Marvell Final

Andrew Marvell’s To His Coy Mistress embodies a familiar theme, “one of the great traditional commonplace of European literature” (qtd. in Young 39). It is the theme of  carpe diem, diem, introduced by the ancient Roman poet Quintus Horatius Flaccus: The carpe diem poem, whose label comes from a line of Horace and whose archetype for Renaissance poets was a lyric by Catullus, addresses the conflict of beauty and sensual desire on the one hand and the destructive force of time on the other. (Moldenhauer 190) In Marvell’s poem, the first person narrator tries to convince the mistress that she should enjoy life while she is young because she will not be able to do so later, when she is old or dead. Moreover, in To His Coy Mistress, Mistress, this argument is used to persuade the young lady to make love with the first person narrator. Marvell’s To His Coy  Mistress can be divided into three sections or stanzas, “each strophe […] possessing its own distinctive grammar, imagery, and tone […] and each serving a precise logical function in the carpe diem argument” (Moldenhauer 195). As Moldenhauer has pointed out “[s]tructurally, the poem resembles a syllogism […]” (195) composed by a major   premise (“Had we but”), a minor min or premise (“But”) and a conclusion (“Now therefore”). A syllogism can be defined as “ a form of reasoning in which a conclusion is drawn from two propositions (premises)” (Oxford Dictionary & Thesaurus). It is beyond doubt “[t]hat Marvell’s poem embodies the carpe diem of Horace […] and especially of  Catullus […]“ so Young (39), but as he points out, the question remaining is how this theme is reorganized by “Marvell’s wit” (Young 39). An answer to this question will be given by arguing that, in the poem To His Coy Mistress, Marvell transforms Horace’s carpe diem theme in a logical syllogism. The opening first stanza of  To His Coy Mistress is primarily a pastiche of  Petrarch’s traditional love poetry, in which the lover adores his mistress and sees in her  a muse (Young 41). Marvell’s first argument begins with the words “Had we but” (1), which stand for the conjunction “if”. The first argument is therefore the first premise of  the poem’s syllogism. In this first premise, Marvell’s persona imagines a world in which the mistress and he would have “world enough, and time” (1). In this imagery of  an endless life, the persona would love the mistress “ten years before the flood” (8) and she would love him “Till the conversion of the Jews” (10), both of these dates evoking the end of the world. The Mistress’s demand for Petrarchan love is clearly mocked in the next lines of the poem (13-16) by the exaggerated lengths of time the first person narrator claims he would praise his mistress. The persona mentions here the lady’s eyes, forehead and breast but her remaining charms are reduced to “the rest” (16). In the first 1

stanza of Marvell’s To His Coy Mistress, the persona’s sexual desire is replaced by a “vegetable love” (11). In order to understand the meaning of the “vegetable love”, we must go back to Aristotle. He distinguished three spirits in man’s nature. The highest spirit was the rational spirit, the middle spirit was called the sensitive spirit and the last of the three elements was the vegetative spirit, which the man shared with the plants (Moldenhauer 198). Marvell’s expression of a “vegetable love” has then to be understood as “rudimentary love, something less than human and even less than bestial” (Moldenhauer 198). Thus, in a world of endless time and space, the first person narrator  could love her, praise her and wait for her “Till the conversion of the Jews” (10) and the mistress could preserve her virginity. But the subjunctive grammar of the poem’s first stanza reminds the unreality of this imaginary world. Every verb is in the conditional mood, which makes the persona’s first argument or premise ironic. The rhythm of this first stanza is slow and static, the imaginary world motionless. Marvell’s first argument is therefore an ironical rejection of the timeless life imagined by the persona. The second stanza and argument of To His Coy Mistress, which is introduced by the transitional term “But” in line 21, communicates the direct opposite of the blissful vision of a timeless world projected in the first stanza of the poem. It represents a shift in Marvell’s syllogism. The argument changes from supposition to reality. The second stanza also introduces a change in the verbal mood of the poem from subjunctive to indicative, its rhythm is even slower than in the first stanza. If the persona and his mistress had endless time in the first stanza, here it is time that possesses them (Moldenhauer 199). The speaker hears “Time’s winged chariot hurrying near” (22), a symbol for Apollo’s mythological car representing the passage of the day (Moldenhauer  199). The persona’s “vegetable love” is now reduced to an inert “Desert[s] of vast eternity” (24). In this stanza of the poem, the persona claims that there will be no more  place for love in their grave. Once the lady dies, her beauty “shall no more be found” (25) and she will not be able to hear the speakers “echoing song” (27) anymore. In his second argument the speaker claims that if the mistress waits to long, time and death will come and it will be too late for loving. The mistress’s “quaint honour” (29) is identified with her “marble vault” (26) into which only the worms can enter. The speaker is presenting his mistress a choice between “giv[ing] her virginity to him or  allow it to become worm fodder […]” (Brackett 400). The persona of Marvell’s To His Coy Mistress assumes that only these two possibilities exist.

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In the third stanza of the poem, Marvell’s final argument is so constructed as to leave no other possible conclusion but sexual act as solution for mastering time. Having told her mistress what they could have done under other circumstances and what time will do to them in the future, the persona now tries to convince her of what they can do in the very present. The speaker assumes that the mistress’s “willing soul transpires” (35) and by doing so he attributes passion to her. Thus, as they both feel passion, they should “roll all [their] strength and all / [their] sweetness up into one ball” (41-42). The opening words of this last stanza, “Now therefore” (33) signal a “necessary synthesis or  resolution […]” (Moldenhauer 202) of the argument. The language is seductive, the verbs are now in the present tense and the mood is imperative. As Moldenhauer points out this grammatical change “has a clear psychological purpose […] insofar as the  present tense affords release from the dreamlike conditional of the first strophe and the terrifying future of the second” (202). While in the first two stanzas of the poem the  personal pronouns are singular, in the third stanza the persona uses primarily the first  person plural pronouns “us”, “we” and “our”. This grammatical union represents the erotic union Marvell’s speaker wishes. Here, the verbs are mostly in an active tone and the impression of movement, fusion and life is very strong. The conclusion drawn by the persona is the very devise of the carpe diem theme. As the mistress and he cannot stop time and “make [their] sun / Stand still” (45), as death is inevitable, they have to enjoy the present by acting with passion and “make [the sun] run” (46). Following Brody, “Marvell’s To His Coy Mistress must be read as […] the  parodic deconstruction of a cluster of inherited forms − the lover’s complaint, the  blazon, the carpe diem exercise […]” (74). Marvell’s “triadic progressions” (Brody 53), are embodied in the poem’s three stanzas, in the three conditions of man’s nature (rational, sensitive, vegetable) and in the three stages of the argument. They form a  parallel between “the verbal content and the thematic structure of the poem […]” (Brody 53) and between the three stanzas and the three arguments of the syllogism. In the first twenty lines of the poem, which represent the first stanza and the major premise introduced by the words “Had we but” (1), the subject imagines the possibility of  having enough time and space and tell the Mistress how he would wait for her and love her and that he could take “An hundred years” to look at her eyes and “Two hundred to adore each breast” (13-15). But soon (in the second stanza, the minor premise, which  begins with the transition “But”) the persona hears “[t]imes winged chariot” coming near (21-22) and the fantasy is replaced by the reality of their mortality. The final stanza

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of Marvell’s poem (the conclusion of his syllogism beginning with the words “Now therefore” (33)) represents the very motif of the carpe diem theme as the persona urges the Mistress to make the most of her present existence on earth. Marvell’s poem is not only a carpe diem poem. Much more it transforms the seize the day theme in a logical syllogism with two premises and a conclusion, which seems to be perfectly rational as the final stanza begins with the words “Now therefore” (33) and indicates this way a “necessary […] resolution” (Moldenhauer 202).

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