“T. S. Eliot on Metaphysical Poets”

Subject: ENGLISH Class: B.A. Part 3 Honours, Paper-V Topic: T.S Eliot Lecture No:36

By: Prof. Sunita Sinha Head, Department of English Women’s College Samastipur L.N.M.U., Darbhanga Email: [email protected] Website: www.sunitasinha.com Mob No: 9934917117

“T. S. ELIOT ON METAPHYSICAL POETS”

ABOUT T.S. ELIOT:

• Besides being a poet, playwright and publisher, T. S. Eliot (1888- 1965) was one of the most seminal critics of his time. • T. S. Eliot is a classicist in literature and supports orderliness both in art and criticism. He rejects impressionistic criticism of Arthur Symons and philosophical abstract and intellectual criticism of Arnold. • He is the critic who was a creative artist first. 2

• He is in the tradition of English poet-critics from Sidney to Arnold. He is one of the greatest literary critics of England. • He is the most influential critic of the modern age. He is like Dryden for most of his criticism is written in the form of prefaces to his works with the purpose of justifying his own poetic creations. • As a critic Eliot speaks with authority and conviction. He had the rare gift of expressing his thoughts in lucid, striking, pointed and trenchant phrases as, “objective correlative,” “disassociation of sensibility” and “tradition and the individual talent.” • Eliot does not accept didacticism or any other use of poetry as a necessary condition of poetic art. To him, poetry is an amusement. • He believed that the function of criticism is the elucidation of art and the correction of taste and to bring back the poet to life. • A key concept in the criticism of Eliot is that he constantly emphasizes using tradition as a basis for the comparison and analysis of literature.

ANALYSIS:

• T.S. Eliot begins the essay with Dr. Johnson’s use of the phrase ‘metaphysical poetry’ as a term of abuse or as the label of quaint and pleasant taste. The main concern of this essay is to what extent the so called metaphysical formed a school and how far this school or movement is a digression from the main current. He also points out the characteristic fault of the metaphysical poets. • Eliot says that it is extremely difficult to define metaphysical poetry and to decide what poets practice it in which of their verses. The poetry of Donne is late Elizabethan. Its feeling is often very close to that of Chapman. The argument put forth by Eliot is that there is no 3

precise use of metaphor, simile or other conceits common to the metaphysical poets. • Why Metaphysical poets were called Metaphysical? This is the question which Eliot mainly focuses on in “The Metaphysical Poets.” According to him, Donne and Cowley use a device considered metaphysical and that is the elaboration of a figure of speech to a level of a mind can think, i.e., Cowley compares the world to a chessboard whereas Donne compares two lovers to a pair of compasses. The other reason is that there is “a development by rapid association of thought” which means that one thought leads to another. • Eliot links Metaphysical poets to Elizabethan playwrights. He reinforces that Metaphysical poets are descendants of Elizabethan dramatists and have unified sensibility. One can find connection between anything. They (Metaphysical poets) found the world as unified whole. In their poetry, thought and feeling affected each other as both are unified whole. Eliot in this essay puts on top John Donne and other Metaphysical poets of the seventeenth century and lowers down the poets of the eighteenth and nineteenth century. • According to him, Romanticism is a sentimental age (feelings were crude). The Victorian poets could not combine thought and feeling. They were self-conscious, instead of feeling and thought, they thought about their thoughts. On the other hand, the Metaphysical poets were able to combine thought and emotion and sensation in one untroubled unity. • Their language exactly matched their experience and their feeling. Eliot writes: “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 this sensibility.” 4

• Eliot’s famous phrase “disassociation of sensibility” in this essay was to explain the change that came over English poetry after Donne and Marvell. “Disassociation of sensibility” is the division of thought and feeling, which according to Eliot is done by Dryden and other poets of the age. • They are responsible for the disassociation. There is a loss of union of thought and feeling whereas in the Metaphysical poetry, there is no separation of thought and feeling. Chapman’s work is a creation of thought into feeling while a thought to Donne was an experience, which modifies his sensibility. • T. S Eliot’s essay “The Metaphysical Poets” is an important landmark in the history of literary criticism. It has bought about revaluation and re-assessment of Donne and other Metaphysical poets, and has caused a revival of interest in these poets, who had been neglected for a considerable time. • “Disassociation of sensibility” and “unification of sensibility” the two phrases occur in this very essay. The former is used to describe the characteristic fault of later seventeenth century poetry. • Eliot says that Donne and Cowley employ a device which is sometimes considered characteristically ‘metaphysical’: The elaboration of a figure of speech to the furthest stage. Cowley’s comparison of the world to a chess board (To Destiny), and Donne’s comparison of two lovers to a pair of compasses. • In these poets, instead of a mere explication of content of the comparison, there is a development by a rapid association of thought. Donne’s most successful and characteristic effects are secured by brief words and sudden contrasts. • Dr. Johnson employed the term ‘metaphysical poets’ keeping in mind Donne, Cleveland and Cowley. He remarked that in them ‘the most heterogeneous ideas are yoked by violence together.’ Eliot 5

says that often the ideas are yoked but not united and if we are to judge styles of poetry by their abuse, enough examples are found in Cleveland to justify Johnson’s condemnation. • He quotes Lord Herbert’s Ode and says that nothing in the poem that fits Johnson’s general observation on the metaphysical poets. According to Eliot, the language of these poets is as a rule simple and pure. Herbert’s verse has simplicity. Unlike the eighteenth- century poems, the seventeenth century poems (metaphysical poems) like Marvell’s Coy Mistress and Crashaw’s Saint Teresa are dissimilar in the use of syllables. • In the former, there are short syllables to produce an effect of great speed and in the latter, long syllables are used to affect an ecclesiastical solemnity. • In Eliot’s opinion, Johnson has failed to define metaphysical by its faults. One has to consider whether the metaphysical poetry has the virtue of permanent value or not. In fact, it does not have it. Johnson’s observation is that the attempts of these poets were always analytic. • Eliot says that in the dramatic verse of the last Elizabethan and early Jacobean poets, there is a development of sensibility. In Jonson, Chapman and Donne, there is a recreation of thought into feeling. That is, there is ‘unification of sensibility’. Eliot makes a distinction between the Victorian poet (reflective poet) and the metaphysical poet (intellectual poet). • Poets like Tennyson and Browning think but do not feel their thought as immediately as the odour of a rose. A thought to Donne was an experience. It modified his sensibility. The disparate experiences are amalgamated and they form new wholes. • The poets of the 17th century are the successors of the 16th century dramatists. They are simple, artificial, difficult, fantastic as their 6

predecessors were. In the 17th century, a dissociation of sensibility set in and this was aggravated by the influence of the two most powerful poets of the century - Milton and Dryden. These poets performed certain poetic functions so magnificently well that the magnitude of effect concealed the absence of others. • There was improvement in language. While the language became more refined, the feeling became cruder. In one or two passages of Shelley’s Triumph of Life, in the second Keats’s Hyperion. There are traces of a struggle toward unification of sensibility. • Now the question is that what the fate of ‘metaphysical’ would have been if the current of poetry descended in a direct line from them? They would not, certainly, be classified as metaphysical. Like other poets, the metaphysical poets have various faults. But they were trying to find the verbal equivalent for states of mind and feeling. Eliot concludes the essay by saying that Donne, Crashaw, Vaughan, Herbert, Cowley at his best are in the current of English poetry.

CONCLUSION:

• Thus, we see that in “The Metaphysical Poets” T. S. Eliot highlights the appreciative features of metaphysical poets according to his own perception. He praises the Metaphysical poets on the basis of their subjective matter and their poetry.

• The essay investigates the metaphysical poetry by rational discussion based on its phenomena rather than by intuition or mysticism and draws people’s interest towards the Metaphysical poets.

• A poet may have best ideas, says Eliot, to communicate but they serve no purpose unless they are expressed as feelings. This essay has acquired universality because of these two phrases. The fact cannot be denied that Eliot’s essay “The Metaphysical Poets” had a strong influence in reviving an interest in the seventeenth century poets.

*** By: Prof. Sunita Sinha Head, Department of English Women’s College Samastipur L.N.M.U., Darbhanga Mob No:9934917117 Email: [email protected] Website: www.sunitasinha.com