【Abstract】John Donne’s poem is full of metaphysical conceit. Based on one of Donne’s most typical poems: A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning, this paper tries to explain Donne’s conceit by using Shklovsky’s theory of defamiliarization and analyze the characteristics of John Donne.
　　【Key words】John Donne;Forbidding Mourning, metaphysical conceit, defamiliarization
　　【中图分类号】I106.4【文献标识码】A【文章编号】1001-4128(2011)02-0059-02
　　
　　作者简介：徐定喜(1977.11-)，男，云南宣威人，英语语言文学硕士，云南红河学院外语学院讲师，研究方向为英美文学。
　　I Understanding of the Poem
　　The title A valediction: Forbidden Mourning, perhaps it seems a little strange for a reader. A valediction is a speech or statement made as a farewell; “Forbidding Mourning” here shows a slight tragedy color, probably asking his lover not to be sad or mourn for his leaving for his love for her would never change.
　　To have a complete understanding of this poem, we must have some knowledge about John Donne and his poetry. Donne’s poems give a more inherently theatrical impression by exhibiting a seemingly unfocused diversity of experiences and attitudes, and a free range of feelings and attitudes, a free range of feelings and moods. The mode is dynamic rather than static, with ingenuity of speech, vividness of imagery and vitality of rhythms, which show a notable contrast to the other Elizabethan lyric poems, which are pure, serene, tuneful and smooth running. The most striking feather of Donne’s poetry is precisely its tang of reality, in the sense that it seems to reflect life in a real rather than a poetical world.
　　This poem is composed of 9 quatrains with each owns rhythm, using a four-beat, iambic tetrameter line; the rhyme scheme for each stanza is an alternate a-b-a-b, and each stanza is grammatically self-contained.
　　The first stanza “As Virtuous men pass mildly away”, when the old, virtuous, high-respected men die, God gently urges their souls, their spirit to go; their friends look this differently. Here Donne shows the metaphysical idea: Their Love (he and his wife) is combined as one just like soul and body is combined in a person, it is impossible to separate them apart from soul though the body may decease. The metaphorical usage their souls refer to their love. It is interesting that this kind of common feelings as love, fear, death, and even jealousy are expressed in such a way that seems holy and difficult and strange, but it is of the typical feature of John Donne.
　　In the next stanza, “let us melt” means let our love combined as one, let our souls melt together; and “tear-floods” means tears drop like floods; it is a kind of exaggerated expression. Donne asks his wife don’t cry, don’t sign, and don’t let others hear “us” in case they profane our love; for they are laity, they are laypeople, they don’t understand what true love is. The word “ twere” means “it were”, usually used for the subjunctive mood. Thus their love seems different from others. But is there any difference really? I don’t think so, but here the expressions make their love sound so innocent and pure and holy. The power of language shows here! This is really Poetry, or we can say literariness.
　　“Moving of th’earth” means the earthquake; when earthquake happens, it does bring harm and fears to people, and people try to explain the reason; but other planets quake, they do no harm but only stir fear among people. Here he compares their love to the spheres (the other planets except the earth); the laity cannot understand our love as they do to the spheres’ quake. At Donne time, people thought that Earth was the very center of the universe; false as it is, yet we can feel Donne’s broad sense of knowledge. What seems strange here is the relationship between love and Earth or the moving of Earth. Is there any relationship between them? Donne’s imagination is so powerful that he could bind them together. The earthly lover’s love in essence is just senses, they can only use their senses to love; when being away they cannot bear, cannot stand their separation; but we can feel each other from our soul. In ordinary people’s eyes, the separation of lover means they can’t feel and can’t touch each other, and with the separation, their love would reduce. But for Donne, he treated their love sacred and not the same as others’. Here we should understand that there is no difference between their love and others’, but he used the idea to comfort his wife. This is also a kind of metaphorical usage, and also a metaphysical idea.
　　Stanza 5 is closely related to stanza 4, by using the link word but, he shows that their love is not an earthly one, but refined and interwoven together as each of us will not know exactly what is it; therefore they don’t care much about the sense’s touching as eye contact, lips touching and hands holding, etc…. Therefore, though “I” must go away from you, “I” will not endure the break of our love, for it expands like a piece of gold, thin as it is, it will never break. The word “ayery” is airy, means extremely thin. Here Donne uses gold as a simile or metaphor to refer to love; however, it is not exactly simile or metaphor, it is the metaphysical conceit. And we can feel that Donne and his wife have come to a kind of spiritual harmony, as if they have a soul contract that binds them together. Maybe Donne favors a Plato’s spiritual love; common people couldn’t bear this kind of departure. However, in Donne’s case this kind of love is the supreme one. And if the souls of two lovers must be two, they are two in such a way that as stiff as the two legs of a compass, your soul is just like the fixed foot of the compass that do not move, and mine another; but if yours move, and mine will move around you. This means I will put my love (my soul) into you and will never change my love for you. The metaphysical metaphor of love to compass is impressive. And though it sits in the centre, here he uses the word sit rather than sits; it shows a concessive clause, yet one part of the compass moves afar, the other part leans with it; and when it goes erect, the other comes near; that their love will live with their concern about each other. The compass gives us a concept of a round, and this reminds us of the science-mainly physics at that time-the idea that universe was mainly consisted of “rounds”: Earth was round and the very center of the universe, and other planets were round too, they turned around the earth. As a further understanding of this poem, we should know that a round has a center; here Donne compared his wife to the very center, and him the round; though how far he went, he would come to her at last. The conceit here is the most imposing one in this poem.
　　In the last stanza, Donne gave promise to his wife, ensuring her that he will be back like the other side of the compass will come to the center. “Such will be you to me, though I must go away from you at present, I will be back like the other part of the compass when one part runs obliquely.”
　　II The idea behind the poem
　　If just make a close reading of this poem as above, it is not enough to get the full understanding of its true meaning; the background contributes to the understanding of it. Donne’s contemporary, the English writer Isaac Walton, tells us the poem dates from 1611, when Donne, about to travel to France and Germany, wrote for his wife this valediction, or farewell speech when she was pregnant. At that time her health was so weak that his leave seems a farewell.
　　The characteristic of metaphysical poems is that they combine intellectual subtlety with great emotional power. In this one, we see that Donne have a broad knowledge of science and art, and it expresses an intense awareness of common human feelings - love, though his concept of the universe is false. He made expert use of such poetic techniques as the paradox, a statement that seems contradictory but actually contains truth, and the conceit, a pertinent comparison between two apparently dissimilar things. Love is the basic theme. Donne holds that the nature of love is the union of soul and body, and the operations of the soul depend on the body, as in this poem.
　　A poet thinks by means of images. Images in this poem are everywhere, such as virtuous men, heavenly bodies, airy thin gold, twin compass, etc. Images can not only be just visual ones, but also can be audible, touchable, and even sensible ones. As Ezra Pound says that “an image is that which presents an intellectual and emotional complex in an instant of time”, the images in this metaphysical poetry cause some difficulty in understanding for abundant superposition of them for Donne juxtaposes these irrelevant images, twisting them together. They are fabulous and too philosophical for common reader, yet they convey the ideas to the fullest degree. This calls for the full understanding of the allusions and the metaphysical ideas.
　　The image of the airy thinness of gold vividly conveys the meaning of the author’s love for his wife; his love is as gold expands but never break. This combines metaphor and simile but not the same, creating a fresh impression. And more imposingly, the image of the compass has nothing pleasure to the mind but it does give the effect of consistency. And this is the characteristic of metaphysical poetry. Other images in this poetry also contribute to the understanding of the poetry, for example, the image of Death, Earth and so on. Image in poetry is the most important thing, for a poet, an artist cannot only explain the abstract idea. If so, he falls into a didactic way, making what he says blunt and dull. Image makes what he wants to say concrete and vivid, and a reader can feel through this kind of image. When a reader reads, he rebuilds the author’s idea through these images, and forms his own understanding according to his experiences, thus he can feel what the author feels. For example, though the image of death in this poem is unpleasant, it acts as a metaphor for his impending departure on the journey that would take him away from his wife for a period of time. When she read it, she would understand his departure though this image, not scolding his leaving. Also, the image of gold and compass would give her some comfort that he would be back, thus suffered so little by his departure. No images could be better than these ones.
　　There is a metaphysical conceit in metaphysical poetry. A conceit is a combination of thoughts or images that are not usually associated with one another. The term “metaphysical poetry” is used to describe a certain type of 17th century poetry. The term was originally intended to be derogatory; Dryden, who said Donne “affects the metaphysics,” was criticizing Donne for being too arcane. Samuel Johnson later used the term “metaphysical poetry” to describe the specific poetic method used by poets like Donne. Metaphysical poets are generally in rebellion against the highly conventional imagery of the Elizabethan lyric. The poems tend to be intellectually complex, and (according to the Holman Handbook), “express honestly, if unconventionally, the poet’s sense of the complexities and contradictions of life.” The verse often sounds rough in comparison to the smooth conventions of other poets; Ben Jonson once said that John Donne “deserved hanging” for the way he ran roughshod over conventional rhythms. The result is that these poems often lack lyric smoothness, but they instead use a rugged irregular movement that seems to suit the content of the poems. The metaphysical poets exploited all knowledge - commonplace or esoteric, practical, theological, or philosophical, true or fabulous - for the vehicles of these figures; and their comparison, whether succinct or expanded, were often novel and witty, and at their best startling effective.
　　Let’s have a detailed look of these metaphysical conceits in the poem. At first, he uses the virtuous men’s passing away and the God’s whispering their souls to go as a comparison to his leave; this, of course is not conventional usage; but it does create a kind of striking and imposing effect on the readers. And in stanza 3, a philosophical conception of the universe appears in “the trepidation of the spheres”. According to Ptolemy’s astronomy, all heavenly bodies revolve around the earth; Earth is the centre of the universe. In the poem, the author compares earthquake with other heavenly bodies’ shaking, and says that their quaking is far from the earth, though causing fear but no harm. And he compares the love between him and his wife to the quaking of other spheres. Others cannot understand this kind of lofty and mysterious love. In stanza 6 and 7, the metaphysical idea shows even clearer. He compares their love to a very thin piece of gold which can expand but never break, and to a stiff twin compass which two feet will never separate. The imagery is drawn from the actual life. The form is frequently that of an argument with the poet’s beloved, with God, or with himself.
　　III The theoretical foundation
　　The conventional usage of images or symbols is somewhat intuitive, and the poets express their feeling plainly; reacting against the deliberately smooth and sweet tones of much 16th century verses, the metaphysical poets adopted a style that is energetic, uneven, and rigorous. Here we should know the general laws of perception: “…as perception becomes habitual, it becomes automatic…”says Shklovsky, a Russian formalist this in Art as Technique. Maybe Donne and other metaphysical poets felt that the verses at that time were in the state of “automatization”, and they tried to find other ways to keep their poetry poetic. What causes a piece of work literary then? Shklovsky argued that literature differs from non-literature for a quality called “literariness”, and other formalists used the concept of “defamiliarization” or “foregrounding” to achieve the literariness. As in this poem, the unconventional usage of the images makes what we are familiar before greatly defamiliarized, making new the plain language used in verses at that time. Donne expressed his feeling (his love for his wife to be more exactly) “impersonally” by using different mixed styles and combined impressions and experiences in a peculiar and unexpected way, thus he defamiliaried the language. The habitation “explains the principles by which, in ordinary speech, we leave phrases unfinished and words half expressed.” But “art exists that one may recover the sensation of life, it exists to make one feel things, to make the stone stony.” (Shklovsky)So we can say that defamiliarization here in this poem does make this poetry “strange” to us, gives us a fresh way of feeling the common things as not common as we see. A poet, an artist feels or thinks differently from other people, making common things uncommon, and this is the essence of art!
　　Also, there is the question of Allusion, Tension and Irony, etc. in a poetry. An allusion is an indirect reference to someone or something, usually historical one. It can make a poem compact and implicit, also adding to the fun of a poem. But it needs a reader much effort to understand it. If he can’t get the allusion, he cannot enjoy the beauty of the poem fully. As in this poem, there isn’t much allusion in it. Tension is a very important aspect of a poem. It is a term called by the American New Critics, a “simple poetic principle” to illustrate the “universal character” of poetry or “poeticity” which would come close to the Formalist concept of “literariness”; it comes from the “furthest extremes of the intension and extension”. The tension in this poem comes from between the concrete, vivid images and the strong feeling of love. As we discussed before, the images suggest his unchanged love, so the tension comes out of it. As irony, it is not so strong in this love poem.
　　References
　　[1] Abrams, M.H. A Glossary of Literary Terms. 7th ed. Beijing: Foreign Languages Teaching and Research Press, 2004
　　[2] Zhu Gang. Twentieth Century Western Critical Theories. Shanghai: Shanghai Foreign Language Education Press, 2004