IS JOHN DONNE A METAPHYSICAL POET ?

OR
DOES DONNES POETRY AFFECT THE METAPHYSICS?
The age of Donne was an age of transition, standing midway between the age of
Shakespeare and the Jacobean age(1572_1631). Many changes in the political, social and
economic domains were being effected. Colonial expansion and increase in industry and
trade made people materialistic. The discovery of the physical world was another aspect
of this age. Donne was intensely interested in the extension of the limits and the
knowledge of the physical world. In his age , we find tension between the old and the
new and the same is said in his poetry. A wave of romance swept the minds of creative
writers . Donnes revolt against the sweetness and harshness of Elizabethan verse is
illustrated by the ruggedness and dissonance of his lines. His poetry is colloquial(not
conventional) and more like the human speech. He gave new form and validity to
Elizabethan conceits. Metaphysical poetry is generally divided into two classes:( i ) Love
poetry and ( ii )Religious poetry. Donne wrote love poems as did Carew, Suckling and
Lovelace .He also wrote Religious poems as did Herbert, Crashaw, Vaughan and
Cowley.
Donnes love poetry , a revolt against the conventional romanticism of
Elizabethan love poetry, was termed as metaphysical poetry and he was termed as a
metaphysical poet both by Dryden and Samuel Johnson. This title has been
conferred on him because of his sudden flights from the material to the spiritual
sphere and also because of his obscurity which is occasionally baffling. His stuff
abounds in wit and conceits. Conceits are the very soul and stuff of his poetic diction.
The term metaphysical was applied to them as in their poetry there is the habit of always
seeking to express something after, Something behind the simple, obvious first sense and
suggestion of a subject. Moreover, he is said metaphysical because his style is
overwhelmed with obscure philosophical allusions and subtle and abstract references to
science and religion. It is he , who set a fashion for metaphysical conceits and influenced
a number of contemporary poets like Crashaw and Cowley. It is right to say that he
represents very well the school of poetry called metaphysical. Besides, he is a
metaphysical poet in the literal sense also( meta= beyond , physical=physical nature).
Some of his poems are philosophical and reflective, and they deal with concerns of the
spirit and soul. And he is a metaphysical poet.
The very first characteristic of metaphysical poetry is the use of wit and intellect
in poetry. Dr. Johnson said that metaphysical poets displayed an abundance of wit in
their poems. He (Dr. Johnson) describes the wit of Donne as a combination of dissimilar
images, or a discovery of occult resemblances in things apparently unlike. Donne has
been called a wit by several criticsColeridge, Pope and Dr. Johnson. Donnes
wit manifests itself in argumentation and ratiocination present in the poems. The
paradoxical style of some of his poems also reflect Donnes wit, specially so in the
HOLY SONNET , BATTER MY HEART. Almost all his poems are strew with brilliant
witty lines. Donnes wit surprises us with its intellectual vigour and agility. Undoubtedly
he can be said the Monarch of Wit. This quality makes him a metaphysical poet.
Secondly,we find in his poems the blend of passion and thought, feeling and
ratiocination. So, emotional intellectuality is a characteristic of metaphysical verse. He
mixes fact and fancy in a manner which astounds us. The passions in his poems are
inextricably fused with thought. In some of his poems he uses arguments to prove the
experience of love. For example, in his poem The Good Morrow, the intellectual
images arise from an emotional situation so intricately woven with thought, as expressed
in the very first line:
I wonder by my troth what thou, and I
Did, till we loved?
Step by step, point by point, the poet succeeds in establishing his point of view. The poem
illustrates the tight fusion of feeling and ratiocination. A great many poems of Donne
have this quality of emotional intellectuality. This quality makes his poetry
metaphysical.
The use of conceit is an ingredient which gives a special character to Donnes
metaphysical poetry. Some of these conceits are, indeed, far-fetched, divorced from
reality, bewildering, and intriguing. Dr. Johnson has referred to some of the conceits of
this category. Many of his poems have such far-fetched conceits. The most exceedingly
hyperbolic conceit has been used in his poem A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning
where there is the comparison of a man that travels, and his wife that stays at home , to a
pair of compasses.
In addition to ingenious, fanciful, hyperbolic, fantastic and ridiculous conceits
which are a characteristic feature of his poetry, he also makes use of paradoxical
statements in his poems frequently. Many of his poems contain paradoxical statements. In
The Legacy the lover becomes his own executer and legacy. In Twicknham
Garden the very truth of the beloved kills the poet. The Apparition, The
Indifferent and The Prohibition also contain paradoxical statements.
Donne deserves the title metaphysical also because of his obscurity which is
sometimes terrible. There are many passages in his verse which baffle the reader. The
poem Air and Angels is known for its unintelligibility. In this sense, we can say him
like Browning because the very difficulty in reading him has counted for something in
his success because it became a point of vanity to be subtle enough to apprehend his
subtlety, to have enough mental agility to follow his somersaults.
To conclude, we can say that all the important characteristics that are the very
essence of metaphysical poetry are present in Donnes poetry. He is rightly said to be the
head of metaphysical school of poetry. After careful reading of his Love and Divine
poems, we come to know the metaphysical nature of his poetry. Thus he is a metaphysical
poet and we favour Dr. Johnson when he describes the metaphysical poetry of Donne and
of his followers as the most heterogeneous ideas yoked together. Donnes poetry
displays an abundance of wit with the help of ingenious, fanciful, hyperbolic, fantastic
and ridiculous conceits. Moreover, the paradoxical statements are also frequently met
with in Donnes poems. Thus he is a metaphysical poet in the true sense of the word.