John,Donne’s,Exploration,of,Ideal,Love|Mystery of Love
时间：2019-03-01 05:34:42 来源：千叶帆 本文已影响人
�Abstract:Donne is the representative metaphysical poet in English literature.His poems are admired for his large number of conceit and wit.A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning contains a group of conceit.Donne expresses the general philosophy，and describes his holy ideal mature love in the poem.The paper tries to explain the ideal of love by analyze the images and metaphors in the poem.
�Key Words:John Donne; A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning; conceit; idea of love
As a metaphysical poet，John Donne’s poem A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning is full of conceits，and the metaphor in the poem also make the poem become one of the most well-known and admired love poems.A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning is one poem of the Songs and Sonnets which contains 55 love poems and is Donne’s most complicated and exhaustive exploration of love.
�The title in modern English is A farewell: Don’t grieve over my leavetaking.Donne’s contemporary，the English writer Isaac Walton，tells us the poem dates from 1611，John Donne was about traveling to France and Germany.The poet wrote the poem to comfort his wife do not feel sad and promised her that nothing would change his love for her.
�As the representative poet of metaphysical poem，the theme of John Donne’s poems is always about love，death and religion.We can analyze the Donne’s ideal love from the angle of the images，metaphors and the theme of this poem and with the help of the background.
�The Key Images and the Metaphors
�Donne’s wit involves surprise，a desire to startle readers，to make them look at things in a new，unconventional way.(Roston 1974: 35 ) He offers analogies that seem both unexpected and remarkably appropriate.He lists five groups of images，and the connection is not so clear and tension.We can combine the image and the metaphor to understand the content of the poem.
�A.Concrete
�At the beginning of the poem，the narrator described the picture of virtuous men that pass away peacefully and without lamenting.The separation of his body and soul is so gentle that their sad friends around him cannot tell if they are still alive or have already dead.And close behind the first stanza，he told his lover that their parting should be the same at the second stanza.Donne thinks that too much output of emotion when people are apart，would be a kind of blasphemy.Then the speaker tells his lover the behavior of those ‘sublunary lovers’love’.Their love is based on sexual relation，and they have to touch and sense the existence of each other to prove their love.As a result，when one of them leaves away，the love fades away with him.
�B.Earthquake and the Moving of the Planet
�Donne shows off his vast knowledge of everything from alchemy to astronomy in the metaphor of the earthquake and the ‘trepidation of the spheres’.In the third stanza the speaker displays a picture of earthquake.Donne uses earthquake as a metaphor of the separation of physical lovers which absence removes their physical beings.Just like common people fear the earthquake，lovers fear separation.The narrator expresses that their parting does not need to cause strong reaction，like an earthquake.But he and his lover have a kind of high level love like the great planet，that their souls are connected with each other.Because their two souls are one，when they depart，they will not mourn.It is not the separation，but expanding and strengthening.
�Ⅱ.The Idea Behind the Conceit
�In this poem John Donne explores physical love and spiritual love and the relation between them.The speaker commits the importance of the body and sexuality in human love.And most people′s relationships are in fact built on purely physical things: if they are not together at all times，the love fades，the relationship breaks down.It contains too much impure things，thus the love between physical lovers might diminish.It is not complete love.
In the poem，John Donne presents his ideal love which is wholeness，unique and perpetual.This ideal love can not be experienced and understood by most common people.Donne and his lover are more likely to be clergy.Donne’s eloping with Anne in December 1601 shows a romantic attitude.Though the beginning of the love was awkward，but his beloved wife was like his soul and the essential to his life.This love involves an exchange and union of souls.The power of this love forms a private world which makes the external world unimportant.The ideal mutual pure love can conquer the process of change and time.The most important thing is that the spiritual love can not be influenced by physical love.
�Ⅲ.Conclusion
�From the whole poem，John Donne analyzes the source or origin of love which should be the spiritual love.Donne explains that people whose love is purely physical do not stay together long because as soon as they are absent from each other，the thing which has caused their love，often namely the ‘sex’，is removed.But he did not condemn the physical love.It seems unusual because at the time of Donne’s life it was thought that if a couple indulged in sex，their lives were shortened.In the poem Donne treats this physical side of love as a gateway to the higher level of love.The idea of nature of love is to combine the soul and body together and to be loyal to each other.
�A Valediction: forbidding Mourning creates a radically contradiction between the common love of the everyday world and the uncommon love of the speaker.Thus state his ideal love in a simply and direct way.The poem ends with the hope that their love will defy the ordinary processes of time.
��Bibliography:
�[1]Datta，Kitty.Love and Asceticism in Donne’s Poetry: The Divine Analogy，Critical Quarterly，London，1977
�[2]Heyward，John.Donne’s Poetry and Prose.London，Cambridge University Press,1929
�[3]Corns，Thomas N.The Cambridge Companion to English Poetry Donne to Marvell.London.Cambridge University Press，1993
�[4]罗经国编.新编英国文学选读(上卷).北京: 北京大学出版社，2005
�[5]Net:维基百科约翰•邓恩《别离辞•节哀》2011/12/01
�[6]http://en.省略/wiki/A_Valediction:_Forbidding_Mourning
