Metaphysical aspects in John Donne’s poems

A student research presented to:

Faculty of foreign language

Islamic Azad university of Roudehen

By: Mahdie Ghanbari

Supervised by: Roya Yaghoubi

May, 2014

Abstract

This study examines the metaphysical aspects in The Flea, Good Morrow, and Valediction: forbidding Love, Woman Constancy, the Sun Rising that written by John Donne. Donne’s poetry is characterized by complex imagery and irregularity. In his poems, Donne effortlessly displays the traits of metaphysical poems, so I analyzed these poems to find out all aspects of Metaphysic to criticize them. The implication of this study is for students who they have been studying English literature.

Introduction

I have been studied some of these poems in seventh semester in the course of English Poetry in university and I found it interesting to work on as my project. My research methodology is Metaphysical; but, what does the meaning of metaphysical?

The word Meta means after, so the literal translation of metaphysical is after the physical. Metaphysic is the branch of philosophy that deals with the first principles of the reality of things, including questions about being and substance, time and space, causation and change, and identity. John Donne is one of the greatest metaphysic poets.

The Metaphysical poet is a term that for the first time used by the poet and critic Samuel Johnson to describe a group of English lyric poets of the 17 th century who they were followers of John Donne. Their works characterized by the use of conceits and others literary terms that I explains about it …

I. Metaphysical conceit

One of the most important aspects of Metaphysical poetry is Metaphysical conceit. In English literature the term is generally associated with the 17 th

century metaphysical poets. It is an extended metaphor with a complex logic that governs a poetic passage or entire poem. It usually sets up an analogy between one entity’s spiritual qualities and an object in the physical world and sometimes controls the whole structure of the poem. "The flea" is a good example for metaphysical conceit that I deals with in my research.

II. Dramatic Nature

It seems that the poet is speaking in front of his lover or friend or some one else, but there is an action involved because of what the poet is telling you, the action involved from the mistress are mentioned too. In other word, the second person or the mistress is doing something or she is performing an action in response to what the speaker is saying.

III. Language

The language which is going to be used in Metaphysical poetry is ordinary speech of common people of the society. The poet is going to use slang expression rather than conventional language.

IV. Lack of pastoral

Lack of pastoral and mythological references in Metaphysical poems. There are no references either to the pastoral or Grecian mythology about God and Goddess of love.

V. Treatment of love

The greatest aspect in Metaphysical poems is treatment of love. Love is not a platonic or mental love. It is a kind of mutual love between two people. According to the Metaphysic poets, love and sex combine with each others and mutual love without sex is meaningless. In platonic love, always the lover is going to suffer and he is going to express his feeling and lack of attention of his love. He says that ‘In my way, I will continue my love and go up to the eternity even if you are not going to pay attention.’ But the Metaphysic poets say that ‘ this relation is a mutual relation. If I am going to love you, you are going to love me too or if you want to be faithful, I am going to be faithful too.

VI. Abruptness

A metaphysical poetry is going to be started very abruptly in surprising tone and in very shocking mood. It is not like ordinary sonnet. It doesn’t have any introduction and conclusion. Suddenly, it is going to be started in a forceful way without any introduction and you we will become surprised with this abruptness.

VII. Simile

A figure of speech involving the comparison of one thing with another thing of a different kind, used to make a description more emphatic or vivid (For example, as brave as a lion).

VIII. Metaphor

A figure of speech in which a word or phrase is applied to an object or action to which it is not literally applicable (for example, my love is a red, red rose).

IX. Paradox

A paradox in literature refers to the use of concepts or ideas that are contradictory to one another, yet, when placed together they hold significant value on several levels. The uniqueness of paradoxes lies in the fact that a deeper level of meaning and significance is not revealed at first glace, but when it does crystallize, it provides astonishing insight (for example, High walls make not a palace; full coffers make not a king).

About John Donne

He was born on January 22, 1572 while the Catholics were the persecuted minority in england. He was born in a Roman Catholic family in London, England. He went to The Oxford and Cambridge university, although he never had got any degree because as a Roman Catholic he could not swear the required oath of allegiance to the Protestant queen, Elizabeth; then he left the University, but he was very talented; so, because of this talent and knowledge that he had had, he became a personal secretary to Lord Egerton. In those days, he was very rich, but he himself destroyed his career because he had fallen in love with Lady Egerton and they had married secrectly; when this secret marriage have been known for every one he had lost his job.

During the next 10 years Donne lived in poverty. In spite of his misery during these years, Donne started to compose poetry, writing and producing prose works on theology, canon law, and anti-Catholic polemics and composing love l yrics, religious

poetry, and complimentary and funerary verse for his patrons. In 1615 he became a Royal Chaplain and Finally He died on 31 March 1631.

The Flea

Mark but this flea, and mark in this,   How little that which thou deniest me is;   It sucked 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 pampered swells with one blood made of two,     And this, alas, is more than we would do.

Oh stay, three lives in one flea spare, Where we almost, nay more than married are.   This flea is you and I, and this Our mariage bed, and marriage temple is;   Though parents grudge, and you, w'are met,   And cloistered 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 sucked from thee?   Yet thou triumph’st, and say'st that thou   Find’st not thy self, nor me the weaker now;     ’Tis true; then learn how false, fears be:     Just so much honor, when thou yield’st to me,     Will waste, as this flea’s death took life from thee.

Good Morrow

I wonder, by my troth, what thou and I Did, till we loved? Were we not weaned till then? But sucked on country pleasures, childishly? Or snorted we in the Seven Sleepers’ den? ’Twas so; but this, all pleasures fancies be. If ever any beauty I did see, Which I desired, and got, ’twas but a dream of thee.

And now good-morrow to our waking souls, Which watch not one another out of fear; For love, all love of other sights controls, And makes one little room an everywhere.

My face in thine eye, thine in mine appears, And true plain hearts do in the faces rest; Where can we find two better hemispheres, Without sharp north, without declining west? Whatever dies, was not mixed equally; If our two loves be one, or, thou and I Love so alike, that none do slacken, none can die.

This Good morrow or Good morning refers to the morning that they had sexual relations in last night. The meaning of Good morrow is symbolic. It is new world and new day for them that every thing changed.

The poems started abruptly, suddenly in surprising tone.

I wonder, by my troth, what thou and I Did, till we loved? Were we not weaned till then? But sucked on country pleasures, childishly?

The speaker says after we had had sex we are like child and when we fall in love and have sex the new world open for us. Up to now we have done nothing.

I wonder, by my troth, what thou and I Did, till we loved? Were we not weaned till then? But sucked on country pleasures, childishly? Or snorted we in the Seven Sleepers’ den? ’Twas so; but this, all pleasures fancies be. If ever any beauty I did see, Which I desired, and got, ’twas but a dream of thee.

In the beginning of the Good morrow poem, the poet asks his beloved how they used to spend their lives before they had met each other. With his beloved in arms, the poet realizes how empty his life was before he had met her. He considers that phase of their lives to be as meaningless as the ones spent in slumber by the seven sleepers of Ephesus in the den when they were trying to escape wrath of the tyrant Emperor Decius. Being without his beloved was as insignificant as those years which the seven sleepers had spent sleeping. It means that those years bore no importance in his life anymore. During those days when he was yet to discover true love, he would make up for that emptiness by indulging in other pleasures of life but now after understanding the meaning of love he realizes that those pleasures were very artificial.

Now it seems to the poet as if he was a small child during those days who was being weaned on these materialistic pleasures of the world in the absence of true love which was like mother's milk to that child. During those days all objects of beauty that he came across were nothing but her beloved's reflection.

To the poet her beloved was like a beautiful dream which was turned into reality. In this Good morrow analysis, it is worth mentioning that through false pleasures the poet might be indicating towards his various liaisons with other women which were just a reflection of the beauty which his true lover filled him with.

And now good-morrow to our waking souls, Which watch not one another out of fear; For love, all love of other sights controls, And makes one little room an everywhere.

In the second stanza of "The good morrow" the poet sheds light upon the bliss which envelops the lovers. He says that their souls rise in the light of the new morning of love in their lives. Their hearts are devoid of any kind of fear of commitment, misunderstanding or losing the one they love. Their presence in the each others life means so much to them that nothing catches their attention anymore. Donne proposes his loved one to turn their tiny room in which they make love into their only world. He says that he does not care about how much the sea discoverers expand the boundaries of the world with their discoveries. During those times when maritime discoveries were given utmost importance, the new inclusions to the map of the world meant nothing to the poet since his world only comprised of his beloved and him. Their respective worlds have now been fused into one. This drawing of an intellectual parallel from astronomy and geography strengthens the metaphysics of the poem.

My face in thine eye, thine in mine appears, And true plain hearts do in the faces rest; Where can we find two better hemispheres, Without sharp north, without declining west? Whatever dies, was not mixed equally;

If our two loves be one, or, thou and I Love so alike, that none do slacken, none can die.

Next the poet talks about the unique beauty of the love which he and his beloved share. Donne says that sometimes he and his beloved stare into each others eyes so longingly that they can see their faces in the others eyes. This refection of faces in the eyes reveals the true hearts of the lovers. Their hearts are true and spotless in love. This means that their love for each other enables the lovers to get rid of all their bad traits and harsh feelings towards the world which helps them become better people. The poet further adds that unlike the world which is divided in hemispheres, their world of love knows no boundaries. It does not have a sharp cold northern hemisphere. Nor does it have a western hemisphere which has to bid farewell to the sun. By drawing this reference to Geography again, the poet tries to give us an insight into the unparalleled bliss of his world of love where it is always warm and sunny.

As I mentioned before one of the aspects of Metaphysic poems is Knowledge of Day. At 17th century discovers were travelling to America and other places around the world that Donne utilizing it in his poem when he say:

Let sea-discoverers to new worlds have gone, Let maps to other, worlds on worlds have shown, Let us possess one world, each hath one, and is one.

He is going to compare their situation with discovers. As discovers was interested to finding new places, introducing new knowledge, introducing new world to other people, so they are finding new world in love and finding new way of life. This is an allusion to sea discovers in 17th century. The poet said that each of us have one world but it seems that we have come together and combine with each other.

Valediction: forbidding Mourning

As virtuous men pass mildly away,    And whisper to their souls to go, Whilst some of their sad friends do say    The breath goes now, and some say, No:

So let us melt, and make no noise,    No tear-floods, nor sigh-tempests move; 'Twere profanation of our joys    To tell the laity our love.

Moving of th' earth brings harms and fears,    Men reckon what it did, and meant; But trepidation of the spheres,    Though greater far, is innocent.

Dull sublunary lovers' love    (Whose soul is sense) cannot admit Absence, because it doth remove    Those things which elemented it.

But we by a love so much refined,    That our selves know not what it is, Inter-assured of the mind,    Care less, eyes, lips, and hands to miss.

Our two souls therefore, which are one,    Though I must go, endure not yet A breach, but an expansion,    Like gold to airy thinness beat.

If they be two, they are two so    As stiff twin compasses are two; Thy soul, the fixed foot, makes no show    To move, but doth, if the other do.

And though it in the center sit,    Yet when the other far doth roam, It leans and hearkens after it,    And grows erect, as that comes home.

Such wilt thou be to me, who must,    Like th' other foot, obliquely run;

Thy firmness makes my circle just,    And makes me end where I begun.

Woman Constancy

Now thou has loved me one whole day, Tomorrow when you leav’st, what wilt thou say? Wilt thou then antedate some new-made vow?             Or say that now We are not just those persons which we were? Or, that oaths made in reverential fear Of Love, and his wrath, any may forswear? Or, as true deaths true marriages untie, So lovers’ contracts, images of those, Bind but till sleep, death’s image, them unloose?             Or, your own end to justify, For having purposed change and falsehood, you Can have no way but falsehood to be true? Vain lunatic, against these ‘scapes I could             Dispute and conquer, if I would,             Which I abstain to do, For by tomorrow, I may think so too.

Before unpacking Donne’s use of conceits and poetic devices in his poem, it is helpful to know the short summary of it. In the poem, the male speaker is asking a woman what she will say when she leaves him tomorrow. The two lovers have loved each other only for a day. He asks whether she will insist she's been love with him for a long time or claim that she and the narrator are the same people they used to be. Will she claim that she no longer has any obligations to him? The speaker next wonders if she will assert that any vow she makes out of fear must be taken back. He further wonders if there is a connection between the death of a marriage and the dissolving of a contract made between two lovers. Will she admit any falsehood in order to be true to herself or will her arguments be challengeable.

John Donne represents a dramatic nature or dramatic monologue in this poem, because it presents the point of view of the narrator and not the woman. In other words, the speaker presents the arguments to which the woman is not able to respond. This is a primary technique Donne uses throughout many of his literary works.

The language is an ordinary and slang language that is full of questions, suggesting that the speaker wants a response, even though we never hear from the woman.

In woman’s constancy the conceit compares two powerful components of Elizabethan as well as contemporary life: love and law. By the use of the connotations of legal terminology and argumentative forms, Donne highlights all that is free and open

in love measured against all that is binding and judgmental in law. In addition to his highly effective use of conceits, he also openly plays with the form of his poem to illustrate the freedom and flexibility that love allows.

Now thou has loved me one whole day, Tomorrow when you leav’st, what wilt thou say? Wilt thou then antedate some new-made vow?             Or say that now We are not just those persons which we were?

The poem starts abruptly in a shocking mood that The speaker’s opening line sets up a sarcastic tone for the poem by suggesting that the woman thinks one day is a significant period of time. This tone carries over to when he presents the woman’s possible excuses and makes them sound absurd.

The speaker’s use of rhetorical questions also disparages the woman’s argument, since a tone of disbelief accompanies each question.

Yet in turning to the excuses themselves, some of them are pretty good and would make valid counterarguments for the woman if she were to use them. Two possible excuses in particular are very logical:

Or, that oaths made in reverential fear Of Love, and his wrath, any may forswear? Or, as true deaths true marriages untie, So lovers’ contracts, images of those, Bind but till sleep, death’s image, them unloose?

The logic in these excuses is based on contract law. Contracts are considered binding, unless an exception clause is met. The focus on arguing a contract is to prove the exception has occurred.

In the first excuse, the speaker claims that the lover’s contract can be invalidated since it was made in fear of the god of love. A common aspect of any contract is that it is not binding if it was signed out of fear. The woman’s excuse, therefore, seems valid since she shows that she has met the exception.

In the second excuse, an agreement to spend the night is likened to an imitation of marriage. If marriages are no longer binding at death, then sleep, which is like death, should end the lovers’ contract. This excuse is sound since she would make her argument in the morning when sleep would have occurred so the exception would be met. In looking at the language of the excuses and leaving out the condescending way the speaker delivers them, the excuses are persuasive since they are logically sound.

Vain lunatic, against these ‘scapes I could             Dispute and conquer, if I would,             Which I abstain to do, For by tomorrow, I may think so too.

The speaker claims that he could refute each of these excuses if he wanted to. This assertion is true since the speaker framed the excuses with sarcasm and disbelief that made them seem ridiculous. Also, the speaker came up with the excuses, and he would not have suggested them to the woman if he did not have responses for them. By refusing to dignify the excuses with a response, the speaker portrays the excuses as insignificant. The speaker’s control is further evidenced when he suggests the possibility of using the excuses himself in the morning. The speaker may not even like the woman, so he does not care about winning the argument. Regardless of whether he cares or not, the control and indifference he shows by not refuting the excuses cause him to win anyway.

By the end of the poem the reader is convinced that the speaker has won the argument. Initially it seemed foolish for the speaker to suggest such good excuses for the woman to use. The woman was not going to come up with those excuses herself, since no one but Donne could think of them. At the end of the poem, however, the reader realizes that there was no risk in providing the woman with these excuses since the outcome of the argument was never in doubt.

 

The Sun Rising

Busy old fool, unruly Sun, Why dost thou thus,Through windows, and through curtains, call on us? Must to thy motions lovers’ seasons run? Saucy pedantic wretch, go chide Late school-boys and sour prentices, Go tell court-huntsmen that the king will ride, Call country ants to harvest offices;Love, all alike, no season knows nor clime, Nor hours, days, months, which are the rags of time.

Thy beams so reverend, and strong Why shouldst thou think? I could eclipse and cloud them with a wink, But that I would not lose her sight so long. If her eyes have not blinded thine, Look, and to-morrow late tell me, Whether both th’ Indias of spice and mine Be where thou left’st them, or lie here with me. Ask for those kings whom thou saw’st yesterday, And thou shalt hear, “All here in one bed lay.”

She’s all states, and all princes I; Nothing else is; Princes do but play us; compared to this, All honour’s mimic, all wealth alchemy. Thou, Sun, art half as happy as we, In that the world’s contracted thus; Thine age asks ease, and since thy duties be To warm the world, that’s done in warming us. Shine here to us, and thou art everywhere; This bed thy center is, these walls thy sphere.

 

Bald, R. C. John Donne: A Life. (Oxford, 1970)

Colclough, David, John Donne's Professional Lives (Cambridge, 2003) Le Comte, Edward, Grace to a Witty Sinner: A Life of Donne, (Walker, 1965)

John Donne: Sparknotes

Homepage of the John Donne Society

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Donne