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John Donne uses poetry to explore his own identity, express his feelings, and most of all, he uses it to deal with the personal experiences occurring in his life. Donnes poetry is a confrontation or struggle to find a place in this world, or rather, a role to play in a society from which he often finds himself detached or withdrawn. This essay will discuss Donnes states of mind, his views on love, women, religion, his relationship with God; and finally how the use of poetic form plays a part in his exploration for an identity and salvation.
The speaker in Donnes poetry is a theatrical character, constantly in different situations, and using different roles to suit the action. He can take on the role of the womanizer, as in The Indifferent, or the faithful lover from Lovers Infiniteness, but the speaker in each of these poems is always John Donne himself. Each poem contains a strong sense of Donnes own self-interest. According to Professor J. Crofts, Donne
Throughout his life... was a man self-haunted, unable to escape from his own drama, unable to find any window that would not give him back the image of himself. Even the mistress of his most passionate love-verses, who must (one supposes) have been a real person, remains for him a mere abstraction of sex a thing given. He does not see her --does not apparently want to see her; for it is not of her that he writes, but of his relation to her; not of love, but of himself loving.
In Elegy XIX [To His Mistress Going to Bed], we are confronted with one of Donnes personalities. The poem begins abruptly Come, Madam, come! All rest my powers defy;/ Until I labour, I in l abour lie. The reader is immediately thrust into the middle of a private scene in which Donne attempts to convince his lover to undress and come to bed. There is only one speaker in this poem, Donne, we do not hear the voice or a description of the feelings of another person, but she is always present. If Samuel Johnson was correct when he made the statement that the metaphysical poets were men of learning, and to show their learning was their whole endeavour..., then the woman Donne is trying to convince is simply there so he can create this poem. Donne uses wit as his poetic device, wit being defined as an elaborate parallel between two dissimilar images or situations, namely the conceit. Donne does not give the woman a voice, and he most likely does not see her as human but as a means to create a role for himself. He describes her body and her undressing in metaphors
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Off with that girdle, like Heavens zone glittering,
But far fairer would encompassing.
Unpin that spangled breastplate which you wear,
That th eyes of busy fools may be stopped there.
Unlace yourself, for that harmonious chime
Tells me from you that it is now bedtime.
Off with that happy busk, which I envy,
That still can be, and still can stand so nigh.
Your gown going off, such beauteous state reveals
As when from flowry meads th hills shadows steals.
Off with that wiry coronet, and show
The hairy diadem which on you doth grow. [lines -16]
With these lines Donne is the poet first, using different poetic strategies to convince his lover, then he is a triumphant explorer
O my America, my new found land!
My kingdom, safeliest when one man manned,
My mine of precious stones, my empery,
How blest I am in this discovering thee! [lines 7-0]
Finally Donne is naked and vulnerable, involved in a battle of the sexes, struggling to get the woman undressed. Donne cannot control how quickly she undresses, or whether she will undress at all. He deals with this problem through his use of wit. Elegy XIX is an exercise for Donne, he explores various types of metaphors, and plays with the Petrarchan conceit, a popular poetic genre of his day. The main role Donne explores in Elegy XIX is that of the poet, and he enjoys this process because no matter what the outcome, Donne is still happy with the situation because he can write a poem describing various ways in which he can convince his lover to do what he wants.
Donnes personality changed with every new experience. His poetry reflects these changing roles by taking on a different form each time. Perhaps Elegy XIX can be seen as a time in Donnes life when he wanted to establish himself as a poet in his own mind, but there certainly was a significant event in Donnes life that changed his attitude toward women and himself. Elegy XIX shows us a person who thinks only of his own gratification, the woman is there so he can invent. In The Good Morrow Donne shows another side of himself, a man in love and finding his own identity inside another person, along with a new and fully developed style. There is still that egocentric attitude and the use of extended metaphors, but also an element of rebirth.
I wonder, by my troth, what thou and I
Did till we loved? were we not weaned till then,
But sucked on country pleasures, childishly?
Or snorted we in seven sleepers den?
Twas so; but this, all pleasures fancies be.
If ever any beauty I did see,
Which I desired, and got, twas but a dream of thee.
And now good-morrow to our waking souls,
Which watch not one another out of fear;
For love all love of other sights controls,
And makes one little room an everywhere. [lines 1-11]
These lines suggest that his past attitudes, past mistresses were somehow outside himself, or merely dreams of the woman he is now in love with. The lovers are separate worlds, they maintain their own identities, but at the same time they are mixed together forming a unit.
Let us posses one world; each hath one, and is one.
My face in thine, thine in mine appears,
And true plain hearts do in fact rest;
Where can we find two better hemispheres
Without sharp north, without declining west?
Whatever dies was not mixed equally;
If our two loves be one, or thou and I
Love so alike that none do slacken, none can die. [lines 14-1]
The lovers are cut off from the outside, they live in their own world. Donne sees himself in the reflection of his lovers eyes, obtaining an identity through her. He ceased to exist before he woke up in love with this woman.
Time disapproves of their love and Donne later finds his unit disturbed by the outside world. In The Sun Rising, the sun intrudes and reminds him that it is not just he and his lover that exist
Busy old fool, unruly sun,
Why dost thou thus
Through windows and through curtains call on us?
Must to thy motions lovers seasons run?
Saucy pedantic wretch, go chide
Late school boys and sour prentices,
Go tell court-huntsmen that the king will ride,
Call country ants to harvest offices;
Love, all alike, no season knows, nor clime,
Nor hours, days, months, which are rags of time. [lines 1-10]
This poem can be seen as a sort of dramatic monologue, a complaint to the sun. The sun reminds Donne of the outside world, one that he is aware of, but wants no part in. He would rather exist outside of time, alone with his love inside the unit they form. The couples hands are firmly cemented, their eye beams twisted together to become one, as in The Ecstasy. In The Sun Rising Donne contrasts his relationship to the sun, the sun is aged and has worldly things to do, while Donne and his lover appear timeless, immortal, able to disregard the sun with a wink of an eye. Eventually the couple contain the sun and the world. The poet no longer contrasts his unit with the sun, because the lovers become the world
She is all states, and all princes I;
Nothing else is.
Princes do but play us; compared to this,
All honours mimic, all wealth alchemy.
Thou, sun, art half as happy as we,
In that the worlds contracted thus;
Thine age asks ease, and since thy duties be
To warm the world, thats done in warming us.
Shine here to us, and thou art everywhere;
This bed thy centre is, these walls thy sphere. [lines 1-0]
Perhaps the most dramatic of Donnes poems is The Canonization. This poem expresses Donnes anger at the criticism of others and their opinions about how he chooses to live his life. The poem begins as a plea to be left alone, a demand for the people bothering him to mind their own business
For Gods sake hold your tongue, and let me love;
Or chide my palsy, or my gout,
My five grey hairs, or ruined fortune flout;
With wealth your state, your mind with arts improve,
Take you a course, get you a place,
Observe his Honour, or his Grace,
Or the kings real, or his stamped face
Contemplate; what you will, approve,
So you will let me love. [lines 1-]
Donne is defending his choices, he chooses to remain set off from the outside world, alone in a relationship that hurts no one save for their lack of understanding The phoenix riddle hath more wit/ By us; we two being one, are it. This poem was written most likely after his elopement with Ann More and the stress and disapprovement that went with his marriage. The beginning of the poem brings the reader into a debate between Donne and his friend, and then he turns inward and examines his love, the opponent is lost, and we get Donnes feelings on the matter of love
We can die by it, if not live by love,
And if unfit for tombs and hearse
Our legend be, it will be fit for verse;
And if no piece of chronicle we prove,
Well build in sonnets pretty rooms;
As well a well-wrought urn becomes
The greatest ashes, as half-acre tombs,
And by these hymns all shall approve
Us canonized for love... [lines 8-6]
Their love will become a legend inscribed on their tomb stones, immortalized in verse, building shelter through the poets words. He turns his love into the written Word, a law to live by, while others take to their courtly duties.
John Donnes Holy Sonnets reveal his relationship with God, his thoughts on religion, and his hope for salvation. Leaving the Catholic Church left Donne alone, worried about his after-life, almost helpless. For a while Donne survived with his various lovers and later his wife, but perhaps these sonnets bring us to the time after Ann Mores death, when Donne did not have the identity he found in the eyes of his lovers. Donne found himself alone with God and his religious beliefs. Writing poetry has always been a private experience for Donne. His dramatic self-presentation remains in his writings. Professor Crofts asserts
And so, later in life, though the stuff of his meditations changes, this inability to lose himself remains. It is not of God that he thinks so often or so deeply as of his relation to God; of the torturing drama of his sin and its expiation, the sowing and the reaping, the wheat and the tares. The great commonplace of his sermons, it has been said, is death but in truth it is not death that inspires his frightful eloquence so much as the image of himself dying; and the pre-occupation culminates in that ghastly charade of his last hours, described by Walton, when he lay contemplating the portrait of himself in his winding-sheet like a grim and mortified Narcissus.
Again, the reader is thrust into the action of the poem in Sonnet 14. Donne calls on God in a frenzied demanding tone Batter my heart, three-personed God; for You/ As yet but knock, breathe, shine, and seek to mend..., in a sense Donne wants God to beat sin out of him because he feels tempted by it. Donne does not feel part of a unit at this moment and calls on God to imprison him because he feels so distant and helpless.
The poet fears his own mortality and believes he is running towards death, that death is meeting him half-way. Many of the Divine Poems describe Donnes sickness and loneliness. He asks God to act, to repair his illness and prevent aging. In Holy Sonnet 1 Donne appears to be helpless
Thou hast made me, and shall Thy work decay?
Repair me now, for now mine end doth haste;
I run to death, and death meets me as fast... [lines 1-]
He begs God to be a magnet for his hardened heart, to tear him away from sin. In SonnetDonne wants God to fight for him. Poetry now becomes the model for his own salvation. Donne, in a sense, is an active participant by calling on God to save him. In Sonnet 5, the poet sees himself as a little world, his body similar to the entire world, his eyes swelled with tears like the sea. These images parallel his first Meditation
Is this the honour which man hath by being a little world that he hath these earth quakes in himself, sudden shakings; these lightnings, sudden flashes; these thunders, sudden noises; these eclipses, sudden offuscations and darkening of his senses; these blazing stars, sudden fiery exhalations; these rivers of blood, sudden red waters?
Donne refers to biblical stories of the Old Testament flood and the New Testament Apocalypse as he calls for God to drown and burn his sin contained within himself as a microcosm. In his sickness, he believes the biblical experience is being fulfilled in him, as was the Old Testament in the New. The Meditations and the Holy Sonnets have some differences. In the Meditations, Donne seems alone in his sickness, scorning the weakness of man; but in the Divine poems he seems to embrace sickness and death believing that this is how God is saving him from sin.
The Hymn to God, My God, In My Sickness was intended to be Donnes death-bed poem, the final acceptance of his sickness that he believes was in preparation for his salvation
Since I am coming to that holy room
Where, with thy choir of saints for evermore
I shall be made Thy Music, as I come
I tune the instrument here at the door,
And what I must do then, think here before. [lines 1-5]
The Hymn is a kind of personal release. The feeling of helplessness in his former poems are abandoned, and Donne seems confident that his bodily illnesses tuned his soul so it can enter heaven. This tuning of instruments refers to the writing of the Hymn itself, and the instrument, an image for Donnes soul, will become the music in Heaven.
John Donne takes a journey through his life and uses poetry in order to find his own identity. The poems take the reader through dramatic situations, confrontations, and debates between the poet and a person whose voice is not heard. In the poems Donne is acting out different personas-- characters like the womanizer, the monogamist lover, a man sick and dying calling on God to save his soul, and finally a man accepting his death to the point of obsession. This is a journey through the poets vulnerability, his pleas for sex, isolation, and finally salvation. Donnes writing reveals his attitudes about sex and religion, experiences he believes should be private and cut off from the outside and reality. By using elaborate conceits, Donne is not only trying to be witty and show his great learning as Samuel Johnson might suspect. The paradoxes and strange comparisons are written as an attempt to understand what is happening to him. The poetry portrays a man obsessed with himself, and obsessed with finding a place or a person so he can exist.
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