Classic English Literature Notes

Introduction of John Donne

           John Donne is the name in English literature who gave a new direction to the literary activities of his age. He is in a sense founded the metaphysical lyric, which was practiced by a score of writers. He set up a new tradition in versification. By and large Donne must be regarded as an original poet, a poet who gave much more than what he borrowed from his age.

Metaphysical Poetry

             The word “Metaphysical” has been defined by various writers differently. The learned critics feel that “Metaphysical Poetry” is inspired by a philosophy, philosophical conception of the universe and the role assigned to human spirit in the great drama of existence.” However in a very simple tone we can interpret the term. Metaphysical is termed as Meta (beyond) and Physical (physical nature). Fondness for conceits is a major characteristic of metaphysical poetry; however concentration is another important ingredient of it.

 John Donne As Metaphysical Poet

           The metaphysical poets were men of learning and to show their learning was their whole endeavor. They neither copied nature nor life, the operations of intellect. Their thoughts are often new seldom natural. They were wholly employed on something unexpected and surprising. Their courtship was void of fondness, and their lamentation of sorrow. Their wish was only to say what they hoped had never said before.

           As we find off these characteristics and features in Donne’s poetry, therefore it is easy to say that Donne is a metaphysical poet. However it is Dryden who first of all used the term for Donne. Moreover conception is particular in Donne’s poetry and in all his poems, the reader is held to one idea or line of argument. His poems are brief and closely woven and he develops the theme without digression.

           Furthermore as fondness for conceits is a major characteristic of metaphysical poetry and Donne employs fantastic comparisons. The most famous and striking one is the comparison of a man who travels and his beloved who stays at home to a pair of compasses in “A valediction Forbidding Mourning.”

In “The Relique”, John Donne imagines himself dead and beneath the soil. His grave is opened to admit the body of another and on his wrist; the grave digger finds a bracelet of bright hair about the bone. Henceforth, he end his urge like saints “All women shall adore us, and same men.”  This is an exceedingly hyperbolic conceit.

In “Twickenham Garden” the very truth of the beloved wills the poet. Furthermore, Donne makes an excellent combination of passion and thoughts. The poem, “Good Morrow” is a poem of passion but its intellectual character is no less evident. The poem is one loving argument to prove that the poet and his beloved are passionately in love. Each of the lovers is a whole world to the other and their little room is a kind of everywhere.

“Where can we find two little hemispheres

Without sharp worth, without declining west?

What ever dyes, was not mixed equally,

If our two loves be one, or thou and I

Love so alike, that none doe shaken, none can die.”

Another feature is the use of colloquial speech marks metaphysical poetry. In Donne’s poems, it is especially apparent in the abrupt, conversational opening of many of his poems.

“I wonder by my troth, what then, and I” (Good Marrow)

“Busie old foole, unruly sunne,

Why dost thou thus.”(Sun Rising)

              Furthermore it is enough to prove Donne as a metaphysical that he speaks of the spiritual love but not of body and physical love. In “A Valediction Forbidding Mourning” love is so refined that the lovers do not much miss each other’s eyes, lips, and hands which are normally the demands of the lovers. In “The Relique”, the lovers do not even know the difference of sex and miss each other sparingly.

             So John Donne is the classic representative of metaphysical poetry. His instinct compelled him to bring the whole of experience into his verse and to choose the most direct and natural form of expression by his learned and fantastic mind. Greisens aptly sums up, “Donne is metaphysical not only by virtue of his scholasticism but by his deep reflective interest in the experience of which his poetry is the expression, the new psychological curiosity with which he writes of lover and religion.”