John
Donne gave up the trend of unbridled emotion and passion of the
Elizabethan poets; put aside the over-romanticized ideas and their sugar-coated
language. Rather Donne and his followers made a fine blending passion and
thought, emotion and intellect, imagination and reality, feeling and
ratiocination. “The Canonization” is one of the most famous poems
of Donne in which we can trace the blending of emotion and reason. Here he uses
some images and conceits to express the supreme feeling of satisfaction in love
in a concrete manner and this emotion of love is harmonized with
the use of complex wit and conceit, reason and argument.
In The Canonization, this fusion of emotion and intellect is observed in the
comparison of the lovers to the mysterious phoenix and the divine saints. The
speaker assumes that like the phoenix, the lovers would 'die and rise at the
same time' and prove 'mysterious by their love'. Reference to this mythical
being well sums up Donne's theory of sexual metaphysics; a real and complete
relation between a man and a woman fuses their soul into one whole. The poet is
both sensuous and realistic in his treatment of love. The romantic affair and
the moral status of the worldly lovers are compared to the ascetic life of
unworldly saints.
