Andrew Marvell: the resolved soul
If Donne is the commanding presence of the Metaphysical movement, it
is to Andrew Marvell (1621-1678) that the credit must go for bringing it
to the acme of development Temperamentally they could not have been more
different. If we were arbitrarily to dissect Wordsworth’s definition of
poetry, Donne’s verse represents “the spontaneous overflow of powerful
feelings” while Marvell’s is essentially “emotion recollected in
tranquillity.” This facility of detached reflection doubtless
contributes to Marvell’s having, despite the smallness of his output,
three advantages over his great predecessor. These are a broader subject
range, a more highly developed “Wit” and greater thematic complexity.
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Andrew
Marvell |
But Marvell’s debt to Donne must be acknowledged. This is immediately
apparent in “The Definition of Love.” The love in question is one that
is incapable of fulfilment or, as he puts it, “begotten by despair upon
impossibility.’’ (A recent literary example would be the love that
springs up between the protagonists of Nihal de Silva’s “The Road frpom
Elephant Pass.”) The penultimate verse reads: “As Lines, so Loves
oblique may well Themselves in every Angle greet: But ours so truly
Paralel, Though infinite can never meet.” This recalls the pair of
compasses to which Donne compared temporarily separated lovers. Indeed,
the poem’s imagery and argument as well as its intrinsic pathos could
well be Donne’s, but the graceful control of expression, line and tone
are essentially Marvell’s. While Donne is primarily a love poet (and
later, primarily a religious one), Marvell’s interests extend to Nature,
Temporality, Spirituality and Politics. The last is best represented by
“An Horation Ode Upon Cromwel’s Return from Ireland.”
This was written when Cromwell was de facto Head of State in England
having had Charles 1 executed for treason. The tone it projects is that
of admiration for Cromwell’s dramatic rise to power and his continued
grip on it. But underlying this is the suggestion that Cromwell is
driven by calculating ambition rather than by concern for the welfare of
the nation. “So restless Cromwel could not cease In the inglorious Arts
of Peace, But through adventrous War Urged his active Star......And, if
we would speak true, Much to the Man is due, Who.....Could by
industrious Valour climbe To ruine the great Work of Time....The same
Arts that did gain A Pow’r must it maintain.” There is neither irony nor
criticism here, but there is an unmistakable equivocalness.
This is accomplished by one of three aspects of Marvell’s wit
identified by TS Eliot, namely “a recognition, implicit in the
expression of every experience, of other kinds of experience that are
possible.” Thus the poem leaves us more sympathetic, if not admiring,
towards the doomed king who “nothing common did or mean Upon that
memorable scene” of his execution, “But bow’d his comely Head, Down as
upon a Bed.”
Marvell’s best known poem is “To His Coy Mistress”. It is his version
of the “carpe diem” (seize the day) theme common to English poetry, of
which Robert Herrick’s “Gather ye rosebuds while ye may” is an
archetype. In the opening section a second aspect of Marvellian wit, ie.
“a tough reasonableness beneath the slight lyric grace.”, is immediately
apparent: “Had we but World enough, and Time, This coyness Lady were no
crime......And you should if you please refuse Till the Conversion of
the Jews. My vegetable Love should grow Vaster than Empires, and more
slow.”
After this urbane and leisurely opening, there comes a sudden note of
urgency; and with it we are greeted with the third dimension of wit, “an
alliance of levity and seriousnes (by which the seriousness is
intensified.)”. “But at my back I alwaies hear Times winged Charriot
hurrying near: And yonder all before us lye Desarts of vast Eternity.”
The seriousness intensifies further to the level of Donne, but levity is
not abandoned: “Thy Beauty shall no more be found; Nor, in thy marble
Vault, shall sound My ecchoing Song;.....The Grave’s a fine and private
place, But none I think do there embrace.”
In the last section the tone becomes even more serious and urgent.
For the only time in his poetry, Marvell becomes as strident and defiant
as Donne, and the poem ends: “Let us roll all our Strength, and all Our
sweetness, up into one Ball: And tear our Pleasures with rough strife,
Thorough the Iron gates of Life. Thus, though we cannot make our Sun
Stand still, yet we will make him run.” Never before nor ever since has
the “carpe diem” theme been invested with such terrifying intensity.
Thematic complexity is taken to even greater lengths in “The Garden.”
Nature, as dealt with here, is hardly Tennyson’s “Nature, red in tooth
and claw”, but the “am’rous....lovely green” grounds of a country
mansion. Marvell seems to be seeking to recover the “happy Garden state”
of the Edenic earthly paradise existing before the fall of man. “Fair
quiet I have found thee here, And Innocence thy Sister dear!” The
continuing description of the delights of the garden suggests, however,
a persisting yearning for the company of the opposite sex. “The Luscious
Clusters of the Vine Upon my Mouth do crush their Wine; The Nectaren,
and curious Peach, Into my hands themselves do reach; Stumbling on
Melons, as I pass, Insnar’d with Flow’rs, I fall on Grass.” The last
line is subtly allusive to man’s susceptibility to the desire of the
flesh and its deathly consequences..
Still, Nature if maturely contemplated encourages man to realise his
spiritual potential. Thus, in the climactic verse, “..the Mind, from
Pleasure less, Withdraws into its happiness... Yet it creates,ed
transcending these, Far other Worlds, and other Seas; Annihilating all
that’s made To a green Thought in a green Shade.” Such spiritual effort
leads eventually, as the next verse shows, to the prospect of eternity.
In this extraordinary poem Marvell rivals Keats in his sensuous
evocation of Nature. And his insight into Nature’s influence is deeper
than Wordsworth’s because it reveals its complex character, its capacity
for encouraging both sensual enjoyment and spiritual elevation.
“A Dialogue Between the Resolved Soul and Created Pleasure” is,
perhaps, the most perfectly crafted of Marvell’s poems. It is based on a
passage in the Bible that urges the man of God to don the spiritual
armour required for his struggle against the world, the flesh and the
Devil. (Ephesians 6:16,17) Thus the poem begins: “Courage my Soul, now
learn to wield The weight of thine immortal Shield. Close on thy Head
thy Helmet bright. Ballance thy Sword against the Fight.” So armed,
Marvell is ready to answer all of Pleasure’s eloquent appeals to his
five senses as well as to the human desire for sex, money, power,
popularity and intellectual brilliance. However, it is an eminently
civilised dialogue and the resolved soul’s responses to Pleasure are
witty but unequivocal. “My gentler Rest is on a thought, Conscious of
doing what I ought.”, “Had I but any time to lose, On this I would it
all dispose” and “If things of Sight such Heavens be, What Heavens are
those we cannot see.”
Thus Marvell finally appears to us, in art as well as in life, as a
“resolved soul”; one sufficiently in command of his experience of life
as to view it objectively while conveying it in its totality. His
ability to temper emotion with a larger awareness of life contributes
much to the unique felicity of his style.
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