What is Metaphysical poetry? Characteristics of Metaphysical poetry

What is Metaphysical poetry?

“Meta” means that “beyond” and “physics” means that “physical nature.” So Metaphysical poetry means that poetry that goes beyond the physical world of the senses and explores the spiritual world.

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The Concise Oxford Dictionary defines “metaphysics” as theoretical philosophy of being and knowing and metaphysical as based on abstract general reasoning.

The term “Metaphysical” was applied more or less accidentally to designate a particular group of poets. John Dryden, while writing on John Donne, mentioned the term metaphysics. He affects the metaphysics, Dr Samuel Johnson subsequently employed the word to attach it to a race of writers that may be termed as the metaphysical poets. Since then a group of poets, who wrote under the influence of John Donne, has been termed as Metaphysical poets.

The Metaphysical poets of the 17th century led by John Donne were reacting against the courtly love poetry of the Elizabethans but it would be wrong to think of the Metaphysical poets as a school or a group or as having any common policy. The sonnet and the lyric, the couplet and the more formally structured verses were part of the Elizabethan stylistic concern but they were adapted by Donne and infused with a wider implication and a wider range of imagery too.

The dictionary definition of the metaphysical is as good a starting point as any: they combined intense feeling with ingenious and often used elaborate imagery and conceit. This is true, and what led Dr Johnson to comment on their use of “heterogenic ideas yoked by violence together.” Nevertheless, they gave to English poetry, in the platitude of our times, a new dimension.

And it was Dr Johnson who attributed the term to Donne and his followers“ the Metaphysical poets.” He borrowed the title from Dryden. But this was given not by way of commendation. Dr Johnson had no appreciation for the fantastic conceits which these metaphysical poets displayed in their poetry. In fact, Dr Johnson condemned this school of poets of always seeking to express something after something behind the simple obvious first sense of a subject.

Metaphysical poetry has thus come to mean a specific type of poetry with certain characteristic features common to the group of poets following Donne. In metaphysical love poetry as well as religious verses, such characteristic features are sufficiently indicated, and they may well be illustrated with reference to some such masters, like John Donne, Henry Vaughan, George Herbert, Richard Crashaw, Abraham Cowley, Robert Herrick, Andrew Marvell, Thomas Carew etc.

John Donne is generally acclaimed as the founder of the Metaphysical School of Poetry, although his lumping with other metaphysical poets, who succeeded him is hardly appropriate chronologically. In fact, he came nearly a generation before other metaphysical poets of whom Robert Herrick, Thomas Carew, Richard Crashaw, George Herbert, Henry Vaughan and Andrew Marvell were prominent.

Of course, these poets came in different phases and there was a gap of nearly fifty years between the emergence of Donne and that of Marvell. The metaphysical poets are thus, generally grouped together not because they lived in particular age, but because they seem to have some common features.

In fact, metaphysical poetry does not denote any particularly fantastic trend but bears several special features which constitute its originality as well as popularity.

Characteristics of metaphysical poetry

1. The first characteristics that metaphysical poetry bears are concentration. There is no elaboration but bears rather a concentration in metaphysical poetry. In fact, this has precision as one of its singular marks. The metaphysical poet doesn't muse or debate upon a particular idea or purpose. He rather keeps his reader confined to an idea or a line of argument. He tends to be brief, and his poetry is often characterised by its closely concentrated concepts. This concentration marks the speciality of eminent Metaphysical poets, including Donne, Vaughan, Crashaw and Marvell.

2. The second characteristic feature of Metaphysical poets is found in their constant use of conceits. A conceit invites an extra-ordinary comparison between the objects in which there is more of incongruity than of likeness. This is like a flash made by two completely unlike stones. Such a conceit causes a startle that forms much of the novelty of the metaphysical poetic technique.

Donne was the great metaphysical poet who taught his follower to indulge in conceits and witticism in poetry. It is an instrument by which a metaphysical poet reveals his wit. Conceit is a literary term which means a strained or far-fetched comparison. We can easily present some of the conceits of Metaphysical Poetry from Donne's poetry.

Donne finds the total unification of the two lovers in the conceit of two hemispheres “without sharp North, without declining West.” Again his poem “The Sun Rising” is full of metaphysical conceits. In expressing his contempt for the Sun, the poet displays all his learning and metaphysical wit and extravagant conceits are used in glorifying his beloved.

Features of metaphysical poetry

3. Similarly, the poetry of Vaughan, Marvell, and Crashaw abound in such conceits. The pre-eminence of conceits has given an intellectual bias to metaphysical poetry. In fact, intellectualism forms a distinct feature of metaphysical poetry. This is well perceived both in metaphysical secular verses and in metaphysical religious poems.

The intellectual aspect of metaphysical poetry is evident not merely in the use of conceits but also in its deeply reflective notes and pointed wit with occasional mildly satiric strokes. Metaphysical poets are reflective and they exhibit more intellect and less emotion.  Their conceits are often the expression of the inner psychology of the human mind. Their poetry is analytical as well as intellectual and here they cover a wide range of thoughts and ideas in varied moods and fashions.

4. The analytical habit of the Metaphysical poets is the very cause of the peculiarity of their imagery, diction and versification. Their imagery appears often extravagant and far fetched. In fact, the metaphysical poets evoke poetical moods and feelings, not with conventional phrases and images, but rather with intellectual or commonplace matters drawn from the period, or from science, scholasticism, the Bible or devotional writings, geography, mathematics or history, or biology.

 
5. In Metaphysical poetry, there is a tendency to the use of a microcosmic emphasis, a tendency to interpret life in a particular way.

6. In Metaphysical poetry, there is a use of satire and irony, sometimes involving the esoteric, since there is a private joke in metaphysical poetry.

7. In Metaphysical poetry, there is considerable interest in the soul, in both the religious and philosophical areas. There is also the use of the sensual and the intellectual imagery where appropriate and spiritual and the intellectual.

In fact, the greatest achievement of the Metaphysical poets is a peculiar blend of their works of passion and thought feeling and ratiocination. Emotional intellectuality is a leading quality of the metaphysical verse, and there is a tendency to reject ‘poetic diction’ and the use of colloquial speech.

Their use of conceits is often witty and sometimes fantastic. Their hyperboles are outrageous and paradoxes astonishing. They blend fact and fancy in a manner which astounds us. Metaphysical poetry is filled with learned and often obscure allusions. They are philosophical and reflective and they deal with concerns of the spirit or soul.