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John DonneWe are pleased to reprint this essay by Amy Wegener, as well as the sonnets discussed by Prof. Bearing in Wit.
The Metaphysical Mind of John Donne (1572-1631)In her groundbreaking study of John Donne’s divine poems, Helen Gardner wrote that “no poet has crammed more into the sonnet than Donne.” Donne’s poetry is famously intense, vibrant and complex, and this is precisely the reason why Margaret Edson chose this prolific and brilliant seventeenth-century English author to be Vivian Bearing’s scholarly obsession.It’s also no coincidence that, among his contemporaries as well as for modern scholars, Donne’s reputation is inextricably linked with the concept of wit. As a famous epitaph written by poet Thomas Carew (1633) described Donne, “Here lies a king, that ruled as he thought fit / The universal monarchy of wit.” Donne is known for having made ingenious use of metaphors, irony, paradoxes, puns, and startling, sustained parallels (otherwise known as conceits) in his writing—all characteristics of the wordplay we call wit. Rediscovered in the twentieth century by such modern literary figures as T. S. Eliot, C. S. Lewis, and Helen Gardner (whose contributions are noted in Edson’s play), Donne’s work is often said to exemplify the passionate quandaries, longings, and arguments of seventeenth century “metaphysical poetry.” His writing shows us a mind and heart in conflict, vividly capturing moments in human experience that leap continually between intellect and emotion, the personal and the cosmic. In other words, as T. S. Eliot put it: “A thought to Donne was an experience; it modified his sensibility.” Both in the love poetry of his prosperous, adventure-filled youth and the darker, more troubled devotions and religious meditations of his later life, Donne’s writing probes experience, calling on the intelligence of the reader to unravel the complexities he presents. Using the rhythms of the living voice—another characteristic of metaphysical poetry—Donne takes the reader through an urgent argument that is being constantly advanced in the “speaker’s” mind. “Basically, all Donne’s poems are dramatic,” writes scholar John T. Shawcross. “They are immediate and involving. Just as in a situation in life, so in a Donne poem the participant’s understanding is developed and changed as the situation itself moves through time.” This sense of the dramatic, of a “speaker” in conflict, is evident in Donne’s Holy Sonnets. Donne is thought to have composed these divine poems around 1609, during a difficult middle period of his life in which he struggled to support his steadily growing family. According to Helen Gardner, the Holy Sonnets were written several years before Donne took holy orders in the Anglican Church in 1615, and before he would become a great preacher and Dean of St. Paul’s Cathedral. They are meditations on death, sin, and salvation; in them, the speaker moves between extremes—hope and despair, fear and awe—searching for redemption, something he can never be sure he has found. It’s a predicament that Margaret Edson cleverly terms “Salvation Anxiety” in her play. And this quality has earned Donne a reputation (according to H. J. C. Grierson) as “our first intensely personal religious poet, expressing not the mind simply of the Christian, but the conflicts and longings of one troubled soul, one subtle and fantastic mind.”
The Holy Sonnets in WitThe following sonnets, which Vivian Bearing discusses in Wit, are reprinted here from Helen Gardner's The Divine Poems of John Donne (Oxford University Press, first published in 1952).Holy Sonnet 5, “If poysonous mineralls”If poysonous mineralls, and if that tree,Whose fruit threw death on else immortall us, If lecherous goats, if serpents envious Cannot be damn’d; Alas; why should I bee? Why should intent or reason, borne in mee, Make sinnes, else equall, in mee, more heinous? And mercy being easie, ’and glorious To God, in his sterne wrath, why threatens hee? But who am I, that dare dispute with thee? O God, Oh! of thine onely worthy blood, And my teares, make a heavenly Lethean flood, And drowne in it my sinnes blacke memorie. That thou remember them, some claime as debt, I thinke it mercy, if thou wilt forget.
Holy Sonnet 6, “Death be not proud”Death be not proud, though some have callèd theeMighty and dreadfull, for, thou art not soe, For, those, whom thou think’st, thou dost overthrow, Die not, poore death, nor yet canst thou kill mee; From rest and sleepe, which but thy pictures bee, Much pleasure, then from thee, much more must flow, And soonest our best men with thee doe goe, Rest of their bones, and soules deliverie. Thou’art slave to Fate, chance, kings, and desperate men, And dost with poyson, warre, and sicknesse dwell, And poppie,’or charmes can make us sleepe as well, And better then thy stroake; why swell’st thou then? One short sleepe past, wee wake eternally, And death shall be no more, Death thou shalt die. |
