JOHN DONNE (1573-1631) 1. His Life. Donne, the son of a wealthy merchant, was born in London. His parents were Roman Catholics, and he was educated in their faith before going on to Oxford and Cambridge. He entered the Inns of Court in 1592, where he mingled wide reading with the life of a dissolute man-about-town. In these years (1590-1601) he wrote his Satires, the Songs and Sonets, and the Elegies, but, though widely circulated in manuscript, they were not published until 1633, after his death. Donne seemed ambitious for a worldly career, but this was ruined by a runaway marriage with the niece of his patron, after which he spent several years in suitorship of the great. In 1615 he entered the Anglican Church, after a severe personal struggle, and in 1621. became Dean of St Pauls, which position he held until his death in 1631. He was the first great Anglican preacher. 2. His Poetry. Donne was the most independent of the Elizabethan poets, and revolted against the easy, fluent style, stock imagery, and pastoral conventions of the followers of Spenser. He aimed at reality of thought and vividness of expression. His poetry is forceful, vigorous, and, in spite of faults of rhythm, often strangely harmonious. His cynical nature and keenly critical mind led him to write satires, such as Of the Progres of the Soule (1601). They were written in the couplet form, later to be adopted by Dryden and then by Pope, and show clearly, often coarsely and crudely, Donnes dissatisfaction with the world around him. His love poems, the Songs and Sonets, were written in the same period, and are intense and subtle analyses of all the moods of a lover, expressed in vivid and startling language, which is colloquial rather than conventional. A vein of satire runs through these too. The rhythm is dramatic and gives the illusion of excited talk. He avoids the smooth, easy patterns of most of his contemporaries, preferring to arrest attention rather than to lull the senses. His great variety of pace, his fondness for echoing sounds, his deliberate use of shortened lines and unusual stress contribute also to this effect of vivid speech, swift thought, and delicate emotional responses. He is essentially a psychological poet whose primary concern is feeling. His poems are all intensely personal and reveal a powerful and complex being. Among the best known and most typical of the poems of this group are Aire and Angels, A Nocturnall upon S. Lucies day, A Valediction: forbidding mourning, and The Extasie. The following stanzas from A Valediction: of weeping give some idea of Donnes use of striking imagery, and of the excitement of his rhythms: Let me powre forth My teares before thy face, whilst I stay here, For thy face coines them, and thy stampe they beare, And by this Mintage they are something worth, For thus they bee Pregnant of thee; Fruits-of much griefe they are, emblemes of more, When a teare falls, that thou falst which it bore, So thou and I are nothing then, when on a divers shore On a round ball A workeman that hath copies by, can lay An Europe, Afrique, and an Asia, And quickly make that, which was nothing, All, So doth each teare, Which thee doth weare, A globe, yea world by that impression grow, Till thy teares mixt with mine doe overflow This world, by waters sent from thee, my heaven dissolved so. His religious poetry was written after 1610, and the greatest, the nineteen Holy Sonets, and the lyrics such as A Hymn to GOD THE FATHER, after his wifes death in 1617. They too are intense and personal, and have a force unique in this class of literature. They reveal the struggle in his mind before taking orders in the Anglican Church, his horror of death, and the fascination which it had for him, his dread of the wrath of God, and his longing for Gods love. They are the expression of a deep and troubled soul. In them are found the intellectual subtlety, the scholastic learning, and the wit and conceits of the love poems. We give here one of the Holy Sonets. It has the intensely personal note and the concern with death which are so typical of Donnes religious works. What if this present were the worlds last night? Marke in my heart, O Soule, where thou dost dwell, The picture of Christ crucified, and tell Whether that countenance can thee affright, Teares in his eyes quench the amasing light, Blood fills his frownes, which from his piercd head fell. And can that tongue adjudge thee unto hell, Which prayd forgivenesse for his foes fierce spight? No, no; but as in my idolatrie I said to all my profane mistresses, Beauty, of pitty, foulnesse only is A signe of rigour: so I say to thee, To wicked spirits are horrid shapes assignd, This beauteous forme assures a pitious minde. He affects the metaphysics, said Dryden of Donne, and the term metaphysical has come to be applied to Donne and the group of poets who followed him. Strictly the word means based on abstract general reasoning, but the poetry of Donne shows more than this. It reveals a depth of philosophy, a subtlety of reasoning, a blend of thought and devotion, a mingling of the homely and the sublime, the light and the serious, which make it full of variety and surprise. It is to these many characteristics, so widely differing yet 80 often brought together in a startling fusion, that the general term wit is applied. Probably the most distinctive feature of the metaphysicals is their imagery, which, in Donne, is almost invariably unusual and striking, often breath-taking, but sometimes farfetched and fantastic. From his wide range of knowledge he draws many remarkable comparisons; parted lovers are like the legs of a pair of compasses, love is a spider which transubstantiates all, his sick body is a map, his physicians cosmographers, and Death his South-west discoverie. 3. His Prose. Donnes prose work is considerable both in bulk and achievement. The Pseudo-Martyr (1610) was a defence of the oath of allegiance, while Ignatius His Conclave (1611) was a satire upon Ignatius Loyola and the Jesuits. The best introduction to Donnes prose is, however, through his Devotions (1614,), which give an account of his spiritual struggles during a serious illness. They have many of the qualities of his poetry, are directly personal, reveal a keen psychological insight, and the preoccupation with death and his own sinfulness which is also to be seen in his Holy Sonnets. The strong power of his imagination and the mask of learning, which are features of the work, cannot hide the basic underlying simplicity of Donnes faith and his longing for rest in God. His finest prose works are his Sermons, which number about 160. In seventeenth century England the sermon was a most important influence, and the powerful preacher in London was a public figure capable of wielding great influence. We possess great numbers of these sermons, which show the form to have a highly developed literary technique based on a well-established oratorical tradition. Donnes sermons, of which the finest is probably Deaths Duell (1630), contain many Of the features of his poetry. Intensely personal, their appeal is primarily emotional, and Donne seems to have used a dramatic technique which had a great hold on his audiences. They reveal the same sort of imagery, the same unusual wit, the keen analytical mind, and the preoccupation with morbid themes which exist in his poetry, and they are full of the same out-of-the-way learning. We quote below the ending of his last sermon, Deaths Duell (1630), called by his Majesties household the doctors owne funerall sermon. Note the power of the dramatic appeal to the emotions, and the final peace so often sought for by Donne--rest in God. There now hangs that sacred Body upon the Crosse, rebaptized in his owne teares and sweat, and embalmed in his owne blood alive. There are those bowells of compassion, which are so conspicuous, so manifested, as that you may see them through his wounds. There those glorious eyes grew faint in their light: so as the Sun, ashamed to survive them, departed with his light too. And then that Sonne of God, who was never from us, and yet had now come a new way unto us in assuming our nature, delivers that soule (which was never out of his Fathers hands) by a new way, a voluntary emission of it into his Fathers hands; For though to this God our Lord, belongd these issues of death, so that considered in his owne contract, he must necessarily die, yet at no breach or battery, which they had made upon his sacred Body, issued his soule, but emisit, he gave up the Ghost, and as God breathed a soule into the first Adam, so this second Adam breathed his soule into God, into the hands of God. There wee leave you in that blessed dependancy, to hang upon him that hangs upon the Crosse, there bath in his teares, there suck at his woundes, and lie down in peace in his grave till hee vouchsafe you a resurrection, and an ascension into that Kingdome, which hee hath purchasd for you, with the inestimable price of his incorruptible blood. Amen. 5.His Influence. Although Donne was far too much of an individual for any succeeding poet to resemble him very closely, his influence is strongly felt in both the courtly and religious poetry of the following generation, and the metaphysical school embraces such names as George Herbert (1593-1633), Richard Crashaw (1612 (?)-49), Henry Vaughan (1621 (?)-95), Robert Herrick (1591-1674), Thomas Carew (1594 (?)-1639 (?)) and, in some respects the finest of all of them, Andrew Marvell (1621-78). Yet all of these, while reflecting directly or indirectly the influence of Donne, differ in many important respects from their great predecessor.
Posted on: Thu, 06 Nov 2014 02:32:30 +0000
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