About metaphysical poetry
Highly intellectualized poetry marked by bold and
ingenious conceits, incongruous imagery, complexity and subtlety of thought,
frequent use of paradox, and often by deliberate harshness or rigidity of
expression.
The word 'meta' means 'after,' so the literal translation of
'metaphysical' is 'after the physical.' Basically, metaphysics deals with
questions that can't be explained by science. It questions the nature of
reality in a philosophical way.
METAPHYSICAL poetry now, as in the past, is amply discussed
and only vaguely defined. From Drummond to Dryden, and from Johnson to T. S.
Eliot, it has been variously mentioned but never distinguished clearly from the
rest of our poetical literature. Two metaphysical anthologies have been
published in recent years, with introductions roughly indicating the compiler's
conception of metaphysical poetry and poems which do not seem to belong even to
the editor's own notions of the genre. Greisens reaches the conclusion that
'all great poetry is metaphysical. Con- might expect, an anthology of the
World's Best Poetry or a Treasure House of English Verse to be a compare -
sequentially, one pensive metaphysical anthology. Obviously, a more restrictive
definition must be found. It will not do to call great poetry and metaphysical
poetry synonymous. Are Shelley's lyrics-Love's Philosophy and 'Music, when soft
voices die-metaphysical? They fulfill Greisens’ requirement in that they are
'born of men's passionate thinking about life, love, and death.' They are
written in the very metaphysical realm of metaphor, and they subscribe to ideas
that are noticeably present in the work of Donne, the exemplar of the
metaphysical muse fulfillment of physical love and thoughts of death. They are,
however, far from the terrain of metaphysical poetry. They are romantic, of
course, and the approach is not primarily from the intellect. The poem on death
has none of the metaphysical with dissolution, nor the psychological analysis
of emotion-but I trespass upon my definition. Let me say merely that
metaphysical poetry probes the depths; it does not consciously and primarily
seeks the wings of Daedal us. If the poet is scorched, it is Concern Fist question:-
1).Characteristics of Metaphysical Poetry with an
explanation of a few metaphysical poetry written by John Donne as well as any
other Metaphysical Poet
Ans). How are poets like John Don and Andrew Marvel
able to write about a clear subject, which is what the spiritual writer really
intends to do with his poetry in my mind's thoughts during a test of poetry? I
try to answer these questions and many more.
The Flea
(born sometime between Jan. 24 and June 19, 1572, London,
Eng.—died March 31, 1631, London)
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 marriage 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.
About
poem :-
The speaker tells his
beloved to look at the flea before them and to note “how little” is that thing
that she denies him. For the flea, he says, has sucked first his blood, then
her blood, so that now, inside the flea, they are mingled; and that mingling cannot
be called “sin, or shame, or loss of maidenhead.” The flea has joined them
together in a way that, “alas, is more than we would do.”
As his beloved moves to
kill the flea, the speaker stays her hand, asking her to spare the three lives
in the flea: his life, her life, and the flea’s own life. In the flea, he says,
where their blood is mingled, they are almost married—no, more than married—and
the flea is their marriage bed and marriage temple mixed into one. Though their
parents grudge their romance and though she will not make love to him, they are
nevertheless united and cloistered in the living walls of the flea. She is apt
to kill him, he says, but he asks that she not kill herself by killing the flea
that contains her blood; he says that to kill the flea would be sacrilege,
“three sins in killing three.”
“Cruel and sudden,” the
speaker calls his lover, who has now killed the flea, “purpling” her fingernail
with the “blood of innocence.” The speaker asks his lover what the flea’s sin
was, other than having sucked from each of them a drop of blood. He says that
his lover replies that neither of them is less noble for having killed the
flea. It is true, he says, and it is this very fact that proves that her fears
are false: If she were to sleep with him (“yield to me”), she would lose no
more honor than she lost when she killed the flea.
Analyses:-
This funny little poem again demonstrates Donne's spiritual
love-poetry mode, with the least potential for its ability to turn images into
elaborate symbols of love and romance. The poem uses the image of a flea who
has bitten the speaker and his beloved in order to create entertaining
conflicts with both sexes in mind. The speaker wants, the beloved does not do
so, and so the speaker, too clever but also a catcher on the straw, uses fleas,
whose body bleeds with his loved ones, to show how innocent such a blend can be
- in fleas. Very innocent, the sexual mix would be equally innocent, because it
really is the only thing. In other words, the speaker fleet is trying to save
lives, holding it as "our wedding bed and wedding temple." Here the
poet introduces the poet in a wonderful way using a simple flea for his love.
But when the speaker kills the flea despite protests from
the speaker, he turns the argument over to his head, claiming that he is still
demanding, despite high-minded and pious ideals. By killing the flea, he could
not really lose the honor of his beloved - and despite high-minded and pious
ideals, he refused to sleep with her, doing so would not honor her.
Poem Form
The poem varies metrically alternating between the lines of
the iambic tetrameter and the lines in the iambic pentameter, 4-5 stress
patterns, ending with two pentose lines at the end of each column. Thus, the
strain method is 454545455 in each of the nine-line stanzas. The rhyme scheme
is the same routine in each class, in couples, with the last line rhythm along
the last line: AABBCCDDD.
Metaphysical
poetry by. T.S. Elliott
17th-century poets are the successors of 16th-century
dramatists. They are simple, artificial, difficult, weird who their
predecessors were. In the 17th century, a diversity of sensibilities was
established and intensified by the influence of two of the most powerful poets
of the century - Milton and Dryden. These poets performed some poetic works so
beautifully that the magnitude of the effect hid the absence of others.
Language improved. When language becomes purer, emotion becomes cruel.
Shelly's Triumph Life In one or two paragraphs of Live, the other in Keats'
Hyperion. There are signs of conflict towards the integration of sensitivity.
Now the question is, what would be the fate of 'spiritual'
in the present line of poetry descending in a straight line from them? They
will, of course, not be classified as spiritual. Like other poets, spiritual
poets have different flaws. But they were trying to find a verbal equivalent
for the state of mind and spirit. Elliott concludes the essay by saying that
Donne, Crashaw, Herbert, Covley are among the best of their current English
poems.
T.S. Elliott Dr. Johnson's term is used as a term for abuse
of 'spiritual poetry' or as creepy and pleasant and well-written. The main
concern of this essay is the extent to which the so-called spiritual school
formed the school and how far this school or movement is far from the
mainstream. It also shows the characteristic flaws of spiritual poets.
Elliott states that it is extremely difficult to define
spiritual poetry and to determine in which verse the poets study it. Donne's
poem is in the late Elizabethan. His feelings are often very close to
Chapman's. The argument presented by Elliott is that metaphorical poets do not
have the correct use of metaphors, similes, or other ideas. Moreover, no common
style is so important for distinguishing these poets as a group. But Donne and
Colley employs a device that is sometimes characteristically considered
'spiritual': the extension of the figure of speech at a distant stage. Compare
Colley's world with Chessboard (To Destiny), and Don's comparison of two lovers
with a pair of compasses. In these poets, instead of a clear description of the
content of the comparison, development occurs through the rapid organization of
thought. Donne's most successful and characteristic effects are protected by
short words and sudden contradictions.
Dr. Johnson used the term 'spiritual poets' in the context
of Donne, Cleveland, and Colley. He remarked that among them, "extreme
racial views are often linked with violence." Elliott says that ideas are
often interconnected but not united, and if we judge the style of the poems
through their abuse, there are enough examples in Cleveland to justify Johnson.
Condemnation. He quotes Lord Herbert's Dee, saying that there is nothing in the poem that fits Johnson's general observation on spiritual poets.
According to Eliot, the language of these poets is, as a
rule, simple and pure. Herbert's verse has simplicity. Unlike teenager
nineteenth-century poems, seventeenth-century poems (spiritual poems) such as
Marvel's Coy Mistress and Crash's St. Teresa characters are different. In
earlier times, there was a short syllable to produce the effect of great
motion, and in later times, the long text was used to affect scientific glory.
In Eliot's opinion, Johnson seems to have failed the
spiritual definition by his faults. One has to consider whether spiritual
poetry has the virtue of lasting value. In fact, he doesn't have it. Johnson's
observation is that the efforts of these poets have always been analytical.
Eliot says that in the dramatic verse of the late Elizabethan and early
Jacobian poets, sensitivity develops. In Johnson, Chapman, and Donne, the
realization of ideas are entertaining. That is, there is 'integration of
sensation'. Eliot distinguishes between the Victorian poet (reflective poet) and
spiritual poet (intellectual poet). Poets like Tennyson and Browning think, but
do not immediately feel the smell of roses. The idea for Donne was an
experience. It improved her sensitivity. Different experiences are seamless and
they form new curiosities.
2) Write critical analysis of metaphysical poems of poets other than John
Donne.
Ans).
Spiritual Poets By Samuel Johnson (1709–1784)
From
the life of the poets
Only, like other poets who have written with narrow
opinions, and paid for temporary prejudices to their court, rather than
intellectual pleasure in the minds of men was much appreciated at that time,
and much ignored on the general public of other literature.
As with other human choices, there are changes and fashions,
as do other things, that change over time. At the beginning of the seventeenth
century there appeared a membership of writers who could be called spiritual
poets; It is innate to criticize because of disagreements
Spiritual poets were always trying to figure out why to grow
into reality, but unfortunately resolved to show it in poetry, instead of
writing poems, they only wrote verses, and often such verses stand better than
a finger hearing than an ear; The modulation was so incomplete that they
appeared to be versed only by counting utterances.
If the father of criticism properly named the favorable poem
[Greek], these writers would, without major lies, lose their authority over the
poets' names; For they cannot be said to have imitated anything: they have
neither imitated nature nor life; Neither drew types of objects nor represented
functions of intelligence.
Those, however, allow those who refuse him to be poets, to
be clever. Dryden confessed to himself and his contemporaries that they were
down to Donne in wit, But they surpass it in poetry.
If wit can be best described by the Pope, because "he
is often thought of, but never expressed so well," he certainly never met
or could never be found; Because they tried to be alone in their thoughts, and
they were careless in their ingenuity. But Nieu's skeptical account of the
pope's wisdom is doubtless wrong; It depresses him below his natural dignity
and reduces him to the pleasure of language by the power of thought.
From this account of their compositions, it will be readily
inferred that they were not successful in representing or moving the affections.
As they were wholly employed on something unexpected and surprising, they had
no regard to that uniformity of sentiment which enables us to conceive and to
excite the pains and the pleasure of other minds: they never inquired what, on
any occasion, they should have said or done but wrote rather as beholders than
partakers of human nature; as beings looking upon good and evil, impassive and
at leisure; as epicurean deities, making remarks on the actions of men and the
vicissitudes of life, without interest and without emotion. Their courtship was
void of fondness, and their lamentation of sorrow.
Nor was the sublime
more within their reach than the pathetic; for they never attempted that
comprehension and expanse of thought which at once fills the whole mind, and of
which the first effect is sudden astonishment and the second rational
admiration. Sublimity is produced by aggregation, and littleness by dispersion.
Great thoughts are always general and consist of positions not limited by
exceptions, and in descriptions not descending to minuteness. It is with great
propriety that subtilty, which in its original import means exility of
particles, is taken in its metaphorical meaning for nicety of distinction.
Those writers who lay on the watch for novelty could have little hope of
greatness; for great things cannot have escaped former observation. Their
attempts were always analytic; they broke every image into fragments, and could
no more represent, by their slender conceits and labored particularities, the
prospects of nature, or the scenes of life, than he who dissects a sunbeam with
a prism can exhibit the wide effulgence of a summer noon
Yet great labor, directed by great abilities, is never
wholly lost; if they frequently threw away their wit upon false conceits, they
likewise sometimes struck out unexpected truth; if their conceits were far
fetched, they were often worth the carriage. To write on their plan it was at
least necessary to read and think. No man could be born a metaphysical poet, nor
assume the dignity of a writer, by descriptions copied from descriptions, by
imitations borrowed from imitations, by traditional imagery and hereditary
similes, by the readiness of rhyme and volubility of syllables.
In perusing the
works of this race of authors, the mind is exercised either by recollection or
inquiry; either something already learned is to be retrieved, or something new
is to be examined. If their greatness seldom elevates, their acuteness often
surprises; if the image is not always gratified, at least the powers of
reflection and comparison are employed and in the mass of materials which
ingenious absurdity has thrown together, genuine wit and useful knowledge may
be sometimes found buried, perhaps in grossness of expression, but useful to
those who know their value, and such as, when they are expanded to perspicuity,
and polished to elegance, may give luster to works which have more propriety
though less copiousness of sentiment.
Thank you
