ANDREW MARVELL試論 : 詩人としての姿勢

抄録

It is generally said that some peculiar and yet fundamental characteristics of English literature in the early seventeenth-century arise from the simultaneous embracing of different planes of knowledge and experience or the habit of immediate and almost unconscious transition from one to another. Such characteristics will be seen in most of Andrew Marvell's poetical works. While we must fix it firmly in our memory that he was a Puritan, we must, at the same time trace in his works even the perishing, Caroline mood and mannerism, not to speak of the influence of Ben Jonson and John Donne. So it is intended in this essay to clarify that -Marvell was rather a man of the century than an exclusive Puritan. It is also intended to emphasize that in his fine pieces we can observe 'the detachment of his judgement' and the sanity of his mind-a certain classical sense of equilibrium; this quality, though some have the opinion that it was due only to the influence of Jonson, seems to have been "based chiefly upon his reading of the classics during his time at Cambridge and thereafter. His works may be regarded as 'the Metaphysical poetry' or as something that the Puritan movement begot, but when we examine them, bearing in mind the above-mentioned fact, we cannot help recognizing that the finest ones are more than that: we admit he, imitated the form, rhythm, diction of his contemporary poets, but he gradually coloured them with his original tone, which was fostered in his personality, and at the same time, was formed by reading Horace, Lucan, and Bonaventura, etc. Marvell's deep interest in the classics had influence on his serious personality, and built up the foundation of his considered viewpoints on life and history. His attitude towards nature and religion in his poetry also, with various and even contradictory aspects in appearance, indicates substantially his seriousness for life and the world in which he lived. The inseparable connection between his life and poetry, with the influence of the classics as the pivot, seems to form his unique attitude as a poet, who was not completely affected by the tendency of that period nor fell into the religious sectionalism.