Concepts of Harmony in Five Metaphysical Poets

218 Pages·2013·3.99 MB·English

Univerzita Karlova v Praze
Filozofická fakulta
Ústav anglistiky a amerikanistiky
Mgr. Tomáš Jajtner
Concepts of Harmony in Five Metaphysical Poets
práce
Disertační
studijní program: anglická literatura
vedoucí práce: Prof. PhDr. Martin Hilský, CSc.
rok podání: 2006
IJIII/1111 ll ll
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Filozofická fakulta
Univerzity Karlovy v Praze
Prohlašuji, že JSem disertační práci vykonal samostatně a s využitím uvedených
pramenů a literatury.
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Contents
Acknowledgements 5
Introduction 7
PARTONE 13
I. The Conceit of Harmony: Harmony as the Principle of Cosmos 14
1.1. Heraclitus and Pythagoras: towards a concept of harmony 14
1.1.1. Introduction 14
1.1.2. The hidden harmony ojH eraclitus 14
1.1.3. The overwhelming harmony oft he Pythagoreans 21
1.2. Socrates and Plato-the aspiration to song 32
1.3. Aristotle and the notion of mimesis (}líJ.111mc;) 35
1.4. Platonism and Neoplatonic frenzy- the commonplaces and the shifters 37
II. The Conceit of English Renaissance Poetics -how harmonies blend together 43
11.1. lntroduction 43
11.2. The problem of conceit 43
11.2.1. Types ojc onceit 48
11.3. The problem of metaphor in Pythagorean scheme 52
11.4. Pre-modem self and the act of poetry 55
III. Towards the concept of metaphysical poetry 58
111.1. lntroduction 58
111.2. The rhetorical problem 58
111.3. The problem ofwit in early modem English theory 62
111.4. Metaphysical wit 69
IV. Breaking the Circle of Perfection 76
PARTTWO 84
I. John Donne- provocation of the metaphysical style 85
1.1. lntroduction 85
1.2. The problem of unity 85
1.3. Dynamism of love as the dynamism oflanguage 91
1.4. Harmony as an act of inscription 97
1.5. Harmonizing faith- Donne's Divine poems 107
II. Towards the Harmony of Religious Experience
- The Adventure of George Herbert 114
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11.1. From Geocentricism to Theocentricism 114
11.2. "The doctrine tun 'd by Christ"-Herbert' s musicality 116
11.3. Sweet phrases, lovely metaphors-the ingenuity ofHerberťs conceits 126
III. Henry Vaughan or the problem oftransubstantiation 135
111.1. Introduction 135
111.2. The problem of conversion 135
111.3. Vaughan' s "re-formation" 140
111.4. Vaughan's hermetic world- innocence ofthe first intuition 146
111.5. Harmony as an experience offaith 150
IV. Andrew Marvell-the garden ofwords 154
IV .1. Introduction 154
IV .2. Inverted cosmology-heaven 's the centre oJ the soul 154
IV.3. Green thought in a green shade-Marvell's retreats 159
VI.4. Oftears and music-harmony within infinity ofworlds 164
V. Richard Crashaw-the triumph of the Baroque 172
V .I. Introduction 172
V.2. The joy of weeping-harmony turned upside down 173
V.3. Un-selfing ofthe Self- the logic of ecstasy 179
V.4. The problem ofPresence- Crashaw's Christology 185
V.5. Images and music- the measure of abundance 190
Conclusion 198
BIBLIOGRAPHY 204
Appendices 211
České resumé 213
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Acknowledgements
Writing a dissertation is a long and complicated process, and its final completion calls
to mind all the people that have helped me along the way. My sincere thanks goes to Prof.
Martin Hilský, who carefully read parts of the manuscript and offered valuable advice and
constant encouragement. I would li ke to thank him also for years of truly collegial debates on
many different topics of Renaissance studies, which have always left me with a sense of new
curiosity. My thanks goes also to Prof. Raymond S. Grant, whose lectures on Renaissance
poetry offered the first impetus for my future work. More than anything else I admired his
passion for inquiry: for making old texts a living tissue of questions pointing to the heart of
our common western heritage. A great thanks is due to Simon Fraser University in
Vancouver, Canada, where I could spend a year of peaceful and fruitful research. Seminars of
Prof. P. Budra and J. D. Fleming helped to shape my research in an indirect, but important
way by making my academic work more disciplined and more scholarly.
My dissertation, indeed, would not have been completed without the help of various
libraries and librarians. I researched all the main libraries in Prague (Národní knihovna,
Městská knihovna and Knihovna Ústavu anglistiky a amerikanistiky FF UK), and the two big
libraries in Vancouver, W C. Bennet lihrary at SFU, and the Library of the University o.f
British Columbia. I enjoyed the company of my fellow doctoral students at Prof. Procházka' s
seminars on modem literary theory, which offered a milieu for mutual encouragement and
inspiration. Prof. Martin Procházka himself was both a passionate lecturer, but also a caring
and inquiring older colleague, always eager to help with whatever was needed. My thanks
goes also to my numerous friends and colleagues, namely to Tomáš Chudý, Martin Mikolajek
and David Mirhady. Cyril Stránský carefully checked my Latin and Greek quotations. Since
the beginning of my university studies the greatest persona! (and financial) support has come
from my family, to which I owe a special thanks too.
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Most of all I thank my beloved wife Karin - for her support encouragement and love.
Many questions within the work would not have been raised, had we not met. As an act of
gratitude I dedicate her this work, whose completion is so eminently bound with her presence
in my life.
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Introduction
My interest in metaphysical poetry has always been tainted with a sense of amazement
and awe: the poetry of the School of Donne, indeed, poses fundamental questions about the
nature of modem poetry and the mission of a poet within a disenchanted world. The slow
abandonment of the old Pythagorean system of ham1onious spheres rotating around a stable
earth and the acceptance of the heliocentric Copernican-Keplerean universe marked a true
"breaking of the circle of perfection''- to use the term of Marjorie Nicholson - and entailed a
complex breach in the nature of representational arts. The old cosmology depicted the
universe as truly universa!, i.e. turning around a single axis, a single principle, or a clearly
defined centre. The order of creation was granted by the gradual chain of being, uniting the
lowest with the highest in a scale of perfection. The nature of representational arts was,
primarily, to re-present the order of creation: i.e. finding a means of transfer between the
static order of universe and human understanding. Classical Renaissance literary theory - in
fact, inherited from Antiquity - emphasised that poetry as the art of making was to "teach and
delight": its delightfulness had to be firmly bound with instruction and initiation into to the
order of harmonious cosmos. Indeed, Sidney emphasised that poetry must not be dull and has
to delight; however, there was no room for any kind of l 'art pour I 'art movement in
Renaissance poetics. What mattered was halance, a sense of decorum, which secured a truly
proportionate and, after all, classically ''objective" art. What Renaissance thinkers associated
with nature was obviously helia natura. i.e. embelished nature, not a wild and unbound nature
of the Romantics. Nevertheless, in the framework of this concept, art could always aspire to a
sense of classical proportion: i.e. harmony granted by the concept it was meant to re-present.
The Renaissance inherited this concept from Antiquity: it is the concept of harmonious order
oť universe as attributed to the teachings of Pythagoras of Samos. Classical Renaissance
poetic theory is tully a poetics of correspondence: the order of universe - granted by the
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immaterial substance of number - could be re-presented everywhere. This cosmological
speculation secured the unity of creation precisely by its infinite repeatability: the whole was
to be seen in part and vice versa. The new discoveries of Copernicus, Galileo and Kepler,
however, made this concept unverifiable. Although Kepler himself- as we shall see later on -
could not fully abandon the inherited lore, his discoveries managed to make the Pythagorean
concept a mere metaphor, an abstract carrier of meaning with no apparent reference.
This. indeed, is the world in which the Metaphysicals find their new, surpnsmg
conceits. Once the mere re-presentation becomes impossible, the means of poetic work
changes: metaphor and its nature become the prime focus of orientation. Indeed, the very
possibility of harmonizing reality brings along a number of surprising discoveries: the in
decorum of the Metaphysicals is not meant to undermine the old system. After all. its
relevance is granted in the nature of our harmonizing intuition, in the intuition of
correspondence, in the "naturalness" of metaphor making. What the Metaphysicals attempt to
do is re-shaping poetic work in such a way, that it becomes apparent to what extent it is an act
of conscious transformation of reality. In other words, to what extent our perception of
harmony, of correspondence and proportion. is to be created. The universe of the
Metaphysicals - I want to argue - is thus perverted; it rotates around an ad lihitum centre.
With the re-shaping of the notion of infinity - from the prophetic intuition of Cusanus to the
classical concepts of Decartes - the notion of the centre of universe became less and less
plausible. This turned the interest of the poets primarily to the questions of language, to the
very process of generating a meaningful, harn1onized and animated universe of man.
The metaphysical school is seen primarily as a breach from the old poetics of
correspondence - as e.g. S.K. Heninger says quite clearly in his classic book. This premise
can be accepted only as long as we bear in mind the Jater developments of the respective
theme: all the main aspects of Pythagorean cosmological lore are, indeed, still eminently
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