Игорь ШАЙТАНОВ

Семинар по поэзии метафизиков (№1)

1. Прочитать весь материал, приложенный ниже (о поэзии метафизиков, статья И.О.Шайтанова)

2. Найти лирику Дж.Донна на английском и русском языках, выбрать 3-4 стихотворения для прочтения

3. Прочитать и перевести два стихотворения Герберта. Сделать разбор (устно)

Metaphysical Poetry

The term metaphysical was applied to a style of 17^th Century poetry first by John Dryden and later by Dr.Samuel Johnson because of the highly intellectual and often abstruse imagery involved.

Chief among the methaphysical poets are John Donne, George Herbert, Richard Crashaw, Andrew Marvell, and Henry Vaughan. While their poetry is widely varied (the metaphysicals are not a thematic school), there are some common characteristics:

1. Argumentative structure. The poem often engages in a debate, an urgent or heated argument with a reluctant mistress, or an intruding friend, or God, or death, or with himself; the poem is an intellectual exercise as well as or instead of an emotional effusion.

· You must sit down”, says Love, “and taste my meat”

So I did sit and eat… (Herbert “Love bade me welcome”)

· Batter my heart, three-personed God…(Donne)

2. Dramatic and colloquial mode of utterance. The poem often describes a dramatic event rather than being a thought or contemplation. Diction is simple and usually direct. The verse is occasionally rough, like speech, rather than written in perfect meter, resulting in a dominance of thought over form.

· Busy old fool, unruly sun,

Why dost thou thus

Through windows and through curtains

Call on us? (Donne)

· For God’sake hold your toungue, and let me love… (Donne)

3. Acute realism. The poem often reveals a psychological analysis; images advance the argument rather than being ornamental. There is a learned style of thinking and writing; the poetry is often highly intellectual. Poets are often realistic, ironic, and sometimes cynical in their treatment of the complexity of human motives.

· This not all spirit, pure, and brave,

If mixture it of fear, shame, honour, have… (Donne “The Dream”)

4. Metaphysical conceit. The poem contains unexpected, even striking or shocking analogies, offering elaborate parallels between apparently dissimilar things, a kind of discordia concors. The analogies are drawn from widely varied fields of knowledge, not limited to traditional sources in nature or art. Analogies from science, alchemy, esotericism, mechanics, housekeeping, business, philosophy, astronomy, etc. are common. These conceits reveal a play of intellect, often resulting in puns, paradoxes and humorous comparisons. Unlike other poetry where the metaphors usually remain in the background, here the metaphors sometimes take over the poem and control it.

· ( on Saint Mary Magdalene’s tearful eyes)

… two faithful fountains

Two walking baths, two weeping motions,

Portable and compendious oceans… (Crashaw)

· My comforts drop and melt away like snow:

I shake my head, and all the thought and ends,

Which my fierce youth did bandy, fall and flow

Like leaves about me: like summer friends,

Flies of estates and sunshine… (Herbert, “The Answer”)

· Go and catch a falling star,

Get with child a mandrake root… (Donne)

· Dear, beautious death! The Jewel of the Just,

Shining nowhere, but in the dark… ( Vaughan)

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