ENG LYRIC POETRY.pdf - STIBA Malang

BEN JONSON AND THE ART OF INCLUSION
Seated in thy silver chair,
State in wonted manner keep:
Hesperus entreats thy light,
Goddess excellently bright.
24
(p. 482, ll. 1–6)
Anyone turning to this frequently anthologized lyric taken from Cynthia’s Revels
(1601) after reading Donne could probably immediately begin producing a list
of opposites to account for differences in tone, theme, and subject matter; and
until recently this list would probably have worked against Jonson. It might
identify a poetry of vigorous invention (Donne) versus a poetry of stated
elegance (Jonson); a poetry that constantly violates decorum, sexual as well as
verbal, versus a poetry that emphasizes chasteness of diction and phrase and
celebrates love with cool reserve; a poetry that banished, in Carew’s phrase, the
“traine/Of gods and goddesses” 2 in favor of mythologizing self-expression versus
a poetry that seems to subordinate self-expression to the timeless constellations
of ancient myths: in short, a poetry of conscious excess versus a poetry of
conscious limitation. Or, as psychoanalytically inclined critics might argue, the
repressed aristocrat exercising his fantasies in poetry versus the displaced
gentleman attempting to recuperate his authority in print.
On the basis of these observations, we might also wish to pry these authors
even further apart from another angle and for a different reason, by invoking
Roman Jakobson’s distinction between metaphor and metonymy to describe the
fundamental semantic habit that governs the different poetics of each. 3 Donne,
the master of metaphor whose yoking of opposites has long been seen as his
special trademark, searches as few poets ever have to find resemblance amid
difference. Jonson, the poet of metonymy for whom listing, not yoking, is at the
core of his distinctly ethical vision, seeks to identify, to define, and frequently to
rank individuals and objects in relation to one another in this world. If “The
Good-morrow,” with its taut dialectics of body and soul, time and eternity, and
its allusively symbolic language positing worlds within worlds is central to
Donne’s art, then “Inviting a Friend to Supper” lies at the heart of Jonson’s. The
various foods described—or rather presented and named—in his imaginary menu
exist in casually arranged relation to each other:
It is the fair acceptance, sir, creates
The entertainment perfect, not the cates.
Yet shall you have, to rectify your palate,
An olive, capers, or some better salad
Ushering the mutton; with a short-legged hen,
If we can get her, full of eggs, and then
Lemons, and wine for sauce; to these, a coney
Is not to be despaired of, for our money.
(ll. 7–14)