Comparative essay of two John Donne poems

Comparative essay on two poems:

A Feaver

&

The Flea

By John Donne

Introduction:

John Donne is remembered today as one of the leading interpreters of a style of poetic verse known as “metaphysical poetry,” which flourished in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries.1 Metaphysical poetry usually employs unusual verse forms, complex figures of speech that are applied to create elaborate and surprisingly unorthodox metaphorical examples, and learned themes discussed according to irregular and unexpected chains of reasoning. Donne’s poetry exhibits each of these characteristics. His unusual meters, his habit for abstract puns and double entendres as well as his frequent uses of, often bizarre, metaphors and his process of indirect reasoning are all characteristic traits of the metaphysical poets that are all unified in Donne as well as any other.

A Feaver and The Flea are two different poems written by John Donne. Both discuss the same theme of love and have some similarities between each other; however the two poems are in contrast to one another in several ways, as well.

Both poems address the same theme of love, however; they approach the topic from different views. The Flea addresses the theme of love in more of a physical approach when compared to that of A Feaver. Whereas in The Flea; Donne uses the flea as a symbol of their love in which their two blood streams are intertwined and mingled as one. For Donne, it is their ‘marriage temple’ in which they become ‘one blood made of two’. It is in this way that he attempts to convince her of what he deems to be the sensible thing to do in them intertwining physically and letting their bodies become one with the act of sexual intercourse. In this poem, Donne does not attempt to use love as something spiritual or in any way relate it to feelings or emotion when trying to convince her to bed with him but rather he describes it as just physicality and just two bodies together. On the other hand, in A Feaver, love is shown to be more than a feeling based on outside beauty or physical appearances. It deals more with the pure and spiritual senses of love, as opposed to the physicality of it, and is made clear through the affection that is evoked from the poem itself. Donne appears to show his pure loving feelings towards his beloved, who seems to die at relatively unexpected time due to a fever. For Donne, it appears that her death is like the death of the world and that her death carries as much relevance and importance as would the death of the world, “The whole world vapours with thy breath”. Although this poem appears to have little to do with the physicality of love, it expresses the sadness of losing the purest form of love through the death of his beloved. It is apparent at this particular aspect that the two poems coincide; as they both appear to associate love with death. In The Flea, the symbol of love (the flea itself) for which Donne depends on in his argument, is killed by the woman, and because the flea has the two lovers’ blood, their possible love dies with it. Similar to in A Feaver, in which Donne’s love dies with the death of her as he states in the first and second lines “…for I shall hate\All women so, when thou art gone”. It is in this way and through their association of love with death that both poems show an instance of similarity to each other.
In the picture of the respective women who are subject of each poem is where an obvious difference can be found between the two pieces. In The Flea, the woman is presented to be rather cruel and careless as she ‘Purpled thy nail’ in killing the flea which Donne argued contained both of them intertwined through both respective blood streams and thus their possible ‘love’. It is implied that Donne approaches the woman in this piece and that it is a poem of seduction as he attempts to argue his way into engaging in the physical act of love with this woman. Through the poem, he chooses her to be silent, but she exists only where crime is present at the killing of the ‘innocent, holy’ flea. The poet seems to make her quite a passive character that is following the other’s orders. Whilst in A Feaver, one can find the polar opposite image of a woman. In this piece, Donne considers his beloved as something that is sacred, and that with her death will follow the death of his entire world. What’s more, he sees the world’s existence as being only her ‘carcass’ if it is left behind after her soul departs. Evidence of this is when he says, “Or if, when thou, the worlds soule, goest\It stay, ‘tis but thy carkasse then”. In this poem, Donne appears to exemplify a showing of more respect and affection for a woman than he does in The Flea; perhaps due to the fact that the woman in A Feaver, could be more meaningful towards Donne’s affections than the woman in The Flea.

In terms of structuring, both poems’ structures are consistent with their desired meanings and effects. The Flea is written in three stanzas, each one containing nine lines and ending with a triplet rhymed in the scheme: AABBCCDDD. This structure is intended to give the poem an increasing effect of power in order to help the poet in his argumentative attempts to lure the woman into bedding with him. Donne writes of three characters and three lives thus it is structured as three stanzas and one could perhaps even go as far as to say it is three stanzas made up of three three’s. In each one of the three stanzas, Donne presents a stage or a different part of the argument that modifies itself and changes in its stance in order to be more convincing. A Feaver consists of seven stanzas that are made up of four lines and rhyming couplets in the scheme: ABAB. This gives the poems a more melancholic musical tone that is compatible with the topic of the poem. It can also be observed that the poem’s building up in the way of its structure gives the reader a feeling of passing through the stages of death and the narrator’s suffering and agony through these stages. So it is through these different structures that Donne is able to convey different feelings and attitudes but under the same umbrella of love.

It is no secret that Donne was as remarkable as much for his metaphysical element as for his wit2. In fact 18th-century poet, Alexander Pope has called said of him, “Donne had no imagination, but as much wit, I think, as any writer can possibly have.” It is in this witty, satirical talent that the tone of The Flea is built around. The piece is witty, satirical and very much made to show off his ‘wooing’ skills towards bedding women. It is in these tonal aspects that the poem can be said to be both youthful and immature and thus very contrasting to the other poem being discussed. The tone of A Feaver, on the other hand, is filled more with passion, tenderness, affection and sensuality thus it can be said that this piece evokes much more maturity and understanding of the metaphysical form love which, in turn, points to one making the possible assumption that John Donne was in two different emotional states of being during the writing of the two respective pieces and that whereas one might have been earlier in his life when he was more youthful and satirical, the other was written at a later time in his life when he had perhaps laid bare his love for one woman.

Bibliography:

Donne, John, and Paul Muldoon. "A Feaver." John Donne: Poems Selected by Paul Muldoon. London: Faber, 2012. 39. Print.

Pope, Alexander. "CONVERSATIONS WITH JOSEPH SPENCE." The Major Works of Alexander Pope. [S.l.]: Digireads.com, 2010. 374. Print.

"Alexander Pope." Wikipedia. Wikimedia Foundation, 24 Dec. 2013. Web. 27 Dec. 2013.

"SparkNotes: Donne’s Poetry: Analysis." SparkNotes. N.p., n.d. Web. 27 Dec. 2013 <http://www.sparknotes.com/poetry/donne/analysis.html>.

"The Wit of John Donne." NeoEnglish. Wordpress, n.d. Web. 27 Dec. 2013. <http://neoenglish.wordpress.com/2010/11/07/the-wit-of-john-donne/>.

Bibliography: Donne, John, and Paul Muldoon. "A Feaver." John Donne: Poems Selected by Paul Muldoon. London: Faber, 2012. 39. Print. Pope, Alexander. "CONVERSATIONS WITH JOSEPH SPENCE." The Major Works of Alexander Pope. [S.l.]: Digireads.com, 2010. 374. Print. "Alexander Pope." Wikipedia. Wikimedia Foundation, 24 Dec. 2013. Web. 27 Dec. 2013. "SparkNotes: Donne’s Poetry: Analysis." SparkNotes. N.p., n.d. Web. 27 Dec. 2013 <http://www.sparknotes.com/poetry/donne/analysis.html>. "The Wit of John Donne." NeoEnglish. Wordpress, n.d. Web. 27 Dec. 2013. <http://neoenglish.wordpress.com/2010/11/07/the-wit-of-john-donne/>.