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Donne was the first poet who included thought and idea in poetry side by side:
Donne neglected the Elizabethan conventions straightaway. He expressed his changing
personal moods. He infused the realistic mood of personal urge and immediacy in his lyrics.
In the Middle Ages, poetry was divorced from thought and reason. It was purely written for
expressing emotions and feelings. Petrarch’s influence was dominant factor in Elizabethan
poetry because of advent of Renaissance. Thus, by and by, the Elizabethan poetry became
lifeless and vigourless. Donne’s lyric poetry is quite reverse to that age.
His poems have unique loud sounds….now melodious, now complicated and twisted almost
beyond comprehension, but never really harsh.
Fondness of Conceits:
Fondness for conceits is a major characteristic of metaphysical poetry. All comparisons
discover likeness in things unlike: but in a conceit we are made to acknowledge likeness
even being strongly conscious of the unlikeness. Donne often employs fantastic
comparisons. The most famous is the comparison of a man who travels and his beloved who
stays at home to a pair of compasses.
Conclusion:
Metaphysical poetry of Donne is marked with wit, blending emotion and feelings. Donne
represents very well the school of metaphysical poetry. He brought the whole of his
experience in his poetry. He uses colloquial speech. These qualities are present in Donne’s
poetry. Grierson has rightly said that Donne is metaphysical not only by virtue of his
scholasticism but by his deep reflective interest.
In single poem, we may have images drawn from cartography, geography, myth and natural science. “A
Valediction: Of Weeping” employs images from a variety of sources. The lover’s tears are like precious coins
because they bear the stamp of the beloved(image from mintage), the tears are pregnant of thee--- a
complex image showing the impression of the beloved’s reflection in the drop of tear along with the
meaning and life given to the tears by the beloved’s reflection in them. Next, the beloved’s tears are
compared to the moon which draws up seas to drown the lover in her sphere (image from geography).
Reference to sea discoveries, new worlds and the hemispheres of the earth occurs in most of Donne’s
poems, reflecting contemporary explorations. War and military affairs also provide a source for Donne’s
conceits, not only in his love poems, but in his religious poems as well. In “Batter My Heart”, he compares
himself to an occupied town.
Conclusion:
Donne’s use of conceits is skilful. It is also, in most cases, appropriate. It makes us concede justness while
we are admiring its skill, as Helen Gardener says. The poet has something to say which the conceit urge and
help to forward. The purpose of an image in Donne’s poetry is to define the emotional experience by an
intellectual parallel. Donne’s imagery brings together the opposites of life, all in one breathe.
“THE MOST HETEROGENEOUS IDEAS ARE YOKED BY
VIOLENCE TOGETHER”. DO YOU AGREE WITH DR
JOHNSON’S ESTIMATE OF METAPHYSICAL POETRY.
Dr Johnson criticizes Donne and the metaphysical poets on the following grounds:
1. That their poetry is academic and imperfect and that their sole purpose is to show their learning.
2. That they neither copy nature nor life. They have not imitated anything, though poetry is the art of
imitation.
3. That their wit is neither natural nor new; it is a combination of dissimilar images or the discovery of
occult resemblances. The most heterogeneous ideas are yoked by violence together.
4. That they are not successful in representing or moving the affections: they write as beholders than
as partners of human nature; their remarks are like those of Epicurean deities on the actions of men
and the change of fortune of life, without interest and without emotion.
5. Neither the sublime nor the pathetic is within their reach, for sublimity is produced by aggregation
and synthesis not by analysis and novelty.
6. That by and large, their poetry is rough and unmusical.
First and foremost, we must bear in mind that Johnson is a classicist; he goes by tradition and the old
models. Donne started a new school of poetry which had more of the Renaissance spirit of discovery and
analysis than the beaten track. Sweetness of verse is not his goal. He wants to infuse thought into emotion
and to analyze human feelings. His poetry has fundamental brain work and logic.
Secondly, Dr Johnson indirectly pays a compliment to their learning, though it can not be said that the
display of learning is their sole purpose in writing poetry. Dr Johnson writes: “To write on their plan it was
at least necessary to read and think……In reading carefully the work of this race of authors, the mind is
exercised either by recollection or inquiry.” In view of Dr Johnson’s favorable remark, we may not further
pursue the charge of display of learning made against the school of Donne.
Thirdly, the charge of strange wit made against Donne is quite true. The wit of Donne is based on
“Conceits”. As such this kind of wit requires great subtlety and minuteness.
Undoubtedly, this wit is base don scholasticism, on medieval learning, but that is not a matter of shame.
Johnson realizes the difficult nature of their wit and though he calls it “False conceits”, he admits that they
struck out unexpected truth.
Fourthly, the charge of lack of imitation in metaphysical poetry is not a defect. Imitation may be the goal of
average poetry, but creation of interpretation of life is the object of high poetry. Poetry is not mere copy of
life; it is something more because it is the result of imagination of the poet.
Fifthly, the charge that the metaphysical poets write as beholders and not partakers of human nature and
that their comments are like those of outsiders is not maintainable because they relate their personal
experiences in their poems. Donne deals with his love adventures and his relations with various women as
well as his affection for his wife. The fact is that the metaphysical are frank and outspoken, analyzing their
personal experience and emotions in their poems.
Sixthly, sublimity is not the sole aim of metaphysical, though some of them have written about their inner
experiences and spiritual conflicts. Of they do not synthesize their feelings, because their wit lies in their
faculty of analysis.