Use of Conceits in Donne's Poetry

Clearly the seventeenth century had the courage of its metaphors and they made them the
organic parts of its staple, imposed them on the nearest and the farthest things with equal
vigour as clearly as the nineteenth century lacked this courage and was half-heartedly
metaphorical or content with similes. The difference between the literary qualities of the two
periods is not the difference in degree between poets. It is something which had happened to
the mind of England between the Age of Donne, Crashaw, Lord Herbert and the time of
Tennyson and Browning. It is the difference between the intellectual poet and the reflective
poet. Tennyson and Browning are the poets who think, but they do not feel their thought as
immediately as the odour of a rose.
A thought to Donne was an experience, it modified his sensibility. When a poets mind is
equipped perfectly for its work, it is constantly amalgamating the disparate experiences. The
ordinary mans experience is chaotic, fragmentary and irregular. The latter cooks something
or reads about cooking, and these two experiences have nothing to do with each other or with
the noise of the typewriter or the smell of the rose. In the mind of the poet, these experiences
are always forming new wholes. Donne had this unique genius, which T.S. Eliot calls
unification of sensibility.
The metaphysical poetry abounds in conceits. A conceit is a far-fetched comparison, a
comparison between dissimilar things, a comparison between objects which have little in
common with each other. Dr. Johnson called it the most heterogeneous ideas yoked by
violence together. A conceit may be brief or it may be elaborate. The conceits used by Donne
are learned. They are drawn from a wide range of subjects such as science exploration,
medieval philosophy, mathematics, astronomy and others. Conceits impart an intellectual
tone to the poetry. The intellectual conceits add weight and illustrate the feeling giving rise to
the impression of unification of sensibility. Ransom states, To define a conceit is to define a
small-scale metaphysical poetry. A conceit is actually a comparison, whose ingenuity is more
striking than its justness, that is, when two things which appear to be completely different
from one another, are stated to be similar that one can be used to explain and analyze the
other. Helen Gardener says, A brief comparison can be a conceit, if two things patently unlike
or which we should never think of together, are shown to be alike in single point in such a way
or in such a context that we feel their incongruity. Here a conceit is like a spark made by
striking two stones together. After the flash the stones are just two stones.
Conceits in Donnes poetry are not a piece of decoration, they are functional. They are used to
persuade, define, illustrate or prove a point. A poem has something to say which the conceit
explicates, or something to urge which the conceit helps to forward. They are the most
effective vehicles of Donnes mode of perception. Their farfetchedness adds a touch of
miraculous to his poetry. In the words of Joan Bennett, The purpose of an image in Donnes
poetry is to diffuse the emotional experience by an intellectual parallel.
Another significant aspect of Donnes metaphysical conceit is that it cannot be isolated from
its context, the whole poem. Like the conceits of Shakespeare, Donnes are born of the given
dramatic movement to illustrate the relationship of characters and relationships of ideas. The
conceits of Donne have an organic growth and proliferation, receiving sustenance from the
intensity and complexity of the given experience. That is why even though far-fetched, they
have an astonishing clarity.
It remains to be seen how Donne rushes from one intellectual hyperbole to another, including
as a habit, a vivid range of speculation within a single example. In The Canonization the two
lovers moving round each other like flies or consuming themselves like tapers; or the images
of the eagle and dove the violent preying on the weak, and ultimately the riddle of the
phoenix indicate the whole process of love from courtship to consummation of love. Because
of sheer force of love they die and rise the same. The poem then leads to the lovers being
regarded as the martyrs; saints of love will make them model of love.
To express the comprehensive nature of love, Donne makes a scintillating use of Elizabethan
circle imagery and encompasses infinitude harmony like the two concentric spheres of the
Ptolemic universe. Such an idea underlies the beautiful A Valediction, Forbidding Mourning.
He argues and gives a proof by analogy in the most famous conceit of the two legs of a
compass. Donnes beloved is the fixed foot around which he moves and hence persuades his
wife or beloved not to mourn.
In the poem Good Morrow the two lovers are compared to two hemispheres which unite to
form an ideal and a better world than the two hemispheres of the earth itself. They are
without sharp north, without declining west. This perfect and ideal union they achieve
through the eyes of each other. The sharp North implies coldness and indifference to which
their love is not subject and declining West symbolizes decay and death from which lovers are
free.
In Batter my Heart Donne compares himself to a usurped town. At the same time there is an
image drawn from the purification of metal, by knocking, blowing and shining it. He has
referred to God as a tinker (a mender of old pots). The third conceit he uses is the portrayal of
man-God relationship through lover-beloved relationship. In this poem that poet addresses
God in His three-fold capacity as Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost. He calls the Reasoning
faculty, the Viceroy of God. In The Extasie the souls of the lovers are compared to two equal
armies confronting and negotiating with each other. Again love without an outlet in physical
expression is like a Prince languishing in prison says Donne. In Go and Catch a Falling Star,
unconventional imagery is used to convey the view that there is no woman in the world who is
both beautiful and true.
In The Flea, the flea is a symbol of the poets passionate plea for physical and sensuous love.
Donne compares the flea to a temple and to a marriage bed. Just as the two lovers are united
in the temple into a bond of marriage, so the two bloods have been united in the body of flea.
Its body is a sacred temple where their marriage has taken place. The killing of the flea would
be an act of triple murder murder of the flea, murder of the lover and her own murder. This
is a sin and so she must spare the flea.
In The Sunne Rising, there is the same outburst of pride in his discovery of a new world
richer than any of the Elizabethan voyagers since it is both the Indias spice and Myne. The
last stanza begins with Donnes favourite antithesis: the nullity of worldly riches as contrasted
with the wealth of love. This idea links naturally with the circle imagery so that the lyric ends
with the thought of the eternal union of two hemispheres, which are perfect, infinite and
indestructible like the world of love.
In the poem A Valediction of Weeping, Donne employs images from a variety of sources. The
lovers tears are like precious coins because they bear the stamp of the beloved (an image
drawn from mintage). The tears are pregnant of thee a complex image, conveying the
impression of the beloveds reflection in the drop of tear. In Good Friday the soul is
compared to a sphere, and Donne treats the metaphor elaborately. Planetary motions are
brought into the poem to illustrate feelings.
Donne has made a remarkable use of conceits in his poems. His conceits are learned, which
are drawn from a wide range of subjects. His conceits impart intellectual tone to his poetry.
They are not decorative but functional. They are used to illustrate or to convince. They cannot
be isolated.