Andrew Marvell, Renaissance poet, is a good read for many reasons:
his work is lyrical, witty, and rife with captivating imagery. However what I
found most interesting about his poetry is, as Stephen Greenblatt explains in
“The Norton Anthology of English Literature”:
Many of Marvell’s poems
explore the human condition in terms of fundamental dichotomies that resist
resolution. In religious or philosophical poems like “The Coronet”… the
conflict is between nature and grace, or body and soul, or poetic creation and
sacrifice. In love poems such as “The Definition of Love”… it is often
between flesh and spirit or physical sex and platonic love, or idealizing courtship
and the ravages of time. In the pastorals like the Mower poems and “The
Garden,” the opposition is between nature and art, or the fallen and the Edenic
state, or violent passion and contentment. (676)
In this paper I would like to explore some of those
dichotomies, and their origin in the time period in which Marvell was writing.
To begin, here’s a brief background on Marvell. He was born near
the city of Kingston upon Hull to an English clergyman. He was educated
at Cambridge. His family was Protestant, although he converted to Roman Catholicism
for a spell. He travelled quite a bit (France, Italy, Holland, and Spain)
before settling in Nunappleton to tutor Thomas Fairfax’s daughter and later Cromwell’s
ward William Dutton. He then involved himself in politics, and was a Member of
Parliament for almost 20 years. He was friends with Milton, and helped him
avoid execution using his political connections. His work was not well known while he was
alive, and most of it was published posthumously by a woman who claimed to be
his wife but was probably his housekeeper.
Let us first take a look at the conflict between body and
soul. Throughout the Renaissance era, literature was often concerned with the
human soul. One of the reasons for this was that during the 14th and 15th
centuries there was a widespread revival of religious fervor, which reached a
climax in the Reformation of the 16th century. Both Catholic and
Protestant reform movements focused more attention on the nature and spiritual
health of the soul.
In the Elizabethan portrait above (artist unknown), the
image of death awaiting burial lies above a text that reads "LYVE: TO:
DYE: AND: DYE. TO. LYVE, ETARNALLY." The meaning is simple: humankind is
born to die, but through death of the body, we find eternal life in the soul. In
terms of the relationship between the body and the soul, we can say that death is
liberation of the soul through the cessation of the body’s desires.
The source for this picture and reading of it can be found
here.
Thus it was at this time that the conflict between the two
entities really came into focus. Roy Porter writes in Flesh in the Age of
Reason: “A human being, [Christian]
doctrines explained, was a compound of two distinctive elements, soul and
flesh”. This duality of “soul and flesh” shaped Western thought and literature
for centuries. Many Renaissance authors such as John Donne and Margaret Cavendish
took up this theme, and believed that the soul was more important, and superior
to, the body. As Sutton puts it in his essay “Soul and Body in Seventeenth-Century
British Philosophy, “debate about the soul was one of the most controversial of
all topics in seventeenth-century philosophy because of its religious, moral,
and political implications” (2). Religiously, of course, the soul was very important,
as it supposedly lived on after the body died, and the Church took
responsibility for it.
Marvell’s poem “A Dialogue Between Body and Soul”
explores this conflict, or as the Norton Anthology puts it, the conflict between
“nature and grace…or poetic creation and sacrifice.” This poem is one of
Marvell’s more religious/philosophical poems, structured as a conversation
between the body and the soul. It begins with the soul speaking. The soul
complains that it is paradoxically imprisoned by the body:
“With bolts of Bones, that fetter'd stands
In Feet ; and manacled in Hands.
Here blinded with an Eye ; and there
Deaf with the drumming of an Ear.
A Soul hung up, as 'twere, in Chains
Of Nerves, and Arteries, and Veins.”
But it is not only enslaved by the body, it is also
tortured: “Tortur'd, besides each other part,/In a vain Head, and double Heart.”
In the third stanza, the soul goes on to wonder what magic has been able to
confine it within another’s grief, that it feels whatever the body suffers. The
body responds, saying “O who shall me deliver whole From bonds of this tyrannic
soul?...[which] Has made me live to let me die.” In the fourth stanze, the body
laments that the soul has forced all manner of psychological suffering on it:
“First the Cramp of Hope does Tear:
And then the Palsie Shakes of Fear.
The Pestilence of Love does heat :
Or Hatred's hidden Ulcer eat.
Joy's chearful Madness does perplex:
Or Sorrow's other Madness vex.”
Thus the soul and the body are entrapped by each other. Although
the poem derives from the medieval debate between body and soul, it interestingly
alters the usual ending which gives a clear victory to the soul, instead ending
without a clear sense of victory on either side. Marvell’s suggestion,
therefore, is probably that there is a continual struggle between the body and
the soul. This idea could have been an attempt to reconcile growing humanism
with a millennium of medieval theology.
Next, I would like to explore the set of dichotomies that
exist in love: the conflict between sexual and platonic love, between idealized
courtship and the unrelenting nature of time, and between perfect love and love
that can never be achieved. Much of the literature arising out of the Renaissance
was about love – love of women (or of men, by the handful of woman writers),
children, nature, God, etc. Love, of course, is a theme which spans the limits
of time, space, social class, and gender, and so it makes sense that poems on
love were so prolific. A lot of the literature on love showed in this time
period conflict between sexual and platonic love, probably because of the
conflict between spiritual and physical desires. Spiritual, or platonic love
was generally thought of as the superior of the two kinds (Donne’s A
Valediction Forbidding Mourning was on this theme), but sexual, Ovidian, or Petrarchan
love was also written about quite frequently. The relation of time to courtship
was frequently exploited by male writers whilst cajoling women to “sport” with
them, and the carpe diem theme was also quite popular during this time. On both
these counts Robert Herrick’s poem ”To the Virgins, to Make Much of Time” is
quite similar to Marvell’s well-known poem “To His Coy Mistress.”
In “To His Coy Mistress,” Marvell explores the conflict
between a long, drawn out courtship and the reality that there is not enough
time to do his mistress justice. He first tells her that if he had enough time
“An hundred years should go to praise
[her] eyes, and on [her] forehead gaze;
Two hundred to adore each breast,
But thirty thousand to the rest;
An age at least to every part,
And the last age should show [her] heart.”
However, he says he is always conscious of time hurrying him
towards “deserts of vast eternity” where her “beauty shall no more be found,” i.e.
although he would love to draw out the courtship of his mistress, time forces
him to speed it up. He then threatens that she will die a virgin (“In thy marble
vault…worms shall try/that long-preserved virginity”). Upon the heels of that
appalling image, he once again coaxes his unnamed mistress to “sport” while she
is still young and beautiful, and while her willing soul “transpires/At every
pore with instant fires.”
While “To His Coy Mistress” is most certainly humorous and
witty, and designedly so, it also clearly explores the dichotomy between a
perfect courtship and the imperfect haste in which time forces one to woo a
lady. This contract between imperfect and perfect love is further explored in “The
Definition of Love,” wherein Marvell describes a love so perfect it can never
be truly realized. He says that he and his lover have “perfect” love for each
other, but Fate does not allow them to be united, driving “iron wedges” between
them. Hope itself cannot fly to such “divine” love. Marvell compares
their love to parallel lines: infinite, but never intersecting. In fact, in
this poem Marvell describes Love itself as a paradox, a dichotomy. He says that
Love, which is supposed to be a beautiful and positive thing, “was begotten by
Despair Upon Impossibility…[shown by]Magnanimous Despair.”
Lastly, let’s look at the opposition between nature and man.
In her review of Robert N. Watson’s article Back to Nature: The Green and the Real in the Late Renaissance, Elizabeth
Spiller says that the Renaissance brought with it a “need to experience things
in and as themselves,” and that materialism and forms of human perception were “key
impediments to truth or knowledge.” Spiller goes on to explain that writers
responded to the sense that man is an impediment to true knowledge by trying to
return to a stable reality which has its origin in nature. Metaphysical poetry,
then, is a “literary expressions of the Protestant argument that knowledge of
God must come, unmediated, from within an individual believer” (Spiller). Nature,
often portrayed as or compared to Eden, was contrasted with the violence of man
and pressures of civilization in a lot of Renaissance writing.
Marvell’s poem “the Garden” shows this conflict. He extols
the solitude found only in nature, comparing it to Eden:
“Such was that happy garden-state,
While man there walked without a mate…
But 'twas beyond a Mortal's share
To wander solitary there.”
Although on the surface this sounds like misogyny, at a
deeper level it expresses “a loathing for the social nature of the human
condition, which creates the longing for total withdrawal into contemplative
solitude and also renders it impossible” (The Poetry Foundation). But nature is
like Eden in other ways as well - this poem lends itself very nicely to an
image of Eden bursting with fruit just waiting to be eaten:
“Ripe apples drop about my head;
The luscious clusters of the vine
Upon my mouth do crush their wine;
The nectarine and curious peach
Into my hands themselves do reach;
Stumbling on melons as I pass,
Insnared with flowers, I fall on grass.”
However, Marvell acknowledges that men engage in unceasing
labor, toiling in vain to win honors, whether military, civic, or poetic. In
the very first stanza, he says that nature reproves such efforts: “all flowers
and all trees do close To weave the garlands of repose!” He says that he has
foolishly looked among men for Quiet and Innocence, when they are in fact
“among the plants,” if on earth at all. In this image of man and nature, there
is a rift between happy seclusion and the reality of man’s life in the public
sphere.ome, unmediated, from within an individual believer” (Spiller). Nature,
often portrayed as or compared to Eden, was contrasted with the violence of man
and pressures of civilization in a lot of Renaissance writing.
Dichotomies are not exclusive to Marvell’s work. Donne also demonstrates
great skill in writing about conflicts that were very relevant during the
Renaissance, such as the conflict between sexual and spiritual love. His poems Elegy 19 and The Flea are addressed to a woman,
and refer explicitly to them having sex, while his poems A Valediction:
Forbidding Mourning and Song focus on the impending separation from the
object of his love, and how it will not weaken their bond as their love is so
strong and pure. Donne also writes on the conflict of man and God. There are various
instances where Donne seeks to be master over something: in The Sun Rising, he
feels himself master of nature, and in Elegy 19, he seeks to be master of his
mistress. However, in his Holy Sonnets, he writes on his inferiority to God. In
Meditation 4, he says “Except God, Man is a diminutive to nothing.” Although he
sees man as more complex and exquisite than the earth, he still sees God as
more powerful than man.
Fundamental dichotomies can also be found in the work of Shakespeare.
For example, The Tempest has clear
conflicts between civilization and the lack thereof in Prospero/Miranda and
Caliban. King Lear shows tension between the young and the old, the clear and
the disguised, flattery/ambition and purity of intention. Both plays also
display the broader theme of good versus evil.
Marvell’s similarities to these two great authors (arguably
the best known of the time period) shows that he is a very good representation
of Renaissance literature. However, he is a supremely original and skilled poet
in his own right. Although he wrote less than many of his contemporaries, all
of his poems are polished to a degree of maturity that not even Donne shows (Alvarez
82-93).
Sources on Marvell that I found helpful or interesting:
Image sources:
Works Cited
Alvarez, A. The School of Donne. New
York, Toronto. The New American Library, 1967. Print.
"Andrew Marvell." Poetry Foundation. Web. 10 May 2013. http://www.poetryfoundation.org/bio/andrew-marvell
Greenblatt, Stephen, gen. ed. The Norton Anthology of English Literature. 9th ed. Vol.
A. New York: Norton, 2012. Print.
A. New York: Norton, 2012. Print.
Porter,
Roy. Flesh in the Age of Reason. New York: Penguin Books, 2003. p. 18. Print.
“Renascent Semiotics: The Pragmatics of the Memento Mori in The Judd Memorial.” Web. 10 May 2013. http://www.sebsteph.com/Professional/sebsportfolio/journals/renascent.htm
“Renascent Semiotics: The Pragmatics of the Memento Mori in The Judd Memorial.” Web. 10 May 2013. http://www.sebsteph.com/Professional/sebsportfolio/journals/renascent.htm
Spiller, Elizabeth.
"Back to Nature: The Green and the Real in the Late Renaissance." Shakespeare Quarterly 58.1 (2007): 125,127,139. ProQuest. Web. 10 May 2013.
Sutton,
John. "Soul and Body in Seventeenth-Century British Philosophy." The
Oxford Handbook of British Philosophy in the Seventeenth Century, Ed. Peter
Anstey. Academia.edu. Web. May 10 2013. http://www.academia.edu/342409/Soul_and_Body_in_Seventeenth-Century_British_Philosophy
