Embed Doc
Copy Link
Readcast
Collections

CommentGo Back

Download

‘A poet of the spiritual journey – John Donne’

Much has been written on the life and work of Dr John Donne. This lecture will not add anynew insight but it provides me with an opportunity to share with you my enthusiasm for thesubject. In his lifetime, he was a poet, a propagandist and a preacher. He was neither anoriginal thinker nor a systematic theologian. He moved in privileged circles and, in thecourse of his life, he experienced periods of poverty as well as periods of wealth. Born aRoman Catholic, he became a defender of the Anglican Church; he wrote religious as well assecular poetry, including erotic poetry, and from time to time he endured spells of serious illhealth. For me it is the power of his language, its vocabulary, imagery and structure whichmakes him most appealing. He is very human; his honesty is breath-taking, and his ability todescribe his own experiences of life and faith turn a personal reflection into a work of universal value.Let me begin by quoting one of his most famous poems from the

Divine Poems

, ‘Batter myheart…’Batter my heart, three-personed God; for, youAs yet but knock, breathe, shine, and seek to mend;That I may rise, and stand, o’erthrow me, and bendYour force, to break, blow, burn, and make me new.I, like an usurped town, to another due,Labour to admit you, but oh, to no end,Reason your viceroy in me, me should defend,But is captived, and proves weak or untrue,Yet dearly’I love you, and would be loved fain,But am betrothed unto your enemy,Divorce me, untie, or break that knot again,Take me to you, imprison me, for IExcept you enthral me, never shall be free, Nor ever chaste, except you ravish me.This is powerful and evocative poetry. Its quality springs as much from its structure as fromits language and imagery. Donne affirms the doctrine of the Trinity, ‘Batter my heart, three

personed God.’ He uses passionate, even erotic, language: ‘nor ever chaste, except youravish me.’ He writes of being ‘captived’ and imprisoned, seeking freedom. The use of short words and phrases in rapid succession gives us the sense of passion in his faith: ‘knock, breathe, shine, and seek to mend; That I may rise, and stand, o’erthrow me, and bend Your force, to break, blow, burn, and make me new.’ This is Donne’s poetry at its best. It is avehicle, a medium, for communicating faith.Donne believed what many Christians believed in his day. Religiously speaking, he lived between Rome and Geneva. Donne believed that we are created by love, that we have ruinedourselves by choice, that we are restored by sacrifice (substitutionary atonement) and that thedestiny of humanity was to share in the life of the Trinity in bliss. Donne said of his preaching, ‘Our mortality and our immortality….are the two reall Texts and Subjects of allour Sermons.’ His sermons were listened to by thousands. After the death of LancelotAndrewes, Donne was the greatest preacher of his day. One commentator wrote thatDonne’s sermons were ‘the most significant prose ever uttered from an English pulpit, if notthe most magnificent prose ever spoken in our tongue.’ One tribute paid to Donne shortlyafter his death was given by Richard Busby, subsequently headmaster of Westminster School:Mee thinkes I see him in the pulpit standing, Not eares, nor eyes, but all mens hearts commanding,Where wee that heard him, to our selves did faineGolden Chrysostome was alive again;And never were we weari’d, till we sawHis houre (and but an houre) to end did drawe.Donne preached for an hour to an hour and a half. He held people spellbound and yet if youwere to look at his sermons now they are not easy to read. Henry Hart Milman, one of Donne’s nineteenth century successors as Dean of St Paul’s, wrote:It is difficult for a Dean of our rapid and restless days to imagine…a vast

congregation in the Cathedral…listening not only with patience but evenwith absorbed interest, with unflagging attention, even with delight andrapture, to these interminable disquisitions, to us teeming with labouredobscurity, false and misplaced wit, fatiguing antitheses. However set off,as by all accounts they were, by a most graceful and impressive delivery,it is astonishing to us that he should hold a London congregation enthralled,unwearied, unsatiated. Yet there can be no doubt that this was the case.‘Golden Chrysostome was alive again’ and ‘the most magnificent prose ever spoken in our tongue’: these are high accolades indeed. I shall return to Dr Donne’s time at St Paul’sCathedral in a moment or two but let me sketch out some facts about his life.John Donne was born in 1572 in Bread Street in the City of London. His father died when hewas four years old. His father had been a very prosperous merchant, a senior member of theWorshipful Company of Ironmongers. His father’s financial legacy provided the young Johnwith financial security and a stream of private tutors. In 1584, at the age of twelve, Johnmatriculated at Oxford. He studied law but his interests were far wider. He was never called to the bar, but he made many good friends while at Oxford. He failed to proceed tograduate because, as a Roman Catholic, he was not able to subscribe to the Thirty-NineArticles nor to take the Oath of Supremacy. He lived in a golden age of literature. Thesewere the years of Spenser, Bacon, Marlowe, Shakespeare and Jonson. In a recent publication, John Moses writes of Donne:Donne had a great agility with words, and the sensuality – indeed, the blatantlyerotic sexuality – of some of his poetry is one of its abiding hallmarks. Hecould be playful. He could be tender. He could be erotic. He could be promiscuous. He could be cynical. He could be brutal. It is….precisely here – in ‘the expression of free thoughts and uncensored moods’ – that we find ‘theglory of his greatest poetry.’Most of his poems seem to date from the earlier part of his life. As Dean of St Paul’s, Donneseems to try to distance himself a little from his earlier poetic work. Here are a few lines on promiscuity. In this verse, he uses the word ‘bands’ which means sexual union: