Семинар по поэзии метафизиков (№2)
Прочитать весь материал, приложенный ниже (о поэзии Дж. Донна, статья Е.А.Первушиной)
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Выбрать по 3 метафизические метафоры из лирики Бродского и Донна, кратко прокомментировать в письменном виде (эти материалы сдать на занятии).
John Donne (1572- 1630)
John Donne was born in 1572 to a London merchant and his wife. Donne's parents were both Catholic at a time when England was deeply divided over matters of religion. Having renounced his Catholic faith, Donne was ordained in the Church of England in 1615.Donne was educated at Oxford, he became prodigiously learned, speaking several languages and writing poems in both English and Latin. Donne's adult life was colorful, varied, and often dangerous; he sailed with the royal fleet and served as both a Member of Parliament and a diplomat. In 1601, he secretly married a woman named Ann More, and he was imprisoned by her father, Sir George More, a month later he was released. For the next several years, Donne moved his family throughout England, traveled extensively in France and Italy, and attempted unsuccessfully to gain positions. In 1615, Donne was ordained a priest in the Anglican Church; in 1621, he became the Dean of St. Paul's Cathedral, a post that he retained for the rest of his life. A very successful priest, Donne preached several times before royalty; his sermons were famous for their power and directness.
However, it is for his extraordinary poems that Donne is primarily remembered. Donne was the leading exponent of a style of "metaphysical poetry". Donne's poetry exhibits each of these characteristics. His jarring, unusual meters; his proclivity for abstract puns and double entendres; his often bizarre metaphores(in one poem he compares love to a carnivorous fish); and his process of oblique reasoning are all characteristic traits of the metaphysicals, unified in Donne as in no other poet.
But Donne is also a highly individual poet, and his consistently ingenious treatment of his great conflict between spiritual piety and physical carnality, as embodied in religion and love remains unparalleled. He was a man of contradictions: As a minister in the Anglican Church, Donne possessed a deep spirituality that informed his writing throughout his life; but as a man, Donne possessed a carnal lust for life, sensation, and experience. He is both a great religious poet and a great erotic poet, and perhaps no other writer (with the possible exception of Herbert) strove as hard to unify and express such incongruous, mutually discordant passions.
The Exstasie
Where, like a pillow on a bed, A Pregnant banke swel’d up, to rest The violets reclining head, Sat we two, one anothers best;
Our hands were firmly cimented With a fast balme, which thence did spring, Our eye-beams twisted, and did thred Our eyes, upon one double string;
So to’entergraft our hands, as yet Was all the meanes to make us one, And pictures on our eyes to get Was all our propagation.
As ‘twixt two equall Armies, Fate Suspends uncertaine victorie, Our souls, (which to advance their state, Were gone out,) hung ‘twixt her, and mee.
And whil’st our soules negotiate there, Wee like sepulchrall statues lay; All day, the same our postures were, And wee said nothing, all the day.
If any, so by love refin’d That he soules language understood, And by good love were grown all minde Within convenient distance stood,
He (though he knew not which soul spake, Because both meant, both spake the same) Might thence a new concoction take, And part farre purer then he came.
This Exstasie doth unperplex (Wee said) and tell us what we love, Wee see by this, it was not sexe, Wee see, we saw not what did move:
But as all severall soules containe Mixture of things, they know not what, Love, these mixt soules, doth mixe againe, And makes both one, each this and that.
A single violet transplant, The strength, the colour, and the size, (All which before was poore, and scant,) Redoubles still, and multiplies.
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When love, with one another so Interinanimates two souls, That abler soul, which thence doth flow, Defects of lonelinesse controules.
Wee then, who are this new soule, kmow, Of what we are compos’d, and made, For, th’atomies of which we grow, Are soules, whom no change can invade.
But O alas, so long, so farre Our bodies why doe wee forbeare? They’are ours, though they’are not wee, Wee are Th’intelligences, they the spheare.
We owe them thankes, because they thus, Did us, to us, at first convay, Yeelded their forces, sense, to us, Nor are drosse to us, but allay.
On man heavens influence workes not so, But that it first imprints the ayre, Soe soule into the soule may flow, Through it to body first repaire.
As our blood labours to beget Spirits, as like soules as it can, Because such fingers need to knit That subtile knot, which makes us man:
So must pure lovers soules descend T’affections, and to faculties, Which sense may reach and apprehend Else a great Prince in prison lies.
To’our bodies turne wee then, that so Weake men on love reveal’d may looke; Love mysteries in soules doe grow, But yet the body is his booke.
And if some lover, such as wee, Have heard this dialogue of one, Let him still marke us, he shell see Small change, when we’are to bodies gone.
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