The relationship between form and content in the religious
verse of the metaphysical poets is of great importance in
tracing the development of a tradition which includes such
dissimilar poets as Donne and Traherne. The nature of the
personal religious experience, as expressed in the religious
poetry of the first half of the seventeenth century, undergoes
significant change. This change is most apparent in the verse
of Donne, Herbert, Vaughan and Traherne, and may be described
basically in terms of the time when individual soul and God
are united. For Donne this union is unattainable in the present
and is to be found only after death, as the Divine Poems and the
Anniversaries demonstrate; in the poems of Traherne, however, it
is experienced at the moment of birth and becomes a continuing,
present reality. As we trace in the work of the four poets the
gradual bringing into this world of the soul's union with God,
we discover also a process in which the barriers of the self are
broken down. Individual personality becomes increasingly
identified with the Divine Personality, and finally nothing
intervenes between present reality and the long-sought vision.
This vision, symbolized in Donne's Anniversaries by the
liberation after death of the soul of Elizabeth Drury, is
progressively interiorized in the verse of the later poets,
and in Traherne's lyrics finds a new embodiment in the living
experience of the poet.
Such a change can be traced in the forms the poets use.
We may find not only in the inner structure of line and stanza,
but also in the total visual arrangement and organizing
principle of a poem or group of poems, formal equivalents to
the kind of vision expressed. The Anniversaries and Divine
Poems of Donne and the poems in Herbert's The Temple are
notable for the complexity of their controlling figures and
the intricacy of their verbal structure. In Vaughan's Silex
Scintillans and in the poems of Traherne, however, we find
simpler and more flexible organizing principles and a corresponding
decline in the use of complex symbols and conceits„
In general, the formal and structural changes which occur
between Donne and Traherne may best be seen as a progressive
simplifying and paring down -- a removal, in the verse itself,
of all that might stand between individual soul and God.
But while the nature of the actual religious experience
changes in the four poets, and with it the inner structures and
outer forms of their verse, there remains one single, informing
vision of God. God is encountered and described in different
ways, but His essential nature is recognized as changeless
and unconditioned. In the same way we must examine the different
formal principles within a larger context. In all four
poets the concept of the poem as a celebration of and a
sacrifice to God remains constant. In all four poets the act
of poetic creation itself is analogous to the greater creative
Act of God; the poems themselves are individual acts of praise
which celebrate as they embody the multiplicity-in-unity of
the Creation. Within this context a study of the best and
most characteristic verse of these poets shows that there is
nothing accidental or unplanned in the methods of organization
each used to convey his religious experience. The different
poetic forms we encounter, many of them unique, are our first
and most compelling guide to the spiritual core of the poetry;
they are the means by which we recognize not only the uniqueness
of the individual experience, but also its place in the larger
framework of universal praise. / Arts, Faculty of / English, Department of / Graduate
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:UBC/oai:circle.library.ubc.ca:2429/42424 |
| Date | January 1968 |
| Creators | Bellette, Anthony Frank |
| Publisher | University of British Columbia |
| Source Sets | University of British Columbia |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Text, Thesis/Dissertation |
| Rights | For non-commercial purposes only, such as research, private study and education. Additional conditions apply, see Terms of Use https://open.library.ubc.ca/terms_of_use. |
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