Claim: The phrase (metaphysical poets) has long done duty as a term of abuse, or as the label of a quaint and pleasant taste.
Reason 1: Extremely difficult to define metaphysical poetry, and also to decide what poets practice it and in which of their verses (para 1)
Backing:
Difficult to find any precise use of metaphor, simile, or other conceit, which is common to all the poets and at the same time important enough as an element of style to isolate these poets as a group.
We find, instead of the mere explication of the content of a comparison, a development by rapid association of thought which requires considerable agility on the part of the reader (para 1)
Reason 2: This telescoping of images and multiplied associations is characteristic of the phrase of some of the dramatists of the period which Donne knew, and is one of the sources of the vitality of their language. (para 2)
Reason 3: Johnson who employed the term metaphysical poets, remarks that the most heterogenous ideas are yoked by violence together. (para 3)
Backing:
The force of this impeachment lies in the failure of the conjunction, the fact that often the ideas are yoked but not united.
A degree of heterogeneity of material compelled into unity by the operation of the poet's mind is omnipresent in poetry.
Reason 4: It is to be observed that the language of these poets is as a rule simple and pure - a simplicity emulated without success by numerous modern poets. (para 4)
Refutation 1: The structure of the sentences, on the other hand, is sometimes far from simple
Backing:
But this is not a vice; it is a fidelity to thought and feeling.
As this fidelity induces variety of thought and feeling, so it induces variety of music.
Reason 5: If so shrewd and sensitive a critic as Johnson failed to define metaphysical poetry by its faults, it is worthwhile to inquire whether we may not have more success by adopting the opposite method.
Backing:
Johnson has hit, perhaps by accident, on one of their peculiarities, when he observed that 'their attempts were always analytic'; he would not agree that, after the dissociation, they put the material together again in a new unity
Reason 6: It is the difference between the intellectual poet and the reflective poet.
Backing:
When a poet's mind is perfectly equipped for its work, it is constantly amalgamating disparate experience; the ordinary man's experience is chaotic, irregular, fragmentary.
Reason 7: In the seventeenth century a dissociation of sensibility set in, from which we have never recovered; and this dissociation was aggravated by the influence of the two most powerful poets of the century, Milton and Dryden
Backing:
While the language became more refined, the feeling became more crude
Reason 8: The sentimental age began early in the eighteenth century
Backing:
The poets revolted against the ratiocinative, the descriptive; they thought and felt by fits, unbalanced; they reflected
Reason 9: The possible interests of a poet are unlimited; the more intelligent he is the better; the more intelligent he is the more likely that he will have interests: our only condition is that he turn them into poetry and not merely meditate on them poetically
Backing:
A philosophical theory which has entered into poetry is established for its truth or falsity in one sense ceases to matter, and its truth in another sense is proved.
Reason 10: Our civilisation comprehends great variety and complexity, and this variety and complexity, playing upon a refined sensibility, must produce various and complex results.
Backing:
The poet must become more and more comprehensive, more allusive, more indirect, in order to force, to dislocate if necessary, language into his meaning
Hence we get something which looks very much like the conceit - we get, in fact, a method curiously similar to that of the metaphysical poets, similar also in its use of obscure words and of a simple phrasing
Reason 11: The metaphysical poets are in direct current of English poetry, and their faults must be reprimanded by this standard, instead of antiquarian affection
Reason 1: Extremely difficult to define metaphysical poetry, and also to decide what poets practice it and in which of their verses (para 1)
Backing:
Difficult to find any precise use of metaphor, simile, or other conceit, which is common to all the poets and at the same time important enough as an element of style to isolate these poets as a group.
We find, instead of the mere explication of the content of a comparison, a development by rapid association of thought which requires considerable agility on the part of the reader (para 1)
Reason 2: This telescoping of images and multiplied associations is characteristic of the phrase of some of the dramatists of the period which Donne knew, and is one of the sources of the vitality of their language. (para 2)
Reason 3: Johnson who employed the term metaphysical poets, remarks that the most heterogenous ideas are yoked by violence together. (para 3)
Backing:
The force of this impeachment lies in the failure of the conjunction, the fact that often the ideas are yoked but not united.
A degree of heterogeneity of material compelled into unity by the operation of the poet's mind is omnipresent in poetry.
Reason 4: It is to be observed that the language of these poets is as a rule simple and pure - a simplicity emulated without success by numerous modern poets. (para 4)
Refutation 1: The structure of the sentences, on the other hand, is sometimes far from simple
Backing:
But this is not a vice; it is a fidelity to thought and feeling.
As this fidelity induces variety of thought and feeling, so it induces variety of music.
Reason 5: If so shrewd and sensitive a critic as Johnson failed to define metaphysical poetry by its faults, it is worthwhile to inquire whether we may not have more success by adopting the opposite method.
Backing:
Johnson has hit, perhaps by accident, on one of their peculiarities, when he observed that 'their attempts were always analytic'; he would not agree that, after the dissociation, they put the material together again in a new unity
Reason 6: It is the difference between the intellectual poet and the reflective poet.
Backing:
When a poet's mind is perfectly equipped for its work, it is constantly amalgamating disparate experience; the ordinary man's experience is chaotic, irregular, fragmentary.
Reason 7: In the seventeenth century a dissociation of sensibility set in, from which we have never recovered; and this dissociation was aggravated by the influence of the two most powerful poets of the century, Milton and Dryden
Backing:
While the language became more refined, the feeling became more crude
Reason 8: The sentimental age began early in the eighteenth century
Backing:
The poets revolted against the ratiocinative, the descriptive; they thought and felt by fits, unbalanced; they reflected
Reason 9: The possible interests of a poet are unlimited; the more intelligent he is the better; the more intelligent he is the more likely that he will have interests: our only condition is that he turn them into poetry and not merely meditate on them poetically
Backing:
A philosophical theory which has entered into poetry is established for its truth or falsity in one sense ceases to matter, and its truth in another sense is proved.
Reason 10: Our civilisation comprehends great variety and complexity, and this variety and complexity, playing upon a refined sensibility, must produce various and complex results.
Backing:
The poet must become more and more comprehensive, more allusive, more indirect, in order to force, to dislocate if necessary, language into his meaning
Hence we get something which looks very much like the conceit - we get, in fact, a method curiously similar to that of the metaphysical poets, similar also in its use of obscure words and of a simple phrasing
Reason 11: The metaphysical poets are in direct current of English poetry, and their faults must be reprimanded by this standard, instead of antiquarian affection
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