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Unit 2 Metaphysical Poets: John Donne and Andrew Marvell UNIT 2 METAPHYSICAL POETS: JOHN Poetry: An Introduction DONNE AND ANDREW MARVELL Structure 2.0 Objectives 2.1 Introduction 2.2 A View of the Metaphysical Trend 2.3 About the Poet: John Donne 2.4 “The Canonization”: The Text 2.5 “The Canonization”: An Overview 2.6 “The Canonization”: Stanza-wise Analysis 2.7 Marvell and Donne as Metaphysical Poets: Background and Themes 2.8 About the Poet: Andrew Marvell 2.9 “To His Coy Mistress”: The Text 2.10 “To His Coy Mistress”: Section-wise Analysis 2.11 “To His Coy Mistress: A Thematic Overview 2.12 Let Us Sum Up 2.13 Questions 2.14 References 2.15 Suggested Readings 2.0 OBJECTIVES After reading this unit you will be able to: gain knowledge about the Metaphysical poets John Donne and Andrew Marvell; critically analyse on significant poem of each of Donne and Marvell. 2.1 INTRODUCTION In this unit, I shall briefly comment upon the metaphysical trend in English poetry of the seventeenth century. This will be with reference to the changed climate of culture; it reflected wit in its diverse ways of representation and became a point of departure from conventions established in Elizabethan England. Help will be sought in this regard from biographical details of the poets and specific factors, cultural or social, active in the period. Thereafter, a poem each of John Donne and Andrew Marvell will be discussed at length—the former’s “The Canonization” and the latter’s “To His Coy Mistress.” While doing so, we shall go into the issues the two poems raise and identify the authorial intent and purpose working through each of them. Those will then be explained so that we can relate to them and see their relevance to our context. 19 British Poetry 2.2 A VIEW OF THE METAPHYSICAL TREND What we associate with Metaphysical poetry emerged in English cultural life in the early seventeenth century is uncertainty. That was the period of political and ideological clashes, one finding it difficult to tie oneself with a strong belief. Monarchy existed at the time as the crucial governing factor. The Tudor kings had given the country a firm footing in political order thriving on a stable centre. The court headed by the king ruled to the advantage of all, the upper classes and the people at the lower rung. At the same time though, the arrangement was not as stable as it had been in mid-sixteenth century. Social tensions could be seen increasing by the day under pressure from one or other development. Towards the end of her tenure, Queen Elizabeth herself did not command as much respect as she did in the fifteen eighties as cliques raised head and conspired to disturb harmony for petty gains. England had become weaker than before and the common masses faced unease of living. With the Queen’s death in 1603, the change from the Tudor dynasty to the Stuarts had traumatized a large section of the populace in terms of loyalty and faith. The people did not look for guidance, the changed leadership at the top of the court or the Church of England that had established itself in place of Roman Catholicism in the preceding years inspired no confidence. In the context, King James was the new reference—he came from a Roman Catholic background and received support from those who had been secretly critical of the previous regime. It appeared that ground was slipping from under the feet of the English people who had veered around England as a nation. Thus, in matters of social living and religious faith the Englishman moved on a shaky ground. The common feeling was neither physical nor spiritual predominantly. It could only be described as “metaphysical,” beyond the physical and spiritual, something weird and deeply disturbing. In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the dramatic mode dominated the literary space. That mode presented the affairs of the world on the stage with actors enacting social roles. Plays dealt with issues of political or social interest. They generated interest in the audience for the broader ways of living. The aspects of governance, morality, loyalty, and human relationships held sway. Drama had meant success or failure at the social level. The life at the court, military ventures, dissidence in the section of the nobility, heroism pitched against fraud and trickery were matters of enquiry. The metaphysical poetry broke that and drove sensitive minds towards self-examination. Internal feelings and processes of thought became new areas of interest. It led away from the dramatic mode and looked for the private and personal domain of individuals. It has been rightly observed by Ronald Carter and John McRae that, While theatre was the most public literary form of the period, poetry tended to be more personal, more private. Indeed, it was often published for only a limited circle of readers. This was true of Shakespeare’s sonnets … and even more so for the Metaphysical poets, whose words were published mostly after their deaths. (Ronald Carter, Ronald and John McRae. The Routledge History of Literature in English. New York: Routledge, 2001, 94) The distance created between drama and poetry was crucial. It neatly separated the public domain from the world of individual thought. Also, the thought in the case covered exploration and the urge to experiment, it encouraged the writer to unsettle accepted notions of conduct. For a long time, the word “metaphysical” 20 carried negative implications. It denoted something unnatural and weird, having Metaphysical Poets: John no link with serious writing. It was seen as laboured and stretched. Samuel Johnson Donne and Andrew Marvell in the eighteenth century gave this word to the poets such as Donne, Herbert and Marvell in the previous century. In fact, till the early twentieth century, metaphysical poets did not attract serious critical attention. Herbert J.C. Grierson and T.S. Eliot later retrieved these poets to establish them as worthy of critical attention and thought. 2.3 ABOUT THE POET: JOHN DONNE (Image source: Wikimedia Commons) John Donne (1572-1631) was a poet, priest and a soldier in sixteenth-seventeenth century England. He was born into a Catholic family at a time when Catholicism was an illegal faith. Church of England was at the religious centre and the King was deemed supreme authority there. Donne’s family were ‘recusant Catholics’, a term used to define those who continued allegience to Pope and Roman Catholicism, refusing to follow the Church of England. He had to drop out of both Hertford College, Oxford and University of Cambridge because of his Catholicism. A degree would be conferred upon the individual only if s/he took the Oath of Supremacy which was an act of swearing allegiance to the King as the Supreme Governor of the Church of England. He was elected as the Member of Parliament in 1602, a year after which Queen Elizabeth I died, succeeded by King James I of England. A time of patronage, Donne too wrote under his patron Robert Drury. In a turn of events, Donne wrote two anti-Catholic polemics, Pseudo-Martyr (1610) and Ignatius His Conclave(1611). King James, impressed with Donne’s work asked him to take holy orders and he became a priest in the Church of England in 1519, though grudgingly. Thereafter he serves as the Dean of St. Paul’s Cathedral in London from 1621-1631. His early poetry were satires on Elizabethan society and he also wrote erotic poems, the elegies, where he deployed unconventional metaphors. His later poems developed a more pious and sombre strain, and many assume financial strain and numerous illnesses as reasons for it. 21 British Poetry 2.4 “THE CANONIZATION”: THE TEXT 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, 5 Observe his honour, or his grace, Or the King’s real, or his stamped face Contemplate, what you will, approve, So you will let me love. Alas, alas, who’s injured by my love? 10 What merchant’s ships have my sighs drown’d? Who say 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 man to the plaguy bill? 15 Soldiers find wars, and lawyers find out still Litigious men, which quarrels move, Though she and I do love. Call us what you will, we are made such by love, Call her one, me another fly, 20 We are tapers too, and at our own cost die, And we in us find the 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, 25 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 tombs and hearse Our legend be, it will be fit for verse; 30 And if no piece of chronicle we prove, We’ll build in sonnets pretty rooms, 22 As well a well-wrought urn becomes The greatest ashes, as half-acre tombs, Metaphysical Poets: John Donne and Andrew Marvell And by these hymns, all shall approve 35 Us canoniz’d 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 40 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! 45 2.5 “THE CANONIZATION”: AN OVERVIEW The above poem has the title “canonization.” The word means raising of level of a person after death.
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