| You will notice that we will read poems with two
very different sets of subject matter. The first set will
be love poems--everything from the humorous carpe
diem argument of "The Flea" to the profoundly
philosophical "The Ecstasy." The second set of
poems, and the prose meditation, are examples of Donne's
religious poetry. You will notice that both sets of poems
use complex imagery and surprising comparisons; they are what we
have come to call metaphysical
poetry. That Donne's poetry covers two such different
subjects should not be surprising, given his lively and
interesting biography.
Donne was born in1572 into a Catholic family, which placed
him at quite a disadvantage during the Elizabethan era. Though
he attended both Oxford and Cambridge universities, he was not
able to graduate, since all graduates had to take an oath of
allegiance to the Crown, which accepted the supremacy of the
English ruler over the church. He went on to study law,
but he eventually returned to the study of theology, at least in
part to resolve his own mind about the tension between the
Catholic and Anglican doctrines. He traveled to Spain in
the late 1590s, and he spent some of his time writing lyric love
poems, which were circulated in manuscript but generally not
printed until after his death (we will read several of these).
He became secretary to Sir Thomas Egerton and seemed to be on
his way to a solid career
But in 1601, 29-year-old John Donne made a rash move: he ran
away with 17-year-old Anne More, who was his employer's niece
and the daughter of a powerful man who vehemently disapproved of
the marriage. Donne lost his job and was temporarily put in
prison. His famous quip about his situation--"John
Donne, Anne Donne, Undone"--all too accurately described
his financial plight. Despite their money woes, their marriage
was, by all accounts, a very happy one (see "A
Valediction Forbidding Mourning").
By 1607, Donne had resolved his religious misgivings and
became a member of the Church of England, though he refused at
this point to become an Anglican priest.. He wrote a tract
urging other English Catholics to take the oath of allegiance to
the King, and he became a favorite of King James I (who had his
own Catholic leanings). He finally was ordained in 1615 and was named
chaplain to the king.
In 1617, Anne Donne died at age 32, in the process of giving
birth to their 12th child. Despite being left to raise all of
those children on his own (seven had survived infancy), Donne
never remarried. Izaak Walton, writing in 1675, said
that Donne's "abundant affection which once was betwixt him
and her who had long been the delight of his eyes and the
companion of his youth...not hard to think but that she being
now removed by death, a commeasurable grief took as full a
possession of him as joy had done; and so indeed it did. For now
his very soul was element of nothing but sadness...."
Donne dedicated himself to his religious work. In 1621 he was
named Dean of St. Paul's Cathedral. He was recognized as one of
the great preachers of the era--and this was in an era when
great preaching was everywhere. We will read one of the
meditations that are part of Devotions Upon Emergent
Occasions.
Donne died in 1631. The first published collection of his
poetry appeared two years after his death.
The poetry of John Donne and the other metaphysical poets was
rediscovered at the beginning of the 20th century, when it had
profound influence on the lyric poetry of the early 20th
century, specifically that of T.S. Eliot, Ezra Pound, W.H. Auden,
Dylan Thomas, and others. According to the introduction in one
anthology, "The dramatic and colloquial qualities of
Donne's work, together with his acute psychological
insights--all elements sought after by the modern idiom--make it
easy to regard the poet as our own contemporary, as a strangely
modern figure...."*
But Donne's poems were not so well received in the 18th
century, when they were dismissed as overly complex and
indecorous in language. According to the 18th c. poet John
Dryden, for instance, Donne was guilty of "perplex[ing] the
minds of the fair sex with nice speculations of philosophy when
he should engage their hearts, and entertain them with the softness of love."
Samuel Johnson also found the metaphysical sensibility to be a
bit excessive, saying that metaphysical religious poetry attempted to
reflect "in a
concave mirror the sidereal hemisphere." But modern
readers admire the combination of passion and intellect, what
Eliot called Donne's "unified sensibility."
*Alexander M. Witherspoon and Frank J.
Warnke, Seventeenth-Century Prose and Poetry (New York:
Harcourt Brace and World, 1963), p. 735.
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