George Herbert as a Metaphysical Poet

Name: Nilay N. Rathod

Paper 101: Elizabethan and Restoration Literature

Subject Code: 22392

Batch: M.A. Sem-1 (2021-23)

Roll No: 18

Enrolment No:4069206420210030

Email Address: rathodnilay2017@gmail.com

Submitted to: Department of English, Maharaja Krishnakumarsinhji Bhavnagar University

Introduction:

English poetry may be divided into different ages for the convenience of study, like, Anglo-Saxon poetry, classical poetry, neoclassical poetry metaphysical poetry, romantic poetry, modern poetry and so forth. Strictly speaking, metaphysical poetry does not represent age rather it is a distinctive school of thought that is distinguished from other trends of poetry by salient features that are recognizing points of the school poetry where George Herbert is a religious poet. Besides George Herbert, some other poets are also listed in the school like John Donne, Andrew Marvell, Robert Southwell, Richard Crashaw, Thomas Treharne, and Henry Vaughan. George Herbert wrote poetry in English, Latin, and Greek. In 1633 all of Herbert’s English poems were published in The Temple: Sacred poems and private Ejaculations, with a preface by Nicholas Ferrer. All of Herbert’s surviving English poems are on religious themes and are characterized by the directness of expression enlivened by original by apt conceits in which, metaphysically, the likeness is of function rather than visual.

George Herbert is considered a religious poet because of the subject matter of his poetry which is fully devotional and religious in nature. By his poetry, he completely surrenders himself to God and his master, Jesus. Although he was associated with the metaphysical group, he was exceptional for his treatment of religion in his poetry. For his devotion to God, he is known as the saint of the metaphysical group. And his religious thought afterwards influenced other metaphysical poets. He deals with the soul, God, life after death, the relation between human spirits and senses and so on. He talks of man's relation to God, of the body to the soul, of the life here and to the life hereafter. In this relation, he often shows rebellion, reconciliation, and final submission. His most famous work is "The Temple"- a collection of 169 religious’ poems in which Herbert uses his poetic skill in God's praise in as many different forms as possible. Some of his other poems are Discipline, Affliction and Prayer. Moreover, his poetry is a sequence of religious poems.

Early Life:

A younger brother of Edward Herbert, 1st Baron Herbert of Cherbury, a notable secular metaphysical poet, George in 1610 sent his mother for New Year’s two sonnets on the theme that the love of God is a fitter subject for verse than the love of woman, a foreshadowing of his poetic and vocational bent.

Educated at home, at Westminster School, and at Trinity College, Cambridge, he was in 1620 elected orator of the university, a position that he described as “the finest place in the university.” His two immediate predecessors in the office had risen to high positions in the state, and Herbert was much involved with the court. During Herbert’s academic career, his only published verse was that written for special occasions in Greek and Latin. By 1625 Herbert’s sponsors at court were dead or out of favour, and he turned to the church, being ordained deacon. He resigned as an orator in 1627 and in 1630 was ordained priest and became rector at Bremerton. He became friends with Nicholas Ferrer, who had founded a religious community at nearby Little Gidding and devoted himself to his rural parish and the reconstruction of his church. Throughout his life, he wrote poems, and from his deathbed he sent a manuscript volume to Ferrer, asking him to decide whether to publish or destroy them. Ferrer published them with the title The Temple: Sacred Poems and Private Ejaculations in 1633.

Herbert as a Metaphysical and religious poet:

Herbert described his poems as “a picture of the many spiritual conflicts that have passed between God and my soul before I could subject mine to the will of Jesus, my Master, in whose service I have now found perfect freedom.” Herbert shares his conflicts with John Donne, the archetypal metaphysical poet, and a family friend. As well as personal poems, The Temple includes doctrinal poems, notably “The Church Porch,” the first in the volume, and the last, “The Church Militant.” Other poems are concerned with church rituals.

The main resemblance of Herbert’s poems to Donne’s is in the use of common language in the rhythms of speech. Some of his poems, such as “The Altar” and “Easter Wings,” are “pattern” poems, the lines forming the shape of the subject, a practice Joseph Addison in the 18th century called “false wit.” Samuel Taylor Coleridge in the 19th century wrote of Herbert’s diction, “Nothing can be more pure, manly, and unaffected.” Herbert was a versatile master of metrical form and all aspects of the craft of verse. Though he shared the critical disapproval given the metaphysical poets until the 20th century, he was still popular with readers. Herbert also wrote at Bremerton A Priest to the Temple: Or the Country Parson, his Character and Rule of Life (1652). Herbert’s Works (1941)

The Concept of Metaphysical poetry:

The term ‘metaphysical’ refers to dealing with the different facets of nature or a philosophical view of the nature of things. Grierson depicts Metaphysical poetry as “poetry inspired by a philosophical concept of the universe and the role assigned to the human spirit in the great drama of existence”. Donne and his associates and designed as metaphysical poets in so far as their poetic works have been enriched by the varied aspects of human life like love, religion, death etc. By way of demonstrating their impact on human life in a lively manner with the help of farfetched imagery. Metaphysical poetry has the sparkling capability to explore and express ideas and feelings about the terrestrial world and its diverse phenomena in a rational way to memorize the readers, making innovative and shocking use of puns; paradoxes and employing subtle logical proposition, the metaphysical has achieved a style that is energetic and vigorous unlike the rich mellifluousness and lilting overtones of the conventional poetry. Broadly speaking, metaphysical poetry was the revolt against the conventional romanticism of Elizabethan love poetry and so, the metaphysical group of poets was inclined towards the amalgamation of heterogeneous ideas and desperate images, use of intricate rhythm, realism, obscurity etc. Rightly does John Bennet observe that in the case of Donne, Herbert and his circle, the term “metaphysical” refers to style rather than subject matter. Metaphysical poetry was in its shay day up to the mid-17th century until neo-classic is mentored to reign the literary realm and in the next two centuries, metaphysical poetry went into total eclipse whereby Donne and his successors were discarded for displaying intentional obscurity. But 20th century ushered an unexpected revival of the metaphysical tradition where Donne and his group regained their lost favour and were studied with renewed interest and veneration under the modernist poet-critic. T.S. Eliot’s celebrated “The Metaphysical Poets” in which Eliot Vehemently admired their stunning capacity for devouring and merging all kinds of experience: when a poet’s mind is perfectly equipped for its work, it is constantly amalgamating disparate experience: the ordinary man’s experiences have nothing to do with each other, or with the noise of a typewriter or the smell of cooking: in the mind of the poet these experiences are always forming new wholes.

Spiritual poet:

Herbert’s poems are characterized by a precision of language, a metrical versatility and ingenious use of imagery or conceits that was favoured by the metaphysical school of poets. His poems explore and celebrate the way of god’s love as Herbert discovered them within the fluctuations of his own experience. Because Herbert is as much ecclesiastical as a religious poet, one would not expect him to make much appeal to an age secular as our own, but it has not proved so. All sorts of readers have responded to his quiet intensity, and the opinion has even been a twentieth-century metaphysical poet. When The Temple was published, it was popular but in the 18thcentury it wasn’t as highly valued, and Cowper called it “gothic and uncouth”. Coleridge was “the first important critic who praised. The Temple on literary grounds” although his letter and posthumous writings placed emphasis on the need for the religious inclination to fully appreciate Herbert’s poetry, which of course is not true.

Mysterious and Emblem Herbert was profoundly influenced by the genre of the emblem, which typically associated mysterious but meaningful pictures and mottoes with explanatory text. The first poem for review is “The Altar” (Herbert) The poem is shaped like an altar. “The Altar” is one of his poems with the “Paradox” that as the work of a Christian poet, his poems ought to give fit praise to God but cannot possibly do so…

George Herbert is one of the most genius metaphysical poets. He is admired for his colossal contribution to metaphysical poetry. In his numerous writings, he has added lots of mysterious, passionate feelings, and striking conceits etc. to highlight the nature and reality revolving around human lives. Herbert’s deals with religion in his poetry. He writes simply. His poetry is not as complicated as Donne’s poetry. He highlights the relationship of man to God. Inorganic unity is found in “Easter Wings”. Herbert in “The Pilgrimage” talks about the vanity of human wishes, and the idea of death which is a road to man’s expectations and goals. The poet realizes that to reach his goals, he needs to take another road or set off a new journey. This journey is associated with his death. In dealing with religious ideas, George Herbert is a very successful poet