浅谈约翰邓恩的意象研究(英文)

3  Images in his poems 
Donne took metaphors from all spheres of life, especially from crafts and the sciences, and made frequent use of the ‘conceit’: a surprising, ingenious, far-fetched turn of ideas. Often a whole poem is an extended ‘conceit’, and frequently a poem ends with a final 'conceit' in the last two lines.
3. 1 Compasses image
John Donne was unique and singular at using geometry knowledge and imagery, particularly the triangle image and the circle image. Using the circle image to describe love and death, Donne holds the idea that circle images reflected his unique thinking about the different social phenomena in England of that time and his inner world which full of contradiction, In A Valediction: Forbidding Morning:
If they be two, they are two so                                        
As stiff twin compasses are two ; 
Thy soul, the fixed foot, makes no show 
To move, but doth, if the' other do. And thought it in the center sit,
Yet, when the other far doth roam it leans, and hearkens after it, 
        and grows erect, as that comes home.
Such wilt thou be to me, who must, Like the' other foot, obliquely run;
Thy firmness makes my circle just,                                
 and makes me end where I begun [9].
This compact image was considered to be the most well known conceit. John Donne compared a compass to a pair of lovers, if the lovers do not share a common soul, Donne argues, and then their individual souls are firmly joined together, like the legs of a pair of compasses. “Thy soul, the fixed foot.”[9] He tells his partner, is not impelled to move until he does so, but then follows his example. In the same way, when the outer leg of the compass draws a circle, its partner marking the center turns about, as though watching. Again, when the outer leg draws an arc at the limit of its reach, its partner 'leans and hearkens after it’ as though straining to keep in contact; and draws itself up straight when the outer leg completes its circular journey and ‘comes home’. This corresponds with their own relationship, Donne tells the lady. Like the leg which describes the circle, he must trace out his traveler’s course while she, the fixed foot, remains in one place.
3. 2 Tear image
John Donne describes tear in many of his poems. Compared to other clichéd description in his time, Donne’s images were extremely strange but was invincibly be loved by readers. In the poem of valediction:
Let me pour forth
My tears before thy face, whilst I stay here,
For thy face coins them, and thy stamp they bear,
And by this mintage they are something worth.
 For thus they be
 Pregnant of thee;
Fruits of much grief they are, emblems of more;
When a tear falls, that thou fall'st which it bore;
so thou and I are nothing then, when on a divers shore [9].
Tear with depart is the most common in the world, But Donne thought that tear was alive, equals to human, it has value and dignity which was beyond clinched tear image. These seem to be extremely bizarre: “For thy face coins them, and thy stamp they bear, and by this mintage they are something worth.”[9] Except that, he thought tear contains lover’s life. “For thus they are, Pregnant of thee.” [9] tear was not only the expression of feeling, but also the carrier of life: “ Fruits of much grief they are, emblems of more ,hen a tear falls, that thou fall’s which it bore.” Donne compared tear to seed of sad, expressing true love in deep meaning. Tear human, life and love link each to another, building up a large group of images. Only be companied with love and depart, tear has its own value.
3. 3 Flea image
In John Donne’s poems, we could find the most fantasy and unique thinking, which were written in a simple language. From the sun, the star to the flea, Mott and compasses, all of these seem to be far away to be used for describing love, but Donne describes them in a genuine manner. Donne employed intricate reasoning through the use of conceits or far fetched comparisons and involved imageries, which resulted in a style extremely artificial witty but obscure and bizarre and unreal, an example of this decadence may be seen in a poem entitled the flea, in which the fled that suck the blood of the lover and then that of mistress is said to bare brought about the union of the two lovers within its body and thus served as their marriage bed, and consequently of three living things, the lover and mistress and the flea, thought ostensibly this poem is supposed to represent the plea of a lover to his cruel mistress. Actually the center of interest is shifted somehow to the ingenious and playful though nonsensical conceit according to which the mingling of the blood of the lovers inside the flea is equivalent to the physical union of the two. In this way the artificial and really nonsensical conceit is indulged in for its own sake:转贴于 酷文网-论文下载中心 http://www.coolwen.net