John Donne - Poetry Madness 1

John Donne!

Bio

·        Born in 1572 London England during a time of political/religious unrest (Protestant Massacre in France on Saint Bartholomew’s day; persecution of Catholics)

·        Studied at Oxford and Cambridge in his early teen years but never took a degree from either because it meant subscribing to the 39Articles of Anglicanism.

·        Studied law at Lincoln’s Inn, and two years later joined Anglican church after his brother died in prison, having been put there for being a Catholic. Wrote his Satires and Songs and Sonnets volumes during these times

·        He was appointed private secretary to Sir Thomas Egerton in 1598 after a 2year naval expedition against Spain

·        He sat on Queen Elizabeth’s last Parliament in 1601 and secretly married Anne More, for which her father (Egerton) imprisoned him and refused them a dowry

·        They succame to extreme financial instability in their subsequent isolation,  especially cuz they had so many kids. He published a group of works called Divine Poems during this time

·        1615 – James I pressured him to enter the Anglican Ministry by declaring that Donne could not be employed outside of the church, and he was appointed Royal Chaplain later that year

·        His wife died in 1617 after giving birth to their 12 child, a stillborn (only 7 actually lived). It is during this period of his life he published Holy Sonnets

·        In 1621 he became dean of Saint Paul’s Cathedral, and during this time wrote his private prayers, Devotions upon Emergent Occasions

·        He was the founder of the Metaphysical School of poetry (a term created by Samuel Johnson, the actual word “metaphysics” developed by Dryden upon observation of Donne’s odd terminology) who are known for their ability to startle the reader and coax new perspective through paradoxical images, subtle argument, inventive syntax, and imagery from art, philosophy, and religion using an extended metaphor known as a conceit

·        His learned, charismatic, and inventive preaching made him a highly influential presence in London (especially amongst the younger generation of poets), best known for his vivacious, compelling style and thorough examination of moral paradox. Died 1631

Influences

He drew influence from:

·        Ovid (treating love cynically or as reduced to mere sexual attraction) note, there is some debate on whether he was actually involved in the rank sexual lifestyle or if he was just using Ovidian themes satiricly for implicitly moral purposes à his first published works, the Satires, almost seem to suggest the latter

·        Petrarch (impassioned and romantic) – quote “For Rachel I have severed, and not for Leah” became his motto, also was influenced by the Petrarchan idea that it is idolatrious to attach your love to a person, and so to rectify your love you must redirect it to the unchanging image Dei  (God; that is, turn from worldly love to divine love – perhaps Donne’s reaction after Anne’s death, and definitely in part the message of Farewell to Love)

·        The Church (his mother was catholic, but he was taught at Anglican universities, led to his acceptance of  Christian Platonism à a reconciliation of the human need to love with both body and soul, but with each not beyond what they should be so that they don’t  take from the relationship with God ----- there would be three types of unions, the union of human bodies sexually, the union of souls emotionally, and the union of souls with God spiritually) This is why so many of his poems are so shockingly sexual, even when dealing with religion

He influenced:

Renaissance love lyric and conational 16^th century poetry

·        Passages are not as smooth or mellifluous, but instead he speaks with “a vocabulary and syntax reflecting the emotional intensity of a confrontation and whose metrics and verbal music conform to the to the needs of a particular dramatic situation” (using “living speech”)

·        He used conceit more fully

·        Drew his imagery from more diverse fields (alchemy, astronomy, medicine, politics, global exploration, philosophical disputation)

·        Direct confrontation of the “ladies” of his poems, instead of about them but apart from them

·        Through all these he influenced Robert Browning, William Butler Yeats, T.S. Eliot, Alexander Pope, and Ernest Hemingway (for whom the bell tolls)

Work Cited

"John Donne." Poets.org. The Academy of American Poets. Web. 13 Mar. 2012

Naugle, David. "John Donne's Poetic Philosophy of Love." Web.

Farewell to Love

WHILST yet to prove 
I thought there was some deity in love, 
So did I reverence, and gave 
Worship ; as atheists at their dying hour 
Call, what they cannot name, an unknown power, 
As ignorantly did I crave. 
Thus when 
Things not yet known are coveted by men, 
Our desires give them fashion, and so 
As they wax lesser, fall, as they size, grow. 

But, from late fair, 
His highness sitting in a golden chair, 
Is not less cared for after three days 
By children, than the thing which lovers so 
Blindly admire, and with such worship woo ; 
Being had, enjoying it decays ; 
And thence, 
What before pleased them all, takes but one sense, 
And that so lamely, as it leaves behind 
A kind of sorrowing dulness to the mind. 

Ah cannot we, 
As well as cocks and lions, jocund be 
After such pleasures, unless wise 
Nature decreed—since each such act, they say, 
Diminisheth the length of life a day— 
This ; as she would man should despise 
The sport, 
Because that other curse of being short, 
And only for a minute made to be 
Eager, desires to raise posterity. 

Since so, my mind 
Shall not desire what no man else can find ; 
I'll no more dote and run 
To pursue things which had endamaged me ; 
And when I come where moving beauties be, 
As men do when the summer's sun 
Grows great, 
Though I admire their greatness, shun their heat. 
Each place can afford shadows ; if all fail, 
'Tis but applying worm-seed to the tail.