Andrew Marvell

This week, I was struck again by how easily the poetry of Andrew Marvell reads. His poems fit the layman’s definition of “poetry” in their regular rhyme scheme and meter (for example, “O let our voice his praise exalt, Till it arrive at heaven’s vault,” Bermudas). They are witty like Donne’s poems, but I found them much more accessible, which to be honest is something I really appreciate in poetry.

What I found extremely interesting about Marvell's poetry is summed up in a line in the Norton Anthology’s introduction of Marvell: “Many of Marvell’s poems explore the human condition in terms of fundamental dichotomies that resist resolution.” It goes on to describe how all of the poems assigned for this week’s reading display these fundamental dichotomies.

“The Dialogue Between Soul and Body” is a religious/philosophical poem, and it talks about the conflict between body and soul (obviously), or as the Norton Anthology puts it, between “nature and grace…or poetic creation and sacrifice.” The form of the poem itself reflects this conflict: it is a conversation, almost, that goes back and forth between the body and the soul. The soul complains that it is paradoxically imprisoned by the body: “With bolts of bones, that fettered 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 nerved, and arteries, and veins; Tortured, besides each other part, In a vain head and double heart.” 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.” Thus the soul and the body are entrapped by each other, and the poem ends without a clear sense of victory on either side.

Marvell also explores the dichotomies that exist in love: sexual and platonic love, idealized courtship and the unrelenting nature of time. In “To His Coy Mistress,” Marvell first described this idealized courtship: “Had we but world enough, and time…An hundred years should go to praise Thine eyes and on thy 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 your heart.” He then turns to time: “But at my back I always hear Time’s winged chariot hurrying near.” What Marvell is saying is that although he would love to draw out the courtship of his mistress, time forces him to speed it up, and he encourages her to “sport while [they] may.” In “The Definition of Love,” Marvell described Love itself as a paradox, a contradiction. He says that Love, which is supposed to be a beautiful and positive thing, “was begotten by Despair Upon Impossibility.” Although there may be “two perfect loves,” Fate does not allow them to be united, driving “iron wedges” between them.

The poem “The Garden” shows the opposition between nature and man. The very first stanza sets up this theme: Marvell says that men toil in vain, while nature reproves them: “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. He extols the beauty found only in nature, comparing it to Eden: “Such was that happy garden-state, While man there walked without a mate.”

After reading Marvell’s poetry, I began to look for dichotomies in other works, and found that they are not difficult to locate. Shakespeare’s Tempest has clear conflicts between civilization (Prospero, Miranda) and the lack thereof (Caliban). King Lear shows tension between the old and the young. Both plays also have the broader theme of good versus evil. John Donne, like Marvell, explores the conflicts between platonic and sexual love, and romantic love and love of God.