Donne : (1572-1631) dean of St. Paul’s Cathedral, lead poet of English Metaphysical School, his poems & sermons were marked by passion & wit.
... classical poet in his style and movement, and Milton has fulfilled it..." Perhaps the claim that Milton is the innovator of English poetry of the thought-mind will be challenged on behalf of Donne. Has not Donne made poetic speech a vehicle of intense thinking? Does he not press all the rest of man's parts into the service of a quivering complicated thought? Well, the very form in which we are led to... to function from within it rather than to work on its own and seize it for vitalising the authentic creations of another power than the nervous being and its dynamic and dramatic thought-quiverings. Donne is trying at the same time to be mental and vital. His is a restless personality and the double effort brings with it all that violence, disturbed rhythm, counter-pointed expression which are extremely... orientation of the mind towards intellectual thought is baulked of consummation Page 99 because a style suitable for the dominant play of the poised intelligence has not yet been launched. Donne was so different a personality from Milton that it is not easy to institute illuminating comparisons except in a very general manner; but we may catch the essential difference between their dealings ...
... note 7. The original French runs: "Il est curieux que je n'ai ete vivement frappe que depuis deux jours de la difficulte de concilier ma doctrine du Christ cosmique et la Pluralite des Mondes. - Etant donne que le Cosmos est certainement inseparable, et que le Christianisme n'est pas plus petit que le Cosmos, il faut admettre une certaine manifestation 'polymorphe' du Christ cosmique sur divers mondes... from Tientsin on 13 October 1933: 8 8. Lettres Intimes..., pp. 253-54, The original French runs: "A Rome, essaiera-t-on de s'entendre avec moi, - ou simplement de me faire sentir qu'on me donne une nouvelle chance' (vous avez sans doute raison: one explication orale la-bas serait dangereuse)? - J'attends, et je suis decide a aller dans la direction d'un accord avec un maximum de sincerite... desirer, un accord? serait-ce franc? et serait-ce solide? - Je finis par penser que la seule solution, dans mon cas, est de continuer a vivre en 'free lance', au moins provisoirement. Si le Seigneur me donne encore assez longtemps force et vie, j'arriverai peut-etre a mettre au point une oeuvre spirituelle plus viable, ou a contempler 1'avenement, dans I'Eglise, d'un esprit nouveau. - En attendant, ce que ...
... poet in his style and movement, and Milton has fulfilled it..." Perhaps the claim that Milton is the innovator of English poetry of the thought-mind will be challenged on behalf of Donne. Has not Donne made poetic speech a vehicle of intense thinking? Does he not press all the rest of man's parts into the service of a quivering complicated thought? Well, the very form in which we are led... function from within it rather than to work on its own and seize it for vitalising the authentic creations of another power than the nervous being and its dynamic and dramatic thought-quiverings. Donne is trying at the same time to be mental and vital. His is a restless personality and the double effort brings with it all that violence, disturbed rhythm, counter-pointed expression which are extremely... the genuine orientation of the mind towards intellectual thought is baulked of consummation because a style suitable for the dominant play of the poised intelligence has not yet been launched. Donne was so different a personality from Milton that it is not easy to institute illuminating comparisons except in a very general manner; but we may catch the essential difference between their dealings ...
... it is on a vital impulse. Shakespeare suggests but does not bring out the idealist in him, the man of bright illusions. Donne Donne is very much in the limelight these days. How far can we regard the present high estimate of him as justified? It seems to me that Donne falls between two stools. The Elizabethan ingenuities pass because of the great verve of the life force that makes them a ...
... Sri Aurobindo: This is decoration with a vengeance dottily so. One might just as well write And my soul's verandah adorn With starry-red rose-pots. Then the soul of Donne would rejoice. But Donne should be doffed here. NB: Do you find any meaning here? Sri Aurobindo: Yes, except that the dots have too much meaning. NB: "Mystery's heavenly fane" all right? Sri... defective sense of poetic values. This is another triumph. You must have had, besides the foiled romantic, a metaphysical poet of the 17th century latent in you, who is breaking out now from time to time. Donne himself after having got relieved in the other world of his ruggedness, mannerisms and ingenious intellectualities, might have written this poem." 51 So, all's well that ends well. REFERENCES ...
... elliptical style with a lot of obscurity and ambiguity. It can take for its patron-saint, as it were, John Donne of the Page 309 seventeenth century; but, to carry it off, the poet must have Donne's ecstatic intellect, Donne's analytic heart, Donne's mystic nerves of sensation; and even Donne with his extraordinary gifts often turns out untransformed stuff of a thought-emotion-sensation melange... because he wrote in a period of poetic conventionalism pieces vibrant with a new vision and a new technique. "Sweet fire the sire of Muse" — so pronounced Hopkins in the midst of his newness. Like Donne with his high-pressure effects, Hopkins time and again overdoes his originality and gives us strained piled-up novelties instead of achieved and possessed audacities; but he has the true sense of the ...
... vein in Donne, My heart is by dejection, clay, And by selfe-murder, red. From this red earth, 0 Father, purge away All vicious tinctures, that new fashioned I may rise up from death, before I'am dead. 2 The allegorical element too finds here cleverly woven into the mystically religious -texture. Here is another example of the mystically religious temper from Donne: ... taint, since he does not know how to transcend it totally, in two ways: (1) by a strong thought-element, the metaphysical way, as it may be called and (2) by a strong symbolism, the occult way. Donne takes to the first course, Blake the second. And it is the alchemy brought to bear in either of these processes that transforms the merely religious into the mystic poet. The truly spiritual, as I ...
... vein in Donne, My heart is by dejection, clay, And by self-murder, red. From this red earth, 0 Father, purge away All vicious tinctures, that new fashioned I may rise up from death, before ram dead.² The allegorical element too finds here cleverly woven into the mystically religious texture. Here is another example of the mystically religious temper from Donne: ... mundane taint, since he does not know how to transcend it totally, in two ways: (1) by a strong thought-element, the metaphysical way, as it may be called and (2) by a strong symbolism, the occult way. Donne takes to the first course, Blake the second. And it is the alchemy brought to bear in either of these processes that transforms the merely religious into the mystic poet. The truly spiritual, as I have ...
... and uniform act. Nor is it determined alone by a poet's individual style. Herbert has a religious simplicity, at once piquant and passionate; Crashaw a rich sensuousness kindling into spirituality; Donne a nervous intricate power troubling the Unknown; Vaughan a half-obscure half-bright straining beyond thought into mystical vision; Patmore a pointed polished ardour of the intellect for the veiled Wonder;... consciousness. Nor is the mystic's distance from intellectual directness to be confused with the complicated density or obscurity resulting from a many-strained, multi-motioned play of the intellect as in Donne, Browning and sometimes Thompson. That distance consists simply in the revelation of secret presences and experiences straight from the hidden planes which are charged with the Superhuman and the Divine ...
... that nothing more can be added. I offer my profound and faithful affection to you Suprabha and Noren. * Page 99 Dearest Suprabha and Noren, Michel nous a donne hier soir la si triste nouvelle. Nous sommes de tout coeur avec vous et partageons votre grande peine. II nous a quitte mais je sens qu'il reste pres de nous. Avec vous tres affectueusement... must have felt a shock. Page 109 Bien cher Patrice, Quelques mots pour te remercier de m'avoir fait prevenir du depart de Abhay Singh. Etrangcmcnt cette nouvelle m'a donne l'impression d'avoir pense a lui tres recemment mais sans que cela se precise. Abhay Singh est pour moi lie a Sujata et c'etait Nandanam; ce sont des souvenirs enfouis dans le fond de mon coeur ...
... itself functions on various planes. Whatever its sources, the expression it finds may very well be on the same planes as those of secular inspiration— the planes of imaginative passion and thought. When Donne acts the vehement devotee— Batter my heart, three-person'd God; for you As yet but knocke, breathe, shine and seek to mend, Page 132 or Crashaw cries de profundis... masse. To be holy scripture is not necessarily to be overhead with the revelatory rhythm with which the Indian Rishis often uttered their realisations. As a rule, the world's Bibles ring the note of Donne or Crashaw or Herbert, Hopkins or Eliot or other fine English poets turned mystics. Most of the existing religious and spiritual literature is wanting in the accent which leads up to what the Rishis ...
... how much poetic writing had gone before. Not only had Spenser, Marlowe, Shakespeare, Ben Jonson worked on English poetry; Chapman, Beaumont, Fletcher, Webster, Marston, Massinger, Shirley, Heywood, Donne, Herbert, Herrick, Campion - all these were born fairly before him. Abundant development had preceded him in prose also, starting with Bacon and Raleigh and culminating Page 101 in... Elizabethan thought rises out of the surge of passion and emotion: there is little of detached controlled intellectual activity. The Life-Force throws up ideas from its quivering entrails, as it were. Even Donne, with his metaphysical wit, is a semi-Elizabethan. Only with Milton comes the pure Mind-Force. We can easily mark the difference between the Life-Force and the Mind-Force by juxtaposing Shakespeare ...
... for supernatural blue. These are splendid lines and by themselves they set up an ideal worth pursuing. Marvell, as you perhaps know already, was a poet of the time of Crabbe, Crashaw, Herbert, Donne, Vaughan: he belonged to the seventeenth century group which includes all these and whose members are called "the Metaphysicals". These poets carry that label not because they were all aching for some-thing... from subtle learning and scholarship and philosophical and scientific literature — imagery escaping, for all its cleverness and far-fetchedness, the charge of being mere fancy and stark conceit. Thus Donne in an inspired lyric compares himself and his sweetheart to a pair of compasses: whether the Page 251 lovers are near to each other or removed and apart, their relationship is shown ...
... varies suddenly and sometimes seems even conflicting in its aspects. This is no surrealistic confusion — feverish jerky disconnected oddities of sight. It is also not the complicated obscurity of Donne, a curious and far-fetched and many-meaninged play of thought. Nor is it exactly Blakean, teeming with a private mythology. It is the subtle many-sidedness of occult vision. In Nirodbaran this Yeatsian... many-tempo'd progress of heavenly delight through earth's dim and coarse stuff. Or analyse: Falls off like a leaf torn by a short breath Of wind. Page 127 Outside Donne and Hopkins — and occasionally Milton — it is difficult to meet with such metrical license indulged in so masterfully. The line is a pentameter but composed of a semi-spondee, a semi-pyrrhic, a full ...
... varies suddenly and sometimes seems even conflicting in its aspects. This is no surrealistic confusion - feverish jerky disconnected oddities of sight. It is also not the complicated obscurity of Donne, a curious and far-fetched and many-meaninged play of thought. Nor is it exactly Blakean, teeming with a private mythology. It is the subtle many-sidedness of occult vision. In Nirodbaran this... that is the many-tempo'd progress of heavenly delight through earth's dim and coarse stuff. Or analyse: ...Falls off like a leaf torn by a short breath Of wind. Outside Donne and Hopkins - and occasionally Milton - it is difficult to meet with such metrical license indulged in so masterfully. The line is a pentameter but composed of a semi-spondee, a semi-pyrrhic, ...
... cause of Shakespeare's way with images. In romantic poetry itself there are two ways of using imagery — that of poets like Spenser, Milton and Tennyson and that of poets like Shakespeare and Donne. Donne differs from Shakespeare in several respects and is a much inferior and less harmonised poet on the whole and often he falls, as you once remarked, between two stools - the vital afflatus ...
... only cause of Shakespeare's way with images. In romantic poetry itself there are two ways of using imagery -that of poets like Spenser, Milton and Tennyson and that of poets like Shakespeare and Donne. Donne differs from Shakespeare in several respects and is a much inferior and less harmonised poet on the whole and often he falls between two stools - the afflatus of the elan vital and the inspiration ...
... has the invigorating luck of being among your "loved ones"? (17.12.1985) I am glad you are delighted with the anthology you have bought of 400 years of English poetry. Your re-discovery of Donne (pronounced "Dun") must have been thrilling. The lines you quote are famous but are surely worth repeating: Our two souls, therefore, which are one Though I must goe, endure not yet A... They are representative of his inspired wit, his blend of vivid feeling with curious bits of learning. But one would miss the full music of the lines if one didn't know how to say "expansion" as Donne wanted according to the seventeenth-century and earlier usage. To get the true rhythmic value of line 3, you have to expand this word to "ex-pan-si-on", four syllables which will make the line a tetrameter ...
... only cause of Shakespeare's way with images. In romantic poetry itself there are two ways of using imagery - that of poets like Spenser, Milton and Tennyson and that of poets like Shakespeare and Donne. Donne differs from Shakespeare in several respects and is a much inferior and less harmonised poet on the whole and often he falls between two stools -the afflatus of the élan vital and the inspiration ...
... defective sense of poetic values. This is another triumph. You must have had, besides the foiled romantic, a metaphysical poet of the 17th century latent in you who is breaking out now from time to time. Donne himself after having got relieved in the other world of his ruggedness, mannerisms and ingenious intellectualities, might have written this poem. In English does 'journey to God" mean anything?... Where do you find metaphysics? I hate metaphysics! and who are these 17th century poets? "Metaphysical poets of the 17th century school" is a standing description of the group or line of poets, Donne, Vaughan, Traherne, Herbert, Quarles, Crashaw and a number of others who wrote poetry of a religious and spiritual character—metaphysical here means that (truth beyond the physical) and has nothing ...
... their bright starry dots." This is decoration with a vengeance dottily so. One might just as well write "And my soul's verandah adorn With starry-red rose-pots." Then the soul of Donne would rejoice. But Donne should be doffed here. Do you find any meaning in my stanza? Yes, except that the dots have too much meaning. April 5, 1938 You have spoken of the original inspiration ...
... a symbol of the sadhana, the discipline that leads towards the goal. II y a en chaque homme une volonte. II faut que cette volonte refuse son consentement aux mouve-ments du vital et donne son plein appui seulement aux mouvements du psychique. There is in every man a will. This will should refuse its consent to the movements of the vital and give its full support only to the... symbol of Sri Aurobindo, we receive from you the consciousness of the Supreme, don't we? Je ne peux pas donner la conscience du Supreme car qui serait capable de la recevoir? — Lorsque je donne le lotus rose j'etablie simplement un rapport entre les sadhaks et Sri Aurobindo — ou plutot je renouvelle ce rapport. I cannot give the consciousness of the Supreme, for who would be capable ...
... pleureuse?” “Je suis la tempete et l’efffroi; Je finis ou le ciel commence. Est-ce que j’ai besoin de toi Petite, moi qui suis l’immense?” La source dit au gouffre amer ; “Je te donne, sans bruit ni gloire, Ce qui te manque, o vaste mer! Une goutte d’eau qu’on peut boire.”* *03/03/195 Victor Hugo* 2. The Sleepy One *If he sleeps the child will see A very... “Bonsoir !” Si l’enfant est sage, Sur son doux visage La Mere se penchera Et longtemps lui parlera. Si mon enfant m’aime, Dieu dira lui-meme: “J’aime cet enfant qui dort, Qu’on lui donne un reve d’or.”* *31/03/1953 Marceline Desbordes Valmore* 3. The Morning Prayer *I thank thee, Lord, for our daily bread, For the sunshine and the rain! I thank thee for my lovely ...
... the negative attitude, the piercing pitiableness of the denying posture, when he penned that sentence of delicate inexplicable nostalgia: 'Ce que la vie a de meilleur, c'est I'idée qu'elle nous donne du je ne sais quoi qui n'est point en elle.' A sentence, we may observe, that is typical also of the beautiful directness of French prose in even the glimmers it gives of the far and the faint, a ...
... forget how gorged with metaphor linked to metaphor and how dazzling with picturesque piled-up epithets was the work of its supreme dramatists. Then there was, almost contemporary, the devious depth of Donne and the ingenious radiance of Crashaw. Had Milton lived in our own day he would have known and appreciated the whole Romantic Movement which, while markedly simple and Page 4 direct ...
... Similarly, Eve's naked form is clothed with heavenly grace; it is as though the "Mother of Mankind" had transcended all these conventions. Another great poet of the seventeenth century, John Donne, uses gold in an innovative manner in his poem The Relique . He claims that his love is immortal and even in the grave he and his beloved will escape the cold clutches of death. He explains that ...
... visions and feelings ? Or is it that the spiritual genre is illegitimate—spiritual subjects not proper for poetic treatment? But in that case much of Tagore's poetry would be improper, not to speak of Donne (now considered a great poet), Vaughan, Crashaw, etc., Francis Thompson 53 and I don't know how many others in all climes and ages. Is it the dealing with other worlds that makes it not proper? But ...
... Bengali novelist and short story writer. 50. See Letters on Yoga, Cent. Ed., p. 770. 51. 4 Arts Annual 1935, printed and published by Haren Ghosh. 52. The Mother, Chapter 2. 53. Donne, John (1572 - 1631). Dean of St. Paul's; preacher and metaphysical poet; author of satires, epistles and elegies. Vaughan, Henry (1622 - 1695). A Welsh metaphysical poet and mystic. Crashaw ...
... note 7. The original French runs: "li est curieux que je n'ai ete vivement frappe que depuis deux jours de la difficulty de concilier ma doctrine du Christ cosmique et la Pluralite des Mondes.-Elant donne que le Cosmos est certainement inseparable, et que le Christianisme n'est pas plus petit que le Cosmos, il faut admettre une certaine manifestation 'potymorphe' du Christ cosmique sur divers mondes ...
... the surface-kind, Crashaw in spite of his rich point is touch-and-go, precariously poised on the edge of perfection. Inspired "conceit" has mostly that slight falling short of the absolute. Even Donne who has an extraordinary gift for aligning disparate elements does not poetically go home with utter finality when he is "conceited". His ideas and his emotions are very valuable, they at once arrest ...
... danser. Un voile aux mille plis la cache tout entière. D'un long trille d'argent la flute la première, L'invite; elle s'élance, entre-croise ses pas, Et, du lent mouvement imprimé par ses bras, Donne un rythme bizarre à l'étoffe nombreuse, Qui s'élargit, ondule, et se gonfle et se creuse, Et se déploie enfin en large tourbillon... Et Pannyre devient fleur, flamme, papillon! Tous se taisent; ...
... lines or passages can be called rugged; for ruggedness and austerity are not the same thing; poetry is rugged when it is rough in language and rhythm or rough and unpolished but sincere in feeling. Donne is often rugged,— Yet dare I almost be glad, I do not see That spectacle of too much weight for me. Who sees God's face that is self-life must die; What a death were it then to see God die? ...
... a review of the Oxford Book of Seventeenth Century Verse in the New Statesman . It might be noted as worth getting when you have the money—unless you have already something of the kind. Have you Donne and Blake in the Library?—not that I want them just now, but I shall some day when I revise The Future Poetry . January 1934 The Mother I sent you a review of The Mother a few days ago. Have ...
... about the Crashaw-element so strong in Thompson at times? It was no obstacle either, for if Crashaw most resembled any poet it was, apart from Thompson, Shelley himself and to a lesser extent Blake. Donne and Patmore now remain: they are present — though more in the psychology than in the actual language of the style — in Thompson's later Odes; but with neither of them was he so much "a brother in song" ...
... que la Douce Mere nous conduit et par suite nous avancons sans hate. (Mere a ajoute:) Quand on nest pas sur de son avenir on est inquiet et impatient; la certitude, au contraire, vous donne le courage de faire les choses tranquillement et soigneusement avec un souci de perfection. Benedictions 16/20 bien * We move forward without haste for we are sure oftlie ...
... also because it is not involved in an elaborate cleverness overdoing the effect. An elaborate clever-ness is not in itself reprehensible: the seventeenth-century poet Page 110 John Donne succeeds often by a curiously worked-out wit which is still poetry by being charged with a fine feeling. But I may here illustrate what piquancy should avoid being. I shall offer an example in which ...
... the price is too high, to ourselves or to others or both. But perhaps the price of beauty and poetry is always high, Shakespeare suffered and Blake was alone, and Shelley, and Mozart, Milton too. Donne, whom Page 289 you cite? All I fear have paid the price of suffering, or others have. The two worlds obey different laws. But I've just been rereading Rilke's Malte Laurids Brigge (I'm ...
... negativist attitude, the piercing pitiableness of the denying posture, when he penned that sentence of delicate inexplicable nostalgia: "Ce que la vie a de meilleur, c'est l'idée qu'elle nous donne de je ne sais quoi qui n'est point en elle"? A sentence, we may observe, that is typical also of the beautiful directness of French prose in even the glimmers it gives of the far and the faint, ...
... to Mother for Christmas, the small Polish Madonna in the dark wooden triptych and your photo. I included inside a letter: "Ma Mere Divine, cette statuette a ete faite en Pologne. Permets que je Te donne aujourd'hui la photo de Riek, Riek par laquelle Tu m'as me nee a Toi. Janina." ("My Divine Mother, this statuette was made in Poland. Let me give You today the photo of Riek through whom You brought ...
... which, also at each moment, opens before us. Page 79 aucune autorité, aucune puissance de volonté, mais com-me une brise fraîche, douce et pure, comme un murmure cristallin qui donne la note d'harmonie dans le concert discordant. Settlement, pour celui qui sait écouter la note, respirer la brise, elle contient de tels trésors de beauté, un tel parfum de pure sérénité et de noble ...
... -Paradiso, 53, 71, 149 Danton, 103 Delille, 85 Denmark,175 Descartes, 286 Dhammapada, 279n Diocles, 108, 109n Dionysus, 182-3 Dirghatama, 162-6 Discabolo, 170 Donne, 74, 80 -Divine Poems, 80 ln -"Annvnciation", 81n -"The Litanie", 80n -The Progress qf the Soule, 80n Douve,217 Dryden, 85 Duncan, 170 Durga,180 ECKHART, 131 ...
... si sublime de patience et de miséricorde qu' elle ne se fait entendre avec aucune auto rité, aucune puissance de volonté, mais comme une brise fraîche, douce et pure, comme un murmure cristallin qui donne la note d' harmonic dans le concert discordant. Seulement, pour celui qui sait écouter la note, respirer la brise, elle contient de tels trésors de beauté, un tel parfum de pure sérénité et de noble ...
... honit son âme et brise son idole ! " Où vas- tu , voyageur?" – "Mais par où tu me mènes , O Flamme mirifique, Asile des phalènes !" Ce qui se donne à Dieu demeure et se restaure, Toute autre chose passe et fuit et s'évapore! Vivre en guerrier, toujours plus dangereusement, Se donner corps et âme, et prêt à ...
... unrealisable. The mystic has to express in words experiences that are beyond verbal expression. As Gilbert Highet perceptively says (he is thinking of poets like St John of the Cross, Holderlin, Valery, Donne and T.S. Eliot): These people had a certain experience of life which they found so complex, so dangerous and alarming, so much profounder than normal thought and living, that they ...
... Correspondence Prithwi Singh's Correspondence with The Mother Undated (1942?) I am sending you two French sentences written with your pen: "Seigneur, donne-nous le bonheur véritable, celui qui ne depend que de toi." [Lord, give us the true happiness, the happiness that depends on you alone.] "Nous avanҫons sans hâte parce que nous somme sûrs de ...
... by her: Hither a rapture she invisible Or he a mystic body and mystic soul. Reveal not then thy being naked to hers.... (Vol. 5, p. 206). Page 103 Not Shakespeare, nor Donne, nor Rossetti could have achieved a completer, a more uninhibited, a more passionate evocation of love's fierce storm and its aftermath of fulfilled calm than in these whirling and hotly adequate lines ...
... worthy of Thy victory. The Mother, Words of the Mother - III: New Year Messages Seigneur, nous aspirons à être Tes vaillants guerriers afin que Ta gloire soit manifestée sur le terre. ...donne-nous la force de rejeter la mensonge et de surgir dans Ta vérité, purs et dignes de Ta victoire. ( Paroles de la Mere , Vol. 3, p. 182) सूर्यो यथा सर्वलोकस्य चक्षुर्न लिप्यते चाक्षुषैर्बाह्यदोषैः ...
... and feelings? Or is it that the spiritual genre is illegitimate—spiritual subjects not proper for poetic treatment? But in that case much of Tagore's poetry would be improper, not to speak of much of Donne (now considered a great poet), Vaughan, Crashaw etc., Francis Thompson and I do not know how many others in all climes and ages. Is it the dealing with other worlds that makes it not proper? But what ...
... poetic value, the difficulty might lie in the remoteness of the subject. But nowadays this difficulty is lessening with the increasing interest in the spiritual and the mystic. It is an age in which Donne, once condemned as a talented but fantastic weaver of extraordinary conceits, is being hailed as a great poet, and Blake lifted to a high eminence; even small poets with the mystic turn are being pulled ...
... of the Virat Purusha in the Gita. 6 November 1936 I remain convinced that fame is a fluke. Even a settled literary fame seems to be a very fluctuating affair. Who gave a thought to Blake or Donne in former times, when I was in England, for instance? But now they bid fair to be reckoned among the great poets. I see that Byron is in the depths, the quotations for Pope and Dryden are rising; it ...
... School for its fusion of intricate thought with sense-impressions and of far-fetched scholarship with immediate feeling and of supra-physical longing with fanciful sentiment. The chief names here are Donne, Marvell, Crashaw, Herbert, Vaughan. Mostly they fall between two stools - they have not the Elizabethan verve to carry off their ingenuities nor the real intellectual self-possession which can fulfil ...
... norm which persists, but the persistence is in the thick of diversities and never clings to a monotonous or single-track method. Many shades and grades of words must be permitted: The vocabulary of Donne need not be cast out by Milton's, the Hopkinsian by that of Bridges. To be able to appreciate the poetic moment — even while noting the absence of one's favourite themes and turns and tones — constitutes ...
... once dead, there's no more dying then. This is an expression of the life-mind moulding with unrest of emotion and sensation a mystic idea. It is a sort of complement to the "metaphysical" Donne-effect which came on the heels of the Shakespeare-phenomenon. Here is a thesis, as it were, suggesting from its own depth that antithesis which is at once opposed and continuous with it, the antithesis ...
... Aurobindo-nian art with its rare characteristics: immense supra-intellectual clarity and penetrating fathomless reverberation. But Page 60 it would be unjust to hold that the school of Donne, Crashaw and Vaughan which he dubbed "metaphysical" could have no success in uttering the Unutterable and that his wisecrack puts it out of court. No metaphysical had Sri Aurobindo's large and close ...
... home from its South American colonies. Elizabeth’s reign became England’s Golden Age. It was the age of the playwrights Christopher Marlowe, William Shakespeare and Ben Jonson; of the poets John Donne, Edmund Spenser, Philip Sidney, Georges Chapman; of the musicians Thomas Tallis and William Byrd; of the seafarers and explorers Francis Drake, Walter Raleigh, Martin Frobisher, John Davies and John ...
... Dawn-Goddess. See Savitri (2) De Quincey's division of literature 162 death 5 desire 29,160 dharma 145,174 Diekhoff,John 244 Divine Presence 303 divinisation 6 Donne 46,230 Durga'sLion 307 Dutt,Toru 144 dvārapālaka 299 E ego 298,310,313 Eliot, T.S. 126,335 emotional being 29 English poetry creative intelligence in 229 ...
... through his idea of an imaginary commonwealth, Utopia. We have already talked about Cervantes who came at a later period: his Don Quixote was a satire and so much more. In the writings of John Donne we may detect the direct imitation of the Roman satirists. Most of the great dramatists of the 17th century were satirists, Moliere being the prince among them. Samuel Butler's Hudibras was a great ...
... Elles viennent, en effet, du dehors, de quelque entite vitale qui s'amuse a vous les envoyer pour voir comment vous allez les recevoir. Je l'aie vue passer (la suggestion) au moment ou je vous ai donne la fleur. Je n'y ai pas attache d'importance parce que c'etait une sottise - mais je vois que vous l'avez reçue. What are these suggestions that sometimes invade me? Are they not coming ...
... call you? My dear child, Be sure that I hear you each time you call and my help and force go straight to you. With my blessings. 30-8-63 Bonne Fête! Je t’embrasse de tout cœur et te donne mes bénédictions pour l’accomplissement de ton aspiration la plus haute. Avec ma tendresse. [I embrace you with all my heart and give you my blessings for the fulfilment of your highest aspiration ...
... lines or passages can be called rugged; for ruggedness and austerity are not the same thing; poetry is rugged when it is rough in language and rhythm or rough and unpolished but sincere in feeling. Donne is often rugged,— Yet dare I almost be glad, I do not see That spectacle of too much weight for me. Who sees God's face, that is self-life must die; What a death were it then to see God die? ...
... sublime de patience et de misericorde qu'elle ne se fait entendre avec aucune autorite, aucune puissance de volonte, mais comme une brise fraiche, douce et pure, comme un murmure cristallin qui donne la note d'harmonie dans Ie concert discordant. Seulement, pour celui qui salt ecouter la note, respirer la brise, elle contient de tels tresors de beaute, un tel parfum de pure serenite et de noble ...
... infinie des esprits à la charité." ³ "Le cœur a ses raisons que la raison ne connaît point; ... Je dis que Ie cœur aime l'être universel naturellement, et soi-même naturellement, selon qu'il s'y donne; et il se durcit contre l'un ou l'autre, à son choix. Vous avez rejeté l'un et conservé l'autre. Est-ce par raison que vous aimez?" 4"Connaissez done, superbe, quel paradoxe vous êtes à vous-même ...
... wife was an ordinary Christian and it took her a long time to come to his standpoint. It was because she could not chime in with him that there was the tragedy. All the Christian mystic poets from Donne onward regard sex as permissible in the man-and-woman relation. × state of inertia. ...
... to enrich the total content of Savitri. But these sonnets have their distinctive character too, and some of them at least are among the best of their kind, comparable indeed to the finest work of Donne or Hopkins. It would thus be rewarding to read Sri Aurobindo's sonnets as the rhythmic diary-notes of an integral Yogin's experiences ranging from the Inconscient to the Superconscient realms. 'The ...
... Texts used in New Year Music Mantra in Music by Sunil New Year Music 1990 Listen Prayer Gloire à Toi, Seigneur, Réalisateur Suprême. Donne-nous une foi ardente, active, absolue, inébranlable en Ta VICTOIRE. ( Prières et Méditations , p. 418) Glory to Thee, O Lord, Supreme Master of all realisation. Give us a faith active and ardent ...
... l touch upon mental speech meets us in Donne's My face in thine eye, thine in mine appears, And true plain hearts do in the faces rest. Typical of this "Metaphysical" poet is the tension not only in the idea with its tug this way and that but also in the metrical craft with its unusual play of stress in both the lines. In contrast to Donne's little picture of hearts in harmony through ...
... service of the spiritual consciousness by English writers themselves. Herbert's religious simplicity, at once piquant and passionate - Crashaw's rich sensuousness kindling into ecstatic devotion - Donne's nervous intricate power troubling the Inscrutable - Vaughan's half-obscure half-bright straining beyond thought into mystical vision - Wordsworth's profound contemplative pantheistic peace - Blake's ...
... in a fundamental sense sincere, whereas over-emphasis and over-statement always bring in falsity. Who would think of censuring out of hand a prose style like Sir Thomas Browne's, Jeremy Taylor's, Donne's, Gibbon's, De Quincy's, Landor's, Car-lyle's, Ruskin's, Meredith's, Henry James's, Chesterton's, Charles Morgan's, Sir Winston Churchill's? These very names — three of them contemporary — ...
... question asked in all poetry. There is also the query of Shakespeare's Lear, which we have already quoted: Why should a horse, a dog, a rat have life, And thou no breath at all? There is Donne's impatient protest to his girl-friend: For God's sake hold your tongue and let me love. There is Sri Aurobindo's line: All our earth starts in mud and ends with sky. We have cited Beddoes ...
... Aurobindo: Conceit means a too obviously ingenious or far-fetched or extravagant idea or image which is evidently an invention of a clever brain, not a true and convincing flight of the imagination. E.g. Donne's (?) comparison of a child's smallpox eruptions to the stars of the milky way or something similar. I have forgotten the exact thing, but that will serve. This hill turns up its nose at heaven's ...
... parts of the world for centuries. The Fear of Death gives tongue to the belief, as did verses by others before—from Shakespeare's And Death once dead there's no more dying then, through Donne's One short sleep past we wake eternally, And death shall be no more : Death, thou shalt die, Page 102 to Longfellow's There is no death! What seems so is transition ...
... seventeenth century are often sophisticated in the former sense: the "modernists" of the twentieth in the latter. But there are effects in both that are brainy or ingenious in an inspired way: some of Donne's conceits, for instance, are not superimposed on the idea and emotion but organic to them and Eliot has at times an intricate cross-light imagery that is really penetrating. Here they are apparently ...
... however little, from the saintly purity of feeling. Such a thing is inconceivable in Sri Aurobindo: this fact is to be particularly noted. In the work of almost all mystic poets — in Kabir's , in Donne's, even in Blake's, to take only a few instances, — we may hear the scolding voice, but not so anywhere in Sri Aurobindo's poetry. He observed the discipline of the "Higher State" even if he ever ...
... and elsewhere flown, Does he return to the forgotten face? Therefore I think by error thou hast come, Or else a passing pity led thee home. 19 And the following has something of Donne's audacity of thought and expression: Ere I had taken half my will of joy, Why hast thou. Night, with cruel swiftness ceased? To slay a woman's heart with sad annoy, O ruddy Dawn... begins in dawn's red shining, Nor will Night stay one hour for lovers' pining. Ere love is done, must Dawn our love discover? 20 Although more elaborate, it makes the same point as Donne's - Busy old fool, unruly Sun, Why dost thou thus, Through windows, and through curtains call on us? Must to thy motions lovers' seasons run? It is, of course, humourless to ...
... Conceit means a too obviously ingenious or far-fetched or extravagant idea or image which is evidently an invention of a clever brain, not a true and convincing flight of the imagination. E.g. Donne's (?) comparison of a child's small-pox eruptions to the stars of the milky way or something similar. I have forgotten the exact thing, but that will serve. This hill turns up its nose at heaven's ...
... these poems have the distinction of being perfectly satisfying in their own kind. 81 And here, in a few lines, Sri Aurobindo sums up the quality of Donne's poetry and the reason why it appeals to the modem mind: Donne's ingenuities remain intellectual and do not get alive except at times, the vital fire or force is not there to justify them.... Energy and force of a kind he has ...
... its own kind settles itself and finds its just place in the durable judgment of the world. Work which was neglected and left aside like Blake's or at first admired with reservation and eclipsed like Donne's is singled out by a sudden glance of Time and its greatness recognised; or what seemed buried slowly emerges or re-emerges; all finally settles into its Page 356 place. What was held as ...
... 602; on role of 'hostile' forces, 602ff; on predestination, 602-3; letters to disciples on literature, 604ff; on Goethe and Shakespeare, 605, 606; on Valmiki & Vyasa, Homer & Shakespeare, 605; on Donne's poetry, 606; on psycho-analysis, 607; "four Aurobindos", 607-8; question-answer duet, 608-9; The Future Poetry, 610ff; Ahana, 620ff; experiments with classical meters, 625ff; system ...
... own kind settles itself and finds its just place in the durable judgment of the world. Work which was neglected and left aside like Blake's or at first admired with reservation and eclipsed like Donne's is singled out by a sudden glance of Time and its greatness recognised; or what seemed buried slowly emerges or re-emerges; all finally settles into its place. What was held as sovereign in its ...
Share your feedback. Help us improve. Or ask a question.