John Donne was the leading English poet of the Metaphysical school and is often considered the greatest love poet in the English language and is also known for his religious sermons and poetry. Because almost none of Donne’s poetry was published during his lifetime, it is difficult to date it accurately (Pinka). Metaphysical writers like John Donne utilize perplexing, sensational expressions and an assortment of abstract ideas like expanded conceits and imagery in casual and individual language that challenges thoughts of morality, traditional love, and sexuality; it is very creative and even mind-blowing since it blends and connects two dissimilar things to make extended metaphors and tales that is interesting in contrast with past artists of his time especially Edmund Spenser (Marjani). Donne is valuable not simply as a representative writer but also as a very unique one but was also a man of contradictions: As a minister in the Anglican Church, Donne possessed a deep spirituality that influenced his writing throughout his whole life; but as a man, Donne possessed a substantial lust for sensation, life and experience. In his best poems, Donne mixes the concepts of the physical and the spiritual and over the period of his career. Donne gave wonderful expressions to the two domains. Donne is regulated as the first metaphysical writer, and Donne's expertise for unique, mentally complex poetry absolutely assisted with setting a new trend for poetry that followed him.
As a literary device, a conceit utilizes an extended metaphor that analyzes two dissimilar things. A conceit is regularly intricate and controls an enormous area of a poem or the whole poem which was popularized in the 16th to 17th centuries. Conceits are frequently very interesting and open, and can introduce striking juxtaposition and correlation of the unlike things. A conceit along these lines, frequently adds to a more prominent complexity of comprehension about the things being contrasted due with the unexpected factor of the unusual correlation. The meaning of conceit has changed after some time. It was a particularly famous literary device in the Renaissance Era, and with the alleged metaphysical poets, similar to John Donne. In the start of the Renaissance, the word conceit alluded to any whimsical expression of wit. Afterward, it gained negative implications, and was utilized to portray the kind of over-the-top correlations that artists of the Renaissance Era once in a while used to depict their friends and family.
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There are two sorts of conceit that researchers perceive: metaphysical and Petrarchan. Petrarchan conceit is named for the Italian artist Petrarch, and applies just to love poetry in which the lover is contrasted hyperbolically with extraordinary encounters or things. Metaphysical conceit is an innovative jump made to look at two unlike things and investigate their likenesses. Sometimes a poet can conceal the genuine significance of the metaphor under the surface of this comparison, while other times, a poet may decide to literalize a metaphor and investigate what it would resemble if the metaphor was practical (The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica). For instance, in the sonnet 'The Flea,' John Donne utilizes a metaphysical conceit between a simple flea and the complexities of youthful love sentiments to build up the storyteller's argument for a young lady to relinquish her chastity. The speaker asserts that the flea bite goes along with them as does sexual intercourse, and in this manner her chastity should never again be an issue between them. The flea assists the man's contention in that sexual intercourse joins their souls like the bite of the flea. Donne utilizes the flea, the blood it concentrates, and its last murder as different indications of affection. In the past it was generally accepted that one's blood was illustrative of their spirit. In this specific sonnet, the blood taken from the couple represents their two souls: “In this flea our two bloods mingled be” (Donne, The Flea, 4), writes Donne, and “pamper’d swells with one blood made of two” (Donne, The Flea, 8). From these two lines, one may infer that the flea bite involves a mingling of their souls – the equivalent to them having sexual intercourse.
John Donne's utilization of conceits has gotten a ton of analysis from various ages of critics. It is either depicted as a mere sign of cold wit or as an incorporation of thoughts and emotions. Donne crosses the boundaries in poetry between the physical world and the non-physical world to make particular expanded conceits that makes up one of the qualities of Metaphysical poetry. Donne's conceits are interesting in their blend of abstract and mundane. Donne is great at making surprising combination between various components so as to clarify his point and structure an argument in his poems. Ronald describes Donne’s love poetry as central and the idea of mutual love is an attempt to confront the issues between public and private domains (Ronald, 99). An example of Donne’s quirky comparison is in the love poem The Good Morrow between the unaware lovers and the breastfed babies; between the unconscious lovers and the seven sleepers who slept for two hundred years with reference to an allusion about a legend which tells how seven young Christian men hid in a cave during a persecution. The cave was sealed up, but the young men fell asleep for several centuries, “Did, till we loved? Were we not weaned till then? / But sucked on country pleasures, childishly? / Or snorted we in the Seven Sleepers’ den?” (Donne, The Good Morrow, 2-4); between two lovers and two hemispheres, “Where can we find two better hemispheres, / without sharp north, without declining west?” (Donne, The Good Morrow, 17-18). The storyteller and his beloved are like the two hemispheres who have united as one and with that their love would never die. In his another love poem The Sun Rising, Donne states compares the beloved with the states and the speaker with all the princes of the world. He portrays that the lover is the inhabited world and he is its ruler. He further implies that their union is the greatest and all the wealth happiness and devotion in the world is just an imitation of what they have between them: “She is all states, and all princes, I, / Nothing else is. / Princes do but play us; compared to this, / All honor’s mimic, all wealth alchemy” (Donne, The Sun Rising, 21-24).
A great deal of Sonnets composed by John Donne, are connected with the topic of death. Unlike other poets, John Donne’s attitude towards to death is quite optimistic. John Donne sees death as a new birth, as people becoming immortal through experiencing death, which is his attitude towards to death. He wrote many religious poems with the main theme as death. In Death Be Not Proud, John Donne writes: “From rest and sleep, which but thy pictures be, / Much pleasure, then from thee, much more must flow, / And soonest our best men with thee do go, / Rest of their bones, and soul’s delivery” (Donne, Death be not Proud, 5-8). In this poem, John Donne describe death with “rest and sleep”. John Donne regards death as a short period of rest and sleep, it shows that death is just a moment, while the joy after the death is eternal. Death is just a short time for flesh to rest, but the spirit can be free. In Death, Be Not Proud another conceit is that death is being compared to a boastful and not very impressive man. Donne addresses Death as if it were a man he'd come across in his everyday life. He mocks Death for its pride, for it being portrayed as mighty and dreadful, simply because some have called it so: “Death, be not proud, though some have called thee/ Mighty and dreadful, for thou art not so;” (Donne, Death be not proud, 1-2). In This is my play’s last scene, Donne compares his life with a play and it’s last scene like his life is coming to an end and says that his life was like a pilgrimage which he has run idly and yet quickly. There were times in his life that he wasted, but all in all his life went by fast: “This is my play’s last scene; here heavens appoint / My pilgrimage’s last mile; and my race,” (Donne, This is my play’s last scene, 1-2). This poem is stark opposite in the context of death with Death be not Proud with the relation that Donne seems to be afraid of death and feels like his life went by too quickly and now death would engulf him. Donne compares his life with a play or a stage which is coming to an end and has reached its final performance. The concept of the two metaphysical conceits Pilgrimage and race continues throughout the poem with Donne’s belief of what happens to the body and soul after death. In Thou hast made me, and shall thy work decay? Donne has compared God with a magnet in the sense that God is the only one who can attract and draw the iron heart of the poet which is full of sins: “Thy grace may wing me to prevent his art, / And thou like adamant draw mine iron heart” (Donne, Thou hast made me, and shall thy work decay, 13-14). “Adamant” has two meanings: the lodestone, or natural magnet, and the perfect example of surpassing hardness, that which is impenetrable by any force. “Iron heart” denotes a heart (metaphorically, the soul) hardened by nature or sin; adamant creates a complex metaphor, suggesting the irresistible pull of God’s grace (Smith).
Donne's tendency to utilize conceits represents a large number of the most important characteristics of his poetry, including its cleverness, its creativity, its wide-extending intellectual associations, and its impression of Donne's capacity to see likenesses even in things which appear, from outside, to share little, practically speaking. Numerous writers can make brisk correlations, however, Donne appears to have had an uncommon ability for investigating all the multifaceted implications of a comparison. John Donne specialized in using figures in his poetry to show his real emotions. The figures should be cold and emotionless, but with his ability in penning, the cold and emotionless figures became tender and soft. Donne's conceits are a combination of physical, intellectual, mystical and poetical experiences ruled by thought, emotions and imagination and are weighed by symbolism. Donne was particularly fond of using planetary imagery and the idea of space travel in his work and drew conceits from a wide range of subjects, such as geography, philosophy, mathematics, astronomy etc. Such type of conceits gave an intellectual tone to his poetry (neoenglish). By using metaphysical conceits in A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning, Donne compares two lovers’ souls with a draftsman’s compass legs and explains that distance wouldn’t effect then since their love is strong enough for them to stay connected even if they’re afar. The separation of the husband and wife in the poem is like the movement of one leg of the compass while the other leg is fixed at the center. “If they be two, they are two so/ As stiff twin compasses are two;” (Donne, A Valediction: Forbidden mourning, 25-26). By doing this, Donne made use of a cartographic element and compared it to the lovers’ soul so as to invoke emotions in the readers. In the poem The Canonization, a fusion is observed in the comparison of the lovers to a phoenix and the divine saints. The speaker assumes that like the phoenix, the lovers would die and rise at the same time and prove mysterious by their love. Reference to this mythical creature sums up Donne's theory of sexual metaphysics; a real and complete relation between a man and a woman that fuses their soul into one whole being. He also compares the lovers to different birds like dove, eagle and tapers: “We're tapers too, and at our own cost die, / And we in us find the eagle and the dove. / The phœnix riddle hath more wit / By us; we two being one, are it.” (Donne, The Canonization, 21-24).
In the poem Hymn to God My God, in my Sickness, the sun is used as a symbol of the speaker’s life – the rising in the east is birth and the setting in the west is his end or his death. In the poem, Donne is describing the fact that death and resurrection are like the east and west on a map. The east and west hemispheres are connected, just as the sun rises and sets, the speaker would live and die. The poem, Hymn to God My God, in my Sickness suggests that maybe death will not be as bad as it seems, because one is resurrected after: “What shall my West hurt me? As West and East / In all flat maps (and I am one) are one, / So death doth touch the resurrection.” (Donne, Hymn to God My God, in my Sickness, 13-15). Just as a map, the speaker can see where he is going or headed – into the west, towards his death. The metaphysical conceit, combined with the symbolism of the sun are both used to describe the speaker’s content with dying and proves the intellectual genius of Donne with his use of elements from fields like geography, cartography and the essence of life. Another beautiful example of Donne’s elaborate use of intellect to invoke emotions is found in his poem Love’s Alchemy. John Donne makes an analogy between the Platonists, who endlessly try to discover spiritual love, and the alchemists, who in Donne’s time, tried to extract gold from lesser metals. This analogy allowed Donne to express his realistic beliefs that such spiritual love does not exist, only physical love does and those who are searching for spiritual love are only wasting their time. He makes use of metaphysical conceit in a way that he compares the futile attempts of alchemists in creating gold to Donne’s futile attempts at gaining perfect love: “And as no chemic yet th'elixir got, / But glorifies his pregnant pot / If by the way to him befall / Some odoriferous thing, or medicinal, / So, lovers dream a rich and long delight, / But get a winter-seeming summer's night” (Donne, Love’s Alchemy, 7-12). By this Donne makes use of elements from chemistry and philosophy. His poetry is full of arguments, logic, shock and surprise. Instead of conventional romantic words, he used scientific and mathematical words to introduce roughness in his poetry and made comparisons of physical things with non-physical ones. And that is exactly how he brings emotional experience by intellectual parallels.
Metaphysical is the label for the poetic traditions that happened in the seventeenth century. These poets were educated men with intellectual experiences and their interest in new discoveries, in philosophies and concepts gave birth to a new imaginative style. Major characteristic of their poetry is the use of sophisticated mental concepts of wit and learning, and a style rather than a universal subject matter is employed to justify a perceived common ground between dissimilar things. Donne’s conceit or image is highly difficult and complex. Combination of passion and thought characterizes his work. His use of conceit is often witty and sometimes shocking. It brings together the opposites of life i.e., body and soul, earth and heaven, the bed of lovers and the universe, life and death, all in one. Donne’s originality is realized when he makes use of images and conceits taken from various sources and fields, from biblical references to myths and even from different fields of science and also from his life. Conceit is an ingredient which adds an extra spice to Donne’s metaphysical poetry. Some of his conceits are far-fetched, bewildering and intriguing. He mixes diverse passions into something harmonious. It is common in Donne’s poetry that intellect and emotions go together and bring about a union of two very dissimilar things. His use of intellect to make comparisons actually enhances the emotional conveyance to the readers. Intellect and emotion are nearly always viewed as separate things or concepts, one being concerned with strong instinctive or spontaneous feelings or sensations, and the other being the basis of reasoning, knowing and thinking, quite opposite and distinct from feeling. But Donne makes use of these two concepts in such a way that they are seen in harmony.
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