Poems, by J.D. VVith elegies on the authors death

Donne, John (1573-1631)

Edité par Printed by M[iles]. F[lesher]. for John Marriot, and are to be sold at his shop in St Dunstans Church-yard in Fleet-street, London, 1639

A propos de cet article

A very desirable copy, bound in its original binding of polished calf, ruled in blind, with only minor wear and abrasions. The text is in very fine condition and is complete with the portrait of Donne -now rarely encountered- by William Marshall, apparently after a lost miniature by Hillyard, showing Donne as a rakish young man of eighteen, with long hair and an earring in his right ear. Beneath the portrait is a poem by Izaak Walton. Provenance: Richard Jennings (Sotheby's London, 28 April 1952, lot 162) - Allerton C. Hickmott, acquired by Seven Gables, 1962. "The poetry of Donne represents a sharp break with that written by his predecessors and most of his contemporaries. Much Elizabethan verse is decorative and flowery in its quality. Its images adorn; its meter is mellifluous. Image harmonizes with image, and line swells almost predictably into line. Donne's poetry, on the other hand, is written very largely in conceits- concentrated images that involve an element of dramatic contrast, of strain, or of intellectual difficulty. Most of the traditional 'flowers of rhetoric' disappear completely. For instance, in his love poetry one never encounters bleeding hearts, cheeks like roses, lips like cherries, teeth like pearls, or Cupid shooting arrows of love. The tears which flow in A Valediction: of Weeping, are different from, and more complex than, the ordinary saline fluid of unhappy lovers; they are ciphers, naughts, symbols of the world's emptiness without the beloved; or else, suddenly reflecting her image, they are globes, worlds, they contain the sum of things. The poet who plays with conceits not only displays his own ingenuity; he may see into the nature of the world as deeply as the philosopher. Donne's conceits in particular leap continually in a restless orbit from the personal to the cosmic and back again. "Donne's rhythms are colloquial and various. He likes to twist and distort not only ideas, but also metrical patterns and grammar itself. In the satires, which Renaissance writers understood to be 'harsh' and 'crabbed' as a genre, Donne's distortions often threaten to choke off the stream of expression entirely. But in the lyrics (both those which are worldly and those which are religious in theme), as in the elegies and sonnets, the verse never fails of a complex and memorable melody. Donne had an unusual gift, rather like that of a modern poet, T.S. Eliot, for striking off phrases that ring in the mind like a silver coin. They are two masters of the colloquial style, removed alike from the dignified, weighty manner of Milton and the sugared sweetness of the Elizabethans. "Donne and his followers are known to literary history as the 'metaphysical school' of poets. Strictly speaking, this is a misnomer; there was no organized group of poets who imitated Donne, and if there had been, they would not have called themselves 'metaphysical' poets. That term was invented by Dryden and Dr. Johnson. But the influence of Donne's poetic style was widely felt, especially by men whose taste was formed before 1660. George Herbert, Richard Crashaw, Henry Vaughan, Andrew Marvell, and Abraham Cowley are only the best known of those on whom Donne's influence is recognizable. The great change of taste that took place in 1660 threw Donne and the 'conceited' style out of fashion; during the 18th and 19th centuries both he and his followers were rarely read and still more rarely appreciated. Finally, in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, three new editions of Donne appeared, of which Sir H.J.C. Grierson's, published in 1912, was quickly accepted as standard. By clarifying and purifying the often-garbled text, Grierson did a great deal to make Donne's poetry more available to the modern reader. Almost at once it started to exert an influence on modern poetic practice, the modern poets being hungry for a 'tough' style that would free them form the worn-out rhetoric of the late 19th century romanticism. And Donne's status among the.

N° de réf. du vendeur 3101

Détails bibliographiques

• Titre: Poems, by J.D. VVith elegies on the authors death
• Éditeur: Printed by M[iles]. F[lesher]. for John Marriot, and are to be sold at his shop in St Dunstans Church-yard in Fleet-street, London
• Date de parution: 1639
• Reliure: Hardcover
• Édition: THIRD EDITION. (first ed. 1633).
• État de l'article: Fine
• Catalogues du vendeur:
  • England
  • Poetry