In order to appreciate Farewell: My Mourning better, we should know about the creation of john donne, the main representative of English metaphysical poetry, and the background of this poem. Donne was born in a wealthy family, received Catholic education in his early years and merged into Oxford University. He has experienced many twists and turns in his life. Youth, wild personality, dissolute life, ambitious. After I became the secretary of a court minister, I returned to the age of 16? One year, he escaped from marriage with the niece of the minister's wife and was put in prison. After being released, life was down and out. But he still refused to give up his official career and finally had to find a way out in the church. According to the will of his revered king James I, he converted to the state religion and became a priest in 16 15. Finally, he was appointed dean of St. Paul's Cathedral College in London until his death. After joining religion, his life and creation have undergone fundamental changes. He once lived a dissolute life, going in and out of theaters and brothels, seeking enjoyment and adventure. Later, he lamented "sighs and tears wasted in the past" and turned his thoughts, feelings and passionate love into a "sacred" religious cause. Therefore, his early major creative achievements were love poems and satirical poems, and his later major achievements were religious poems and sermons. As he himself declared: "My mistress was poetry when I was young, and my wife was theology when I was old."
Farewell: My condolences belong to Donne's early poems. This poem was given to the woman he loved before he left when he went to Paris with Sir Robert Trulli in 16 1 1. According to izaak walton's biography, this poem was given to his wife Anne Donne (she was pregnant with her tenth child and still gave birth to a stillbirth).
Like some of his early love poems, metaphysical skills are particularly prominent in the poem Farewell: My Mourning. This poem is not only a famous work in Donne's early days, but also one of the most representative works in English metaphysical poetry. In this poem, Donne mainly describes the discovery and possession of love. What this poem emphasizes (or the theme of the poem) is to praise the purified feelings between male and female lovers, and think that the separation between them is not important or even impossible.
The greatest feature of this school of poetry is "wit" (wit), that is, the wisdom of seeing the same in differences and combining Zhuang and He. In poetry, there are more arguments than lyricism, and there are obviously irrelevant ideas, thoughts, images, allusions and so on. Often combined to form a "double thinking." This deep-seated thinking activity incorporates strong emotions (passion for love and religious passion), thus making feelings philosophical and thoughts emotional.
The whole poem is divided into nine sections and 36 lines. The first section of this poem adopts the metaphor of metaphysics, which gives people a strong perceptual image. The tone of this paragraph is calm and slow, and the whole scene is entirely to set off the words in the five elements. The poet told his lover that there is no need to show exaggerated sadness when leaving, just to melt quietly. He used the metaphor of death to illustrate that even death is extremely subtle and imperceptible, and people gathered nearby can't tell when their last breath will leave. At first glance, it is really sad to compare the parting of true lovers to death, which is not in line with the poet's original intention. However, it is in this respect that the master of metaphysics embodies his "eccentric talent", making the image of "parting" almost imperceptible, and making death a "melting" of returning to tranquility and perfection in the spiritual sense. In order to contrast this kind of "melting", in the original poem, the poet used the repetition of "S" sound and alliteration in this paragraph, which made people feel whispering and weak breathing, and produced the sound effect of "melting".
In the second section, Donne shows that he likes to create new words to highlight the extensiveness, uniqueness and uniqueness of separation. In the use of words, Donne likes to express new ideas with words with natural images, and is even keen to create new words with natural images. He combined "tears" and "Hong Tao" into a new word "tears-flood", and "sigh" and "storm" into a new word "sigh-storm", and mutual insurance. All this makes this poem vivid and "human body" at the same time. The word "laity" and "blasphemy" in lines 78 and 78 are used together, which is more sacred than their love and different from ordinary people.
In the third section of the poem, a small but harmful movement on the ground-"the movement of the earth" is compared with a larger but harmless movement in space-"the vibration of celestial bodies". According to the Greek astronomer Ptolemy, the earth is the center of the universe and celestial bodies have nine orbits. Celestial movements such as "panic" refer to the changes in the operation on the ninth or eighth day and are considered harmless. What the poet emphasizes here is that their differences are different from ordinary people. He compared parting to the deviation of a huge celestial body, which is mysterious and significant, but extremely sacred, which is not something that ordinary people can teach.
On April 4th and May 5th, the poems still take the grand cosmic celestial bodies as metaphors, emphasizing the difference between "sacred love" and "secular love". The word "sub-secular" in the fourth section superficially means "under the moon". Because among the nine circles of celestial bodies, the closest circle to the earth is the orbit of the moon, which is the first heavy day. This poem shows that the love of ordinary people under the moon is composed of senses, while Donne praises the spiritual holy love, which is beyond ordinary people's understanding. The fifth section further emphasizes that the love they have is different from the love of ordinary people, and it is not composed of senses. Their sacred love is refined to a fine degree, and they have no sense (eyes, lips, hands).
As can be seen from the sixth section, this school of poets typically adopts two artistic means, namely, strange metaphor and paradox, in order to achieve the effect of philosophical feelings and perceptual thoughts.
Metaphor is a common skill in Renaissance and metaphysical poetry, and it is also widely used in the creation of modernist poets such as Eliot in the twentieth century. It is good at wit, has the nature of turning decay into magic, and endows ordinary images with magical meaning. For example, at the end of Donne's farewell speech: My condolences, the image of ordinary compasses has been given multiple meanings. The relationship between the two feet of ordinary compasses, which are interrelated and will be combined for a long time, is a good metaphor for the poet's complex psychology when he leaves his wife. Paradox refers to a statement that is self-contradictory on the surface, but contains profound insights in essence.
In section 6, the strange metaphor is an extension of gold. The poet compares love to gold. Unlike other metals, gold will not break in the process of separation, but will only extend. At the same time, this golden love is ethereal, not secular.
The last three sections lead to a new and well-known metaphysical metaphor: comparing men and women in the process of separation with the feet of compasses. These last three verses actually have three meanings. For the first time, it shows that the two legs of the compass are interrelated, which shows that real separation is actually impossible. Secondly, it is believed that the two feet will be together for a long time to show that the separation is only temporary; The last moral is the most important "circle theory" in the poem. In the poet's view, the circle is a symbol of perfection. In the process of drawing a circle with a compass, its starting point is the end point. The poet believes that as long as the compass is firmly fixed, the other foot can draw a perfect circle. Here, standing still symbolizes the firmness of women, and this firmness gives the poet the power to complete the circle. This metaphysical metaphor vividly shows the poet's complicated psychological experience and feelings full of care, worry and persuasion towards his wife.
At the same time, the image of "compass drawing a circle" at the end and the image of "destiny" at the beginning, although they are two extremes in object form, both reveal the essence of lovers' separation from macro and micro aspects, and "perfect circle" and "destiny" are consistent from beginning to end, highlighting the poetic skills of metaphysics and referring to the poet's expectation for a perfect spiritual realm and a beautiful life course.