Metaphysical Poetry on Love

John Donne and Andrew Marvell

 Outline
Terms to Know
Valediction Forbidding Mourning
Platonic Love
The Flea
Metaphysical Poetry Defined
Metaphysical Poetry in Context
Metaphysical Poetry Defined
Spirit + Matter
1. The exaltation of wit, which in the 17th century
meant a nimbleness of thought; a sense of fancy
(imagination of a fantastic or whimsical nature);
and originality in figures of speech
2. Often poems are presented in the form of an
argument
3. In love poetry, the metaphysical poets often
draw on ideas from Renaissance Neo-Platonism
to show the relationship between the soul and
body and the union of lovers' souls
4. They also try to show a psychological realism
when describing the tensions of love.
Metaphysical Poetry Defined
5. Use of ordinary speech mixed with puns,
paradoxes and conceits
1. Metaphysical Conceit: a paradoxical and
extended metaphor
2. causing a shock to the reader by the
strangeness of the objects compared; e.g:
departure and death, beating of gold foil,
lovers and a compass)
3. Abstruse terminology often drawn from
science or law
http://www.eng.fju.edu.tw/English_Literature/period/metaphysic
als.html
Metaphysical Poetry in Context
1. The European baroque period (1580 to
approximately 1680): extravagance,
psychological tension, theatricality, eccentricity,
and originality of its creations (in all artistic
media), as well as for the quirkiness and
intricacy of its thought
2. the seventeenth century in England, a time of
radical changes in politics (e.g. Puritan
revolution, Civil war, execution of Charles I
Restoration ) and modes of literary expression.
For a while during the Commonwealth Period
(1649-1660), drama disappeared, public
theaters closed because of fears of immoral
influences, and incendiary political pamphlets
circulated.
 Metaphysical Conceit
conceit - an ingenious and fanciful notion or
conception, usually expressed through an
elaborate analogy, and pointing to a striking
parallel between two seemingly dissimilar
things. A conceit may be a brief metaphor, but it
also may form the framework of an entire poem.
 A Valediction Forbidding Mourning
John Donne
As virtuous men pass mildly away,
And whisper to their souls to go,
Whilst some of their sad friends do say,
"Now his breath goes," and some say,
"No." Simile

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.
Proposition
Melt: disappear as if by dissolving
Moving of th' earth brings harms and fears ;
Men reckon what it did, and meant ;
But trepidation of the spheres, Metaphor
Though greater far, is innocent.

Dull sublunary lovers' love

Whose soul is sensecannot admit
Of absence, 'cause it doth remove
The thing which elemented it.

But we by a love so much refined,

That ourselves know not what it is,
Inter-assurd of the mind,
Care less, eyes, lips and hands to Explanation
miss.
Our two souls therefore, which are one,
Though I must go, endure not yet
A breach, but an expansion,
Like gold to aery thinness beat.

If they be two, they are two so

As stiff twin compasses are two;
Thy soul, the fix'd foot, makes no show
To move, but doth, if th' other do.

And though it in the centre sit, Elaboration and

Yet, when the other far doth roam, Conclusion
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. Obliquely: not straight, devious
A Valediction Forbidding Mourning:
Platonic Love
Form: nine four-line tetrameter stanzas, rhyming
abab, cdcd, and so on.
How does the speaker compare the love of him and
his lover with that of "laity" (l. 8) or "dull
sublunary lovers" (13)?
e.g. the difference of their parting movements like
those of earthquake and the movement of
heavenly spheres (stanza 3);
the difference of their attitudes toward parting
(stanzas 4 and 5).
Out of sight, out of mind;
Departure as expansion, love made truer through trials.
 Valediction = farewell utterances

Parting compared to
death of virtuous men,
movement of heavenly spheres,
the beating of gold foil
The two feet of a compass What do
you think about the idea of having one
foot fixed in the center, while the other
making a circle around?
Donnes Neo-Platonic Love
the preeminence of soul over body, the
distinction between love and lust, and
the goodness of striving for perfection
through devotion to a woman's beauty.
Source (1) Plato
beauty proceeds in a series of steps
from the love of one beautiful body
to that of two,
to the love of physical beauty in
general, and ultimately to beauty
absolute the source and cause of
all that perishing beauty of all other
things."
Donnes Neo-Platonic Love
Source (2) the Renaissance Platonic
lover
Christianized by equating this ultimate
beauty with the Divine Beauty of God,
move in stages through the desire for
his mistress, whose beauty he
recognizes as an emanation of God's,
to the worship of the Divine itself.
embraces sexuality (the mystical
union of souls) which is directed to an
ideal end.
 The Flea

How is the flea used in the speakers

persuasion of his lady to go to bed?
bDescribe the speaker's tone.
Why does the speaker say that to kill the
flea would be "three sins in killing three"?
In the third stanza, the woman has killed the
flea. What is the speaker's response to that?
Does he change his position?
How would you argue against the speaker if
you were the lady?
 The Flea
MARK but this flea, and mark in this,
How little that which thou deniest me is ;
It suck'd 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 pamper'd swells with one blood made
of two ;
And this, alas ! is more than we would do.
1. The flea where two bloods mingle; before wooing
pregnancy before marriage
O stay, three lives in one flea spare,
Where we almost, yea, more than married are.
This flea is you and I, and this
Our marriage bed, and marriage temple is.
Though parents grudge, and you, we're met,
And cloister'd 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.
(use = habit)

2. The flea three lives; marriage bed and temple

killing the flea = refusing sex = self-murder, killing me
and sacrilege = and 3 sins
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 suck'd from thee?
Yet thou triumph'st, and say'st that thou
Find'st not thyself nor me the weaker now.
'Tis true ; then learn how false fears be ;
Just so much honour, when thou yield'st to
me,
Will waste, as this flea's death took life from
thee.
 The Flea
as a Metaphysical Conceit
The Flea: Flea = sex as no loss >
Flea = Church, etc. > Flea = no loss
this mingling of blood, causing a swell
3 lives
more than married the flea as their
temple and bed; we cloister'd in these
living walls of jet
Killing the flea: 1) kill three lives, a
"sacrilege" ; 2) kill/lose nothing, just as
your losing your virginity
The Flea -- other poetic devices

Iambic, three nine-line stanzas, identical in form.

(The first six lines alternate, triameter, then
tetrameter, rhyming aabbcc. The seventh line is
trimeter, the eighth and ninth, tetrameter. ddd).
Direct address and casual tone: Mark but this
flea...
Repetition: And mark in this
Imagery: religious (church, cloisterd, sacrilege,
three sins in killing three - more holy trinity
imagery
blood of innocence ) and sexual (mingle)
Argument: sophistry/circular argument. The flea
starts and ends as nothing.
 To His Coy Mistress
Andrew Marvell
HAD we but world enough, and time,
This coyness, Lady, were no crime
We would sit down and think which way
To walk and pass our long love's day.
Thou by the Indian Ganges' side
Shouldst rubies find: I by the tide
Of Humber would complain. I would
Love you ten years before the Flood,
And you should, if you please, refuse
Premise 1: time and
space enough
Till the conversion of the Jews.
My vegetable love should grow
Vaster than empires, and more slow;
An hundred years should go to praise
Thine eyes and on thy forehead gaze;
Two hundred to adore each breast,
But thirty thousand to the rest;
An age at least to every part,
And the last age should show your heart.
For, Lady, you deserve this state,
Nor would I love at lower rate.
But at my back I always hear
Time's wingd chariot hurrying near;
And yonder all before us lie
Deserts of vast eternity.
Thy beauty shall no more be found,
Nor, in thy marble vault, shall sound
My echoing song: then worms shall
try
That long preserved virginity,
And your quaint honour turn to dust,
And into ashes all my lust:
The grave 's a fine and private place,
But none, I think, do there embrace.
Now therefore, while the youthful hue
Sits on thy skin like morning dew,
And while thy willing soul transpires
At every pore with instant fires,
Now let us sport us while we may,
And now, like amorous birds of prey,
Rather at once our time devour
Than languish in his slow-chapd power.
Let us roll all our strength and all
Our sweetness up into one ball,
And tear our pleasures with rough strife
Thorough the iron gates of life:
Thus, though we cannot make our sun
Stand still, yet we will make him run.
 Questions

What is the main argument and how

is it developed?
What conceits and other poetic
devices are used?
 Argument: Carpe Diem
or "seize the day" --
a very common literary motif in poetry.
emphasizes that life is short and time is
fleeting as the speaker attempts to
entice his listener, a young lady usually
described as a virgin.
frequently use the rose as a symbol of
transient physical beauty and the finality
of death.
 Argument and Imagery
Argument -- If we lived forever there would be
no need to hurry. However, we do not live
forever. Therefore we must seize the day.

Imagery:
Praising foreverand slowly images of space
and time alternate with each other.
mortality marble vault; images of sterility,
rotting corpses, tombs, and a shocking denial of
the procreative activity of sex.
Seize the day images of transience and daring
action
 Imagery of Action
Rather at once our time devour Devour eat up time
quickly and at a large
Than languish in his slow-chapt
amount each time.
power.
Like birds of prey
Let us roll all our strength and all (hawks) eat up their
prey (rabbits)
Our sweetness up into one ball,
unthinkingly and
And tear our pleasures with rough instinctively
strife Rolled into one Ball
sexual act
Thorough the iron gates of life Gates of life inevitable
aging process and
difficulties which lead us
to death.
 Poetic Devices
Metaphors Paradox
vegetable love slow tearing
and quiet. "pleasures with
Times wings "strife"
chariot Pun
Gates of life sun/son; run (go faster,
run away)
Conceit & Hyperbole
the use of large space
and time to woo slowly.
Marble vault as both
the grave and the
sexual organ.