晏 丽

YAN Li

（普洱学院 英语系，云南 普洱 665000）

(Department of English,Puer University,Puer Yunnan 665000,China)

0 Introduction

Any of the modern literary critics,scholars or even students cannot turn a blind eye or ear to John Donne’s overwhelming reputation in our times.He is one of the most influential figures among Metaphysical poets.He is always capable of treating his subjects with unexpected originality and mastery.His works are best remembered for the use of “conceits”,a condensed,highly complex metaphor,which often links two seemingly unrelated objects in a surprising and compelling way.This essay ventures into Donne’s love poems “A Valediction:Forbidding Mourning” and“The Flea” and comes out convinced that the poems abounds in conceits.This study helps to promote understanding of John Donne from a fresh perspective and provide the readers with a larger space for the recreation.

1 Conceit in Donne’s Poems

Among Donne’s various poetic features,the most striking one is his use of witty conceit. “Donne’s various and shocking witty conceits incur him both the most fierce curses we have ever heard and the sweetest praise we can imagine”.[1]

1.1 Conceit in “A Valediction:Forbidding Mourning”

“A Valediction:Forbidding Mourning” is one of the most famous Metaphysical Poems in which Donne employs metaphor “compass” as the symbol of eternal love between his wife and he,which became the most striking conceit.“Isaac Walton,in his brief life of his friend,tells us that Donne composed the poem in 1611 while he was on a diplomatic mission to France and that it was addressed to his wife Anne”.[2]When reading this poem,we cannot turn our eyes away from the images employs in it.“The comparison between the significance of earthquakes and the‘trepidation of the spheres’ and the brief simile of the beaten gold,the elaborated simile of the pair of compass,are the less likely to seem merely ingenious,or studied,or out of the way”.[3]

In this poem,Donne explicates the idea that two lovers either possess a single soul which can never really be divided,or have twin souls permanently connected to each other while their bodies are separated.For this purpose,Donne ingeniously invents his metaphysical conceit—comparing the two souls of the lovers to the feet of a drawing compass—to prove their closeness.

“Donne thinks circle is a symbol of perfect.In the process of a compass drawing a circle,its beginning point equals its ending point”.[4]Therefore,if the “fixed foot” is firm enough,the compass can draw a perfect circle.The “fixed foot” refers to his wife;Donne thinks that if his wife loves him firmly,they will be unit together soon,even though their bodies are separate.

Compass,as a striking image in literary field,has been used in different poems to illustrate the similar themes.When one of the couple leaves the other for some time and the other stays alone at home,the static one leans towards the one that travels and also makes it go in a surrounding circle that causes it to end where it begins.Donne compares the lovers’soul to the two legs of the compasses,which could be regarded as a sort of outrageous,fantastic piece of imagination,which is the typical of Donne’s ingenious mind.Dr.Johnson takes particular notice of the compass simile,he says,“To the following comparison of a man that travels and his wife that stays at home,with a pair of compasses,it may be doubted whether absurdity or ingenuity has a better claim”.[5]

1.2 Conceit in “The Flea”

“The Flea” is probably the most celebrated of Donne’s erotic poems in our day.With exuberant wit the speaker argues that the flea,having sucked blood from both him and his lover,has mingled their blood and thus fulfilling the sexual union he desires.

Fleas were popular subjects for humorous love poetry in the Renaissance,while they are the mostextraordinary through the description of John Donne.People think that fleas are only dirty insects,but they become the “marriage bed” and “marriage temple” in Donne’s“The Flea”: “This flea is you and I,and this/Our marriage bed,and marriage temple is”;More absurd is, “Me it sucked first,and now it sucks thee,/And in this flea our bloods mingled bee;”The flea sucks first his blood and then hers,and mingles their blood within its tiny body,thus the flea as an evidence to illustrate their physical relationship.This piece of evidence comes from the popular belief in the seventeenth century that during sexual intercourse,the blood of the two people actually mixes.

In the second stanza, “Oh stay,three lives in one flea spare…/And sacrilege,three sinnes in killing three.”The lady makes a movement to kill the flea,to save it,the speaker“makes the creature into a vessel of‘three lives’ whose murder will thus constitute both a suicide and a sacrilege”.[6]“Three lives” refer to the speaker,his lover,and their son.“Three lives” may remind us holy trinity.Therefore,if the lover kills the flea,she would commit “sacrilege” and killing three lives at the same time.Donne’s shocking conceits make us can’t help thinking he was really a cultivated,unique and influential metaphysical poet.

2 Conclusion

From the analysis of the conceit within the two poems of John Donne,it contains the unique viewpoints reflected in Donne’s conceits,which makes his poetry unique and striking within the Elizabethan literary tradition.“Undoubtedly,Donne stands in his unique position first thanks to his striking and arresting images that any others are not able to compare and share,then thanks to his colloquial tone and the homely and technical imagery characteristics of conceit”.[7]The studies of the conceit provide one more ground to keep up with the fast speed of Donne’s “quick wit”,to illustrate the magnificent images and to overcome the difficulties which increase the length of intellectual perception and aesthetic appreciation.His poetry,rather his conceits also contribute a lot to the Modernism.

［1］Wang,Dongyan.Tension:Another Reading of John Donne’s Erotic Poems[D].Beijing Normal University,2005.

［2］［3］Trilling,Lionel.The Experience of Literature Briefer Version[M].New York:Holt,Rinetart and Winston,1967:416.

［4］Li,Kai.Ingenious Compass and Everlasting Love:Decoding John Donne’s A Valediction:Forbidding Mourning[J].Science Information,2006(8):179.

［5］Trilling,Lionel.The Experience of Literature Briefer Version[M].New York:Holt,Rinetart and Winston,1967:416.

［6］邵青臣，齐娟，王永乐.浅析约翰多恩诗歌的奇思妙喻[J].沧州师范专科学校学报,2008(24):29.

［7］Josephy,A Mazzeo.A Critique of Some Modern Theories of Metaphysical Poetry[J],Modern Philology,Vol.50,No.2,1952:89.