Zod wrote:
> anon...@coolgroups.com wrote:
>
> > "The Metaphysical Poets"
> > First published in the Times Literary Supplement, 20
> > October 1921.
> >
> > By collecting these poems from the work of a generation
> > more often
> > named than read, and more often read than profitably
> > studied,
> > Professor Grierson has rendered a service of some
> > importance.
> > Certainly the reader will meet with many poems already
> > preserved in
> > other anthologies, at the same time that he discovers poems
> > such as
> > those of Aurelian Townshend or Lord Herbert of Cherbury here
> > included. But the function of such an anthology as this is
> > neither
> > that of Professor Saintsbury's admirable edition of
> > Caroline poets
> > nor that of the Oxford Book of English Verse. Mr.
> > Grierson's book is
> > in itself a piece of criticism, and a provocation of
> > criticism; and
> > we think that he was right in including so many poems of
> > Donne,
> > elsewhere (though not in many editions) accessible, as
> > documents in
> > the case of 'metaphysical poetry'. The phrase has long done
> > duty as a
> > term of abuse, or as the label of a quaint and pleasant
> > taste. The
> > question is to what extent the so-called metaphysicals
> > formed a
> > school (in our own time we should say a 'movement'), and
> > how far this
> > so-called school or movement is a digression from the main
> > current.Not only is it extremely difficult to define
> > metaphysical
> > poetry, but difficult to decide what poets practice it and
> > in which
> > of their verses. The poetry of Donne (to whom Marvell and
> > Bishop King
> > are sometimes nearer than any of the other authors) is late
> > Elizabethan, its feeling often very close to that of
> > Chapman.
> > The 'courtly' poetry is derivative from Jonson, who borrowed
> > liberally from the Latin; it expires in the next century
> > with the
> > sentiment and witticism of Prior. There is finally the
> > devotional
> > verse of Herbert, Vaughan, and Crashaw (echoed long after by
> > Christina Rossetti and Francis Thompson); Crashaw,
> > sometimes more
> > profound and less sectarian than the others, has a quality
> > which
> > returns through the Elizabethan period to the early
> > Italians. It is
> > difficult to find any precise use of metaphor, simile, or
> > other
> > conceit, which is common to all the poets and at the same
> > time
> > important enough as an element of style to isolate these
> > poets as a
> > group. Donne, and often Cowley, employ a device which is
> > sometimes
> > considered characteristically 'metaphysical'; the
> > elaboration
> > (contrasted with the condensation) of a figure of speech to
> > the
> > furthest stage to which ingenuity can carry it. Thus Cowley
> > develops
> > the commonplace comparison of the world to a chess-board
> > through long
> > stanzas ("To Destiny"), and Donne, with more grace, in "A
> > Valediction," the comparison of two lovers to a pair of
> > compasses.
> > But elsewhere we find, instead of the mere explication of
> > the content
> > of a comparison, a development by rapid association of
> > thought which
> > requires considerable agility on the part of the reader.
> >
> > On a round ball
> > A workeman that hath copies by, can lay
> > An Europe, Afrique, and an Asia,
> > And quickly make that, which was nothing, All,
> > So cloth each teare,
> > Which thee cloth weare,
> > A globe, yea world by that impression grow,
> > Till thy tears mixt with mine doe overflow
> > This world, by waters sent from thee, my heaven dissolved
> > so.
> > Here we find at least two connections which are not
> > implicit in the
> > first figure, but are forced upon it by the poet: from the
> > geographer's globe to the tear, and the tear to the deluge.
> > On the
> > other hand, some of Donne's most successful and
> > characteristic
> > effects are secured by brief words and sudden contrasts:
> > A bracelet of bright hair about the bone,
> > where the most powerful effect is produced by the sudden
> > contrast of
> > associations of 'bright hair' and of 'bore'. This
> > telescoping of
> > images and multiplied associations is characteristic of the
> > phrase of
> > some of the dramatists of the period which Donne knew: not
> > to mention
> > Shakespeare, it is frequent in Middleton, Webster, and
> > Tourneur, and
> > is one of the sources of the vitality of their
> > language.Johnson, who
> > employed the term 'metaphysical poets', apparently having
> > Donne,
> > Cleveland, and Cowley chiefly in mind, remarks of them
> > that 'the most
> > heterogeneous ideas are yoked by violence together'. The
> > force of
> > this impeachment lies in the failure of the conjunction,
> > the fact
> > that often the ideas are yoked but not united; and if we
> > are to judge
> > of styles of poetry by their abuse, enough examples may be
> > found in
> > Cleveland to justify Johnson's condemnation. But a degree of
> > heterogeneity of material compelled into unity by the
> > operation of
> > the poet's mind is omnipresent in poetry. We need not
> > select for
> > illustration such a line as:
> > Notre ame est un trois-mats cherchant son Icarie;
> > we may find it in some of the best lines of Johnson himself
> > ("The
> > Vanity of Human Wishes"):
> > His fate was destined to a barren strand,
> > A petty fortress, and a dubious hand;
> > He left a name at which the world grew pale,
> > To point a moral, or adorn a tale.
> > where the effect is due to a contrast of ideas, different
> > in degree
> > but the same in principle, as that which Johnson mildly
> > reprehended.
> > And in one of the finest poems of the age (a poem which
> > could not
> > have been written in any other age), the "Exequy" of Bishop
> > King, the
> > extended comparison is used with perfect success: the idea
> > and the
> > simile become one, in the passage in which the Bishop
> > illustrates his
> > impatience to see his dead wife, under the figure of a
> > journey:
> > Stay for me there; I will not faile
> > To meet thee in that hollow Vale.
> > And think not much of my delay;
> > I am already on the way, And follow thee with all the speed
> > Desire can make, or sorrows breed.
> > Each minute is a short degree,
> > And ev'ry houre a step towards thee.
> > At night when I retake to rest,
> > Next morn I rise nearer my West
> > Of life, almost by eight houres sail,
> > Than when sleep breath'd his drowsy gale....
> > But heark! My Pulse, like a soft Drum
> > Beats my approach, tells Thee I come;
> > And slow howere my marches be,
> > I shall at last sit down by Thee
> > .
> > (In the last few lines there is that effect of terror which
> > is
> > several times attained by one of Bishop King's admirers,
> > Edgar Poe.)
> > Again, we may justly take these quatrains from Lord
> > Herbert's Ode,
> > stanzas which would, we think, be immediately pronounced to
> > be of the
> > metaphysical school:
> > So when from hence we shall he gone,
> > And he no more, nor you, nor I,
> > As one another's mystery,
> > Each shall he both, yet both but one.
> > This said, in her up-lifted face,
> > Her eyes, which did that beauty crown,
> > Were like two starrs, that having faln down,
> > Look up again to find their place:
> >
> > While such a moveless silent peace
> > Did seize on their becalmed sense,
> > One would have thought some influence
> > Their ravished spirits did possess.
> >
> > There is nothing in these lines (with the possible
> > exception of the
> > stars, a simile not at once grasped, but lovely and
> > justified) which
> > fits Johnson's general observations on the metaphysical
> > poets in his
> > essay on Cowley. A good deal resides in the richness of
> > association
> > which is at the same time borrowed from and given to the
> > word 'becalmed'; but the meaning is clear, the language
> > simple and
> > elegant. It is to be observed that the language of these
> > poets is as
> > a rule simple and pure; in the verse of George Herbert this
> > simplicity is carried as far as it can go - a simplicity
> > emulated
> > without success by numerous modern poets. The structure of
> > the
> > sentences, on the other hand, is sometimes far from simple,
> > but this
> > is not a vice; it is a fidelity to thought and feeling. The
> > effect,
> > at its best, is far less artificial than that of an ode by
> > Gray. And
> > as this fidelity induces variety of thought and feeling, so
> > it
> > induces variety of music. We doubt whether, in the
> > eighteenth
> > century, could be found two poems in nominally the same
> > metre, so
> > dissimilar as Marvell's "Coy Mistress" and Crashaw's "Saint
> > Teresa";
> > the one producing an effect of great speed by the use of
> > short
> > syllables, and the other an ecclesiastical solemnity by the
> > use of
> > long ones:
> > Love thou art absolute sole lord
> > Of life and death.
> > If so shrewd and sensitive (though so limited) a critic as
> > Johnson
> > failed to define metaphysical poetry by its faults, it is
> > worth while
> > to inquire whether we may not have more success by adopting
> > the
> > opposite method: by assuming that the poets of the
> > seventeenth
> > century (up to the Revolution) were the direct and normal
> > development
> > of the precedent age; and, without prejudicing their case
> > by the
> > adjective 'metaphysical', consider whether their virtue was
> > not
> > something permanently valuable, which subsequently
> > disappeared, but
> > ought not to have disappeared. Johnson has hit, perhaps by
> > accident,
> > on one of their peculiarities, when he observed that 'their
> > attempts
> > were always analytic'; he would not agree that, after the
> > dissociation, they put the material together again in a new
> > unity.It
> > is certain that the dramatic verse of the later Elizabethan
> > and early
> > Jacobean poets expresses a degree of development of
> > sensibility which
> > is not found in any of the prose, good as it often is. If
> > we except
> > Marlowe, a man of prodigious intelligence, these dramatists
> > were
> > directly or indirectly (it is at least a tenable theory)
> > affected by
> > Montaigne Even if we except also Jonson and Chapman, these
> > two were
> > notably erudite, and were notably men who incorporated their
> > erudition into their sensibility: their mode of feeling was
> > directly
> > and freshly altered by their reading and thought. In Chapman
> > especially there is a direct sensuous apprehension of
> > thought, or a
> > recreation of thought into feeling, which is exactly what
> > we find in
> > Donne:
> > in this one thing, all the discipline
> > Of manners and of manhood is contained
> > A man to join himself with th' Universe
> > In his main sway, and make in all things fit
> > One with that All, and go on, round as it
> > Not plucking from the whole his wretched part
> > And into straits, or into nought revert,
> > Wishing the complete Universe might be
> > Subject to such a rag of it as he;
> > But to consider great Necessity.
> > We compare this with some modern passage:
> > No, when the fight begins within himself
> > A man's worth something. God stoops o'er his head,
> > Satan looks up between his feet - both tug -
> > He's left, himself i' the middle; the soul wakes
> > And grows. Prolong that battle through his life!
> > It is perhaps somewhat less fair, though very tempting as
> > both poets
> > are concerned with the perpetuation of love by offspring,
> > to compare
> > with the stanzas already quoted from Lord Herbert's Ode the
> > following
> > from Tennyson:
> > One walked between wife and child,
> > With measured footfall firm and mild,
> > And now and then he gravely smiled.
> > The prudent partner of his blood
> > Leaned on him, faithful, gentle, good
> > Wearing the rose of womanhood.
> > And in their double love secure,
> > The little maiden walked demure,
> > Pacing with downward eyelids pure.
> > These three made unity so sweet,
> > My frozen heart began to beat,
> > Remembering its ancient heat.
> > The difference is not a simple difference of degree between
> > poets. It
> > is something which had happened to the mind of England
> > between the
> > time of Donne or Lord Herbert of Cherbury and the time of
> > Tennyson
> > and Browning; it is the difference between the intellectual
> > poet and
> > the reflective poet. Tennyson and Browning are poets, and
> > they think;
> > but they do not feel their thought as immediately as the
> > odour of a
> > rose. A thought to Donne was an experience; it modified his
> > sensibility. 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 the typewriter or
> > the smell
> > of cooking; m the mind of the poet these experiences are
> > always
> > forming new wholes.We may express the difference by the
> > following
> > theory: The poets of the seventeenth century, the
> > successors of the
> > dramatists of the sixteenth, possessed a mechanism of
> > sensibility
> > which could devour any kind of experience. They are simple,
> > artificial, difficult, or fantastic, as their predecessors
> > were; no
> > less nor more than Dante, Guido Cavalcanti, Guinicelli, or
> > Cino. In
> > the seventeenth century a dissociation of sensibility set
> > in, from
> > which we have never recovered; and this dissociation, as is
> > natural,
> > was aggravated by the influence of the two most powerful
> > poets of the
> > century, Milton and Dryden. Each of these men performed
> > certain
> > poetic functions so magnificently well that the magnitude
> > of the
> > effect concealed the absence of others. The language went
> > on and in
> > some respects improved; the best verse of Collins, Gray,
> > Johnson, and
> > even Goldsmith satisfies some of our fastidious demands
> > better than
> > that of Donne or Marvell or King. But while the language
> > became more
> > refined, the feeling became more crude. The feeling, the
> > sensibility,
> > expressed in the "Country Churchyard" (to say nothing of
> > Tennyson and
> > Browning) is cruder than that in the"Coy Mistress."The
> > second effect
> > of the influence of Milton and Dryden followed from the
> > first, and
> > was therefore slow in manifestation. The sentimental age
> > began early
> > in the eighteenth century, and continued. The poets
> > revolted against
> > the ratiocinative, the descriptive; they thought and felt
> > by fits,
> > unbalanced; they reflected. In one or two passages of
> > Shelley's "Triumph of Life," in the second "Hyperion" there
> > are
> > traces of a struggle toward unification of sensibility. But
> > Keats and
> > Shelley died, and Tennyson and Browning ruminated.After
> > this brief
> > exposition of a theory - too brief, perhaps, to carry
> > conviction - we
> > may ask, what would have been the fate of
> > the 'metaphysical' had the
> > current of poetry descended in a direct line from them, as
> > it
> > descended in a direct line to them ? They would not,
> > certainly, be
> > classified as metaphysical. The possible interests of a
> > poet are
> > unlimited; the more intelligent he is the better; the more
> > intelligent he is the more likely that he will have
> > interests: our
> > only condition is that he turn them into poetry, and not
> > merely
> > meditate on them poetically. A philosophical theory which
> > has entered
> > into poetry is established, for its truth or falsity in one
> > sense
> > ceases to matter, and its truth in another sense is proved.
> > The poets
> > in question have, like other poets, various faults. But
> > they were, at
> > best, engaged in the task of trying to find the verbal
> > equivalent for
> > states of mind and feeling. And this means both that they
> > are more
> > mature, and that they wear better, than later poets of
> > certainly not
> > less literary ability.It is not a permanent necessity that
> > poets
> > should be interested in philosophy, or in any other
> > subject. We can
> > only say that it appears likely that poets in our
> > civilization, as it
> > exists at present, must be difficult. Our civilization
> > comprehends
> > great variety and complexity, and this variety and
> > complexity,
> > playing upon a refined sensibility, must produce various
> > and complex
> > results. The poet must become more and more comprehensive,
> > more
> > allusive, more indirect, in order to force, to dislocate if
> > necessary, language into his meaning. (A brilliant and
> > extreme
> > statement of this view, with which it is not requisite to
> > associate
> > oneself, is that of M. Jean Epstein, "La Poesie d'aujourd-
> > hui.")
> > Hence we get something which looks very much like the
> > conceit - we
> > get, in fact, a method curiously similar to that of
> > the 'metaphysical
> > poets', similar also in its use of obscure words and of
> > simple
> > phrasing.
> > O geraniums diaphanes, guerroyeurs sortileges,
> > Sacrileges monomanes!
> > Emballages, devergondages, douches! O pressoirs
> > Des vendanges des grands soirs!
> > Layettes aux abois,
> > Thyrses au fond des bois!
> > Transfusions, represailles,
> > Relevailles, compresses et l'eternal potion,
> > Angelus! n'en pouvoir plus
> > De de'bacles nuptiales! de debacles nuptiales!
> > The same poet could write also simply:
> > Wile est bien loin, elle pleure,
> > Le grand vent se lamente aussi . .
> > Jules Laforgue, and Tristan Corbiere in many of his poems,
> > are nearer
> > to the 'school of Donne' than any modern English poet. But
> > poets more
> > classical than they have the same essential quality of
> > transmuting
> > ideas into sensations, of transforming an observation into
> > a state of
> > mind.
> > Pour l'enfant, amoureux de cartes et d'estampes,
> > L'univers est egal a son vaste appetit.
> > Ah, que le monde est grand a la clarte des lampes!
> > Aux yeux du souvenir que le monde est petit!
> > In French literature the great master of the seventeenth
> > century
> > Racine - and the great master of the nineteenth -
> > Baudelaire - are in
> > some ways more like each other than they are like anyone
> > else. The
> > greatest two masters of diction are also the greatest two
> > psychologists, the most curious explorers of the soul. It is
> > interesting to speculate whether it is not a misfortune
> > that two of
> > the greatest masters of diction in our language, Milton and
> > Dryden,
> > triumph with a dazzling disregard of the soul. If we
> > continued to
> > produce Miltons and Drydens it might not so much matter,
> > but as
> > things are it is a pity that English poetry has remained so
> > incomplete. Those who object to the 'artificiality' of
> > Milton or
> > Dryden sometimes tell us to 'look into our hearts and
> > write'. But
> > that is not looking deep enough; Racine or Donne looked
> > into a good
> > deal more than the heart. One must look into the cerebral
> > cortex, the
> > nervous system, and the digestive tracts.May we not
> > conclude, then,
> > that Donne, Crashaw, Vaughan, Herbert and Lord Herbert,
> > Marvell,
> > King, Cowley at his best, are in the direct current of
> > English
> > poetry, and that their faults should be reprimanded by this
> > standard
> > rather than coddled by antiquarian affection ? They have
> > been enough
> > praised in terms which are implicit limitations because they
> > are 'metaphysical' or 'witty', 'quaint' or 'obscure',
> > though at their
> > best they have not these attributes more than other serious
> > poets. On
> > the other hand we must not reject the criticism of Johnson
> > (a
> > dangerous person to disagree with) without having mastered
> > it,
> > without having assimilated the Johnsonian canons of taste.
> > In reading
> > the celebrated passage in his essay on Cowley we must
> > remember that
> > by wit he clearly means something more serious than we
> > usually mean
> > today; in his criticism of their versification we must
> > remember in
> > what a narrow discipline he was trained, but also how well
> > trained;
> > we must remember that Johnson tortures chiefly the chief
> > offenders,
> > Cowley and Cleveland. It would be a fruitful work, and one
> > requiring
> > a substantial book, to break up the classification of
> > Johnson (for
> > there has been none since) and exhibit these poets in all
> > their
> > difference of kind and of degree, from the massive music of
> > Donne to
> > the faint, pleasing tinkle of Aurelian Townshend -
> > whose "Dialogue
> > between a Pilgrim and Time" is one of the few regrettable
> > omissions
> > from the excellent anthology of Professor Grierson.
> >
> > The term "Metaphysical Poet" was first coined by the critic
> > Samuel
> > Johnson (1709-1784) and he used it as a disparaging term.
> > Earlier,
> > John Dryden had also been critical of the group of poets he
> > grouped
> > together as too proud of their wit. Johnson and Dryden
> > valued the
> > clarity, restraint and shapeliness of the poets of Augustan
> > Rome
> > (which is why some 18th century poets are
> > called "Augustan," and
> > therefore were antagonistic towards poets of the mid-17th
> > century.
> > The Metaphysicals were out of critical favor for the 18th
> > and 19th
> > centuries (obviously, the Romantic poets found little in
> > this heavily
> > intellectualized poetry). At the end of the 19th century
> > and in the
> > beginning of the 20th century, interest in this group
> > picked up, and
> > especially important was T.S. Eliot's famous essay "The
> > Metaphysical
> > Poets" (1921). Interest peaked this century with the New
> > Critics
> > school around mid-century, and now is tempering off a bit,
> > though
> > Donne, the original "Big Name" is being superceded now by
> > interest
> > in George Herbert, who's religious seeking and questioning
> > seems to
> > be hitting a critical nerve
> Outstanding history................