ZENITH

International Journal of Multidisciplinary Research

Vol.2 Issue 2, February 2012, ISSN 2231 5780

METAPHYSICAL POETRY AND JOHN DONNE:

AN OVERVIEW
PIU SARKAR*

*Researcher & Part-time Lecturer in English,

Guskara Mahavidyalaya, Burdwan, West Bengal, India.

ABSTRACT

John Donne is acknowledged as the master of metaphysical poetry and is admired for his talent
and magnificent wit exercised in his writing. Metaphysical poetry is a special branch of poetry
that deals with the pedagogic use of intellect and emotion in a harmonic manner. The basic
praxis of metaphysical poetry is to highlight the philosophical view of nature and its ambience
concerning human life. Despite criticisms from various corners, Donne and his other companions
remained busy with their work to concentrate on metaphysical poetry to portray the feelings and
sentiments of human beings by dint of their skillful and artful literary accomplishments. This
paper is to address the outstanding performance of John Donne in the arena of metaphysical
poetry and it endeavours to make a critical assessment of the diverse issues allembracing
metaphysical poetry as well as to establish the relevance of metaphysical poetry in the literary
realm.
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INTRODUCTION

―Shine here to us, and thou art everywhere

This bed thy centre is, these walls, thy sphere‖

The Sun Rising: John Donne

The startling conversational lines marvellously enumerate the poet‘s intense appeal to spread the
beams of sun on the lovers‘ world as a mark of illuminating the macrocosmic world and beckon
the readers to enter into a new realm of poetry with a sense of attachment and belonging between
different objects of nature and human sentiments, feeling, passion etc. This philosophical
structure of poetic aptitude to associate the different aspects of nature and its constituents in a
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significant manner constitutes the basics of metaphysical poetry the pioneering contribution of
which has been made by John Donne. Metaphysical poetry and John Donne are so inherently
interconnected that one without the other becomes a misnomer. Metaphysical poetry symbolizes
the splendid and meticulous blending of intellect and emotion, ingenious wit and caustic humour
so as to acquaint the readers with a new pattern of poetic excellence.
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International Journal of Multidisciplinary Research
Vol.2 Issue 2, February 2012, ISSN 2231 5780

GENESIS AND CONCEPT OF METAPHYSICAL POETRY

The onset of social reforms and Renaissance in particular made a sensational change in socio-
political atmosphere in the late 16th and 17th centuries in England. In that era, politics and religion
were intrinsically intertwined with each other and religion was at the heart of political
controversy. The realm of education was revolutionized with new scientific ideologies,
discoveries and inventions, coupled with grand and splendid literary creations. In the midst of
such political insecurity, religious controversy, social fragmentation and intellectual ferment,
there was the strong and pervasive presence of a spirit of freshness, of vivacity, of enthusiasm, of
originality, of individuality, of new learning, of zest and so on. Diverse literary trends emerged
in this whirlpool of change and enriched the history of literature.

While Shakespeare lends a unique dimension to poetic drama and Spenser to dramatico-lyrical
poetry, this era also witnessed the flourishing of an erudite group of poets whose poetic
reputation rested on a powerful mingling of the intellect and the emotion in the form of
metaphysical poetry. Chagrined by the much trodden track of Petrarchan sonnets coupled with
pompous words and emotional exuberance, this new circle of poets, known as metaphysical
poets, set a new fashion of composing poems, which provided intellectual parallels to a spectrum
of emotional experience, a sudden transmission from playfulness to high-pitched passion,
interplay of levity and sincerity, and a wide range of imagery, both starkly realistic and
startlingly cunning. John Donne, the pioneer of this metaphysical school of poetry, and his
compeers like Andrew Marvell, Henry Vaughan, George Herbert and Richard Crashaw
significantly contributed to this new poetic field to draw the attention as well as animadversion
from various corners. A more comprehensive list of metaphysical poets would like to include
Abraham Cowley, Traherne and Thomas Carew who were either directly or indirectly influenced
by Donne, the lynchpin of this group.

The term ‗metaphysical‘ refers to dealing with the different facets of nature or a philosophical
view of the nature of things. Grierson depicts metaphysical poetry as ―poetry inspired by a
philosophical concept of the universe and the role assigned to human spirit in the great drama of
existence‖. Donne and his associates are designated as metaphysical poets in so far as their
poetic works have been enriched by the varied aspects of human life like love, religion, death
etc. by way of demonstrating their impact on human life in a lively manner with the help of far-
fetched imagery. Metaphysical poetry has sparkling capability to explore and express ideas and
feelings about the terrestrial world and its diverse phenomena in a rational way to mesmerize the
readers. Making innovative and shocking use of puns, paradoxes and employing subtle logical
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propositions, the metaphysical poetry has achieved a style that is energetic and vigorous unlike
the rich mellifluousness and lilting overtones of the then conventional poetry. Broadly speaking,
metaphysical poetry was the result of revolt against the conventional romanticism of Elizabethan
love poetry and so, the metaphysical group of poets was inclined towards amalgamation of
heterogeneous ideas and disparate images, use of intricate rhythm, realism, obscurity etc. Rightly
does Joan Bennet observe that in case of Donne and his circle, the term ―metaphysical‖ actually
refers to style rather than subject matter.
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International Journal of Multidisciplinary Research
Vol.2 Issue 2, February 2012, ISSN 2231 5780

Metaphysical poetry was in its heyday up to mid-17th century until neo-classicism entered to
reign the literary realm and in the next two centuries metaphysical poetry went into total eclipse
whereby Donne and his successors were discarded for displaying intentional obscurity. But 20th
century ushered an unexpected revival of the metaphysical tradition where Donne and his group
regained their lost favour and were studied with renewed interest and veneration by virtue of the
modernist poet-critic T. S. Eliot‘s celebrated essay ―The Metaphysical Poets‖ in which Eliot
vehemently admired their stunning capacity for devouring and merging all kinds of experience:
―When a poet‘s mind is perfectly equipped for its work, it is constantly amalgamating disparate
experience; the ordinary man‘s experience is chaotic, irregular, fragmentary. The latter falls in
love, or reads Spinoza, and these two experiences have nothing to do with each other, or with the
noise of a typewriter or the smell of cooking; in the mind of the poet these experiences are
always forming new wholes‖.

CHARACTERISTICS OF METAPHYSICAL POETRY

Metaphysical poem primarily hinges on, to say in Eliotean phrase, ―a unification of

sensibility‖— the marvellous fusion of head and heart, of intellect and emotion, of thought and
passion. Unlike poets in the Petrarchan and Spenserian tradition, a metaphysical poet attempts to
establish a logical connection between his emotional feelings and intellectual concepts so that
readers are compelled to think afresh, exercising their wit in lieu of a passive reading of poems.
In this regard, metaphysical poets utilize striking images and conceits which are considered the
hallmark of any metaphysical poem. For instance, Donne in A Valediction: Forbidding
Mourning compares the lovers with a pair of compasses: ―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
th‘other do.‖ Such a far-fetched comparison to show the mutuality and interdependence of the
lovers in terms of compasses is indeed astounding for which Samuel Johnson describes
‗metaphysical conceit‘ as ―a kind of discordia concors – a combination of dissimilar images or
discovery of occult resemblances in things apparently unlike‖ (Life of Cowley). Again in
Twicknam Garden Donne makes another brilliant use of conceit whose ingenuity, Helen Gardner
considers, is more striking than its justice: ―The spider Love, which transubstantiates all/ And
can convert manna to gall‖. Although Dr. Johnson pejoratively says that in metaphysical poetry
heterogeneous ideas are yoked by violence together, it is evinced that such blend of discordant
elements is quintessential to prove and persuade the readers about the point, the poet wishes to
highlight.

Eschewing hackneyed phrases and worn-out images of conventional Elizabethan lyrics, these
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metaphysical poets telescope images and draw references from diverse spheres of cosmology,
geography, science, philosophy, alchemy, theology, law and even from colonial enterprise so far
as Britain was then emerging as the greatest empire through colonial expansion in different
countries. The easy equation between lover‘s triumph and territorial conquest is perhaps nowhere
so tellingly exemplified than in Andrew Marvell‘s To His Coy Mistress: ―My vegetable Love
should grow/ Vaster than Empires. . .‖. In a similar vein, Donne charts love‘s course in tandem
with his race‘s charting of the new world: ―Let sea-discoverers to new worlds have gone,/ Let
maps to others, worlds on worlds have shown,/ Let us possess one world, each hath one, and is
one‖(The Good Morrow). While the following lines from Donne‘s The Good Morrow: ―Where
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International Journal of Multidisciplinary Research
Vol.2 Issue 2, February 2012, ISSN 2231 5780

can we find two better hemispheres/Without sharp north, without declining west?‖ compare the
world of the lovers with the geographical world; the concluding couplet of The Sun Rising:
―Shine here to us, and thou art everywhere/ This bed thy centre is, these walls, thy sphere‖ brings
forth a cosmic imagery to show how the microcosmic world of the lovers emblematizes the
macrocosmic world. Marvell‘s The Definition of Love, which is an abstraction on perfect love,
culminates with an astrological allusion: ―Therefore the Love which us doth bind/ But Fate so
enviously debarrs/ Is the Conjunction of the Mind/ And Opposition of the Stars‖. In Love‘s
Growth Donne draws his imagery from mediaeval science, and scholastic philosophy to illustrate
the true nature of love: ―. . . this medicine, love, which cures all sorrow/ With more, not only be
no quintessence, / But mixed of all stuffs, paining soul, or sense. . .‖ The speaker in Love‘s
Alchemy, on the contrary, derives his imagery from alchemy to suggest that it is not possible to
fathom the mystery of love: ―I should not find that hidden mystery/ . . . as no chemic yet the
elixir got‖.

Another distinct feature of metaphysical poetry, as practised by Donne and his successors, is a
strange coalescence of passionate thinking and subtle ratiocination. For example, The Flea
presents a desperate lover, trying to woo his beloved with logical and earnest solicitation for
physical consummation: ―And in this flea, our two bloods mingled be/ Confess it . . . . . ./ This
flea is you and I, and this/ Our marriage bed, and marriage temple is. . .‖. The metaphysical
poetry is also characterized by a sudden dramatic beginning and superb utilization of colloquial
language in lieu of specific poetic terms, as evinced in the abrupt, conversational opening of The
Canonization where the poet-lover admonishes the intruder in a colloquial tone for hampering
their privacy: ―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‖.

JOHN DONNE: THE ARCHITECT OF METAPHYSICAL POETRY

John Donne is regarded as both the pioneer and the chief spokesperson of metaphysical poetry.
Robert Browning rightly complemented on Donne‘s poetic proliferation by the words: ―Who was
the Prince of wits, amongst whom he reign‘d / High as a Prince, and as great State maintain‘d?‖
Donne had a prosperous literary life, garnished with numerous love poems, songs, sonnets,
elegies, satires, sermons, religious verse and treatises but a majority of Donne‘s poetical works
were published posthumously, barring a few like The Anniversaries (1612) and Devotions Upon
Emergent Occasions (1623).
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By his glorious poems, Donne helped the readers to taste the metaphysical flavour of his poetic
expressions. In his major love lyrics like The Sun Rising, The Canonization, The Good Morrow,
The Anniversary, A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning, The Ecstasy, Lovers‘ Infiniteness, The
Flea, The Indifferent, A Nocturnal Upon St. Lucy‘s Day, A Valediction: Of Weeping, The
Undertaking, The Relic, The Apparition, Love‘s Growth, The Dream, The Triple Fool, Song: Go
And Catch A Falling Star etc., Donne critically sketched human love to differentiate it from the
conventional concept of love given by others. Whereas most of the poets through ages contend
that love remains beyond the compass of time‘s bending sickle, Donne in his poem The
Canonization has blended love‘s timeless fragrance with love‘s unifying power, through the
symbol of ‗phoenix‘ and here lies Donne‘s ingenious talent as a poet sermoning on love. The line
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International Journal of Multidisciplinary Research
Vol.2 Issue 2, February 2012, ISSN 2231 5780

―we in us find the eagle and the dove‖ is a powerful expression of the miracle of love to
harmonize the antipathetic and opposite sexes – eagle and dove, symbolizing masculine virility
and feminine softness respectively. Again in the same poem Donne celebrates love not simply as
a holy passion, purging the lovers from baser things; rather as an alternative religion, the
reverend love which becomes one another‘s hermitage, a haven of heavenly bliss and spiritual
grace and thereby transforming the ordinary lovers to the saints of love to be followed by the
posterity who will ―beg from above/A pattern of your love‖.

Through this act of resembling the canonization of priest with the glorification of lovers, Donne
has pointed out a peculiar metaphysical flair of connecting the sublime with the commonplace.
While the poet-speaker in The Canonization bestows a saintly grace to the earthly lovers, in The
Sun Rising he describes the lovers as the monarchs in the realm of love and also claims that in
comparison to the lovers‘ dignity and grandeur, ‗all honour‘s mimic; all wealth alchemy‘ i.e.
love is the greatest wealth to them. The speaker-lover in The Sun Rising strategically glorifies
love‘s perpetuity against the evanescent and ephemeral feature of nature through these lines:
―Love, all alike no season knows, nor clime, / Nor hours, days, months, which are the rags of
time‖, in a manner much akin to Shakespeare‘s Sonnet No. 116 where he avows ―Love alters not
with his brief hours and weeks, / But bears it out even to the edge of doom‖. The poet-persona in
The Good Morrow proclaims how love creates its own perfect world, combined of two better
hemispheres: ―For love, all love of other sights controls, / And makes one little room, an
everywhere‖.

John Donne also made his remarkable performance by employing sparkling wit and jarring
language in his writings. Having been disgruntled with the soft and melting phrases of the
followers of Petrarch, Donne devised a language, terse and vigorous —all of which contribute to
lend a masculine aura to metaphysical poetry. The strange and uneven opening of Donne‘s Song
(Go and Catch a Falling Star) strikes a dissonant tone: ―Go, and catch a falling star,/ Get with
child a mandrake root,/ Tell me, where all past years are/ Or who cleft the Devil‘s foot. . .‖. In
Song, Donne has critically compared the impossible task of catching a falling star with the
impossibility of getting a faithful woman: ―…..And swear / No where / Lives a woman true, and
fair‖.

While among the Elizabethan poets, use of wit has been decorative and ornamental, Donne in his
writings has employed wit sometimes in the form of satire and hyperbolic statements and often
in a serious and sincere manner. In The Sun Rising Donne has categorically applied satire: ―Thy www.zenithresearch.org.in
beams, so reverend, and strong/ Why shouldst thou think? / I could eclipse and cloud them with a
wink‖. Again in the same poem Donne‘s witty approach is conveyed by way of hyperbolic
expression: ―She is all states, and all princes, I, / Nothing else is‖ to suggest that the lady-love is
the empress of the kingdom where the lover is merely the prince. The following lines from
Donne‘s The Canonization: ―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‖ highlight how the speaker has used poetic wit in a
serious and sincere tone to emphasize the immortality of terrestrial lovers through verse even if
after death nothing is mentioned on their tombs.
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International Journal of Multidisciplinary Research
Vol.2 Issue 2, February 2012, ISSN 2231 5780

CONCLUSION

John Donne is one of the most genius and versatile English poets. He is admired for his colossal
contribution in metaphysical poetry. In his numerous writings he has added lots of witty
approaches full of satire, passionate feelings, striking conceits etc. to highlight the nature and
reality revolving around human lives. The new era of writing in the form of metaphysical poetry
starkly attracted the readers through ages although many eminent writers like Dryden, Dr.
Johnson strongly discarded his writings on the plea that Donne unnecessarily used metaphysical
aspects to perplex the natural phenomena of love, sex etc. Although Andrew Marvell, Henry
Vaughan, George Herbert and others have evinced their astuteness and sharpness in representing
common subject matters like love, religion etc. with a new-fangled approach, John Donne shines
amongst them like a luminous star for his stunning and unrivaled genius in rationalizing his
daring imagination. It is Donne who blows the trumpet of change in the clichéd pattern of poetry,
teeming with emotion, by inaugurating ‗intellectualized poetry‘— the metaphysical poetry. At
the same time, scarcely can one deny how Donne‘s immense contribution to this domain of
poetry facilitates and felicitates the meteoric rise and development of metaphysical poetry.
Irrespective of time and age, John Donne is highly appraised all over the globe for his fantastic
intellectual aptitude in describing the varied states of emotion and action of human beings.

REFERENCES

1. Eliot, T.S., The Metaphysical Poets, Selected Essays, London: Faber, 1932

2. Bennet, Joan., Five Metaphysical Poets: Donne, Herbert, Vaughan, Crashaw, Marvell,
Kolkata Radha Publishing House, 1988

3. Reeves, James, Ed., Selected Poems of John Donne, London, Heineman, 1952

4. Redpath, Theodore, Ed., The Songs and Sonnets of John Donne, London, Methuen, 1956

5. Daiches, David, A Critical History of English Literature, Vol. I, Random House, India,
2007

6. Evan, G. Blakemore., Ed., The Sonnets, The New Cambridge Shakespeare, Cambridge
University Press, 2003 www.zenithresearch.org.in

7. Sanders, Andrew, The Short Oxford History of English Literature, Oxford University
Press, 3rd Edn., 2004.
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