Metaphysical poetry
Metaphysical word composed of two
words "Meta" means Beyond and "Physics" means Our
environment. Metaphysics means poetry that has a particularity that goes beyond
the word of this article.
Metaphysical poetry is about the
total experience of man, but the intelligent learning and seriousness of the
poets mean that poetry is about deep realms of experience, especially love
poetry, romantic and religious.
Metaphysical poetry occupies a unique
place in the history of English poetry. It was written in the Post - the
Shakespearean era during the Milton Era and continued until the beginning of
the Restoration Era.
Characteristics:
There are certain
characteristics which differentiate their poetry from the poetry of former
poets. The Metaphysical poets think and feel at the same time.
Un-dissociated Sensibility:
The most important
characteristics of the metaphysical is their possession of or striving
after what T.S Eliot calls un-dissociated sensibility ( the combination
of thought and feeling) which Milton was to “Split” later.
However Prof. L.C Knights in his essay “
Bacon and the dissociation of sensibility” in explorations puts forward the
view that sensibility came to be dissociated much earlier by Bacon.
Donne has the knack of presenting together different
objects which have between them a quite remote though undeniable similarity. He
connects the abstract with the concrete the remote with the near and sometimes
during moments of the most serious meditation breaks into a note of sardonic humour or bathetic frivolity. This
juxtaposition and sometimes, interfusion of a
apparently dissimilar or exactly opposite objects often pleasantly
thrills us into a new perception of reality .
Donne says Hayward is a “thrilling poet” Donne
wrote:
Oh, to vex me contraries meet in one,
Inconstancy
naturally hath begot
A
constant habit.
These “contraries” meeting in Donne’s poetry “vex” not only the poet but also
sometimes his readers . His successors handled these contraries rather crudely
with very unpleasant.
Metaphysical Wit and Conceits:
Metaphysical poets using wit ,Irony , Concits ,pun and paradoxes
comparison is made between two very
unlike things . It is a unique duality of metaphysical poets . Dr. Johnson
was the first critic to point out the tendency of the metaphysical poets to
yoke radically different images forcibly together. This tendency arose
according to T.S Eliot from their
un-dissociated sensibility.
It
may be objected that Donne and his followers do not really seem to be serious
and spontaneous in the tendency noted by Dr Johnson. When Donne compare a pair of lovers to a pair of
compasses he is not speaking with his tongue. Such a tendency is a true
manifestation of the metaphysical wit.
Hobbes in his Leviath is defined wit
as the capability to find out similarities between things which may look very
dissimilar when Carew said that Donne.
Ruled , as he thought fit,
The universal
monarchy of wit
All the metaphysicals have an incorrigible aptitude for witty comparisons , juxtaposition and imagery and
what may be called “the metaphysical conceite” some strains or far-fetched
comparison or figure of speech Dr. Johnson Defined Wit of the metaphysical as a
kind of Discordia concors combination of dissimilar images.
In another
poem we have the very quaint line.
A holy thirsty dropsy melts me yet.
The word “holy” is highly serious “thirsty
“ stands for a simple physical need and
dropsy the name of a disease has a
clinical twang Again consider the lines :
Go tell court- Huntsman that the king
will ride ;
Call country ants to harvest offices.
See how the king and country
ants are juxtaposed.
Learnedness:
Metaphysical poets are man of highly
intellectual with the help of their vast knowledge they presented new ideas and
stories to their readers . The poetry of the metaphysical has the impress of
very vast learning.
It may be said that this poetry is brain
sprung not heartfelt. It is intellectual and witty to a fault Dr. Johnson noted
that the metaphysical poets sometimes drew their conceits from “ recesses of
learning not very much frequented by common readers” .Learning is an asset for a poet our quarrel with the
metaphysical is not that they are learned but that ,sometimes they show off
their learning just to impress the reader.
An imaginative and learned writer says
Edmuhd Blunden “ calls for annotion, but the object of his difficult allusions
is to give shape to his ideas of the world , of the soul not to decide matters
of astronomy ,physics, geography and natural history”.
Many of Donne followers do not always prove so imaginative”.
Paradoxical Ratiocination:
According
to Grierson the hallmarks of metaphysical poetry are passionate feeling
and paradoxical ratiocination. The poems are argumentative to prove their ideas
. The poems are amalgon of spiritual and physical abstact and concrete though
and emotions . The same critic observer that the metaphysicals “exhibited deductive
reasoning carried to a high pitch.
Donne state at the beginning of a poem a
hoplessly in supportable proposition which he defends soon after. Consider the
poem “ The indifferent” which open as below ;
I can love both fair and brown.
Whatever qualities a woman has are made into
so many reasonsfor loving her! Again note this in his poem “The Broken Heart”.
He is stark mad who ever says,
That he hath been in love one hour
With his tremendous ratiocination ability
.Donne defends this proposition . In “The
Flea” the proposition presented to his mistress is :
This
flea is you and I , and this
Our marriage bed, and marriage temple is
It seems an unpromising subject but there are twenty seven lines of
packed argument to drive it home see, for instance , the following clever lines
:
You that are she and you that’s double she,
In her dead face half of yourself
shall see.
Lucas complains : Donne treats poetry as a trapeze for mental frisks Clay Hunts disapproves such “ pyrotechnics of wit”
Diction and Versification:
Metaphysical poets employ their own
diction in their poetry . They mostly used colloquial language in his poetry .
In style and versification Donne and his
followers reacted against cloying sweetness and harmony of the school of Spencer .
According
to Wordsworth the language of poetry should be :
“The natural language of impassioned
feeling”.
The
metaphysical employed very “ prosaic” words as if they were scientists or
shopkeepers. The versification of the metaphysical is also like their diction coarse
and jerky in contrast to the honeyed smoothness of much as Elizabethen poetry . Their revolt according to Grierson
is due to two motives :
I.
The desire to startle.
II.
The desire to approximate poetic to direct
unconventional colloquial speech.
Donne
could “sing “ whenever he liked but often he seems to be bending and cracking he often throws all prosodic
considerations vehement utterance to the winds and distributes his stresses not
according to the sense . “In his work “
say Tucker Brooke “ The pierian flood is no clear spring : it is more
Like a yellow stone geyser : over-heated, turbid, explosive and far from pure “
Donne has to say is subtle and surprising and so
are often the metrical effects which it is presented.
Religious
Poetry
Most of the metaphysical
poets wrote on religion. Indeed we owe
most of our good religious poetry to them. They introduced Palatonic Love
which means spiritual Love free from elements of physical love . It must be emphasized
that all metaphysical do not write
exactly alike .
Herbert followed Donne in most respects .
He has been called the “saint” of the metaphysical school . His temple was the
most popular Anglican poem of the age Herbert had two distinguished followers Vaughan
and Crashaw they acknowledge their debt to Herbert . His thoughts
concerning childhood in his poem .The retreat are largely echoed by the
Wordsworth in the ode on the Intimations of Immortality in Childhood. His poem The
World has daring image:
I saw etemity the other night,
Like a great ring of pure and
endless light,
All calm as it was bright .
Crashaw ‘s poetry is uneven work . Whereas
Herbert is a gentle stream, Crashaw is an impetuous torrent. He is quite
undiscipline and given a moods of religious exaltation conceits . The eyes of
Mary Magdalene in The Weeper are describe as:
Two walking baths , two
weeping motions
Potable and compendious
ocean.
He sing says a critic the raptures of
soul visited by divine love in term as concrete and glowing as any human lover
has ever used to elaborate an Eartly passion.
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