Hearts

    Last week we did a Harkness on The Broken Heart by John Donne and Symptoms of Love by Robert Graves. I found this Harkness especially interesting and insightful. Although Donne and Graves were centuries apart, they both managed to display the chaotic and all-consuming nature of love (although is VERY different ways).

    Donne's The Broken Heart really zooms in on the destruction. He doesn't just say a few sentences about heartbreak, he turns it into this dramatic piece on the obliteration left behind. Love doesn't just hurt, it shatters like glass, "at one first blow did shiver it as glass." His imagery is very prevalent and extreme sort of, but it matches the overall meaning of his poem. His use of hyperbole, like comparing love to the plague and gunpowder exploding in an instant emphasizes how overwhelming and irreversible it is. Donne's extended metaphor of love as a "tyrant pike" swallowing its prey whole shows the severity he wants to convey to the readers.

    Graves, on the other hand, takes a more psychological approach in Symptoms of Love. Instead of the dramatic scenery that Donne portrayed, Graves describes love as an affliction, "a universal migraine." He describes the ailments of love as a disease of some sort, it clouds judgment, causes paranoia, and fills the mind with obsessive waiting and longing. The short, fragmented lines and minimal punctuation creates this sense of restlessness I felt while reading his poem. This mimics the anxious anticipation of a lover waiting for some sign that might not ever happen. His imagery of "lean figures", "laggard dawns", and "nightmares" shows love as something that dissolves stability and reason. 

    The main difference I noticed between Donne and Graves is that the former writes love like an explosion while the latter imagines it as a slow-burning fever. However, both poets took an interesting approach to one of the most common themes--love. I found it intriguing that two poets could write about love so similarly yet so differently all at once.