A considerable number of Andrew Marvell’s poems contain reference to various forms of visual arts. Marvell’s use of this type of imagery frequently leads to some type of transformation of a psychological, spiritual, political or social reality, with more or less overt allusions to the Neoplatonic notions of sublimation. However, this predominantly Neoplatonic notion of art, characteristic of Marvell’s earlier lyrics, disappears from his Restoration poems. In the satires, art, instead of idealising and elevating the corporeal, is rather dragged into the sphere of matter, where, together with the objects of the poet’s mockery, it undergoes a carnivalesque deformation. Such a degradation or carnivalisation of art imagery in Marvell’s Restoration satires is not only generically conditioned, but has its roots in the political, social and philosophical legacy of the Republic.
Death’s crude statement: “Et in Arcadia ego,” does not spring surprise on us, as it is a recognizable pastoral convention. But for the naïve and innocent inhabitant of any type of literary Arcadia this is a moment of wonder. Surprised by Death, the coarse Mower of Andrew Marvell’s pastoral poems struggles with the unfamiliar. Unaware of the world of urbane manners and unschooled in the ars moriendi, he translates the new, puzzling and painful experience into the familiar concepts of his everyday labours. His mind displaced, he looks for the confirmation of his identity in the mirror of his scythe, and when the latter accidentally cuts into his own ankle, the moment of ostensibly naïve anagnorisis of the natural man turns into the revelation of the conventional symbol. “Death, thou art a mower too,” concludes the clown in a way that may sound simple-minded, but at the same time, has an obvious, though on his part unconscious, reference to a well-known cultural myth. The aim of this paper is to trace the ways Marvellian pastoral personae cope with the wonder of Death by digesting the unfamiliar into the conventional and the aesthetic.
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