Old Habits Die Hard, I Guess - Eliza Colbert
I’m disappointed we didn’t read my favorite John Donne poem, “This is My Play’s Last Scene.” But there were still some good ones in this week’s reading. “Death, Be Not Proud” is a fantastic one. It’s an amazing depiction of the hope we have in the resurrection. “One short sleep past, we wake eternally, / And death shall be no more; Death, thou shalt die” (13-14). That line is so powerful, “Death, thou shalt die.” What a triumphant pronouncement! I think this poem is my second favorite John Donne poem.
One observation about the Holy Sonnets in general: they echo Donne’s previous work. As was mentioned in class, John Donne used to write some pretty racy love poems. This kind of imagery is still present in his Holy Sonnets. The last 3 lines of “Batter My Heart, Three-Person’d God” is the best example of this: “...I, / Except you’enthrall me, never shall be free, / Nor ever chaste, except you ravish me” (12-13).The sexual imagery is not evident at first glance, especially to our modern eyes. “Chaste” is the only word we can pick out on our first reading. However, the words “enthrall” and “ravish” both carry sexual meaning. Thus the final line, “Nor ever chaste, except you ravish me,” is a complete paradox. Let that sink in for a moment.
The other Holy Sonnets contain similar imagery. “I Am a Little World Made Cunningly” associates zeal for God with “the fire / Of lust” (10-11). In “Show Me Dear Christ, Thy Spouse So Bright and Clear,” Donne asks if God will “let mine amorous soul court thy mild Dove” (12). “Since She Whom I Lov’d Hath Paid Her Last Debt” is all about how God “Dost woo my soul” (10). You get the point. Donne, though now writing Holy Sonnets, still writes with some of the same sexual imagery that he did before. While nowhere near the same type, the imagery is still there. I’m curious, what is your opinion about this? Before you answer, take a look at Song of Solomon and then let me know what you think.
P.S. I commented on AnnaKate’s and Ezra’s posts.
I wish I had time to answer your question better and with greater detail, but I personally think that Donne using sexual imagery is not necessarily a bad thing. Poetry is so much about human emotion, and both sex and love are apart of that. Although in today's culture the two seem to be often separated, they aren't supposed to be. It is clear that Donne as a person felt very deeply, and because of that, he wrote deeply. Sex and sexual lust were things that he dealt with as a human, and like all good poets, he decided to write about what impacted him.
ReplyDeleteI’ve never read “This is My Play’s Last Scene, but it sounds like it would have been very appropriate for five of us right now…
ReplyDeleteYou could take his sexual imagery one of two ways. There’s the “JESUS ISN’T YOUR BOYFRIEND” view, and then there’s the “We are literally the Bride of Christ” view. The Bride of Christ view is entirely biblical, and the union of man and woman in marriage (spoilers: a sexual relationship) is offered as a parallel of Christ’s union with the church at the end of history. Now, to my knowledge the Bible itself doesn’t draw comparisons specifically between sex and Christ’s relationship with the church, but we’ve got brides, marriage, wedding feasts… We all know what follows. I’m sure there are biblically sound scholars out there who would compare the bliss of eternal paradise to the joy of sex.
While I have not read a lot of John Donne's poems, I did get an impression of subtle sexual allusions throughout our assigned reading. I think that obviously sex carried a lot of meaning for this man. Perhaps he thinks it is the highest form of intimacy that humans can understand on earth. Our relationship with God is supposed to be more intimate than that, so naturally the closest thing Donne can relate to this intimacy is sexual intimacy. It is weird and uncomfortable, but that is the best imagery he could come up with.
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