Session six - Methaphysical poetry PDF

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METAPHYSICAL POETRY Reading: Background: summary of the lecture (handbook 19-20); from The Early Seventeenth Century: “James’s second son, Prince Charles […] which would soon be managing a revolution” ( Norton B 897-898), “Donne, like Jonson, […] Abraham Cowley, and Andrew Marvell” ( Norton B 906-907), “When King Charles came to the throne […] literary and cultural affairs from politics” ( Norton B 908-909), biographical introduction to Marvell ( Norton B 1339-1340) Texts: John DONNE, ‘Elegy 19. To His Mistress Going to Bed’ (1669) ( Norton B 943-944), from ‘Expostulation 19’ [The language of God] (Norton B 971-972), Thomas CAREW, ‘A Rapture’ (1640) (Norton B 1325-1328), Andrew MARVELL, ‘To His Coy Mistress’ (1681) ( Norton B 1346-1347), A.D. Hope, ‘His Coy Mistress to Mr Marvell’ (handbook 59) Language NB: In Renaissance English, the word ‘mistress’ referred to a beloved woman, not to a lover. Donne, Elegy 19 NB: In this case, the title ‘elegy’ does not mean that the poem mourns a dead person, but simply signals the fact that the poem imitates the form of ‘elegiac’ poetry (classical elegies were written in couplets). l. 8: ‘That…’: so that… ll. 17-18: ‘shoes … temple’: one is supposed to take off one’s shoes before entering a mosque. This reference to Islam (an object of much curiosity in Europe since the crusades) prepares for the reference to ‘Mahomet’s paradise’ in l. 21) ll. 22-23: ‘know … from’: distinguish (these angels) from (an ‘evil sprite’, i.e. an evil spirit or ghost) ll. 37-38: ‘That when a fool’s eye lighteth on a gem,/His earthly soul may covet theirs, not them’: so that when a fool sees a gem, his earthly soul covets what is theirs (the gems women wear), and not themselves (the women). The same reasoning is applied in ll. 7-8. l. 43: since that: so that Thomas Carew, ‘A Rapture’: as the poem will chiefly serve to illustrate Donne’s influence on Cavalier poets, we will not go into this text in any detail. You are advised to read the text and understand as much as you can through a first reading (the metaphors do not always leave much to the imagination anyway…), but you are not expected to be familiar with the vocabulary of every line. Marvell, ‘To His Coy Mistress’ l. 2: were: would be l. 8: the Flood: when God destroyed the world, see Genesis 6 and 7. ‘Before the flood’ proverbially refers to very old times. l. 22: ‘Time’s Winged Chariot’: in Greek mythology, the sun was regarded as a god riding a fiery chariot across the sky from East to West (see also lines 45-46). l. 24: ‘vast’: does not just mean ‘large, immense’; in Renaissance English, the adjective was also related to the word ‘waste’ in the sense of ‘empty, desolate’ (a meaning which is already implied by the use of the word ‘deserts’ in the line). l. 26: ‘thy marble vault’: your grave l. 29 ‘shall’ is implied before ‘turn’ l. 29-30: ‘dust… ashes’: the lines contain a clear echo of the phrase ‘ashes to ashes, dust to dust, [in sure and certain hope of resurrection to eternal life]’ ( Book of Common Prayer) l. 37: ‘let us sport us’: let’s have fun (really meaning sex). l. 43: ‘tear our pleasures’: take our pleasures energetically (‘tearing’ also hints at the loss of virginity) l. 44: ‘the iron g(r)ates of life’: a dense metaphysical conceit that mixes references to female genital organs and sexual intercourse: ‘the gates of love’ / ‘grating’ / the iron chastity belt / the birth canal.

METAPHYSICAL POETRY: DONNE, MARVELL Genre that flourished in the 17th century, especially the early part of the 17th century. The three examples of metaphysical poetry are all very blatantly erotic poems, not all metaphysical poems are erotic. What typifies metaphysical poetry is the use of very elaborate and complex metaphors. Very unexpected and intuitive metaphors as well that link together arias of experience which we would not think of connected with each other. Metaphysical poetry is defined by a certain technique that is defined by the use of elaborate metaphors. Metaphorical poetry is a product of its time. When we look at the different poems you have to try and connect them to the context that is very far removed from purely poetic considerations or even from the idea that those are poems and therefore should be read as the product of fairly private or individual obsessions.

What has this all to do with metaphysical poetry? It has a lot to do with the different writers we will look at. Those writers, even though they practised the poetry that has certain features which are very distinctive, ‘Elegy 19’ by Donne , ‘a rapture’ by Thomas Carew and ‘to his coy mistress’ by Marvel are poems that all look very much a like. They all belonged to very different religions. Donne was originally a Catholic who converted to Anglicanism, Thomas Carew was definitely a Anglican who during the civil war was a cavalier, a supporter of the king and Marvel was a Puritan and a supporter of Cromwell. It is going to be important to bear in mind how those conflict play out in the middle of the 17th century during the civil war. The civil war, the establishment of the Puritan commonwealth that follows. 1660 the collapse of the Puritan commonwealth, the restoration of the monarchy and the restoration of the Anglican church. The dates which usually are attached to the poems always matter they will matter even mare as part of this lecture when are those poems written and published. DONNE (1572-1631): BACKGROUND FROM CATHOLICISM TO ANGLICANISM John Donne born in Catholic family and like many other Catholics converted to Anglicanism. For somebody who chose to become a priest means that you can marry. It may seem strange that Donne was a priest and eventually became the dean of saint pose cathedral in London. He was both a prominent priest and of very erotic poems like elegy 19. They were the same person and he did not experience a split in his personality when he was writing erotic poem and a very prominent priest. It makes sense in the end of the 16th and beginning of the 17th century, because as the of a reaction against Puritanism. Angelic art would celebrate the senses the Catholic art of the period, of the counter information was extremely sensual e.g. ‘Ecstasy of ST Theresa’ Italian sculpture, is that ecstasy the ecstasy of a saint who is experiencing a spiritual revelation or is it the ecstasy of a woman who is in the grip of a very physical sensation some kind of orgasm. It is not unusual that mixture of sensuality or even sexuality on the one hand and spiritual revelation on the other hand -> very typical for a certain kind of counter information or baroque art in the 17th century. It is part of the art of the counter information typical for the Catholic art. ‘Pieta’ which is oddly and disturbingly sexual the way in which Maria gripes the body of Christ, that kind of embrace is almost erotic. That is not untypical of the art of the counter information. What does survive and that is poetry, poetry has a way of surviving.

‘ELEGY 19’ First published in 1669, after the restoration, after the Puritan regime had collapsed and ‘Elegy 19’ was a poem first circulated in manuscript form. Those manuscripts did survive the civil war and the puritan regime. What you find in the poetry is the mixture of sensuality or sexuality even and spiritual revelation that you find in the visual art of the catholic counter revelation. It is an intensely erotic poem. It is also poetry that can be defined metaphysically for its use of bold and unusual and complex images. - DONNE’S SELECT AUDIENCE - ‘METAPHYSICAL’ POETRY -- METAPHYSICAL CONCEITS WARFARE (3-4) MYTHOLOGY (ll. 35-38 and note) EXPLORATIONS (ll. 27-30) RELIGION (ll. 17-24, 39-43): DONNE’S ANGLICANISM: - THEOLOGICAL SYNCRETISM (OPENESS TO AND CURIOSITY ABOUT OTHER RELIGIONS) - SECTARIAN SUBVERSION (SUBVERSIVE USES OF IMAGES AND CONCEPTS BORROWED FROM ISLAM, ll. 17-18 and 21, AND FROM CALVINISM, ll. 40-42) -- PUNNING (e.g. the recurrent pun on ‘(dis)cover’) AND THE LANGUAGE OF GOD - EROTIC POETRY -- THE TRADITION OF THE ‘BLAZON’ (‘anatomical’ description of female beauties) -- ‘COME, MADAM’: DESCRIPTION, PERSUASION – OR WISHFUL THINKING? The poem first circulated in manuscript form only. It was never print in Donne’s lifetime. He was part of a higher class that still thought of print that was destined for the vulgar. John Donne belonged the highly educated, upper class circles and in those circles, it was very unusual to regard publication and print as being below yourself. You do not want to be known as an author whose poem circulated in print. Manuscript was still enough. John Donne wrote for a very select audience, people who were intelligent enough to appreciate all the complex metaphors that were drawing on so many different areas that were developed in his poem. Also, beyond the fact that this audience was very select, they were also an audience in likeminded people in religious terms. They were people who would enjoy reading very erotic, even pornographic poetry, it was a way for both Catholics and Anglicans to show that they were not Puritans. Writing blatantly erotic poetry at the time is a way of showing that you do not share the Puritan distressed of Puritan enjoyment. John Donne audience was an audience that was not made up of Puritans. John Donne wanted to entertain his audience not just with titillating erotic verse. He also wanted to surprise them by using very strange He also wanted to surprise them by developing very strange and very complex metaphors which in later would age be too complex for their own good. The term metaphysical in the 18th century, when people thought this poetry was simply too complex and too obscure. That the metaphors were to complex and too full fudged for an age that valued clarity and simple elegance. For Donne and his audience, the difficulty was part of the enjoyment. Metaphysical conceits were aimed to puzzle you and surprise you, but also to favour a kind of reading which made poetry a kind of intellectual puzzle to be solved and those metaphors that he developed can be seen as series of puzzles that its up for the reader to solve by picking up the hints which show you how those very daring and unusual and almost counter intuitive metaphors can be made to work. Let’s look at some examples and how John Donne develops those metaphysical conceits. Warfare 3-4: Mistress means the woman you are in love with not necessarily the woman you have an affair with, in this case the mistress is the poet’s wife. Come to bed with me but not in order to rest. My manly powers don’t want to sleep but want to do something else instead. ‘Until I labour …’ I’m like a pregnant woman lying in bed waiting to be delivered. A poetry of paradox, if you already in labour,

you don’t have to wait to go into labour, you are already in labour. Though John Donne is punning on the two meanings of labour. Labour lie meaning I lie in labour, I’m like a pregnant woman lying in labour and lying in bed waiting on the baby to be delivered. ‘Until I labour’ -> labour means something different like pawing and of course this is a euphemism for what he wants to do with his mistress once she jounces him in bed. He wants to labour on her body, he wants to paw her body open and labour it as though she was a field, he wants to have sex with her. He wants to make her feel what his manly powers or all about. The poetry that makes you stop that makes you want to think hard about the paradox about labour and labour. A poetry that also devotes very unusual images. If he wants to persuade his mistress to bed with him in order to have sex with him, why does he develop a metaphor in which he and she are actually compared to enemies. ‘the foe …’ We, you and I, my mistress and I are like foes; I look at you and you look at me when we are in sight of each other and we are like foes, we are like enemies. A very counter intuitive metaphor, why would you describe your lover as your enemy? John Donne goes about and surprises you with new metaphors, unusual metaphors, metaphors who one first sight don’t make sense but actually seem to suggest the opposite of what they should be suggesting, isn’t that a complete contradiction in terms. The next line explains why lovers can actually be compared to enemies. ‘Is tired with …’ this metaphor is based on the rules of warfare in the renaissance. In the renaissance armies that fought each other would actually face each other across the battlefield, they could see each other across the battlefield, but the generals would typically wait before giving a sign that either their own army should attack or withdraw. A lot of time would spend arranging the enemy armies in such a constellation that perhaps the generals would think well now is the ideal moment for attacking. Meanwhile the enemies would stand on the battlefield, they had to be ready on every moment, they didn’t know when the order of attacking was coming, they were standing, they couldn’t afford to relax they had to be ready to answer any order at any given time. This process of waiting of not knowing when the generals would be attacking or withdrawing would be extremely exhausting for soldiers. This is what John Donne refers to; having the foe in sight, we don’t fight and yet the mere process for waiting on the moment when you start fighting is already quite tiring and exhausting. The poet here says; I am like one of those soldiers standing on the battlefield. Perhaps you would say this is paradoxical because in the first line he was lying in bed and know he is standing, well he may be lying in bed but part of him is standing very upright, his penis is standing erect. He is very excited of thought that the mistress is going to bed with him, but perhaps fearful if she keeps him waiting for too long, if there is no actual engagement, if the battle never starts than he will get tired of standing. His powers that now defy all rest may get tired and he may actually lose his excitement. His erection, in other words, may starts flagging. This is how lovers can be compared to enemies facing each other across the battlefield. One of them is going to get tired of standing if the battle doesn’t start soon. That justifies the metaphor that likens lovers to enemies. It may be surprising at first. Then the next line tells you how that metaphor is justified and then the penny drops, and you indeed understand the metaphor as somehow being clarified. Then you understand how daring and razing the metaphor really is. This is how the metaphysical conceits work. Mythology 35-38: Metaphysical conceits are aimed to make you work hard but are meant to draw on your own intelligence and your own sense of intromission in order to understand how those metaphors work. That is going to be the case if they presuppose the knowledge of anthology. For instance, the comparison of the jewels the mistress is wearing and taking of as she goes to bed. Those jewels are compared to Atlanta’s balls and of course in your Norton Anthology you do have a footnote explaining what the reference to Atlanta’s balls actually is. Atlanta in Greek mythology was a very famous and unbeatable runner who lost a race because balls, in her case golden apples, had been cast in her path so that even though she was a very fast runner she started running to win the race and then she stopped to pick up in order to pick up the golden apples that slowed her down and other runners caught up with her and actually started winning the race. John Donne says that the gems that you women wear, the jewels that you woman wear are like Atlanta’s balls you cast them in men’s views to distract them from their proper goal. If you wear those jewels men instead of looking at you and your body start coveting, start looking envyingly at the jewels that you wear instead of looking at the body that is wearing those jewels; you are wearing your jewels to distract us men from our proper goal, winning the race to your body. He is less interested in her jewels than in her body therefor he tells her; cast

your jewels away. I will not be interested in them even though you try to put them in my path so as to distract me from what I really want and that is your body. That is what justifies the cause of Atlanta’s balls and again this metaphor only makes sense in this particular case if you are familiar with the story of Atlanta in the first place. That presupposes that you are familiar with Greek anthology, in other words, it presupposes that you are a member of that very select audience who will not need a footnote to understand the reference to Atlanta, the footnotes in John Donne’s manuscript. Explorations 27-30: Metaphysical conceits also drew on a very wide range of domains in order to find the very daring and new and unusual metaphors. Another field of experience on which metaphysical poetry often drew was a very recent domain of knowledge that was a field of overseas explorations. The 17 th century was also an age of overseas expansion and the development of European colonialism other parts of the globe were being explored and conquered. That new field of experience provided new sources of metaphors for poets like John Donne. For John Donne the more unusual and particular a metaphor was the better. That was also part of the cultivation of metaphysical conceits. They were very complex images and they also drew on relatively new fields of experience. John Donne was not a poet who would rest content with conventual and traditional metaphors and already earlier on, you had already poets like Shakespeare who would not rest content with traditional metaphors and would for instance write a sonnet like sonnet 18 that starts with ‘shall I compare you to a summers day …’ -> it is the usual, expected metaphor ‘you are as beautiful as a summers day’ but Shakespeare will not rest content with that with comparing his lover to the different seasons, he will instead argue that the beautiful young man of the sonnet is beyond any such metaphors. That all traditional metaphors based on the seasons will fall short in order to pay ohmage to the young man’s beauty. What Shakespeare does is to criticises traditional metaphors and how they fall short but he doesn’t come up with metaphors of his own, sonnet 18 is about showing you how old traditional metaphors will not work but it’s not about developing new metaphors. John Donne though and poets who come after him are very keen to develop those new metaphors. You can compare your lover for instance to America which will not be seen as a very new metaphor these days, but it was a very new at the time John Donne was writing. It was a very unusual metaphor. Why would anybody be compared to America? ‘My America …’ You are my new kingdom, my conquest but you are safest when only one man occupies you. If there were more man than I, your husband, around you I would not feel safe in my possession of the kingdom of your body. You are safest for me when you are maned with only one man and that man is myself. ‘My mine of precious stones’ she is wearing jewels that are referred to other stages than the poem; ‘the gems which you woman use’ or the ‘spangled breastplate which you wear’. Your body adorned with jewels reminds me of a source of precious stones and America was a source of precious stones and precious metals for Europeans in the 1èt century. That justifies the comparison of the wife to America; she is like America because she seems to be bringing as many of precious stones as America does. ‘How blest am I in this discovering thee’ You are like America like newfound land because I can discover you. Here John Donne is punning on the two senses of discover; metaphysical poets also love to pun. They love to develop metaphors based on the wall of word play. He is playing with the two different senses of the word ‘discover’. In the 17th century ‘to discover’ could mean to find something for the first time which is of course still a meaning that is used today. You are like America my newfound land being found for the first time. I am like Columbus discovering America; I discover you, but he is not finding her for the first time actually because the poem suggests that this is a kind of little ritual that they go through on a regular basis. He knows her very well already. He is not finding her for the first time. He is discovering he...