Olga Dolgusheva

British and American literature

Composed by Olga Dolgusheva
Lecture notes 3
English Mannerism and Baroque Literature

1. Philosophic and aesthetic background of the cultural break on the turn of 16 th-17th
centuries. The ideas of Michel de Montagne, Blaise Pascal, Emmanuaele
Tesauro, Baltasar Gracián in ideological and poetic areas.
2. British metaphysical poetry. Poetic practices of G.Herbert, R. Crashaw,
H.Vaughan, A.Marvell, A. Cowley, R.Lovelace, Th. Carew.
3. John Donne’s poetic vision. Secular and religious poetry.

1. Philosophic and aesthetic background of the cultural break on the turn of

16th-17th centuries. The ideas of Michel de Montagne, Blaise Pascal,
Emmanuaele Tesauro, Baltasar Gracián in ideological and poetic areas.

The turn of 16th-17th centuries in Britain was marked by the gradual emergence of
a new way of thinking. The signs of this can easily be traced in W. Shakespeare’s
sonnet 66 as well as in “Hamlet” (What a piece of work is a man! how noble in reason!
how infinite in faculty! in form and moving how express and admirable! in action how
like an angel! in apprehension how like a god! the beauty of the world! the paragon of
animals! And yet, to me, what is this quintessence of dust? man delights not me: no, nor
woman neither, though by your smiling you seem to say so.). This new world outlook is
called mannerist and baroque and the period of Late Renaissance is frequently termed as
an epoch of “a tragic humanism”.
Hamlet has to face all attributes of a tragic humanism as disillusionment in the
human virtues peculiar to those of High Renaissance. He is a witness to homicides,
betrayal, incest, brotherly wars, etc. He becomes aware of human values’ distortion, a
personality moral declining, and the ruination of humanistic ideas in general.
A tragic humanism representative does not follow the Renaissance moral and
philosophic catena. Instead he/she advisedly emphasizes the differences and
disagreement with the ideals of High Renaissance. A person strives to become aware of
his own being not ideal, not flawless. A human being is imperfect like anything in the
universe, which is also not perfect.
One of the essential features of a human being is that he/she starts analyzing
oneself; he/she perceives himself/herself as an intellectual being able to go deep insight,
analyze his/her own deeds and actions, draw parallels and establish connections
between things, objects and various phenomena. A person is kind and evil at the same
time, a person is fully aware of the immanent tragic nature of life itself. He/she
contemplates on such issues as Is man the answer or the question? General knowledge
is cheap. Particular knowledge is expensive. Etc.
Such tendencies in self-awareness are prompted by changes in the social,
political, scientific and cultural area leading to the formation of a new world outlook as
well as a new art. For instance, the discovery of America in 1492 was a starting point to
review both social and scientific standards. The discovery itself was a very positive and
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progressive issue. On the other hand, the new continent became a source Europeans
used for their enrichment, and thus, leading to a number of negative consequences.
The changes were perceived mostly as negative ones. Such changes in people’s
mode of life had to reconsider the ways of further existence. All this was accompanied
by the devaluation of main spiritual virtues like honor, equality, fairness etc.
Scientific innovations fostered the emergence of new civilizational outlook. The
most crucial achievement concerned the structure of the Universe. The transition from
the Galilean theory (which was geocentric) to the Copernican one (heliocentric) made a
profound impact on the human conscience. People began wondering “Who is a man on
the Earth?” The answer that was prompted by the recent discoveries was that “A man is
nothing more than a grain of sand!”
Educated people were especially influenced by this new theory. In their circles
there appeared a notion of a “defective human” who was deprived of the possibility to
extol, aggrandize or respect a human being as it was in the previous centuries.
Earlier the Renaissance symbol was a human inscribed in a circle (an in-circle
human). The circle was considered a perfect geometrical figure as all points of the
circumference are equidistant from its center, thus the inscribed object is perceived
equally from any side or point outside. In the 17th century the circle gave way to an
ellipse. It is figure with two centers inside. A man estimated one and the same thing or
object from different angles. The judgment of the object thus is based on the principle
of uncertainty as anyone can arrive at a definite conclusion that is sure to be distinct
from others.

Philosophic background of mannerism and baroque

The baroque philosophy is much indebted to the ideas Michel de Montaigne and
Blaise Pascal. The thinkers distinguished the major traits peculiar to a man with new
outlook perspectives.
M.Montagne’s “Essays” is baroque in style. It can be read at any part or episode
as every fragment and sentence is autonomous enough. The writings are based in self-
scrutiny and self-analysis. The book was inaugurated the term essay for the short prose
composition treating a given subject in a rather informal and personal manner. There is
no an indication of a necessary internal unity and structure within the work, the title
indicates an intellectual attitude of questioning and of continuous assessment.
Montaigne, from the beginning to the end of the “Essays”, does not cease to affirm that
“I am myself the matter of my book.” He finds that his identity, his “master form” as he
calls it, cannot be defined in simple terms of a constant and stable self, since it is instead
a changeable and fragmented thing.
He advocates the value of concrete experience over abstract learning and of
independent judgment over an accumulation of undigested notions uncritically accepted
from others.
Some of the mentioned observations can be illustrated by the following
quotations:
“Nothing is so firmly believed as that which we least know.”
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"To practice death is to practice freedom. A man who has learned how to die has
unlearned how to be a slave.”
“I prefer the company of peasants because they have not been educated
sufficiently to reason incorrectly.”
“I find I am much prouder of the victory I obtain over myself, when, in the very
ardor of dispute, I make myself submit to my adversary’s force of reason, than I am
pleased with the victory I obtain over him through his weakness.”
“There were many terrible things in my life and most of them never happened.”
“There is no knowledge so hard to acquire as the knowledge of how to live this
life well and naturally.”
“I have never seen a greater monster or miracle than myself.”
“There is no desire more natural than the desire of knowledge.”
“If ordinary people complain that I speak too much of myself, I complain that
they do not even think of themselves.”
“The thing I fear most is fear.”
“Life itself is neither a good nor an evil: life is where good or evil find a place,
depending on how you make it for them.”

Blaise Pascal in his “Pensées” (Thoughts) also creates a “portrait” of the 17th
century man:
Thought 125. Contraries.—Man is naturally credulous and incredulous, timid and
rash.
Thought 127. Condition of man: inconstancy, weariness, unrest.
Thought 157. Contradiction: contempt for our existence, to die for nothing, hatred
of our existence.
Thought 272. There is nothing so conformable to reason as this disavowal of
reason.
Thought 397. The greatness of man is great in that he knows himself to be
miserable. A tree does not know itself to be miserable. It is then being miserable to
know oneself to be miserable; but it is also being great to know that one is miserable.
Thought 385. Scepticism. – Each thing here is partly true and partly false.
Essential truth is not so; it is altogether pure and altogether true. This mixture
dishonours and annihilates it. Nothing is purely true, and thus nothing is true, meaning
by that pure truth. You will say it is true that homicide is wrong. Yes; for we know well
the wrong and the false. But what will you say is good? Chastity? I say no; for the world
would come to an end. Marriage? No; continence is better. Not to kill? No; for
lawlessness would be horrible, and the wicked would kill all the good. To kill? No; for
that destroys nature. We possess truth and goodness only in part, and mingled with
falsehood and evil.
Thought 365. Thought. – All the dignity of man consists in thought. Thought is,
therefore, by its nature a wonderful and incomparable thing. It must have strange
defects to be contemptible. But it has such, so that nothing is more ridiculous. How
great it is in its nature! How vile it is in its defects! But what is this thought? How
foolish it is!
Thought 347. Man is but a reed, the most feeble thing in nature; but he is a
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thinking reed. The entire universe need not arm itself to crush him. A vapour, a drop of
water suffices to kill him. But, if the universe were to crush him, man would still be
more noble than that which killed him, because he knows that he dies and the advantage
which the universe has over him; the universe knows nothing of this. All our dignity
consists, then, in thought. By it we must elevate ourselves, and not by space and time
which we cannot fill. Let us endeavour, then, to think well; this is the principle of
morality
Thought 412. There is internal war in man between reason and the passions. If he
had only reason without passions... If he had only passions without reason... But having
both, he cannot be without strife, being unable to be at peace with the one without being
at war with the other. Thus he is always divided against and opposed to himself.
Thought 437. We desire truth, and find within ourselves only uncertainty. We
seek happiness, and find only misery and death. We cannot but desire truth and
happiness, and are incapable of certainty or happiness. This desire is left to us, partly to
punish us, partly to make us perceive wherefrom we are fallen.
Thus, the key notion of baroque is disappointment; the main human activity is the
activity of the wit, mind, study and reason. The baroque man is an adventurer, a
melancholic, the one who does not value his life; he is both a coward and a hero; he is
fully aware that the man is nothing.

Poetic and aesthetic background of mannerism and baroque

Baltasar Gracián’s literary ideas on conceptism and the art of conceited writing
(writing that continually shocks the reader by the use of startling metaphor) were clearly
set forth in Agudeza y arte de ingenio (1642, 2nd ed. 1648; “Subtlety and the Art of
Genius”).
Emmanuale Tesauro presented an elaborated theory on the metaphysical
metaphor – conceit.
While having as a model the work of Aristotle, Tesauro tries for the first time to
update the classical rhetoric to the new style of Baroque literature. Right from the title,
Il Cannocchiale Aristotelico (The Aristotelian Telescope), Tesauro's work aims to
revolutionize rhetoric and poetry in a way similar to what Galileo did in astronomy.
The central element of the new poetry is, accordig to Tesauro, the metaphor,
defined by the author as "madre di tutte le argutezze" [mother of all wit], whose main
aim is to generate "wonder in the reader", as well as to penetrate the variety of creation.
A conceit is not a mere comparison.
The metaphysical conceit was a more ingenious many-leveled comparison,
worked out in some detail and giving a strong sense of the poet’s ingenuity in
overcoming obstacles – for instance, Donne’s comparison of separated lovers to the legs
of the compass (“A Valediction Forbidding Mourning”) or Herbert’s comparison of
devotion to a pulley (“The Pulley”).

“A Valediction Forbidding Mourning”

As virtuous men pass mildly away, say

And whisper to their souls to go, The breath goes now, and some
Whilst some of their sad friends do say, No:
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Our two souls therefore, which are

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.
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.

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.
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.

It is an image that is based simultaneously on a number of predicaments or

common places in logic has a particular character which is formally distinguishable, is
naturally allied to certain type of function (often closely resembling those of dialectic),
and is stylistically very striking. A “metaphysical conceit” is just such an image, framed
with especial subtlety. Indeed the formal defining element in any conceit, Elizabethan or
medieval or metaphysical, in any poet in any language, is the use of multiple logical
bases, upon all of which the comparison obtains.
Tesauro explains the mechanism according to which metaphors (conceits) should
be created.
The main objective of creating a metaphor is to find new definitions and analogies
to a particular notion. The scholar gives an example of an hop-o'-my-thumb and draws a
list of associative phenomena to the key sememe of it which is “small” or “tiny”.
Tesauro suggest writers make up a list of similar qualities of things or ideas taken from
various spheres of human life, knowledge and sciences. According to him, there are
thousands of things or objects having the semantic meaning of “a small quantity”,
“small size”, etc.
His list is the following:
Substances – a drop of water, a grain of sand, an atom, a fiery spark, the fifth
element, a pearl, quintessence etc.
People – embryo, hop-o'-my-thumb, a baby/child, pinky, an eye pupil, a birthmark,
a hair, a nail etc.
Animals – an ant, a flea, a bee sting, a mosquito, fish scales, chrysalis, a sparrow
etc.
Plants – a wig, a mustard seed, a seed, bread mold, a pea stem etc.
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Sciences – point (mathematics), dot (linguistics, spelling mark), a summary, nil

(zero), reduced sound, abbreviations, a particle in the mechanical equilibrium, the center
in a circle, indivisibility etc.
Architecture – the apex of a pyramid, a pillar, a door hinge, a closet, etc.
Painting and sculpture – a sketch, a draft, a diminutive, figures in a perspective
etc.
Needlework – knot, a patch, a ball of wool, needle’s eye, etc.
Poetic fabulas – a mice’s general, a mouse born of a mountain, etc.
All in all, the complete list includes about 3 pages and theoretically it is limitless. Thus
metaphors (conceits) can be generated endlessly; comparisons and associations between
ideas, notions or concepts taken from non-related areas demonstrate the acute wit of a
poet and foster the imagination or enjoyment of a reader.

Summary of the Baroque poetics:

- Baroque writers widely employ symbols, emblems, allegories of a medieval culture;
- Baroque writers employ their moods and thoughts with the help of biblical images;
- Baroque writers’ artistic perception is different from that of renaissance;
- Baroque writers were aware of a discord between high renaissance ideals and the
contemporary world, of an antagonistic relations between personal and communal;
- Baroque poets touch upon the topics of inconsistency, changeability of human
values, the dominance of fate and chance;
- Baroque writers were skeptical about a human being, his abilities; they emphasized
his dual nature, flaws, unreasonableness, spoliation;
- The writings were marked by expressiveness and emotionality;
- The combination of heterogeneous things, ideas or objects in one image or trope;
- The whole literary paradigm undergoes revision in terms of genres, genre canons,
poetic diction etc. for example, the sonnet was no longer so rigid as it had been
earlier; the distinction line between songs and sonnets was blurred; the main purpose
of poetry was expressing the thoughts of an author who analysis the world around
him.
- Style dominants of baroque poetry include rhetorical questions, the emblem of a
circle (endlessness) and a sphere (mystery, enigma, puzzle), didactic teaching.

2. British metaphysical poetry. Poetic practices of G.Herbert, R. Crashaw,

H.Vaughan, A.Marvell, A. Cowley, R.Lovelace, Th. Carew

The Metaphysical school of poetry was addicted to witty conceits and far-
fetched imagery. Metaphysical conceits were based on the principle “discordia
concors” which is a combination of dissimilar images, or the discovery of
resemblances in things otherwise unlike. Conceits were also instruments of definition
in an argument or instruments of persuasion.
Another characteristic feature is a greater detachment of “lyrical I” from the
context. It is a poetry of confession, very personal and individual, yet one always has
the feeling that such poems barely touch the surface of things, leaving the depths
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unexplored. The form of the language precludes the content, it is the “how” not
“what” of the expression that is truly important.
Poets associated with metaphysical poetry include John Donne, George Herbert,
Andrew Marvell, Henry Vaughan and other men of letters. Donne is often said to be
first metaphysical poet, and Donne’s genius for original, intellectually complex poetry
certainly helped to set the trend for the poetry that followed him. (Donne began writing
at the end of the sixteenth century, but the high moment of metaphysical poetry would
be in the century that followed.)
Key characteristics of metaphysical poetry include: complicated mental and
emotional experience; unusual and sometimes deliberately contrived metaphors and
similes; and the idea that the physical and spiritual universes are connected.
The term ‘metaphysical’ comes from metaphysics, the branch of philosophy
dealing with, among other things, the relationship between mind and matter, or between
the physical world and human consciousness. The word ‘metaphysical’ comes from the
Greek meaning ‘after physics’, but more specifically referred to ‘after Aristotle’s work
on physics’.
Metaphysical poets often give concrete form to abstract ideas through their
unusual images and comparisons as they were interested in the interplay between the
world of the mind (or the spirit or soul) and the physical world. So, poetry in their
opinion was equal to the world cognitions.

The main feature of metaphysical poetry are:

1) excessive usage of conceits
2) metaphysical poetry seems universal due to its paradigm of themes, imagery
taken from all spheres of human experience and knowledge.
3) metaphysical poetry is often termed as poetry of wit, since it employs play of
mind, reasoning and argumentation, logics, artifice and conventions.
4)complicated mannerist imagery proves the crisis of the humanist tradition of
High Renaissance.
5) versification techniques are marked by a violation in tone and syllabic patterns
and a great number of broken rhythms as a marker of inner anxiety.
6) metaphysical poetry is laconic and concentrated. Helen Gardner: The reader is
held to an idea or a line of argument. He is not invited to pause upon the passage. A
metaphysical poem tends to be brief, and is always closely woven…. There is some
truth in saying that a metaphysical poem is an expanded epigram (the vogue of an
epigram helped to form the task for witty poetry).
7) metaphysical poetry combines universalism and individualism.

George Herbert (1593-1633) was a friend and disciple of Donne. After

finishing his studies, Herbert stayed at the university, attaining in three years the post
of public orator, which he held for 1619 to 1627.
Most of his poetry can be found in the collection entitled The Temple. These
poems are chiefly of religious character and are distinguished by original imagery,
extravagant conceits and metaphors.
Through his poetry his spiritual life from the days at Cambridge to his last
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years in the parish. In The Collar, his committed spirit plunges and tugs at the bonds.
He portrays the sense of conflict between the claims of worldly life and
sophistication and of true Christian feelings of devotion and subordination, his
exploration of such states of doubt has emblematic significance. Herbert knows that
his Christianity is the right one, the struggle in his poetry is between the world and
complete surrender to God.
As far as poetic language is concerned, he endeavors always towards
simplicity. In Jordan, he confesses that he first sought: “quaint words and trim
invention”, with his imagery far less fantastic that Donne’s.
‘The Collar’ is one of Herbert’s best-known poems. In this poem, the poet speaks
about the “collar” that a Christian priest is recognized by. (It’s interesting to note that
Herbert was a priest himself.) He depicts the collar as something that restricts one’s
freedom in an intolerable way.

[…] But as I raved and grew more fierce and wild

At every word,
Methought I heard one calling, Child!
And I replied My Lord.
Among other well-known Herbert’s poems are Virtue, Love-Joy, The Alter,
Paradise.
In Virtue, in particular, the poet raises the question whether human virtues are
really existent in human society. Reasoning the issue, Herbert arrives at the conclusion
that all must die. No one can object the point as it is a law of nature. Meanwhile,
another law says that nothing can die traceless:
But though the whole world turn to coal, / Then chiefly lives.

Thus everything and everyone leaves something after death; life continues in new
ways and forms; it a cyclic movement. Though life as well as a human being himself is
difficult to understand, since it is full of contradictions, dichotomies: e.g., sweet day
(calm and bright) is opposed to death (inescapable); sweet rose or spring is opposed to
grave and death.

George Herbert. Virtue

Sweet day, so cool, so calm, so bright,

The bridal of the earth and sky:
The dew shall weep thy fall tonight;
For thou must die.

Sweet rose, whose hue, angry and brave,

Bids the rash gazer wipe his eye:
Thy root is ever in its grave,
And thou must die.

Sweet spring, full of sweet days and roses,

A box where sweets compacted lie;
My music shows ye have your closes,
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And all must die.

Only a sweet and virtuous soul,

Like seasoned timber, never gives;
But though the whole world turn to coal,
Then chiefly lives.

The emblem nature of Herbert’s poetry is evident even in the visual shaping of
his verses. “The Alter” is designed in such a way that it resembles an alter in a temple:
The Altar
A broken ALTAR, Lord, thy servant rears,
Made of a heart and cemented with tears:
Whose parts are as thy hand did frame;
No workman's tool hath touch'd the same.
A HEART alone
Is such a stone,
As nothing but
Thy pow'r doth cut.
Wherefore each part
Of my hard heart
Meets in this frame,
To praise thy name:
That if I chance to hold my peace,
These stones to praise thee may not cease.
Oh, let thy blessed SACRIFICE be mine,
And sanctify this ALTAR to be thine.

Or “Easter Wings” bear a visual resemblance to the object the verse describes:

Easter Wings
Lord, who createdst man in wealth and store,
Though foolishly he lost the same,
Decaying more and more,
Till he became
Most poore:
With thee
O let me rise
As larks, harmoniously,
And sing this day thy victories:
Then shall the fall further the flight in me.

My tender age in sorrow did beginne

And still with sicknesses and shame.
Thou didst so punish sinne,
That I became
Most thinne.
With thee
Let me combine,
And feel thy victorie:
For, if I imp my wing on thine,
Affliction shall advance the flight in me.

Henry Vaughan (1622-1695) was always interested in the relationship

between God and man, and in many of his poems he contrasts the infidelity of man
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towards God with the constancy of natural creation. Because he was a practicing
physician, his views on nature are different from those of other poets. He sees the
physical side of life, of death and nature, but is also capable of departing from that
physicality to convey a great intensity of feeling. One of his greatest poems is The
Retreat, which talks about childhood as a time when the soul was closer to God. The
child, like the things of nature is still in harmony with the mind that governs all
things.
Characteristic images of light and whiteness symbolize holiness and purity.
Henry Vaughan criticized the abuse of wit when it did not deal with religious
practices.
Vaughan’s poetry is a blend of Christian and neo-platonic ideas and imagery
marked by a greater individualism and originality. Very often the author raises the
question of God’s leaving a man. He interprets it as God’s leaving England; under such
circumstances God did hear a man; similarly, human also turns away from God; as a
result, a man lost his roots, got disoriented in life and lost the way to the truth.
Another issue raised by Vaughan is a hymn to nature. The author states that
poetry should not be artificial with much decorum. His poems about nature conform to
the pastoral 17th century tradition that accentuated the opposition of simple rustic life
and the spoiled, immoral life in a big city. The poet thus creates his own idea of
escapism – people should move farther from his everyday life towards nature. Only in
this case a human being will be able to reflect on the sense of life.
The image of Light is one on the central in his poetry and is associated with
eternity and transcendental world:

Peace
My Soul, there is a country
Afar beyond the stars,
Where stands a winged sentry
All skillful in the wars;
There, above noise and danger
Sweet Peace sits, crown’d with smiles,
And One born in a manger
Commands the beauteous files.
He is thy gracious friend
And (O my Soul awake!)
Did in pure love descend,
To die here for thy sake.
If thou canst get but thither,
There grows the flow’r of peace,
The rose that cannot wither,
Thy fortress, and thy ease.
Leave then thy foolish ranges,
For none can thee secure,
But One, who never changes,
Thy God, thy life, thy cure.

Abraham Cowley (1618-1667) tended to use grossly elaborate, self-consciously

poetic language that decorated, rather than expressed, his feelings. In his adolescence he
wrote verse (Poeticall Blossomes, 1633, 1636, 1637) imitating the intricate rhyme
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schemes of Edmund Spenser. In The Mistress (1647, 1656) he exaggerated John

Donne’s “metaphysical wit”—jarring the reader’s sensibilities by unexpectedly
comparing quite different things—into what later tastes felt was fanciful poetic
nonsense.
Abraham Cowley’s “Ode: Of Wit” is one of the best known his poems. It is a
Pindaric ode written in iambic lines of irregular length and rhyme scheme, with
occasional heroic couplets. As with all odes, Cowley’s is dedicated to a specific subject:
wit. However, Cowley spends an overwhelming amount of his ode identifying what wit
is not, as opposed to what it is.
One should understand the definition of wit in the seventeenth century as a
quality of mind and intelligence. Wit is understood to be a talent of quick brilliant
responses. These different versions of the word lead Cowley to first point out that
isolating a single definition is harder than expected: “A thousand different shapes it
bears”. The poet contemplates on the following questions: Is wit a philosophical or
metaphysical category? Wit is a concept that helps to define the essence and self-
sufficiency of a human being. Wit is manifested in a variety of forms and hypostases.
One cam speak about a man, but one cannot cognize a man:
TELL me, O tell, what kind of thing is wit,
Thou who master art of it.
For the first matter loves variety less;
Less women love ’t, either in love or dress.
A thousand different shapes it bears, 5
Comely in thousand shapes appears.
Yonder we saw it plain; and here ’tis now,
Like spirits in a place, we know not how.

London that vents of false ware so much store,

In no ware deceives us more. 10
For men led by the colour, and the shape,
Like Zeuxes’ birds fly to the painted grape;
Some things do through our judgment pass
As through a multiplying glass.
And sometimes, if the object be too far, 15
We take a falling meteor for a star.

Hence ’tis a wit that greatest word of fame

Grows such a common name.
And wits by our creation they become,
Just so, as titular Bishops made at Rome. 20
’Tis not a tale, ’tis not a jest
Admir’d with laughter at a feast,
Nor florid talk which can that title gain;
The proofs of wit for ever must remain.

’Tis not to force some lifeless verses meet 25

With their five gouty feet.
All everywhere, like man’s, must be the soul,
And reason the inferior powers control.
Such were the numbers which could call
The stones into the Theban wall. 30
Such miracles are ceas’d; and now we see
No towns or houses rais’d by poetry.
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Yet ’tis not to adorn and gild each part;

That shows more cost than art.
Jewels at nose and lips but ill appear; 35
Rather than all things wit, let none be there,
Several lights will not be seen,
If there be nothing else between.
Men doubt, because they stand so thick i’ th’ sky,
If those be stars which paint the Galaxy. 40

’Tis not when two like words make up one noise,

Jests for Dutch men, and English boys.
In which who finds out wit, the same may see
In an’grams and acrostics poetry.
Much less can that have any place 45
At which a virgin hides her face,
Such dross the fire must purge away; ’tis just
The author blush, there where the reader must.

’Tis not such lines as almost crack the stage

When Bajazet begins to rage. 50
Nor a tall metaphor in the bombast way,
Nor the dry chips of short-lung’d Seneca.
Nor upon all things to obtrude,
And force some odd similitude.
What is it then, which like the power divine 55
We only can by negatives define?

In a true piece of wit all things must be;

Yet all things there agree.
As in the ark, join’d without force or strife,
All creatures dwelt; all creatures that had life. 60
Or as the primitive forms of all
(If we compare great things with small)
Which without discord or confusion lie,
In that strange mirror of the Deity.

But love that moulds one man up out of two, 65

Makes me forget and injure you.
I took you for myself sure when I thought
That you in anything were to be taught.
Correct my error with thy pen;
And if any ask me then, 70
What thing right wit, and height of genius is,
I’ll only shew your lines, and say, ’Tis this.

The writer creates a bright imagery in this poem: the tropes of stars, meteors,
galaxy, universe. The most precious thing and value in the galaxy is wit.

Andrew Marvell (1621-1678). Marvell’s poetry combines metaphysical wit

with a perfect classical grace, contemplative and exciting, gravely formal and
mysteriously suggestive. To His Coy Mistress offers wonderful images of
Maceration, showing not only a skillful use of wit but also its three fold movement
and a sense of form which provides a wholly new dimension.
Olga Dolgusheva

Marvell’s favourite principle that of “catch an instant” is employed in "To His

Coy Mistress". The author creates a conceit (the persuasion of the speaker's lover by
means of a carpe diem philosophy). Time is viewed as an enemy, the lyrical I cannot get
rid of its influence, though the character is able to restrain time mentally, thus his mind
can turn a moment into eternity.

To His Coy Mistress

Had we but world enough and time, Deserts of vast eternity.

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
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 wingèd chariot hurrying near;
And yonder all before us lie
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-chapped power.
Let us roll all our strength and all
Our sweetness up into one ball,
And tear our pleasures with rough strife
Through the iron gates of life:
Thus, though we cannot make our sun
Stand still, yet we will make him run.

Marvell’s poems (The Definition of Love, A Dialogue between the Soul and the
Body) are marked by restrained that combines with jocosity of tone while describing
serious matters, richness of thoughts, introspection, juxtaposition of various concepts
etc.
The Definition of Love

My love is of a birth as rare For Fate with jealous eye does see
As ’tis for object strange and high; Two perfect loves, nor lets them close;
It was begotten by Despair Their union would her ruin be,
Upon Impossibility. And her tyrannic pow’r depose.

Magnanimous Despair alone And therefore her decrees of steel

Could show me so divine a thing Us as the distant poles have plac’d,
Where feeble Hope could ne’er have flown, (Though love’s whole world on us doth wheel)
But vainly flapp’d its tinsel wing. Not by themselves to be embrac’d;

And yet I quickly might arrive Unless the giddy heaven fall,
Where my extended soul is fixt, And earth some new convulsion tear;
But Fate does iron wedges drive, And, us to join, the world should all
And always crowds itself betwixt. Be cramp’d into a planisphere.
Olga Dolgusheva

As lines, so loves oblique may well Therefore the love which us doth bind,
Themselves in every angle greet; But Fate so enviously debars,
But ours so truly parallel, Is the conjunction of the mind,
Though infinite, can never meet. And opposition of the stars.

3. John Donne’s poetic vision. Secular and religious poetry

John Donne (1572-1631)
The poetry of Donne represents a sharp break with that written by his
predecessors and most of his contemporaries.
His poetry is complicated, mysterious; it does not conform to the norms,
stereotypes and canons that were established by his time. It is marked by poly-semantic
meanings, unexpected turns of thoughts, contrasts, combinations of analytical
observations and passions, constant search and indeterminacy.
Donne’s poetry is written very largely in conceits – concentrated images which
involve an element of dramatic contrast, of strain, or of intellectual difficulty. The
contemporaries called J.Donne “the monarch of wit”.
The poet who plays with conceits not only displays his own ingenuity; he may
see into the nature of the world as deeply as the philosopher. Donne’s conceits in
particular leap continually in a restless orbit from the personal to the cosmic and
back again.
Donne’s rhythms are colloquial and various. He likes to twist and distort not
only ideas, but metrical patterns and grammar itself.
Donne had an unusual gift, rather like that of a modern poet, T. S. Eliot, for
striking off phrases which ring in the mind like a silver coin. They are two masters of
the colloquial style, removed alike from the dignified, weighty manner of Milton and
the sugared sweetness of the Elizabethans. In the 20th century Donne was called the
poet of poets. He did not belong to any poetic society; neither did he intend his poems
for publication.
The baroque conceits also enable the poet to play with subtle eroticism. Donne,
however, is much less detached in his poetry. He frequently talks about nights spent
together when the lovers form a unit beyond any human laws. In The Good Morrow
the bedroom becomes ‘an everywhere’ for the lovers through the power of their love.

John Donne. The Good-Morrow

I wonder, by my troth, what thou and I
Did, till we loved? Were 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.
Let sea-discoverers to new worlds have gone,
Olga Dolgusheva

Let maps to other, worlds on worlds have shown,

Let us possess one world; each hath one, and is one.

My face in thine eye, yhine 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.

In “The Good-Morrow” the theme of love is interconnected with a moral one,

immorality in particular, and world perceptions. The poet questions the issues of love
trying to understand it – whether it is a child’s play, whether it a dream, or something
else. The author thus concludes that all this was nothing but a fancy of mind. The true
beauty for a lyrical I is in the eyes of his beloved. He experiences a mixture of feelings,
fears influence his soul, the soul in its turn makes an impact on his love since love is
empowered to change the whole world. The lyrical I is a person able to reflect, to
contemplate thus producing a new philosophic category of space – love “makes one
little room an everywhere”. The lovers then live in their own universe. This world is
shown serene, windless – a symbol of a calm life. The reader tries to grasp its eternal,
immortal things as they are created naturally and harmonically. Artificially creations
cannot exist long. The unity of souls is based on this idea. This unity is not accidental,
but designed by the God and fate, thus love is immortal.
The best known poetry collection is “Songs and Sonnets” the major topics of
which are:
- contradictions of love
- death and its philosophic sense
- sufferings caused by the separation with the beloved
- autumn as a symbol of maturity
- spring as a reflection of youth
- religious matters.

“The Canonization” is a poem that strikes readers by an exquisite prevalence /

victory of wit that is rendered through a particular rhythmic pattern, individual author’s
manner and style:
The Canonization
For God's sake hold your tongue, and let me love,
Or chide my palsy, or my gout,
My five gray hairs, or ruined fortune flout,
With wealth your state, your mind with arts improve,
Take you a course, get you a place,
Observe his honor, or his grace,
Or the king's real, or his stampèd face
Contemplate; what you will, approve,
So you will let me love.

Alas, alas, who's injured by my love?

What merchant's ships have my sighs drowned?
Olga Dolgusheva

Who says my tears have overflowed his ground?

When did my colds a forward spring remove?
When did the heats which my veins fill
Add one more to the plaguy bill?
Soldiers find wars, and lawyers find out still
Litigious men, which quarrels move,
Though she and I do love.

Call us what you will, we are made such by love;

Call her one, me another fly,
We're tapers too, and at our own cost die,
And we in us find the eagle and the dove.
The phœnix riddle hath more wit
By us; we two being one, are it.
So, to one neutral thing both sexes fit.
We die and rise the same, and prove
Mysterious by this love.

We can die by it, if not live by love,

And if unfit for tombs and hearse
Our legend be, it will be fit for verse;
And if no piece of chronicle we prove,
We'll build in sonnets pretty rooms;
As well a well-wrought urn becomes
The greatest ashes, as half-acre tombs,
And by these hymns, all shall approve
Us canonized for Love.

And thus invoke us: "You, whom reverend love

Made one another's hermitage;
You, to whom love was peace, that now is rage;
Who did the whole world's soul contract, and drove
Into the glasses of your eyes
(So made such mirrors, and such spies,
That they did all to you epitomize)
Countries, towns, courts: beg from above
A pattern of your love!"

The reader here notices Donne’s particular fancy for a conceit, as through the
associative imagery the poet tries to prove that love is a divine unity.
The first 5 stanzas have a rhyme pattern of abbacccaa and thematically resemble
the Christian verse canon. The lyrical I begins his defence with the words “For God’s
sake hold your tongue, and let me love.” Later he justifies the holiness of his love
connections and summarizes by expressing hopes concerning his relationships that are
supposed to become a model for other people.
J.Donne frequently refers to a paradox, play of words and puns. He combines
synthesis and analysis, his metaphors illustrate “the mathematic way of his thinking”;
his images combine opposite things and notions thus with a great mastery Donne finds a
point for them to come in contact and to have something in common.
Donne’s “Holy Sonnets” present Baroque motives. For ex., Sonnet 7 contains a
typical baroque trope ‘At the round earth's imagin'd corners’ («з кутів землі, хоча
вона є кулею»).
Olga Dolgusheva

Holy Sonnets: At the round earth's imagin'd corners, blow

At the round earth's imagin'd corners, blow
Your trumpets, angels, and arise, arise
From death, you numberless infinities
Of souls, and to your scatter'd bodies go;
All whom the flood did, and fire shall o'erthrow,
All whom war, dearth, age, agues, tyrannies,
Despair, law, chance hath slain, and you whose eyes
Shall behold God and never taste death's woe.
But let them sleep, Lord, and me mourn a space,
For if above all these my sins abound,
'Tis late to ask abundance of thy grace
When we are there; here on this lowly ground
Teach me how to repent; for that's as good
As if thou'hadst seal'd my pardon with thy blood.

The whole cycle demonstrates a sense of spiritual conflicts, inner struggle, fear,
uncertainty, pain, etc. The Lyrical I is supposed to get rid of the negative emotions by
means of thinking, meditations and reflections.
The stylistic dominants of J.Donne are:
- the foreground is given to an idea, thought, not the wording;
- the desire to express an inference with the help of simple language.
Література:
1. Английская лирика первой половины 17 в./ под ред. А.Н. Горбунова. – М.:
МГУ, 1989.
2. The Metaphysical Poets. Ed. by H.Gardner: Penguin Books, 1972. The
Metaphysical Poets. Compiled by E.M.Parsons, 1983.
3. A Dictionary of Modern Critical Terms/ Ed.by R.Fowler. , 1973.
4. Літературознавчий словник-довідник. – К., 1997.
5. История всемирной литературы (ИВЛ). – М.: Наука, Т.4. – С.64, 179-189.
6. Oxford Anthology of English L-re. Vol. 1. Pp. 1049-1062, 1063-1112, 1324-
1376. (Звіряйте сторінки в антологіях різних років видань).
7. George Herbert. Ed.by W.H.Auden, Penguin Books, 1972.
8. The Pelican Guide to English Literature. From Donne to Marvell /ed. By B.Ford.
– Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1968-1969. – Vol.3.