Metaphysical Poetry on Love
John Donne and Andrew
Marvell
Outline
An Example first: “Valediction:
Forbidding Mourning” –Watch out for
logical transition, original figurative
language (conceit)
Platonic Love
Metaphysical Poetry Defined
Metaphysical Poetry in Context
A VALEDICTION FORBIDDING
Simile
MOURNING
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."
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
A VALEDICTION FORBIDDING
Metaphor
MOURNING
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
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-assurèd of the mind,
Care less, eyes, lips and hands to
miss.
Explanation
A VALEDICTION FORBIDDING MOURNING
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,
Yet, when the other far doth roam,
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.
Elaboration and
Conclusion
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“ (告別辭) = 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?
Donne’s 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."
Donne’s 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.
John Donne (1572-1631)
Having inherited a
considerable fortune,
young "Jack Donne"
spent his money on
womanizing, on books,
at the theatre, and on
travels.
Secret marriage in
1601, which got him
imprisoned.
Donne had refused to
take Anglican orders in
1607, but King James
persisted, so finally
Donne gave in.
(source)
Started to write holy
sonnets after the
death of his wife in
1617.
The Flea: Starting Questions
(note)
How is the flea used in the speaker’s
persuasion of his lady to go to bed?
Describe 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
The Flea (2)
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
The Flea
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 -- Notes:
the 17-century idea was of sex as a "mingling of
the blood“: It was believed that women became
pregnant when the blood of the man (present in
his semen) mixed with her blood during sexual
intercourse.
The Flea -- "Fleas were a popular subject for
jocose [humorous] and amatory [love] poetry in all
countries at the Renaissance". Their popularity
stems from an event that happened in a literary
salon (a place where poets and others came to
recite poetry and converse). The salon was run by
two ladies, and on an occasion a flea happened to
land upon one lady's breast. The poets were
amazed at the creature's audacity, and were
inspired to write poetry about the beast. (source)
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 -- the other poetic device
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, cloysterd, 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.
Andrew Marvell (1621-1678)
Marvell was engaged in political activities,
taking part in embassies to Holland and
Russia and writing political pamphlets
and satires.
A controversial person (one with a
sense of balance and fairness; a
bad-tempered, hard-drinking
lifelong bachelor) and an
unclassifiable poet
“To his Coy Mistress”
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.
“To his Coy Mistress”
But at my back I always hear
Time's wingèd 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-chapt
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.
e.g.
Argument: carpe diem
To Virgins, To Make Much Of Time
Robert Herrick
Gather ye rosebuds while ye may,
Old Time is still a-flying;
And this same flower that smiles
today,
To-morrow will be dying.
[. . .]
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 “forever”and 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
Than languish in his slow-chapt
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
Devour –eat up
time quickly and at
a large amount
each time.
Like birds of prey
(hawks) eat up their
prey (rabbits)
unthinkingly and
instinctively
Rolled into one Ball –
sexual act
Gates of life –
inevitable aging
process and
difficulties which lead
us to death.
Metaphors and Conceits
Metaphors
vegetable love –slow
and quiet.
Time’s wing’s chariot
Gates of life
Paradox -- tearing
"pleasures“ with
"strife"
Conceit & Hyperbole –
the use of large space
and time to woo slowly.
Marble vault as both
the grave and the
sexual organ.
Pun—sun/son; run (go
faster, run away)
Metaphysical Poetry Defined
1.
2.
3.
4.
Spirit + Matter
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
Often poems are presented in the form of an
argument
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
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.
2.
3.
Metaphysical Conceit: a paradoxical and
extended metaphor
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)
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.
2.
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
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 (煽動者 ) political
pamphlets circulated.
Metaphysical Poetry in Context
Peter Paul Rubens Garden of Love c. 1638 Museo del Prado,
Madrid
-- The colors are soft and
warm, light, gay, ripe, and
sensous.
-- The figures melt into each
other in a soft, flowing
rhythm. ...
-- The courtly man in the
broad-brimmed hat
http://www.eng.fju.edu.tw/English_Literature/17th_c/paintings/rubens.htm