John Donne

JOHN DONNE

John Donne (1572-1631) is credited with the honour of being the poet who broke the Petrarchan tradition in England and created a new mode of poetry. Rather than a complete breach, Donne's poetry is a widening of the scope of the Elizabethan tradition. He implements already existing modes in every aspect: new metrical schemes (although he will return to the sonnet in his last works), a rich and original imagery, a colloquial, conversational tone, and a mingling of intellect and passion which disconcerted his contemporaries: he and his followers were labeled as "metaphysical poets." Not that Donne's poems have any philosophical intention: his themes are the traditional ones, although renewed by a new attitude: love, religious feeling, satire.The love poems correspond roughly to the early period of his career. He abandons the rigid Elizabethan conventions, which sprung from Petrarchism, and adds realism, sincerity, psychological penetration and a great variety of moods enhanced with images taken from every field of experience. Some of his love poems are harsh and cynical; others are nearly ecstatic, and celebrate love as the supreme thing in the world. The most famous among these are "The Sun Rising," "The Dreame" and "The Good-Morrow".

Love as the supreme experience suggests to Donne connections between it and other aspects of reality: everything can be used to try to describe an ineffable feeling. His imagery ranges from the vulgar to the sublime, from daily activities to old scientific theories; it may be of a deplorable bad taste or combine sheer originality with beauty and accuracy. It is never ornamental: the poet seems to think that sensation must be subordinated to thought. Much the same happens with the sound pattern of his poems, which is very far away from the smoothness of previous poets. Rhythm is secondary; at its best, it merely helps to underline ideas. One is going to examine in the first place those figures of speech that contribute to enhance musicality, not sense; those that could be appreciated on hearing the poem even by a person with no knowledge of English. Of course, the main of these are the metrical scheme and the rhyme, but these are taken almost for granted in a poem of the seventeenth century, and deserve a separate section.

- Alliteration is a device frequently used by Donne. There are several instances in our poem:

Line 2: ". . . Were we not wean'd till then?"

Line 4: "Or snorted we in the Seven Sleepers' den?"

Here alliteration has an onomatopoeic character; alliteration in ¬s appears in two words related to sleep, "snorted" and "sleepers", helping thus to underline the sense.

- Anaphora in lines 12, 13 and 14; "Let sea-discoverers . . . Let maps . . . let us . . . "

- Epanadiplosis in line 1 (though perhaps a chance one):

"I wonder, by my troth, what thou and I . . . "

- Parallelism of construction on two occasions:

Line 18: without sharp north, without declining west

PREP ADJ N PREP ADJ N

Line 15: M y face in thine eye, thine in mine . . . "

POSS+N PREP POSS+N POSS.Pron. PREP POSS Pron.

Both parallelisms are strongly emphasized byt the pause in the middle of the line. They appear in association with other figures, such as

- chiasm: Line 15: My face in thine eye, thine in mine . . . "

1st p. poss. 2nd. p. poss. 2nd pl. poss. 1st p. poss.

- Reduplication (present too in several other instances):

Line 10: "For love all love of other sights controls"

Line 13: "Let maps to others, worlds on worlds have shown"

The word "world" or "worlds" is also present in lines 12 and 14, but the effect is not so conspicuous.

Line 14: "Let us possess one world; each hath one, and is one"

Line 15: "My face in thine eye, thine in mine appears"

(1) (2)

It is of no consequence that (1) is an adjective while (2) is a pronoun; the effect is the saqme as far as the ear is concerned.

Line 18: "Without sharp north, without declining west"

Line 21: ". . . love so alike that none do slacken, none can die"

Now for the figures of speech which add to the sense: it is in these that Donne's imagination ran more freely:

- Rhetorical interrogative ¬ The first four lines are a series of these:

- "I wonder . . .what thou and I / Did, till we lov'd?"

Were we not wean'd till then?

But sucked on country pleasures, childishly?

Or snorted we in the Seven Sleepers' den?"

- Exclamation: Line 1: "by my troth"

- Invocation: In line 8, the poet addresses himself to his soul and his lover's, and wishes them a "good-morrow". In fact, the whole of the poem is a sort of invocation; the poet is speaking to his lady, who doesn't intervene.

- Metonymy: Line 6: "If ever any beauty I did see"

Beauty = beautiful woman. In fact, this is everyday speech. The same occurs in lines 8 (souls = minds, people) and 16 (heart=mind, especially if in love). A far more interesing metonymy is developed in line 14:

"Let us possess one world; each hath one, and is one".

So, each lover is a world for the other. If I consider this a metonymy rather than a metaphor, it is because of Donne's cultural background. At that time it was widely held¬it was the traditional belief¬that man was a "microcosm": everything was ordered in the "macrocosm" or universe just as it was in man; fluids governed the body just as elements governed the macrocosm; man's destiny was already fixed in the stars. Knowledge of the world