John Donne's Love Poetry

DONNE’S LOVE POETRY -1-

METAPHYSICAL POETRY OF JOHN DONNE DONNE’S LOVE POETRY The variety and scope of Donne’s love poetry is truly remarkable. He oscillates between physical cynicism and faith in love and above all the sanctity and dignity of married life. He is quite original in presenting love situations and moods. Partly they are based on common experiences of his contemporaries and partly on his own experiences. His poems are entirely different from the Elizabethan love-lyrics. He is unconventional and original. His love songs are a blend of sensibility and wit, of joy and scorn, of beauty and repulsion. Another peculiar quality of his love poetry is its metaphysical strain which is evident in his scholasticism, his game of using fantastic conceits, his hyperboles and paradoxes. Donne’s treatment of love is realistic and not idealistic. He knows the weaknesses of the flesh, the pleasures of sex and the joy of secret meetings while Elizabethan love-lyrics are by large imitation of the Petrarchan traditions. Donne’s love poems stand in a class themselves. Donne’s love poems are entirely unconventional. He rather mocks at them. Donne is fully acquainted of the Petrarchan model where woman is an object of beauty, love and perfection. They seldom deal with the joy of love and the deep contentment of mutual passion (the only exception is Shakespeare). There are always pains and sorrows of love, the sorrow of absence, the pain of rejection, the incomparable beauty of the lady, and here unwavering cruelty. But Donne treats such set themes in a different way. His utter realism forces him to give the same importance towards body and soul. He establishes a relationship between body and soul that physical love leads to spiritual love as in “The Extasie”. That is why joy is dominant in his poetry. He gives birth to new kind of love poetry. The love which he portrays is not impassioned, courtly or chivalric, but intellectual love in which art plays a predominant part. There are three distinct strains in his love poetry, cynical, the Platonic and conjugal. Donne analyses the attitudes and moods of love. In his poems with cynical strain, he frequently dwells on the fickleness of women. His song, beginning with go and catch a falling star ends with a bitter mocking and cynicism. Faithful woman does not exist on this earth and if there is, she will prove faithless even before the poet visits her;

Yet she will be false, Ere I come, to two, or three, EASY LEARNING NOTES

BY: MUHAMMD AAMIR SAEED

DONNE’S LOVE POETRY -2-

Then his poem “The Message” also learns the cynical strain which starts with the sentence

“Send home my long strayd eyes to me “. There is no Platonism here but bitter satire against women. Then again he is angry at women’s infidelity when he says that graves also give place to more than person as women share their beds with more than one man ,in “The Relique” The second strain found in Donne’s love poetry is Platonic. In such poems the poet has addressed to the Lady Bedford and Mrs. Herbert. Here Donne adopts the hopeless and adoring pose of Petrarchan. His poems “Twicknam Garden”,”The Funerall”, “The Blossome” and “The Relique” are examples of his poems with Platonic strain. Though women in general are false and faithless, the poet’s sweetheart is an exception.

All measure and all language I should pass, Should I tell what a miracle she was? (The Relique). The third strain in Donne’s love poetry is that of conjugal love. Most of his songs, written after his marriage, contain this strain. The Anniversary was written to celebrate the second anniversary of his wedding. Married life knows no change or decay. It is immortal and must continue even in the grave. Similarly, the song beginning with ‘Sweetest love’ is addressed to his wife when the poet was to undertake foreign travel. He bids farewell to his wife cheerfully, because this separation is temporary. This separation is like a sleep;

“But think that we, Are who but turned aside to sleep” Another poem – “A valediction”; forbidding mourning refers to a temporary separation. The poet compares the journey with the two legs of a compass, one remaining fixed and the other moving to complete the circle. What we can conclude is that Donne’s concept of love is realistic. He accepts that love is a merger of souls but bodies cannot be ignored.

“Love must not be, but take a body too” (Air and Angel) “Loves mysteries in souls doe grow.

EASY LEARNING NOTES

BY: MUHAMMD AAMIR SAEED

DONNE’S LOVE POETRY -3-

But yet the body is his booke”. Extasie)

(The

Donne believes in reciprocated love

“Thou and I Love so alike, That none doe slacken, none can die” Hence reciprocated love which accepts the importance of bodies also is a love for ever.

POINTS TO REMEMBER  The variety and scope of Donne’s love poetry is truly remarkable  His poems are entirely different from the Elizabethan lovelyrics  Donne’s treatment of love is realistic and not idealistic  He gives birth to new kind of love poetry  poems with cynical strain  Poems with Platonic strain  Poems with Conjugal strain.  Conclusion

EASY LEARNING NOTES

BY: MUHAMMD AAMIR SAEED