JOHN DONNE (1572-1631)

HISTORICAL BACKGROUND

John Donne lived in the Elizabethan Age as well as the Puritan Age. He has seen the rise of Puritan Movement and James I coming to the Throne. It was his age, when the Gunpowder Plot (1605) was organised by Elizabethans to blow the Royal Personas. The theory of Machiavelli was misunderstood and under its impact the hero turned villain. By the breakdown of Medieval Ideas, the Earth no longer remained the center of the universe, the sun was no longer supposed to move round it. Logic, rhetoric and theology bacame the main subjects of study. Satire and Realism were emphasized. Classical mythology was exploited for decoration and imagery. The development of new ideas and style developed and the poets rejected the over poetised and conventional vocabulary. In this age of tention, strain and great stress, the satir and criticism became the prominent features of literature.

THE METAPHYSICAL SCHOOL

Though William Drummond coined the term “Metaphysical”, but it was John Dryden, who first used the word “Metaphysics” in his Discourse of Satire (1693), that John Donne in his poetry “affects the metaphysics”. Dr. Samual Johnson coined and extended the term “Metaphysical” from Donne to a school of poets in his “Life of Cowley (1779)” saying that “Cowley belongs to the metaphysical school of John Donne.” The term implies dry reasoning, a speculation of nature and the process of life and death. It was not popular till H.J.C. Grierson wrote an essay, “Introduction to Metaphysical Lyrics and Poems of Seventeenth Century (1912)” and T.S. Eliot’s critical essay “The Metaphysical Poets”.

Metaphysics in poetry is the fruit of Renaissance tree becoming overripe and approaching putrescence. Literally ‘Meta’ means “beyond” and ‘physics’ means “physical nature”.

The Metaphysical poetry has the following chief features:-

• It is characterised by subtle and complex thoughts.
• Use of far fetched imagery.
• It has mostly the abrupt opening.
• It employs conceits and paradoxes.
• It shows the vast intellectual knowledge.
• It uses the dissociated sensibility or the unification of sensibility.
• Mostly, the theme is realistic, ironic and cynical.
• Use of rough idioms.
• Use of colloquial language or tone of living voices.
• Pedanticism ( parade / boastful show of knowledge ).
• Use of rhetorical devices.

John Donne is the leading poet or the pioneer of the Metaphysical School of Poetry. Presenting far fetched imagery, vast learning, paradoxes, conceits and intellectualised emotions make the potry more complicated for a common reader. The Metaphysical Poets played with the thoughts not with the words. They dictated their true thoughts without caring about the diction. As Johnson says,”They were Men of learning and to show their learning was their whole endeavour.” George Herbert, Thomas Carew, Richard Crashaw, Henry Vaughan, Cleveland, Andrew Marvell and Abraham Cowley are some other metaphysical poets of 17th century.

LIFE AND CAREER OF JOHN DONNE

John Donne was born in 1572, in London, he started writing in 1590’s, lived through Jacobean Age ( the reign of James I, 1603-1625 ) . Thus he is the connecting link between the Elizabethan Age and the Puritan Age. He was a Roman Catholic and in those days Catholics were subject to severe persecution. He studied law at Lincoln’s Inn. He studied hard in the morning and led a Bohemian life in the evening. In 1593, Henry Donne (his only brother) died in prison having been committed for sheltering a priest.

In 1598, he became secretary to Lord Egerton, fell in love with Egerton’s niece, Ann More, eloped and married her (1601). For this he was sent to prison. Despite of his scholar education and poetic talent, he lived in poverty for some years. Later Sir George More forgave the couple and settled a handsome allounce to her daughter. In 1615, he was ordained priest, Doctor of Divinity, Cambridge. He served as the Dean of St. Paul’s Cathedral from 1621 to death.

Donne died on March 31, 1631 and was buried in Old St Paul’s Cathedral, where stands a memorial statue erected by Nicholas Stone with a Latin epigraph.

NOTABLE WORKS

Most of his works were preserved in manuscript copies (handwritten) and passed on by his admirers. Anniversaries (1611-12) were written in the remembrance of Elizabeth Drury, the 14 year daughter of his patron, Sir Robert Drury. His works were published after his death by his son. “The Holly Sonnets” or “The Divine Meditation” or “Divine Poems”, a collection of 19 poems was published in 1633. His prose work “Devotions”, an essay of twenty three groups of essays, each with a different meditation was widely read.

The famous Poems are as follows:

• The Flea : Donne couldn’t kill the flea that sucked his and his mistress’ blood, because the blood is mingled now and therefore flea is now like their progeny. Hyperbole and Conceit overused by Donne.
• The Good Morrow
• Death be not proud (Holly Sonnet)
• The Canonization
• A Valediction : Forbidding Mourning (Known for the Conceit of Compass)
• Batter My Heart, Three Personed God
• On His Mistress (elegy)
• To His Mistress Going to bed (elegy)
• The Extasie
• The Sunne Rising

DONNE AS A METAPHYSICAL POET

John Donne is the founder of Metaphysical poetry. His works are noted for their strong and sensual style. His use of imagery, extended metaphors and elaborate conceits make him a revolutionary poet. His poetry seems to be a reaction to the classical Elizabethan poetry. His treatment of love, sex and use of unconventional and colloquial rhymes and tone was highly contrary to the classical poetry.

John Donne uses scholarly allusions. His knowledge is not limited or pin pointed, there are many references from mythology, philosophy, scientific researches and adventurous journeys. In “A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning”, true lovers, now parted are likened to the legs of compass, they are apart but still as the head unites them, they are spiritually one. The bedroom of lovers is compared to the whole world. Similarly, in Flea, the flea sucks his and his mistress’ blood and he will not let her kill the creature in which their blood is mingled, and therefore is the bridal bed, “the temple of their wedding”, his conceits and metaphors are fantastic. Most of his poetry begins with abrupt and colloquial opening.

Concluding, we can say that John Donne is the master of metaphysics, colloquial language, conceits, metaphors, sensibility, versification of language.

GO AND CATCH A FALLING STAR

TEXT

Go and catch a falling star, 
       Get with child a mandrake root,
Tell me where all past years are,
       Or who cleft the devil's foot,
Teach me to hear mermaids singing,
       Or to keep off envy's stinging,
            And find 
           What wind
Serves to advance an honest mind.

If thou be'st born to strange sights,
    Things invisible to see,
Ride ten thousand days and nights,
    Till age snow white hairs on thee,
Thou, when thou return'st, wilt tell me,
All strange wonders that befell thee,
            And swear,
            No where
Lives a woman true, and fair.

If thou find'st one, let me know,
    Such a pilgrimage were sweet;
Yet do not, I would not go,
    Though at next door we might meet;
Though she were true, when you met her,
And last, till you write your letter,
            Yet she
            Will be
False, ere I come, to two, or three.

INTRODUCTION

There is no idea about the poem’s date of composition. It was published after two years of the death of John Donne in his collection “Songs and Sonnets (1633)”. It was named as a Song, generally to read loud or sing. As Donne’s lyrics are misogynistic in nature, the poem “Go and catch a falling star” satirises women’s infidelity and inconstancy. According to Donne a combo of Beautyful and True woman is impossible and he compares the possibility of such woman with several impossible tasks.

THEME OF THE POEM

The theme of the poem “Go and catch a falling star” is women’s inconstancy which finds an ironical-satirical treatment. The central idea the poem revolves around is the infidelity, inconstancy, disloyalty, faithlessness, fickle mindedness of woman. The poem reminds us the famous quote by Shakespeare’s Hamlet,” Frailty, thy name is woman”. By the series of impossible tasks in the beginning of the poem, Donne plays a psychological game with his reader, conditioning his mentality to impossibility and finally, in stanza two, asserts the main idea he wants to convey . The tone of the poem is cynical, light hearted, humorous and frivolous. The language is colloquial.

VOCABULARY

• Mandrake : a plant with forked roots, used for medical purposes (anesthesia)
• Cleft : past participle of ‘cleave’, to split or to divide
• Mermaids : a mythological creature (generally in stories) with the upper half of a woman and lower half of a fish.
• Envy : jealousy
• Wilt : archaic form of ‘will’
• Befell : happened
• Pilgrimage : a journey to some sacred place
• Ere : archaic form of ‘before’

EXPLANATION

STANZA ONE

The poem opens abruptly and Donne using rhetorical style to persuade or convince the theme of seven impossible tasks in the first stanza, stressed the impossibility of the existence of a true and fair woman. As it is impossible to catch a falling star or meteor. Though the mandrake plants roots are forked and look like humans lower half, yet we can’t beget a child from it, so also one cannot discover a woman who is beautiful as well as faithful to her lover.

A constant woman is as great an impossibility as the telling of where the past years have gone or who clove the Devil’s foot. We have no access to our past. As one cannot teach listening to the mermaids songs, because in mythology these fictional creatures allure the sailors by beauty and voice, and then kill them. So no one who heard their music is alive, who could teach their songs. In the same manner their is no visible or known cause or cure to jealousy, as it is impossible to keep ourselves away from jealousy and as it is impossible to know the reasons that makes a mind/man honest, similarly it is impossible to find a fair and faithful lady.

STANZA TWO

In the second stanza the poet challenges the listener that if he were born with the magical powers to see mysterious and invisible things, and even if he were to go on a journey of ten thousand days and nights, like the Knight in Spenser’s Faerie Queene, till his hairs turn white like snow, than too he will not find a woman who is both beautiful and faithful. Such a quester may see the wonders and adventurous sights but he will swear that nowhere he found a woman with such qualities. The stanza two deals with the theme of the poem.

STANZA THREE

In the third stanza, the satire is at extreme. If the quester tells the poet of a woman who is both ‘fair and true’, the poet would consider her Godess, and to meet her will be like a pilgrimage. But then the poet changes his mood and says that if such a woman even lived next to him, he will not go to her because she might be faithful when you went to her, and she might be true when you write to me, but by the time the letter will arrive and by the time I reach there, she would have cheated two or three lovers. A woman’s constancy is short lived and is not to relied upon. The last lines are exaggerated.

STRUCTURE OF THE POEM

There are three stanzas of nine lines each. The rhyme scheme of the poem sticks to ABABCCDDD, and the meter used is Iambic pentameter with some variations. The first four lines of each stanza have seven syllables, line five and six contain eight syllables, line no seven and eight of each stanza have two syllables (monometer) and the last line of each stanza have variations in number of syllables.

This is a very unusual pattern that works best in reading the poem loud or reciting it. Line number seven and eight in each stanza are very short. This shows the inconsistency of rhythm and meter which best suits the theme “inconstancy of woman” of the poem.

LITERARY DEVICES

1. RHETORICAL TECHNIC : In the first stanza, poet uses this technique persuading the series of impossible tasks and make the reader mind conditioned with the thought of impossibility.
2. FAR FETCHED IMAGERY And SHOW OF KNOWLEDGE : In line one, the poet shows his interest in astronomy with falling star, line two presents Botanical interest by Mandrake root. Line three, carry the Temporal/ chronological, line four and five Mythological and line six and nine shows his knowledge of Psychology and Social study respectively.
3. CONCEIT : Extended metaphors are called conceits. To understand it we need to know the context. In the line, “If thou find’st one, let me know,/Such a pilgrimage were sweet;” the fair and true woman is compared with a Godess.
4. METAPHOR : Metaphor is used in Snow-white, envy’s-sting, falling-star.
5. HYPERBOLE : It is used in the line,”Ride ten thousand days and nights.”
6. EYE RHYME : “Find and Wind” and “Root and Foot” are examples of eye rhyme.
7. HALTING RHYTHM : In the last line of the poem, the continuous commas halt the rhythm of the line.
8. ALLUSIONS : “Falling Star” might be alluding the Lucifer, brightest angel, also known as Satan, who revolted against the God. “Devil” and “Mermaids” are also mythological creatures.