The word ‘baroque’ has
been derived from Spanish and Portuguese name for a pearl that is rough and
irregular in shape. The literal meaning of baroque is anything extravagantly
monumental. It was a term of abuse for 16th-17th century
art of Italy, next Germany and then of other countries. Initially this was a
term of disapprobation but with the passage of time the derogatory meaning is
lost. This term is also applied to literature. It has assumed the signification
of any elaborately formal and magniloquent style in verse or prose.
The ‘baroque style’
gave the writers a habit of seeing the universe as a metaphor and its objects
as symbols. The poems of Donne especially some of his divine poems in which he
contemplates the apocalyptic vision are labelled as baroques. This term also
suggests the religious emotionalism of poets like Crashaw. In the continental
context the term ‘baroque’ refers to the crisis of sensibility in the late
Renaissance.
The Renaissance in
initial years generates remarkable self-confidence and buoyancy of spirit. The
pagan world that comes into being with the Renaissance clashes with medieval
ethic, and there ensures a war between body and soul. So long as the balance of
the two is there, the picture is ordered and coherent. But the loss of balance
results into pessimism, chaos and violence. The scenario is perceptible in the
Jacobean drama and the Metaphysical poetry, more conspicuous in the former than
in the latter. The baroque thus helps the poet to present and surmount the
chaotic state prevailing in the continent. Some poets who want to come to grips
with the conflict between the body and the spirit harness their senses in the
service of God.
The baroque
sensibility works in two different ways. In most of the continental poets, the picture
is macabre and the dance of death is horrifying. The taste for the macabre is
perceptible in the French drama as well. Poems of Gongara, Theophile and Marino
replace the living world by a series of resemblances. The recurrent motifs are
tears, wounds, flaming hearts, the turtle love, the phoenix, the grave and the
nest. On the other hand some of the baroque conjure up a rich sensuous world.
In the poetry of Crashaw, it works in terms of rich sensuous images in
adoration of the divine. Drops of blood become rubies and tears become pearls
in his poetry. The experience of suffering undergoes a glittering metamorphosis
and the end product is the emergence of a world of tenderness and joy.
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