Q. Examine Donne’s ‘A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning’as an example of Metaphysical poetry.
Or
What is Metaphysical Poetry? Examine Donne’s ‘A Valediction : Forbidding Mourning’as an example of Metaphysical Poetry.
Metaphysical Poetry
Ans. John Donne is said to be the originator of a new school of poetry
called ‘Metaphysical poetry‘. This term was first used by Dr. Johnson, who found his poetry to be difficult and unnatural because of his use of far-fetched conceits.
The poem ‘A Valediction : Forbidding Mourning’is not only passionate but also highly intellectual in tone. The poet has used far-fetched ideas, similitudes and images to convey his ideas about true love. In this beautiful love poem Donne has beautifully blended passion, imagination and argument. The poetry of Donne often suffers from obscurity because of his use of dissimilar ideas without trying to unite them. In this poem Donne has used a number of conceits and images. He has compared their separation or parting as a kind of death. The extension of their love without affecting their relationship is compared to gold beaten to airy thinness. But the most unconventional image that he has used to describe their relationship is to compare themselves to a pair of compass. Donne has also used hyperbole in this poem. He asks his wife not to lament their separation and tells her not to shed tears which would cause floods or heave sighs which would raise ‘tempests’.
To conclude it can be rightly said that the poem ‘A Valediction : Forbidding Mourning’ has all the characteristics of Metaphysical poetry like unified sensibility, obscurity, and far fetched conceits.
The Metaphysical Poetry was regarded as interesting but perversely ingenious and obscure marked with eccentricity until it was re-evaluated given an astonishing revaluation after the first World War. T.S. Eliot remarks. “If Donne, in youth was rake then I suspect that he was a conventional rake; if Donne in age was about then I suspect that he was conventionally evout”. Grierson, Eliot and the New Critics tended to elevate the Metaphysical style into the very model of the poetry of a “unified sensibility”. The Metaphysical poets have greatly influenced the poetry of the twentieth century.
John Donne is the pioneer of the Metaphysical style. His poems present abundant proof for their being Metaphysical in nature and Valediction : Forbidding Mourning is not an exception. All the characteristics of Metaphysical Poetry can be obviously illustrated from this poem.
There are novel thoughts and expression in A Valediction : Forbidding
Mourning. We find singular, or remote, or special, or startling thoughts in this poem. The departure of the lover (poet) is contrasted with the departure of soul from body. The lover wants to depart.
“As virtuous men pass mild by away,
And whisper to their souls, to go”,
We are also astonished when the lover forbids his beloved to morn his absence. Poet’s offer to “make no noise, no tear-floods, nor sigh-tempests move”. This quality is also obvious when the poet presents
his notion that ordinary lovers views the separation as an earth-quake which is harmful and fearful but great loves do not damage their love like the trepidation of heavenly bodies create no horror.
“Moving of th’ earth brings harms and fears,
Men reckon what it did and meant,
But trepidatin of the spheres
Though greater for, is innocent”.
The imagery used in the above stanza becomes odd and remote as far as the thought herein is concerned.
The lover-poet neglects the value of physical, sensuous and sexual relation in love. Though he does this for very purpose to show his intense feeling of love for his beloved and to console her, he becomes extra-ordinary. This also startles the readers.
Important links
John Donne as a Metaphysical Poet
Shakespeare’s Sonnet 116: (explained in hindi)
What is poetry? What are its main characteristics?
Debate- Meaning, Advantage & Limitations of Debate
Sarojini Naidu (1879-1949) Biography, Quotes, & Poem Indian Weavers
Charles Mackay: Poems Sympathy, summary & Quotes – Biography
William Shakespeare – Quotes, Plays & Wife – Biography
Ralph Waldo Emerson – Poems, Quotes & Books- Biography
What is a lyric and what are its main forms?
