Metaphysical Poetry

between Mannerism & Baroque

Representatives:
John Donne; George Herbert; Andrew Marvell; Henry
Vaughan; Richard Crashaw; Abraham Cowley

INGENUITY, INTELLECTUALITY,
OBSCURITY
subject matter [the relationship of spirit to matter or the
ultimate nature of reality]
expression [putting forward a particular philosophical
world view] - ornate language, strange syntax, farfetched images, intellectual sophistication, artificial (as
opposed to naturalistic) qualities

The evolution of the term

1.
originally:
DERISIVE LABEL
by
DRUMMOND
OF
HAWTHORDEN: new metaphysical
ideas and scholastical oddities
Renaissance poetics - strong lines intricate intellectual quality, intentional
obscurity, CRABBED, ECCENTRIC,
CHAOTIC

2.
John
Dryden
(Discourse
concerning the Original and Progress
of Satire, 1693):
Donne affects the metaphysics not only
in his satires but in his amorous verses,
where nature only should reign, and
perplexes the minds of the fair sex with nice
speculations of philosophy

3. Samuel Johnson (The Lives of the English

Poets): described the basis of metaphysical
imagery as discordia concors
the most heterogeneous ideas are yoked by
violence together
The metaphysical poets were men of learning, and to
show their learning was their whole endeavour

20th century revaluation

Sir Herbert Griersons great ed. of
Donnes Poetical Works (1912)
T. S. Eliot 1921 (The Metaphysical
Poets) the polyvalent sensibility of the
metaphysicals

T. S. Eliot, The Metaphysical Poets

Something happened to the mind of England between the time
of Lord Herbert of Cherbury and the time of Tennyson and
Browning; it is the difference between the intellectual poet and
the reflective poet. Tennyson and Browning are poets, and they
think; but they do not feel their thought as immediately as the
odour of a rose. A thought to Donne was an experience; it
modified his sensibility. When a poets mind is perfectly
equipped for its work, it is constantly amalgamating disparate
experience; the ordinary mans experience is chaotic, irregular,
fragmentary. The latter falls in love, or reads Spinoza, and these
two experiences have nothing to do with the other, or with the
noise of the typewriter or the smell of cooking; in the mind of the
poet these experiences are always forming new wholes[]

T. S. Eliot, The Metaphysical Poets

(ctd)
[] The poets of the seventeenth century, the
successors of the dramatists of the sixteenth,
possessed a mechanism of sensibility which
could devour any kind of experience. They
are simple, artificial, difficult or fantastic, as
their predecessors were; no less nor more
than Dante, Guido Cavalcanti, Guinicelli, or
Cino. In the seventeenth century a
dissociation of sensibility set in, from which
we have never recovered

for a poet with a unified sensibility: the

sensory world = saturated with meaning
for a poet with a dissociated
sensibility: feeling = ungrounded
1. sentimentality SENTIMENTALIST
emotional effusion
2. rumination REFLECTIVE philosophical
speculation

Characteristics
Herbert Grierson Introduction to Metaphysical Lyrics
and Poems of the Seventeenth Century :
lays stress on the right thingsthe survival, one might say the
reaccentuation, of the metaphysical strain, the concetti
metafisici ed ideali as Testi calls them in contrast to the simpler
imagery of classical poetry, of mediaeval Italian poetry; the
more intellectual, less verbal, character of their wit compared
with the conceits of the Elizabethans; the finer psychology of
which their conceits are often the expression; their learned
imagery; the argumentative, subtle evolution of their lyrics;
above all the peculiar blend of passion and thought, feeling and
ratiocination which is their greatest achievement. Passionate
thinking is always apt to become metaphysical, probing and
investigating the experience from which it takes its rise

1. the metaphysical strain, the

concetti metafisici et ideali
METAPHYSICAL CONCEIT. (Lat. conceptus,
concept) via It. concetto)
Strong unusual metaphors uniting contraries
(discordia concors)
figure of speech which combines incongruous &
apparently contradictory words & meanings for a
special effect and which is intended to surprise and
delight by its wit and ingenuity
e.g. honest thief, black snow, Miltons description of
hell, No light, but rather darkness visible)

world - regarded as a vast divine system of

metaphors; the ability to realise that was wit.
(constantly
amalgamating
disparate
experience, TS Eliot)
explore far-reaching allusions to physiology,
astronomy, alchemy, chemistry, geography,
biology.
Antimimetic Logic (their poems imitated
nothing, neither nature nor life Dr. Johnson).
association with intense sensual and spiritual
experience

e.g. Donnes A Valediction: forbidding

mourning
If they be two, they are two so
As stiffe twin compasses are two,
Thy soule, the fixt foot, makes no show
To move, but doth, if the other doe.
And though it in the center sit,
Yet when the other far doth rome,
It leanes, and hearkens after it,
And growes erect, as that comes home.
Such wilt thou be to mee, who must
Like th other foot, obliquely runne;
Thy firmnes makes my circle just,
And makes me end, where I begunne.

2. the more intellectual, less verbal,

the character of their wit
Metaphysical Wit
(INGENUITY, INVENTIVE, IMAGINATIVE
FACULTY, FLASH OF VERBAL INTUITION):
pun, paradox and conceit
play of intellect and the depth of emotion
feeling thought,
thought (TS Eliot)

sensuous

apprehension

of

passion is curbed by judgment, and judgment

is illuminated by passion
passionate ratiocination (Williamson)

3. the finer psychology of which their

conceits are often the expression
deep reflective interest in experiences
new psychological curiosity

4. learned imagery
startling imagery
incongruous objects

that

associates

erudite and recondite analogies drawn from

classical myth (the Phoenix legend in The
Canonization); references to scholastic
philosophy, Renaissance logic and rhetoric,
alchemy, mathematics, astrology, theology,
anatomy, the law.
the homeliest and most prosaic imagery.
Donne The Flea, whose body unites the
blood of lover and mistress, a marriage
temple

John Donne, THE CANONIZATION

FOR God's sake hold your tongue, and let me love ;
Or chide my palsy, or my gout ;
My five gray hairs, or ruin'd fortune flout ;
With wealth your state, your mind with arts improve ;
Take you a course, get you a place,
Observe his Honour, or his Grace ;
Or the king's real, or his stamp'd face
Contemplate ; what you will, approve,
So you will let me love.

Alas ! alas ! who's injured by my love?

What merchant's ships have my sighs drown'd?
Who says my tears have overflow'd his ground?
When did my colds a forward spring remove?
When did the heats which my veins fill
Add one more to the plaguy bill?
Soldiers find wars, and lawyers find out still
Litigious men, which quarrels move,
Though she and I do love.

Call's what you will, we are made such by love ;

Call her one, me another fly,
We're tapers too, and at our own cost die,
And we in us find th' eagle and the dove.
The phoenix riddle hath more wit
By us ; we two being one, are it ;
So, to one neutral thing both sexes fit.
We die and rise the same, and prove
Mysterious by this love.

We can die by it, if not live by love,

And if unfit for tomb or hearse
Our legend be, it will be fit for verse ;
And if no piece of chronicle we prove,
We'll build in sonnets pretty rooms ;
As well a well-wrought urn becomes
The greatest ashes, as half-acre tombs,
And by these hymns, all shall approve
Us canonized for love ;

And thus invoke us, "You, whom reverend love

Made one another's hermitage ;
You, to whom love was peace, that now is rage;
Who did the whole world's soul contract, and drove
Into the glasses of your eyes ;
So made such mirrors, and such spies,
That they did all to you epitomize
Countries, towns, courts beg from above
A pattern of your love."

John Donne, THE FLEA

MARK but this flea, and mark in this,
How little that which thou deniest me is ;
It suck'd me first, and now sucks thee,
And in this flea our two bloods mingled be.
Thou know'st that this cannot be said
A sin, nor shame, nor loss of maidenhead ;
Yet this enjoys before it woo,
And pamper'd swells with one blood made of two ;
And this, alas ! is more than we would do.

O stay, three lives in one flea spare,

Where we almost, yea, more than married are.
This flea is you and I, and this
Our marriage bed, and marriage temple is.
Though parents grudge, and you, we're met,
And cloister'd in these living walls of jet.
Though use make you apt to kill me,
Let not to that self-murder added be,
And sacrilege, three sins in killing three.

Cruel and sudden, hast thou since

Purpled thy nail in blood of innocence?
Wherein could this flea guilty be,
Except in that drop which it suck'd from thee?
Yet thou triumph'st, and say'st that thou
Find'st not thyself nor me the weaker now.
'Tis true ; then learn how false fears be ;
Just so much honour, when thou yield'st to me,
Will waste, as this flea's death took life from thee.

5. the argumentative subtle

evolution of their lyrics
strenuous (powerful, forceful) argument in
poetry; the ratiocinative, argumentative
development, persuasive stratagems
Strategy of address = typically
DRAMATIC (interaction between speaker,
audience, reader), rather than narrative
and descriptive
dramatic and colloquial mode of utterance

6. direct, unconventional,
colloquial speech

complex syntax, vivid and abrupt

speech patterns instead of
Elizabethan smoothness, mellifluous
harmony

7.
IRONY & PARADOX
Helen Gardner: the Metaphysical
Poem = an expanded epigram

8. Themes
baroque world view
I. LOVE: Original attitudes toward sexual love:
hedonistic, epicuristic perspective.
new sexual realism, together with introspective
psychological analysis
CARPE DIEM, DEATH

II. Religious theme: devotional,

death, love, God, human frailty

mystical

Amatory and religious melancholy, a

mannerist preoccupation with the pains and
anguish of love and faith

JOHN DONNE (1572-1631)

well spring of the metaphysicals
age of religious polemic (a Roman Catholic who later became
an Anglican), strong Jesuit teaching
family - a long history of martyrdom (Pseudo-Martyr, 1610)
Songs and sonnets, the satires, elegies and verse letters chiefly love poetry: psychological penetration, a wide range of
mood from ecstatic passion to flippant cynicism
1604 Biathanatos
anti-Catholic polemics
took Holy Orders 1615; Dean of St Pauls Cathedral 1621

five satires,
twenty elegies &
the Songs and Sonnets
occasional poems
religious poems
sermons
19 Holy Sonnets: combine passion and argument (Batter my Heart,
Death be not proud): man searches the right relationship with
divinity
use of contemporary imagery for profane love to make concrete and
shockingly personal the impact of divine love
excruciating trials undergone by a believer in search of faith.

Batter My Heart, Three Persond God

Holy Sonnet, XIV
Batter My Heart, Three Persond God; for you
As yet but knocke, breathe, shine, and seeke to mend;
That I may rise, and stand, oerthrow me, and bend
Your force, to breake, blowe, burn and make me new.

I, like an usurpt town, to another due,

Labour to admit you, but Oh, to no end,
Reason your viceroy in mee, mee should defend,
But is captivd, and proves weake or untrue.

Yet dearly I love you, and would be loved faine,

But I am betrothd unto your enemie:
Divorce mee, untie, or breake that knot againe,
Take mee to you, imprison mee, for I

Except you enthrall mee, never shall be free,

Nor ever chast, except you ravish mee.

Andrew Marvell, To His Coy

Mistress
Had we but world enough, and time,
This coyness, lady, were no crime.
We would sit down and think which way
To walk, and pass our long love's day;
Thou by the Indian Ganges' side
Shouldst rubies find; I by the tide
Of Humber would complain. I would
Love you ten years before the Flood;
And you should, if you please, refuse
Till the conversion of the Jews.
My vegetable love should grow
Vaster than empires, and more slow.
An hundred years should go to praise
Thine eyes, and on thy forehead gaze;
Two hundred to adore each breast,
But thirty thousand to the rest;
An age at least to every part,
And the last age should show your heart.
For, lady, you deserve this state,
Nor would I love at lower rate.

But at my back I always hear

Time's winged chariot hurrying near;
And yonder all before us lie
Deserts of vast eternity.
Thy beauty shall no more be found,
Nor, in thy marble vault, shall sound
My echoing song; then worms shall try
That long preserv'd virginity,
And your quaint honour turn to dust,
And into ashes all my lust.
The grave's a fine and private place,
But none I think do there embrace.

Now therefore, while the youthful hue

Sits on thy skin like morning dew,
And while thy willing soul transpires
At every pore with instant fires,
Now let us sport us while we may;
And now, like am'rous birds of prey,
Rather at once our time devour,
Than languish in his slow-chapp'd power.
Let us roll all our strength, and all
Our sweetness, up into one ball;
And tear our pleasures with rough strife
Thorough the iron gates of life.
Thus, though we cannot make our sun
Stand still, yet we will make him run.

Sources
Eliot, T. S. (1932) The Metaphysical Poets in Selected Essays
London: Faber & Faber Limited
Grierson, HJ (1921) Introduction to Metaphysical Lyrics and
Poems of the Seventeenth Century Hammondsworth: Penguin
Books
Holloway, John (1960) The Charted Mirror: Literary and
Critical Essays London: Routledge & Kegan Paul
Kermode, Frank (1973) Renaissance Essays Collins Fontana
Books
Nelson, Lowry (1966) Baroque Lyric Poetry, New Haven: Yale
University Press
Warnke, Frank (1978) Versions of the Baroque, New Haven:
Yale University Press