece by Donne which proves the assertion that the metaphysical poetry is a decadent poetry is song. Too complicated figures:

“Go and catch a falling star

Get with child a mandrake root.

Tell me where all past years are

Or who cleft the Devil’s foot

Teach me to hear mermaids singing

Or to keep off envoy’s stinging

And find what wind

serves to advance an honest mind”

At the same time one can see the decadence of society in which Donne moves. Here is what he thinks of woman of the times:

“And swear

No where

Lives a woman true and fair”

“If then find’st one, let me know

Such a pilgrimage were sweet.

yet do not; I wouldn’t go,

Though at next door we might meet

Though she were true when you met her,

And last till you write your letter,

Yet she

Will be

False, ere I come to two or three”.

This is a poetry built upon the special reaction in the first years of the 17 th century. And indeed very seldom doesn’t find in Donne’s poetry elements of spontaneity and simplicity so rare for his complicated and witty manner. Something like the Daybreak:

“Stay, o sweat, and do not rise,

The light that shines comes from thine eyes;

The day breaks not; it is my heart,

Because that you and I must part

Stay, or else my joys will die

And perish in their infancy.”

Donne is famous for his prose work either. His sermons often delivered in magnificent prose, were very popular and certain passages from them are still frequently quoted. Here is an extract from his “Meditations” which has become very famous:

“No man is an island entire it itself,

Every man is a piece of the Continent,

A part of the Main… any man’s death

Diminishes me, because I am involved in

Mankind, and therefore never sends to know

For whom the dell tolls; it tolls for thee …”

But it is a poet that he has had the strongest influence, first during the 17^th century and then, after a long period of almost complete neglect, on the poetry that followed after World War I. Modern poets turn to him because he is both highly intellectual and impassioned, and uses imagery in the modern manner. His chief weakness, which may be found in all his followers, are obscurity and a rather crabbed unmusical manner of writing. Donne was a non-conformist in literature.