Introduction:
Donne's love poems were published in Songs and Sonnets after his death in 1663. The volume contains fifty - five poems in all. His whole reputation as a love poet depends on these poems. His remarkable poems include: The Sunne Rising, A Valediction Forbidding Mourning, The Canonization, The Extasie, The Blossome, The Flea, The Good Morrow, The Of My Name In the Window and Goe and Catche A Falling Stare. It is supposed that before their publication they were widely read in literary circles. Few of his poems can be linked to actual persons and events of his life. His love appears in them in different forms. In some, it appears as extreme physical passion. In others, it appears as something cynical, tinged with contempt for woman's unfaithfulness.
Poems Covering a Wider Range of Emotions:
Donne's greatness as a love poet arises from the fact that his poetry covers a wider range of emotions than that of any previous poet, and that is not bookish but is rooted in his personal experiences. His love experiences were wide and varied and so is the emotions range of his love - poetry. He had love affairs with a number of women, some of them lasting and permanent, others only of a short duration.
An Important Role of Donne's Personal Life in His Love Poems:
Donne never took interest in publication of his poems which had made him favourite of ladies who longed to hear his love poems. He used to recite the poems in the sweet company of ladies. He developed affairs with some of them. The Countess of Bedford had heard of him and was a sincere admirer of his poems. His other admirers were Magdalen Herbert, Elizabeth Huntingdon and Anne More who he fascinated so strongly that she eloped with him and became his wife. It is the great variety of his love experiences that finds display in his poems.
Poet's Dealing with Three Types of Love:
(a) Cynical Strain of Love:
The poet holds that all women are faithless and corrupt. In Go and Catche A Falling Stare, he claims that it is possible to catch a falling star or make a mandrake root pregnant with a child, but it is impossible to find out a true and fair lady. The poet asks his friend that if he finds out a lady of constant nature, he must inform him, for the poet wishes to meet such a rare lady and wants to go with her. His journey with that lady will be regarded as a pilgrimage. Later on the poet changes his mind and refuses to meet the lady even if she lives quite near for she may be true just for a while. In A Valediction: Of My Name In the Window, the poet fears that his beloved may turn faithless to him. He believes that women are inconstant by nature. His beloved too will be seduced by a new lover who succeeds in bribing her maids and page - boys. They will bring his letters to the beloved.
(b) Platonic Strain of Love:
In The Extasie, the poet tells about the sublime state of love in which souls come out of their bodies and hold negotiation. The bodies during this conversation remain inactive and unmoved like lifeless statues. The poet argues that the basis of true love is not sex and body but feelings and soul. The poet discusses the process of union of different souls. Single souls are imperfect. Their union makes them perfect. In the state of ecstasy, lovers attain the state of living soul and neglect their physical existence. The beautiful body is the first source of attraction - the beginning of love which later on elevates to the height of spiritual love by virtue of body and its organs like hands, eyes and feelings of love, the spiritual union takes place. Souls are intelligences while bodies are spheres. Donne treats his love as a holy passion. His love is pious enough to be called devotion. In A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning, the poet exalts the spiritual aspect of love which is so purified that so often lovers themselves do not understand it. The poet asks his beloved not to feel sorry on finding him departing for physical separation cannot reduce love. It is love by souls. If their souls look separated, they are like the two feet of a compass. It appears that the feet are separated while at the top they are closely united. The beloved's soul is the fixed foot and does not appear moving. But in fact it moves with the movement of the other foot.
(c) Matrimonial Love:
In the poem The Sunne Rising, the poet enjoys himself in privacy with his beloved wife. The sun peeps into the bed room and disturbs him. The poet is solely absorbed in the charms of his beloved wife. He rebukes the sun for his ill - manners. The poet warns the sun that he can eclipse the light of sun rays only by closing his eyes but he does not wish to lose his beloved's sight even for a moment. The poet hints at the sexual pleasures attained with the beloved. The suggestion becomes clearer when he asks the Sun to warn them for the whole world is centred in one bed. In the poem The Flea, he does not inspire his beloved to be his wife for his sole interest lies in sexual satisfaction. He provokes his beloved to give up false notions of honour and morality and be willing to satisfy. The poet expresses his faith in free sex.
Sensuous and Realistic Treatment of Love:
The poet does not completely reject the pleasure of the body even in poems where love is treated as the highest spiritual passion. This emphasis on the claims of the body is another feature which distinguishes. It is the body which brings the souls together, and so the claims of the body must not be ignored. In the poem The Blossome, the poet disgusted with the beloved, who has forbidden his physical advances, goes to London to enjoy physical pleasures there and thus to grow fat. In the poem The Canonization the lovers unite body and soul to form a neutral sex. However, while in The Valediction: Forbidding Mourning the poet does not consider physical contact as necessary for the continuation of spiritual love. In The Relique, physical contact is spoken of as essential.
A Little Depiction about the Beauty of the Woman:
In the poem The Blossome, the grace and delicacy of his beloved may be guessed from the fact that she has been likened to a tender flower . In some other poems, he devotes one or two lines to depiction, but even then he does not really describe; he merely gives an account of the delight of the eye at the charms of his mistress. In this respect he is different from other love - poets of his times.
Understanding and Quality in Sexual Relationship:
According to poet's view, the purity or otherwise of the sexual act depends on the quality of the relation between the lovers. If delight in one another is mutual, physical union is its proper consummation, but if the lovers are not inter assured of the mind then, the sport is, but a winter - seeming, summer's night. He may sometimes accept the human laws which forbid the consummation of love outside marriage, but he does so with great reluctance. Indeed, he often makes the woman's readiness to give herself entirely, body and soul, to her lover, the test of her love for him.
Poet's Presenting Metaphysical Treatment of Love:
The poet uses novel thoughts and expressions, far-fetched images, affectation and hyperboles. His poems bring to light his great scholarship sometimes leading to obscurity. The Canonization exposes Donne's far-fetched images. He imagines that they both are like tapers; for they burn themselves out for each other's love. In A Valediction: Of My Name In the Window, the poet makes a hyperbolic account of the power of his engraved name, The Extasie throws light on his great scholarship and obscurity. The poet deals with the basic nature of soul three kinds of spirits based on three principal parts Brain, Heart and Liver.
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