Analysis of selected poems "The Flea" & "The Ecstasy" by John Donne

ANALYSIS OF SELECTED POEMES "THE FLEA" & "THE ECSTASY" BY JOHN DONNE

 

                                                              The Flea

Mark but this flea, and mark in this,

How little that which though deniest me is;

It sucked me first, and how sucks thee,

And in this flee our two bloods mingled be;

Thou know’st that this cannot be said

A sin, nor shame, nor loss of maidenhead,

Yet this enjoys before it Woo,

And pampered swells with one blood made of two,

And this, alas, is more than we would do.

Oh stay, three lives in one flea spare,

Where we almost, nay more than married are.

This flea is you and I, and this

Our marriage bed, and marriage temple is;

Though parents grudge, and you, w’are met,

And cloistered in these living walls of jet.

Though use make you apt to kill me,

Let not to that, self-murder added be,

And sacrilege, three sins in killing three.

Cruel and sudden, hast thou since

Purpled thy nail, in blood of innocence?

Wherein could this flea guilty be,

Except in that drop which it sucked from thee?

Yet thou triumph’st, and say’st that thou

Find’st not thy self, nor me the weaker now;

‘Tis true; then learn how false, fears be:

Just so much honor, when thou yield’st to me,

Will waste, as this flea’s death took life from thee.

* Introduction of the poem:-

                   

               The Speaker uses the occasion of a flea happing from himself to a young lady as an excuse to argue that the two of them should make love. Since in the flea their blood is mixed together, he says that they have already been made as one in the body of the flea. Besides, the flea pricked her and got what it wanted without having to woo her. The flea’s bite and mingling of their

Bloods is not considered a sin, so why should their lovemaking?

                        In the second stanza the speaker attempts to prevent the woman from killing the flea. He argues that since the flea contains the “Life” of both herself and the speaker, she would be guilt both of suicide and a triple homicide in killing it. The woman in question is obviously not convinced, for in the third stanza she has killed the flea with a fingernail. The speaker then turns this around to point out that, although the flea which contained portion on their lives is dead, neither of them is the weaker for it. If this commingling of bodily fluids can leave no lasting effect, then why does she hesitate to join with him in sexual intimacy? After all, her honor will be equally undiminished.

                                   

 * Analysis of the lines:-

                Donne here makes use of the wit for wit for which he eventually became famous- although in his own day his poetry was often considered too lurid to gain popular notoriety, and little of his earlier poems, “The Flea”, demonstrate his ability to take a controlling metaphor and adapt it to unusual circumstances.

“The Flea” is made up of: -   three nine lines stanza

   Following an aabbccddd rhyme scheme.

                  He beings the poem by asking the Young woman to “Mark this Flea” (line-1) which has bitten and sucked blood from both himself and her. He points out that she has “denied” him something which the flea has not refrained from enjoying: the intimate union of their bodily fluids (in the case, blood).

                  This commonplace occurrence, he argues, “can marriage not be said/A sin, nor loss of maidenhead” (line-5, 6); if this tiny commingling of the two people is not wrong, then how can a greater commingling be considered evil or undesirable?

                 He even points out that the flea is able to enjoy the woman’s essence “before he woo”(Lines-7), the implication being that he need not court the woman in order to enjoy her sexual favors. In the second stanza the poet argues for the life of the flea, as his describe lady has made a move to kill it. He paints the flea as a holy thing: “this flea is you and I, and this/our marriage bed, and marriage temple is” (Line-12, 13)

Note:  Also the reference to the Christian concept of “three lives in one” (Line-10) suggesting that a spiritual marriage temple”, the third being in the trio is not God but a flea.

                  Besides arguing for the sanctity of the flea’s life, the speaker is also arguing that he and the lady  have already by passed the usual vows of fidelity and ceremony of marriage; thus, he pushes toward his point that the two of them have already been joined as one is the flea, so there is no harm in joining their bodies in sexual love here is a hint that he has already attempted to gain the lady’s favors and failed, either through her response or that of her parent:” Though parents grudge, and you”, (Line-14) he say, suggesting that even her opinion does not matter anymore.

                     The flea has already “cloister’d”them within its body’s “walls of jet” (line-15), possibly also suggestive that they are alone together in a dark room. The woman’s disdain for him and his suit because more appropriate as he clamed she is “apt” to kill him (Line-16), following in her habit of killing fleas, but he offers that she should refrain from harming the flea because In so doing she would add suicide (“Let not to that self-murder added be”) (Line-17) by destroying the vessel holding her blood. He fails in his defense of the flea, for she has “purpled” her finger with the flea’s blood by opening of the third stanza. (Line-20)

                       It is a “sudden” but perhaps inevitable betrayal of an innocence being. The woman claims triumph over the lover’s argument responding that neither she nor the man is weaker for her having killed the flea. (Line-23, 24)

     

                        The poet, however, is quick-witted enough to turn her argument back against her: if the death of the flea, which had partaken of just tiny amount of their life-essences, is virtually no problem, despite his pretended fear, then any fear she might have about her loss of honor is equally a “false” fear. The act of physical union would cause virtually no serious harm to her reputation.  That is, as mochas lost to the flea, “just so much honor, when thou yield’s to me, will waste, as this flea’s death took life from thee” (Line-26, 27)

* Form of the poem:-

              This poem alternates metrically between lines in iambic tetrameter and lines in iambic pentameter, a 4-5 stress pattern ending with two pentameter lines at the end of each stanza. Thus, the stress pattern in each of the nine-live stanza is 454545455. The rhyme scheme in each stanza is similarly regular, in couplets, with the final line rhyming with the final couplet: AABBCCDDD.

* Conclusion:-

            Although the lover suggest that he is in control and that it is a matter of “when thou yield’st,” some feminist scholars have noted that he is powerless to do anything until the woman makes her decision. He merely utters his words of warming, but she can raise her hand and kill the flea; similarly, she can exercise her power by continuing to deny the man his desires. The Flea could take what it wanted without stopping to woo, but the lover uses no force beyond the force of argument. He has not been successful so far, but we do not know what will happen next.

                      The Ecstasy

WHERE, like a pillow on a bed,

A Pregnant bank swell’d up, to rest

The violet’s reclining head,

Sat we two, one another’s best.

Our hand were firmly cemented

By a fast balm, this thence did spring;

Our eye-beams twisted, and did thread

Our eyes upon one double string.

So to engraft our hands, as yet

Was all the means to make us one,

And pictures in our eyes to get

Was all our propagation.

As, ‘twixt two equal armies, Fate

Suspends uncertain victory,

Our souls-which to advance their state,

Were gone out-hung ‘twixt her and me.

And whilst our souls negotiate there,

We like sepulchral statues lay;

All day, the same our postures were,

And we said nothing, all the day.

If any, so by love refined,

That he soul’s language understand,

And by good love were grown all mind,

Within convenient distance stood,

He-though he knew not which soul spake,

Because both meant, both spake the same-

Might thence a new concoction take,

And part far purer than he came.

This ecstasy doth unperplex

(We said) and tell us what we love;

We see by this, it was not sex;

We see, we saw not, what did move:

But as all several souls contain

Mixture of things they know not what,

Love these mix’d souls doth mix again,

And makes both one, each this, and that.

A single violet transplant,

The strength, the colour, and the size-

All which before was poor and scant-

Redoubles still, and multiplies.

When love with one another so

Interlaminates two souls,

That abler soul, which thence doth flow,

Defects of loneliness controls.

We then, who are this new soul, know,

Of what we are composed, and made,

Forth’ atomies of which we grow

Are souls, whom no change can invade.

But, O alas! So long, so far,

Our bodies why do we forbear?

They are ours, though not we; we are

Th’ intelligences, they the spheres.

We own then thanks, because they thus

Did us, to us, at first convey,

Yielded their sences ‘force to us,

Nor are dross to us, but allay.

On man heaven’s influenced works not so,

But that it first imprints the air;

For soul into the soul may flow,

Though it to body first repair.

As our blood labours to beget

Spirit, as like souls as it can;

Because such fingers need to knit

That subtle knot, which makes us man;

So much pure lovers’ souls descend

To affections, and to faculties,

Which since may reach and apprehend,

Else a great prince in prison lies.

To our bodies turn we then, that so

Weak men on love reveals may look;

Love’s mysteries in souls do grow,

But yet the body is his book.

And if some lover, such as we,

Have heard this dialogue of one, Let him still

Mark us, he shall see

Small change when we’re to bodies gone.

* Introduction of the poem:-

            “Ecstasy in Neo-platonic Philosophy was the stat of mind in which the soul, escaping from the body attuned to the vision of God, the one, the absolute:” The term ecstasy denotes the transition to a higher level where absolute truths are apprehensible to us beyond seens, reasoning and intellect. Just as another metaphysical poet, Richard Crashaw, describes spiritual or religious ecstasy in his “Hymm to st Teresa” J weemes asserts that ecstasy  when “The servants of God where taken up in spirit, separate as it were from the body, that they might see some heavenly mystery revealed unto them.”

            In the prescribed poem, the souls of two lovers free themselves from the definite confines of the physical construct of the body and became one physically and spiritually in an ecstatic union of souls.

* Analysis of the stanza:-

• In the opening, Donne is describing the scenery of a river or lakeside bank. He describes himself and another as pillows on a bed as they lie there.
• The second stanza described how their hands were held together and “cemented” with perspiration. He then described beams coming out of their eyes and twisting like thread which holds their eyes together as with a single, double thread.
• The third stanza Donne states that the lovers hands were all they had to make themselves into one, further; he says that the reflections in their eyes were their only way to propagate.
• The four stanza use a metaphor of armies to describe their souls. The two are equal armies and fate keeps victory uncertain, which is like the way the lovers souls are suspended.
• Furthering the army metaphor, stanza five has the souls negotiating as their bodies lie like memorial statues. They remained that way the whole day and said nothing to each other.
• The next stanza postulates whether any man can be so refined in love that he can understand the language of the the soul, and furthermore, if that “good” love of the mind stood at a convenient distance.
• Stanza seven relates that the two souls now speak as one; they may take a concoction and leave that place better off than when they arrived.
• The eighth stanza states that their state of ecstasy “unperplexes” or simplifies thing, and they can see that it was not sex that motivated them.
• The ninth stanza furthers the idea that two lovers are one soul which is mixedo`each a part of the other.
• The next uses a metaphor of a transplanted violet to show how two souls can be interlaminated and how this “new” soul can repair the defects of each of the indivual souls.
• The eleventh stanza again furthers the idea of two souls as one. In it says that the lovers know what they are made of, and that no change can invade them.
• The next stanza asks why the bodies are left out, and it says that although the soul is the intelligence, the bodies are the sphere which controls them, like the celestial spheres.
• Stanza   thirteen thanks the bodies for their service of bringing the soul to be and for yielding their senses. The bodies are not impurities that weaken, but rather alloys that strengthen us.
• The next stanza relates the method of how the body and soul are related. Heavenis influence does not work on man like other things. It imprints the air so that peoples souls may flow out from the body.
• Stanza fifteen tells how our blood works to make “spirits” that can help the body and soul together make us man.
• Stanza sixteen postulates that lover’s souls must give in to affections and wits that our bodies provide. If not, we are likened to a great prince in prison.
• The next stanza says that we turn to our bodies so that weak men may look at them, but that love is true mysteries are grown in the soul. The body is just the souls “book’.
• The last stanza sums up the scene by speculating how they would be regarded by another lover in their “dialogue” of the combined souls. Donne says that this lover will see a small change when their bodies are gone.

* Conclusion:-

               The images in the Ecstasy focus on the relationship of the soul to the body. Donne begins with visual images of water, hands, perspiration and things that are physical in nature. He proposes that two lover’s souls are formed into one and uses metaphors of alloys, celestial spheres and even a violet to make his point. Furthermore, Donne describes the process at work in the body by relating the mechanisms of blood and air. All of the images between lines 13 and 75 relate to the union of the souls, which creates a third soul that transcends the sum of the two.