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The Rhetorical strategies
of
John Donne's "Roly Sonnets"
Noreen Jane Bider
Department of English
McG~11 University, Montreal
June, 1992
A thesis submitted to the Facul ty of Graduate Studies and Research in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in English.
~Noreen Jane Bider
ABSTRACT
ThIS study examines two Important lnf luences thal shape .John
Donne's "Holy Sonnets": The Ignatian medltatlve tradlLlon
and the devotional trad1tlon of the psalm genre.
that their confluence ln hlS sonnets glves rlse ta unIque
rhetarlcal structures and strategIes that reflect the
doctr1nal uncertal~tles of his age.
RESUME
c'est étude explore deux lnfluences lmportantes qUl forment
les "Holy Sonnets" de Donne: la tradltlon medilatlve de
Ignatius Loyola et le genre psalmodique. Il suggère que
leur confluence dans ses sonnets mène à d'unlques stru~ture8
et statégies rhétorIques qUl reflèctent les Incertiludes
doctrlnales de son temps.
( Acknowledgements
1 should llke to thank my Supervisor, Professor Michael
BrIstol, for his encouragement, patIence and advice.
famIly, friends. and nelghbours in Dalesvllle, Quebec and
enVIrons supported this effort wlth words of encouragement
and many acts of kindness and generosity. Nancy Johnson
undertook to read and edit the fInal draft, and her comments
and observatlons lmproved the presentation of material. 1
am indebted to Maria Tariello and other staff of the
Department of Engllsh for carefully preparlng this
manuscrlpt for printing. But lt ia to my two children,
Claire and Anthony, that 1 owe the greatest expression of
gratitude. In Many respects, this work is our achievement.
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, TABLE OF CONTENTS
Introduction • • • • 1
Chapter One 6
Chapter Two • 34
Chapter Three • 68
Notes • 80
Bibliography • • • 83
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1
Introduction
This work ia a study of John Donne's "Holy Sonnets."
At the out set of the project, 1 had intended to use this
study to trace th~ Influences shaping the nineteen poems in
order to expiain the sources of their rhetorical structures
and strategies. ThIS seemed eminently sensible and
feasible: the poems were Obvlously the result of Donne's
Intlmacy with the Ignatlon trad)tion of meditative prayer
(and Its antecedents) on the one hand, and on the other,
they were a product of his evident interest in the Book of
psalms, especially those aspects of the Davldic persona that
exhibited heterodox hablts of devotion. Both these
lnfluences possess unlque rhetorlcal characteristics, and l
wanted to Investigate how Donne adopted and ,dapted them.
How dld the confluence of these two devotional tradItions-
the medltational and the "conversatlonal"--bring forth such
a unlque poetlc vOlce ln English devotlonal poetry, and why
did lt occur at that particular point in English history?
Llke most contemporary students and critlcs of Donne, l
Inlended to work out from the scholarly legacies of Helen
Gar~ner, Louis Martz and Barbara Lewalski. 1 1 was
convinced by my initial readings of their works and those of
thelr students that we could concelve of both the Ignatian
influence and Donne's passion for the Psalms as filtera
2
through which flowed hlS raw responses to the vIcissItudes
of his age. Donne's "Holy Sonnets" were wrltten during a
particularly dIfflcult period of his llfe, and lt lS falr to
say thal many of the tensIons we find in the poems are
reflections of the turmoIl and material difflcultles he was
experienclng. In sorne sense, the use of older devotlonal
models and paradlgms to express these difficuities may have
been a source of personal comfort to Donne. Thus, 1 had
hoped my work would enable us to use the Holy Sonnets to
"decode" sorne aspects of Donne's relationshlps wlth and
attItudes toward hlS peers, the Engllsh Church, and
structures of authorlty ln early modern England, aIl of
WhlCh, 1 was convlnced, were encoded to some extent wlthin
the rhetorical structures of the poerns. Further, 1 belleved
that If 1 could break the code--discover consistent
rhetorical patterns that could be related to doctrInal and
philosophlc tradltions wlth which he was Intlmate and/or
aligned, and not rely merely on the historicai Circumstances
of his life--I felt sure 1 could also dlscover how Donne
conceived the function of the poem as a devotional device,
which was a subject he never ventured to explore but WhlCh
seems to have implicltly interested hlm at varlOUS tlmes in
his life. Finally, 1 wanted to challenge sorne of the more
mechanical and unyleiding aspects of New Hlstorlcist
scholarship as 1 worked the tangles out of Donne's
~ rhetorical webbing.
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( The project, however, became seemingly unmanagable in
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a short period of time. l did not wish to limit my study of
Donne's rhetorical strategies to an analysis of a selected
number of technlcally competent manipulatlons of the English
language he apparently employed to achieve a pre-concel.ved
effect or response; nor dld l want to reduce rhetoric solely
to a crit..J.cal method. While l felt both appro~ches
constitutcd elements of the kind of study l was undertaking
dnd both had to be glven ample consideratIon, l al so
bellev~d that Donne scholarshl.p had tended to ignore the
unlque rhctorlcal strategIes of the Blblical psalms WhlCh he
approprlated and adapted ln hlS "Holy Sonnets," and l wanted
to explore this area as well. 1 declded to dIrect my
efforts so as ta present an account of how the meditationai
and Davldic influences converged ln Donne's "Holy Sonnets"
thcreby produclng rhetoricai contours and strategIes that
were unlque in Renalssance poetry. Tmplicit ln the effort
18 an atlempt to glve less emphaSlS to the theological
aspecta of Donne' a Sonnets and more to their modes of
observatIon, persuasion and argument. What 1 hope l have
achleved IS a descrlptive analysis of exactly how unIque
Donne' s rhetorical strategIes are ln the "Holy Sonnets" and
why.
Two essenllal pOInts inform this study: as a poet,
John Donne participated in a public, cultural endeavour
which placed specific pressures on him--performative and
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stylistic pressures--which cannot be ignored in a thorough
analysis of the Sonnets; secondly, there also must be
recognition and appreciatl0n of the private nature of John
Donne's poetry, that lS, recognitlon of the emotional
sincerity WhlCh lies behlnd the rhetorical control he
exe~cized. By dlstInctly expresslng that there lS a public
and private aspect to Donne's poetry, however, my analysis
does not reduce the publIC aspect of the poems to the purely
rhetorical, and the private to that of the lyrJcal. This lS
too simpiistic and unsatlsfying a model in the long run,
especially as 1 shall be ~rguing most strenuously that in
Donne's "Roly Sonnets," It 18 rhetorlC WhlCh sustains the
ethos of the craft poetrYi It is the slncerlLy or lyrlclsm,
if you like, that yields the coherent self--Donne's "I"--and
finally, It is what 1 calI "rhetoricity" that allows the
modern reader to examine the various uses Donne makes of
rhetoric and to read those uses on an expressive and
symptomatic level, both as personal and cultural road-maps.
In other words, Donne's use of rhetorlcal devices, and his
overall control of rhetoric in the "Holy Sonnets" tells us
something about hlS senslbllltles as a craftsman. But when
we examine the rhetoricity of these sonnets, we are apt to
discover Danne's conSClOUS and unconscious relationshlp with
doctrinal and philosophic traditions that employ similar
rhetorlcal structures. And it i8 only when we see Donne's
lyrical "1" in the "Holy Sonnets," that we know we are in
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the realm of prayer an~ poetry, and not the disciplines of
either pure rhetoric or logic.
1 have broken this work into three distinct sections.
ln the first, 1 have examined Donne scholarship of the past
forty-odd years ln order to establish the solidity of my
claim that the Ignatlan Influence is indisputably present in
the "Holy Sonnets" and that it constitutes a far greater
control over Donne's craft than any other single
influence. 2 In the second section, 1 look at the Book of
Psalms and, to a lesser extent, the Book of Lamentations and
draw sorne parall~ls between the rhetorical strategles found
there and ln Donne's poems. The object of thlS section is
to give a greater emphasis to the authorial control of the
lyrical "1" ln the "Holy Sonnets" than is usually granted in
critical literature. In the third section, 1 begin with a
rather abstract dlScusslon of rhetoric, rhetoricity, and the
important distlnction 1 make between the two. Increasingly,
1 draw Donne's poems, personality, and proclivities into the
diSCUSSIon in order to lilustrate, with the help of
conclusions drawn in the two prior sections, that Donne
placed himself wlthin certain doctrinal and philosophic
tradItions by employing their rhetoric, but that the
rhetorlcity of the poems firmly places the man in his own
age, and shows him fiercely engaged in a dialogue with the
issues of his day.
VLADIMIR: ESTRAGON: VLADIMIR: ES'fRAGON: VLADIMIR: ESTRAGON: VLADIMIR: ESTRAGON:
VLADIMIR:
ESTRAGON: VLADIMIR: ESTRAGON: VLADIMIR: ESTRAGON: VLADIMIR: ESTRAGON: VLADIMIR: ESTRAGON: VLADIMIR: ESTRAGON: VLADIMIR: ESTRAGON: VLADIMIR: ESTRAGON: VLADIMIR: ESTRAGON: VLADIMIR: ESTRAGON: VLADIMIR: ESTRAGON: VLADIMIR: ESTRAGON: VLADIMIR:
ESTRAGON: VLADIMIR: ESTRAGON: VLADIMIR: ESTRAGON: VLADIMIR: ESTRAGON: VLADIMIR: ESTRAGON: VLADIMIR: ESTRAGON:
Chapter One
WeIl? Don't
What do we do? let's do anything. It's safer. wait and see what he says. Let' s
Who? Godot. Good idea. Let's wait till we know exactly how we stand. On the other hand it might be better to strike the iron before it freezes. l'm cur10US ta hear what he has ta offer. Then we'll take it or leave it. What exactly did we ask him for? Were you not there? 1 can't have been listening. Oh ••• Nothing very definite. A kind of prayer. Precisely. A vague supplicatlon. Exactly. And what did he reply? That he'd see. That he couldn't promise anything. That he'd have to think it over. In the quiet of his home. Consult his family. His friends. His agents. His correspondents. His books. His bank account. Before taking a decision. lt's the normal thing. Is l.t not? 1 think it is. 1 think so too. Silence. (anxious). And we? l beg your pardon? 1 said, And we? 1 don't understand. Where do we come in? Come in? Take your time. Come in? On our hands and knees. As bad as that? Your Worship wishes ta assert his prerogatives? We've no rights any more? Laugh of Vladimir, stifled as before, Jess the
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VLADIMIR: ESTRAGON: VLADIMIR:
smile. You'd make me laugh if it wasn't prohibited. We've lost our rights? (distinctly). We got rid of them.
- Samuel Beckett, Waiting for Godot
Sorne time between the years 1607 and 1609, Sir Henry
Goodere, a contemporary and dear friend of John Donne.
purportedly found himself listlng perllously in the
7
directlon of the Roman Catho11c Church. Donne, upon hearing
of this, immediately took 1t upon himself s1multaneously to
syrnpathize w1th and chastise his impressionable friend in a
spir1ted letter quoted here at sorne length:
As some bodies are as wholesornely nourished as ours, with Akornes, and endure nakednesse, both which would be dangerous to us, if we for them should leave our former habits, though theirs were the Primitive diet and custome: so are many souls weil fed w1th such formes, and dressings of Rellgion, as would distemper and misbecome us, and rnake us corrupt towards God, if any humane circumstance moved it, and in the opinion of men, though none. You shall seltlome see a coyne, upon which the stamp were removed, though to imprint it better, but it looks awry and squint. And so, for the most part, do mlndes which have recelved divers impressions, 1 w111 not, nor need to you, compare the Re11gions. The channels of Gods mercies run through both flelds; and they are sister teats of hlS graces, yet both diseased and infected, but not both alike. And 1 think, that as Copernicus in the Mathematiques ha th r.arried earth farther up, from the stupLd Centre; and yet not honoured it, nor advantaged it, because for the necessity of appearances, it hath carried heaven so much higher from it: so the Roman profession seems to exhale, and refine our wills~om earthly dr~gs, and Lees, more then the Reformed, and so seems to bring us nearer heaven; but then that carries heaven farther from us, by making us pass so many Courts, and Offices
8
of Saints in this life, in aIl our petitions, and lying in a painfull prison in the next, during the pleasure, not of him to whom we go, and who must be our Judge, but of them from whom we come, who know not our case, Sir, as l sa1d last time, labour to keep your alacrlty and dignity, ln an even temper: for in a dark sadnesse, indifferent things seem abominable, or necessary, being neither; as trees, and sh~ep to melancho11que night-walkers have unproper shapes. Letters 101-2
This is one of Donne's most powerflll pieces of
ccrrespondence precisely because it is Donne--the Catholic
turning Protestant--and not only the recipient of the letter
whom we see as the melancho11que n1ghtwalker, the cOin upon
which was attempted a second stamping, and the soul that
wrestles w1th itself and the language of sacred address to
attain a coherent, acceptable and uncorrupted expression of
faith and trust in God's mercy and grace. Rlchar~ StrIer,
in his 1989 article "John Donne Awry and Squlnt: The 'Holy
Sonnets' 1608-1610," makes extenslve use of the coin Imagery
Donne employs in the letter. He argues, quite cogently,
that "many of the 'Holy Sonnets' lwhich were written during
the same period as this letterJ are awry and squint as
poems, reflecting rather than reflecting on the confusions
and uncertainties of Donne's spiritual life" (359).
Strier's main contention is that the painful confusion we
find in the "Holy Sonnets" "is not that of the convinced
Calvinist but rather that of a person who would like to be a
convinced Calvinist but who iB both unable to be 80 and
unable to admit that he iB unable to be so" (361). While
9 , t Strier astutely appraises the many doctrinal tensions of the
"Holy Sonnets," he seems reluctant to attribute to Donne a
conscious deployment of "confusionary arsenal." He does
not entertaln the notion, as l do, that Donne was engaged in
a conscious attempt to evoke a provocative dialogue with God
and that he was prepared to engage in a range of radical
literary and devotional activltles ln order to achieve his
end. Donne was a well-educated and well-read man by 1607,
and in his "Holy Sonnets" we find him empioying various
rhetorlcal structures and devlces with great dexterity and
sensitlvIty. But we can also find evidence of a less
consciously ~ontrolled influence on the structure of the
"Holy Sonnets," and that is the traditionally Catholic
practice of rneditation first forrnulated for laypersons by
~t. Ignatius.
Since this chapter deals with the Ignatian influence we
find ln the "Holy Sonnets," particularly the practice of
medilation St. Ignatius descrlbes in his book of Spiritual
Exercises, it seems appropriate to explain how it came about
thal Donne was susceptible to the influences of Jesuit
thlnking and practices. Biographers argue that the events
of Donne's life tell us how thoroughly Jesuit theology was
first stamped upon Donne's consciousness. They crntend that
this influence not only is traceable beneath Donne's efforts
ta reform his theological orientation but it also "distorts"
the contours of what Protestant theology was impressed upon
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him in adulthood.
John Donne was born lnto an English Cathollc family in
1572. Like many Catholics of the age, he was heir to a
tradition of dlscrimination, persecution and the specre of
self-imposed exile. In Donne's case, there were a great
great-uncle (Thomas More) and two uncles who were Jesuits
(Jasper and Elias Heywood) and an elder brother, Henry
Donne, who died while in jal1 on charges of harbouring a
Cathollc priest. Donne's connection, then, with the Roman
Catholic Church and in partlcular the Jesult order, was
greater than that of many other English Catholics. More
than any other order, the Jesuits undertook to minister to
English Catholics struggllng to remaln faithful to the
church of Rome. To this end, they wrote, printed,
translated, and secretly clrculated vast amounts of recusant
literature between the years 1548 and 1650. In English
Devotlonal Literature, 1600-1640, Helen C. Whlte provides a
lengthy, though not alI-inclusive, bibliography of
devotional literature that was printed abroad--ln Antwerp,
Louvain, Rouen, Douay, Rheims and Paris, for instance--and
smuggled into England. What makes this Catholic devotional
literature unique is not only that it was often self
consciously Counter-Reformation, that lS, knowingly set in
opposition to established Puritan and Anglican docLrines and
certainly against the authority of the English (read State)
church, but also that it received such a warm (if covert)
Il
\ reception from both England's Catholic and non-Catholic
communities. Louis Martz, in The Poetry of Meditation,
speculates that these works, primarily works of rneditation,
received such an eager reception because they satisfied a
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collective inner need. "It was a fact, larnented by writers
of every persuasion," he writes,· that Engllsh devotional
lire had been shattered by the rapid upheavals and bitter
controversles of the sixteenth century's rnlddle yea~e" (7).
The range of wreckage, however, was rnuch larger than
Martz seems to suggest. Not only devotional life, but also
families and fundamental social values were shattered and
scattered by the upheavals of the century, and there was
much consolation ln Counter-Reformation writings that wrung
from classical philosophical works and traditional church
theology the best solace and sp1ritual b~lstering available
to deal with the vicissitudes of thf day. Perhaps st.
Ignatlus--hlffiself an early vlctim of the Reformation's
upheavals and controversies3--best expressed the nature of
devotl0nal need to which Martz alluded when he wrote that
"it i8 not knowing rouch, but realising and relishing things
Interiorly, that contents and satisfies the soul" (Exercises
6). During hls youth, Donne, llke roost Catholics of his
dayv would have sought such solace ln recusant literature.
He would have read or been farniliar with the contents of st.
Ignatius' Spiritual Exercise~1 Luis de Granada's Book of
12
prayer and Meditation, and many of the other popular tracts
that constituted the essence of Counter-Reformation thinking
in England. Following the sacrament of Holy Communion
(which would have been received in the course of secretly
celebrated masses), he probably reclted St. Ignatius' Anima
Christi:
Soul of Christ, sanctify me. Body of Christ, save me. Blood of ChrIst, lnebriate me. Water from the slde of Christ, wash me. Passion of Christ, strengthen me. o good J~sus, hear me; Within thy wounds hide me; Suffer me not to be separated from thee; From the mallgnant enemy defend me; In the hour of my death calI me, And bid me corne to thee r
That with thy saints 1 may praise thee Forever and ever. Amen.
Iodeed, readlng these Counter-Reformation texts leaves one
with the belief that the integrity and certainty of the
Catholic world ln the England of Donne's day relied on the
capacity of the recusant to create and maintain a world
interio~ly. For the Engllsh Cathollc, whose public
devotional activities were effectively denied, spiritual
life and faith had to be sustained by virtue of the three
faculties of the soul: the memory, the understanding, and
the will, which Ignatius taught his exersants to employ in a
new way, just for such purposes. The emphasis on creating a
spiritual experlence with the se powers became a hallmark of
the kind of fugitive faith CatholicB could practice when
public worship was denied them.
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John Carey, in h~s celebrated biography entitied John
Donne Life, Mind and Art, aiso emphasizes the importanéë of
Donne's Catholic heritage, beginning his work with this
chilling advlce: "The first thing to rernember about Donne
ls that he was a Cathollc; the second, that he betrayed his
Falth" <Carey 5). He then devotes the first chapter
entlrely to a vivid account of the plight of English
Catholic familles such as Donne's, and suggests three
motives behind Donne's "betrayal" of the Roman Catholic
Falth: ambition, Intellect, and reaction agalnst the role-
models of his youth, those pious Catholics and in particular
the martyrdom-bound Jesuits. Warming to his theme, Carey
proceeds to argue, ln the second chapter, that it was
Donne's dlfflculty in coming to accept the seemingly
slmpllstlC Protestant doctrine of Justification by Faith
that led Donne into the abyss of doubt about his salvation
(Carey 57). "In abandonlng the Cathollc for the Protestant
Church," writes Carey, Donne
had entered the realm of doubt, and had he not made this move the ~Holy Sonnets' could never have been written. They are the fruit of his apostasy. For aIl their vestIges of Cathollc practice, they belong among the documents of Protestant religlous paln, and their suffering lS the greater because they are the work of a man nurtured ln a more sustaining creed. 57
Carey's ~nterpretation of Donne's sp~rituai
difflcultles, like Strier's, followa in the wake of Helen
Gardner's work on the dating and sequencing of the "Holy
14
Sonnets'" composition. In 1952, Gardner published a
critical edition of Donne's religious poetry entltled The
Qlvine Poems. of this work she writes in the introduction:
In setting out to edIt the Divine Poems of John Donne 1 had two purposes. 1 wished to print the 'Holy Sonnets' in what 1 believe to be their right order, to display their dependence in subject and treatment on the tradition of formaI meditatl0n, and to argue that the majority were written weIl before Donne was ordained. My second purpose was to annotate the poems. v
By tracing the manuscript productions and reproductions of
the "Holy Sonnets," Gardner distilled what are today
considered by the majority of scholars ta be the most
authoritative versions of Donne's holy verse. After paying
tribute to Sir Herbert Grlerson, who undertook a similar
project in 1912, she pursued "a fresh examination of the
material he worked on and a study of four more manuscrlpts"
which had been unavailable at the time Grlerson prepared his
two-volume editl0n of Donne's poetry (Gardner Vl). From her
analysis of the available rnanuscripts and various
correspondence, Gardner concluded that John Donne had
cornposed at least twelve of the "Holy Sonnets" weIl before
his ordination in 1515 rather than afterwards, as Isaac
Walton and subsequent biographers and editors had
traditionally asserted. Not only did her work shatter a
classic basis for the old distinct10n between Ja~k Donne,
Courtier, and Dr. Donne, Dean of st. paul's, lt fuelled anew
a curiosity about the man and his character that had only
srnouldered for more than three centuries. The work Gardner
15
( performed on the dating and sequence of the "Holy Sonnets"
invited fresh examinations of the poems, and indeed, debate
and diScussion has since raged on topics varying from
eVldence of doctrinal ambIvalences, such as those discussed
by Carey, Strier, and like-minded Donne scholars, to
suggestIons that a discerning reader can flnd Donne
fantasizing about a "homoerotlcally sexualized salvation"
(
(Marotti 1986, 259).
Admittedly, It lS interesting and fruitful to look at
the "Holy Sonnets" as both products and expressions of
doctrinal struggles and Incertitude--almost as
autobiographlcal notes--and It is equally fascinating to
explore Donne's work "contextually" as Marotti does in John
Donne, Coterie Poet. Doctrine and contextuallty aside,
however, it seems to me that the theological influence that
most evidently left its mark on the structure of Donne's
"Holy Sonnets" is the traditIon of formaI medltation--that
form of spirItual, dlsciplined prayer whose roots extend
back to the Church writings of Augustine, St. Bernard, and
st. Bonaventure, to name but a few of its earlier fathers,
and WhlCh culminates, for Donne, in Counter-Reformation
treatises on medltation--the prototype of which was St.
Ignatius Loyola's §piritual Exercises. It was, as Louis
Martz notes, "in the middle years of the sixteenth century,
under the stimulation of the Counter-Reformation and its
spearhead, the Jesuit order Ithat1 new treatises on
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rned1tation began to appear by the dozens" (1954, 5). Not
only was st. Ignatius' rnanual the flrst of lts type, but its
influence on Engllsh devotional poetry, partlcularly Donne's
work, was greater than that of any of the non-Jesult worka
on medltatlon that followed Loyola's.
As ~ theologlcal work, St. Ignatius' Spirltu~
Exercises proposed an alternatIve model of salvatlon to the
Protestant doctrine of JustificatIon by Faith that was at
once medieval and senSItIve to rlslng hurnanlst thought.
Martz suggests that the slxteenth and seventeenth centuries
fused the medleval (affectIve) and the hurnanist
(intellectual) currents ln Lhe tradition of rneditation, and
he claims that "the central alm of Cathollc spirltuallty
during this period was to teach the devout indlvldual how to
maintain a proper balance and proportlon between these two
aspects of his nature" (1954, 114). It is a moot pOInt
whether such a proper balance was believed to be a pre
requisite for salvation, but Martz's idea that specific
historical factors gave rise to poetry of meditation was
further investigated by other Renaissance scholara,
includlng Anthony Raspa in his work, The Emotlv~mage.
Raspa sought to clarify the foundations of English poetry
and rneditation in the sixteenth and sev~nteenth centurlea
and was led to a theory of Jesult poetics at the centre of
which was, of course, St. Ignatius and hls ~ritual
Exercises. "In their historical context," writes Raspa
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"Exercises aimed ••• at filling a void that accompanled the collapse of the old world order. This order had plctured ChrIstIan concepts springing from the classlcal dualism of matter and forme IgnatIUS sought to allevlate wlth a new verSIon of order the stralns caused by the shattering of the conceptIon of order ln a Great ChaIn of BeIng." 49-50
Agaln, It lS highly debatable whether or not Ignatius
sought to allevlate anything wlth hlS exerClses other than
the uncertainty of how to attain salvation, but hlS
prescriptive text resounds with voices--classical and
medievai ln tone--whlch rise together and merge to suggest a
new aesthetlc WhlCh poets such as Donne dlscovered and
appropriated, forging with It a new poetic sensibiiity and
strategy. Essentially, Donne and others such as Southwell,
Crashaw, and Herbert employed the relatIons of the soul's
three powers to establish an aesthetic that conflates prayer
and poetry lnto a single act of the hurnan wlll--an act at
once devotionai and creative.
st. IgnatIUS' Spiritual Exercises, which clearly
establlshes the working principles of this aesthetic, is
actually an Instructional manual which was written prirnarily
for the use of Retreat Directors supervising the spiritual
exercises of Retreatants. The exercises were to be
perforrned over a period of four weeks, although Ignatius
remarks in one of hlS annotatIons that
though four weeks .•• are spent ln the Exercis~sr it is not to be understood that each Week has, of necesslty, seven or eight days. For, as it happens that in the First Week sorne are slower to find what they seek--narnely, contrition, sorrow, and tears for their sins--and in the sarne way sorne are more diligent
----------
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than others, and more acted on or trled by different spirits; it is necessary sometimes to shorten the Week, and at other tlmes to lengthen it. 6
Loyola refined and edited his manual several tImes in
the years following Its flrst publication, and many of hlS
annotations, such as this one, offer lnsights into the
structure and psychologlcal prlnciples behind the exercises.
The first, third and fifth annotations, quoted below at
length, are particularly important glosses on the prlnclples
of meditatl0n that we shall see ln the structure of Donne's
"Holy Sonnets."
Flrst Annotation. The first Annotation is that by this name of Spiritual ExerClses lS meant every way of examining one's conscience, of meditating, of contemplating, of praying vocally and mentally, and of performlng other spIritual actions, as Will be sald later. For as strolllng, walking and running are bodily exercises, sa every way of preparing and disposlng the soul to rld Itself of aIl the dlsordered tendencies, and, after lt is rid, to seek and find the DivIne WIll as to the management of one's Ilfe for the salvatlon of the soul, is called a SpirItual Exercise.
Third Annotation. The third: As in aIl the followlng Spiritual Exercises, we use acta of the intellect ln reasonlng , and a~ts of the will ln movernents of the feelings: let us remark that, ln the acts of the WIll, when we are speaking vocally or mentally with God our Lord, or with His Saints, greater reverence is requlred on our part than when we are using the intellect in understandlng.
Fltth Annotation. The fifth: It is very helpful to him who is recelving the Exercisea to enter lnto them with great courage and generoslly towards hlS Creator and Lord, offering Hlm aIl his will and liberty, that His Divine Majesty may make use ut hlS person and of aIl he has according to His moat Holy Will. 6-7
During the first of the four weeks, the Retreatant was
:t' to meditate "with the three powers on the first, the second
•
19
(, and the third sin," that iB, the sin committed by Godls
rebelling angels, that of Adam and Evels disobedience, and
(
the sins and evils they perpetuate in this world (Exercises
26-30). The object of these exercises was to prepare for a
general confessIon which would be followed by the sacrament
of Holy Communion. The first exercise begins with a
preparatory prayer in WhlCh the Retreatant asks "grace of
God our Lord that aIl . . . intentions, actions and
operatIons may be directed purely to the serVIce and praise
of HIS DivIne Majesty" (Exercises 32). The prayer is
followed by two preludes which may vary according to the
subject matter of each exercise, but which must always
consist of first a composition of place, and second, a
petition for appropriate responsorial behaviour. st.
IgnatIus describes the two preludes (in terms of the first
exercise) thus:
First Prelude. The First Prelude is a composition, seeing the place.
Here it is to be noted that, in a visible contemplation or meditation--as, for instance, when one contemplates Christ our Lord, Who is visible--the composition will be to see WiLh the sight of the imagination the corporeal place where the thlng is found which 1 want to contemplate. 1 say the corporeal place, as for instance, a Temple or Mountain where Jesus Christ or Our Lady is found, according to what 1 want to contemplate. In an invisible contemplation or meditation--as here on the Sins--the composition will be to Ree with the sight of the imagination and consider that my soul is imprisoned in this corruptible body, and aIl the compound in thls valley, as exiled among brute beasts: 1 say aIl the compound of soul and body.
Second Prelude. The second is to ask God our Lord for what 1 want and desire.
20
The petition has to be according to the subject matter; that is, if the contemplation is on the Resurrection, one is to ask for joy with Christ ~n joy; if it is on the Passion, he i8 to ask for pain, tears and torment with ChrIst in torment.
Here it will be to ask shame and confusion at myself, seeing how Many have been damned for only one mortal sin, and how many times l deserved to be condemned forever for my so Many sins. 32
The structure of the second Prelude is far more complex
than that of the first, considering as it does in this
exercise, the First, Second and Third Sin in separate
points. Loyola advises that the exersant brlng the memory,
then the intellect, and finally the will to bear on each
sin, as further divisions within each "poInt." The purpose
of bringing the soul's three powers to bear on these sins is
first, to employ the memory to consider the who's, what's
and how's of the transgression of Lucifer and the angels,
and to examine the consequences of their sin. By bringing
the intellect to bear on this detailed recollect10n of the
first sin against God's love, human reason and logic can be
exercised in a discussion of how sinning against God and
acting against his "Infinite Goodness" justly led to eternal
damnation (~xercises 34). The enormity of the sin is
transfigured into humanly understood terms by thlS act of
the intellect. The will moves the exersant's feelings to a
pitch of remorse and contrition.
The Preludes are followed by a colloquy which is made,
says Loyola, "as one friend speaks to another, or as a
servant to a master; now asking sorne grace, now blaming
21
( oneself for Borne misdeed, now communicating onels affairs,
and asking advice in them" (36).
(
In effect, St. Ignatius exhorts the exersant to trigger
a deliberate emotional outpouring by dramatizing a biblical
event down to the finest detail. It is then analyzed as
thoroughly and painstakingly as the exersant is capable,
leaving no detail untouched by such analysis. Flnally, when
aIl the psychic and intellectual defence-rnechanisms are
challenged and proven Inefflcacious in the face of the
exercant's self-determined 9uilt or culpability, the will is
engaged to move the heart and mind of the exersant to
conform more closely to the heart and mind of ChrIst.
Properly conducted, these exercises were to result in a
chastened and contrite state in which the exersant joyfully
abnegated hlS will in the face of God's love and grace.
In many of John Donne's "Holy Sonnets," we find
indisputable evidence of how thoroughly Ignatius Loyola's
exercises influenced both their structures, and to a lesser
extent, their strategies. Sometirnes we see the entire
meditative process--from preparatory prayer to co 1 1oquy--in
evidence in a single sonnet; sometimes only segments are
traceable. But in aIl Donne's "Roly Sonnets,~ we find that
the trinity of the soul's powers are employed just as Loyola
prescribed.
Martz suggests that four of the "Roly Sonnets" exhibit
"the rnethod of a total exercise ••• or, at least, a
22
poetical structure modeled on the stages of a complete
exercise" (1954, 49', He includes, in this group, sonnets
five "1 am a little world made cunn1ngly," seven "At the
round earths irnag1n'd corners," nine "If poysonous
mineralls" and ~leven "Spit in rny face yee Jewes." While 1
have no quarrel with his selection, 1 believe a fifth
belongs in the company of those Martz discusses, and will be
adding it to my discussion in this ~hapter.
Speaking of Sonnet V, Martz suggests that the f1rst
four lines constitute a "'composition by similitude'
defining precisely the 'invisible' problem to be considered"
(1954, 53):
1 am a little world made cunningly Of Elements, and an Angelike spright, But black sinne hath betraid to endlesse night My worlds both parts, and (oh) both parts must die.
Donne's speaker, here, establishes the Platonic duality of
body and soul, and he mourns, 1n despairing tones, the
inevitable death of both resulting from sin. Raw from the
painful awareness of his mortality, the speaker then follows
the pattern of a prelude in the next five lines. He
hyperbolically contrasts God's reach and powers with those
of mankind: God can found a universe, pour seas, drown
worlds, cleanse by baptism; mankind's world ia confined to
what he makes of his life, and having fouled it with
sinfulness, he can but seek God's grace and mercy to move
him to such a state of remorse that he drowns in a Lethean
pool of his own tears; if remorse is insufficient to attain
•
r-----
( •
23
grace, then he can ask that those tears provide a cat~7~tic
cleansing:
You which beyond that heaven which was most high Have found new sphears, and of new lands can write, Powre new seas in mine eyes, that so l might Drowne my world wlth my weeping earnestly, Or wash it, If it must be drown'd no more:
SIowly, the "invIsIble" problem of the first quatrain
takes its shape in the second. We are suddenly conscious
that the realm of the speaker's sin and despair is not
really the mortal nature of the Platonic universe so neatly
divided between the mIneraI and the spirItual; it ~s no
longer a question of shades and shadows, but it is a problem
of the interior state of the speaker, whose world is
rhetorically conceived and emotionally perceived. It is the
shadowy world of the speaker's conscience, the seat of
rhetorlc; for what other world could be washed away or
cleansed by tears?
The five closing lines of the sonnet function as a
colloquy in which the speaker petitions Godls grace--the
flame of the 801y Ghost--and begs that lt consume his
sinful, fouled world. It is here that Donnels speaker first
aknowledges that there is no effective rhetoric of salvation
and that only a zealous faith heals a broken and contrite
heart:
But oh it must be burnt; alas the fire Of lust and envie have burnt it heretofore, And made it fouler; Let their flames retire, And burne me 0 Lord, with a fiery zeale Of thee and thy house, which doth in eating heale.
•
Sonnet VII borrows from Revelations 7:1: "1 saw four
angels standing on the four corners of the earth." It
establishes a composition of the last hour:
At the round earths imagin'd corners, blow Your trumpets, Angells, and arlse, arise From death, you numberlesse infinitles Of soules, and to your scattred bodles goe
ln the next quatrain, the speaker intones a litany of
death's companlons and ends ~ith a flicker of hope that
there are those who die, though they do not taste the
bitterness of spiritual death and separation from God:
AlI whom the flood did, and fire shall o'erthrow,
24
AlI whom warre, dearth, age, agues, tyrannies, Despaire, law, chance, hath slaine, and you whose eyes, Shall behold God, and never tast deaths woe.
The first four lines of the sestet constitute a sêcond
prelude, wherein the speaker, realizing that his sinfulness
exceeds that of many who have died and shall taste death's
woe, petitions God for time in which to mourne, repent, and
move his heart to a state of contrition:
But let them sleepe, Lord, and mee mourne a space, For, if above aIl these, my sinnes abound, 'Tis late to aske abundance of thy grace, When wee are therei here on this lowly ground.
The last two lines of the sonnet constitute a heterodox--
perhaps even blasphemous--colloquy in which the speaker
seeks the tutoring of God: "Teach mee how to repent;" he
says, "for that's as good / As if thou'hadst seal'd my
pardon, with thy blood." Of this couplet, Lewalski writes
that Donne "asks specifically for the divine gift of true
repentance, for that would be a trustworthy sign of his
r
25
t election and justification" (269). But that is a remarkable
interpretation of a tersely worded texte 1 offer an
alternative to her analysis. While the passion and
sacrIfice of Chr1st has never, ever, 1n any Christian creed
been equated with the power of penance, much less
repentance, Donne's speaker seems unwilling, or perhaps
unable, to speak to God of the sacrif1ce of his Son, as
though he were incapable of accepting such a gift, even if
aknowledgment is required for salvation. Christ's sacrifice
1S the coroerstone of Christianity, and yet here, there is
almost a suggestion that what the speaker seeks is such
perfect contrition that no sacrifice, no intermediary, is
needed. Donne's speaker,.we must conclude, seeks to come
into the presence of God on his own self-willed merits. And
here is Donne, we might also say, still exploring the Roman
Catholic conception of the power of penance and contrition.
Perhaps, too, we must aknowledge seeing him still clinging
to the notion that contrition must have sorne value and
relation ta the process of salvation, but not necessarily as
Lewalski Buggests. Certainly this colloquy in no way
represents Donne exploring a theological issue. Bere,
(
truly, is someone speaking to God as a friend, seeking
communion and intimacy outside doctrine--perhaps we should
say in a manner good friends would seek forgiveness for
trespasses, and look with hope ta be forgiven.
In her commentary on the "Boly Sonnets," Helen Gardner
26
argues that Sonnet IX, "If poysonous mineralla," does not
exhibit the full structure of a meditative exercise because
it has no apparent composition of place. Nevertheless, 1
wou i suggest that a locus of action has been evoked by
Donne in the fIrst quatrain and that It bears a strong
structural relatIon to a composition of place. In this
sonnet, the locus is the seat of pride: we are in the
speaker's conscience--a profane court--where the issues of
responsibillty and culpability, where questions of freedom
and the wIll, are ralsed:
If poysonous mineralls, and if that tree, whose fruit threw death on else immortall us, If lecherous goats, if serpents enVIOUS Cannot be damn'd; Alas; why should 1 bee?
Of course, the speaker's catechism lessons rise to the
occasion in the second quatrain as the theological answers--
rhetorically altered--are provided:
Why should intent or reason, borne in mee, Make sinnes, else equall, in mee, more heinous? And mercy being easie, and glorious To God, in his sterne wrath, why threatens hee?
The belligerence of the first two quatrains disappears
completely from the sestet, where the speaker is found
talking to God, not in the style of a cross-examiner, but as
a supplicant, as one who knows these are questions for a
higher court:
But who am l, that dare dispute with thee? o God, Oh! of thine onely worthy blood, And my teares, make a heavenly Lethean flood, And drowne in it my sinnes blacke rnemorie. That thou remernber them, sorne claime as debt, I thinke it mercy, if thou wilt forget.
27
( Lewalski reads this sonnet as an echo of David's voice in
Psalm 25:7, wherein the psalmist says "Remember not the sins
of my youth, or my transgressions; accordlng to thy
steadfast love remember me, for thy goodness' sake, 0 Lord!"
(269-70). But Donne's speaker is not only grounding his
hope for salvation in the Calvinist paradigm of
Justification, in which lt is Christ and not the sinner whom
God sees in each of those he "imputes righteous. Il Donne,
here, is qui te specif lC: l t lS Christ' s blood and his
speaker's tears that make a "heavenly Lethean flood" which
is once again suggestive of Donne's belief that remorse and
repentance i8 a cleansing, a preparation for coming into
GOd'D presence. Unlike the previous sonnet, however, we see
Donne's speaker more at ease with Christ's sacrifice than
previously, and somewhat more comfortable including it in
his colloquy.
Sonnet XI begins with a composition in action which
throws us in medias res, so to speak, with Donne supplanting
Christ on the cross: "Spit in my face you Jewes, and pierce
my aide, 1 Buffet, and scolfe, scourge, and crucifie mee."
Vivid indeed i8 the composition of the picture, and so
lmmediate the emotional response that while we know these
words are not those of Christ ~ saviour, they nevertheless
evoke an interior image of a Golgotha--familiar, yet
imperfect. That it is only John Donne'a speaker vainly
( dressing a scene for his own penitential mood is
l "
1 , " ~i
1 ~
1
•
&
28
disquieting; and it is with a certain degree of anxiety that
we continue to participate as an audience of the drama.
ln the second quatraine, Donne's speaker admits that
his wish i8 futile, that even his death could not atone for
his ains, and he dwells on how his daily impieties re-enact,
in spiritual terms, the events of that flrst crucifixion:
But by my death can not be satisfied My sinnes, which passe the Jewes impiety: They kill'd once an inglorious man, but 1 Crucifie him daily, being now glorified.
The tones, first of bombastic bravado and then of dramatic
despair, which are present in the first two quatrains
dissolve, however, as Donne's intellectual exarnination of
the crucifixion and its personal meaning comes to an end.
He seeks the will to see and accept the nature of God's love
(sornething which does not corne naturally)--signalling the
onset of the colloquy--:
Oh let mee then, his strange love still admire: Kings pardon, but he bore our punishment. And Jacob came cloth'd in vile harsh attire But to supplant, and with gainfull intent: God cloth'd himselfe in vile mans flesh, that BO
Hee might be weake enough to suffer woe.
Here, he compares the power of God's unconditional and all-
consuming love of sinners to the lesser might of earthly
Kinga who can but pardon a criminal, not relieve a sense of
guilt or burden; and he wonders at a love that could extend
to and embrace the likes of Jacob whose deceptions and
cruelties were so painstakingly chronicled in Genesls. The
two closing lines, which express a painful paradox at the
29
( centre of Christian faith, are a kind of ironic reversaI of
the opening lines.
In her introduction to The Divine Poems, Helen Gardner
writes:
the influence of the formaI Meditation lies behind the "Holy Sonnets," not as a literary source, but as a way of thinking, a method of prayer •••• That such d1fferent works as the "Holy Sonnets" and the Anniversaries can be shown to depend on the same exercise points to real familiarity with the Methode When we are genu1nely familiar with something we can use lt with freedom for our own purposes." liv
There is certainly a lot of conscious "borrowing" from
the tradition of Meditation. Indeed we might even argue
that Donne was cleverly altering its purpose and exhibiting
his prowess for his courtier-audiences who were privileged
to read the poems. But in Donne's "Holy Sonnets" there is
also significant evidence of unconscious borrowings from and
dependencies on the Ignat1an exercises that stayed with
Donne weIl into his years, and weil after the period of
personal crisis during which Most of the "Holy Sonnets" were
believed to have been written. Sonnet XVIII, "Show me deare
Christ, thy spouse, so bright and cleare," which was written
weIl after his ordination', reveals the depth of the
Ignat1an influence.
In The D1vine Poems, Gardner argues that this sonnet
owes nothing to the tradition of formai Meditation, being "a
prayer to Christ for unit y in his church" (xlii).
Nevertheless, it calls to mind the three-point division of
( Meditative procedure with the addition of a preparatory
30
prayer found in the first line of the openlng quatrain:
Show me deare Chrlst, thy apouse, so bright and cleare. What, i9 it ahe, whlch on the other shore Goes richly painted? or which rob'd and tore Laments and mournes in Germany and here?
The composition la one of strlfe-torn Christendom: the
Roman Catholic church, that great painted "whore" on the
other shore, ia contrasted with the internally-torn
Protestant movernent. The image of a wornan, ravished and
left to mourne, bears a strong resemblance to the image of
Zlon in Lamentations. The speaker leaves the reader in no
doubt as to the scene of despair.
The second quatrain delves into sorne of the arguments
Protestants and CathollcS leveled at one another: whether
the Church that stood between the days of the early
Christians and the onset of Lutheranism was lndeed a non-
Church; whether the true church stands one day only to be
felled by a new truth the next; whether indeed there i9 a
~rue church, and if so, where--ln Rome? In onels soul?
Sleepes she a thousand, then peepes up one yeare? 1s she selfe truth and errs? now new, now outwore? Doth she,'and did she, and shall she evermore On one, on seaven, or on no hill appeare?
The understanding is at work in th18 quatrain, seeking
to expose the kind of rational arguments that prove
themselves futile and fatuous at bottom. In the last four
lines of the sestet, the speaker addresses Christ directly,
though more urgently than in the opening prayer: instead of
asking Christ to "show" him the true Church, he now
,
( beseeches Him to "Betray" her.
Betray kind huaband thy spouse to our sights, And let myne amorous soule court thy mild Dove, Who is moat trew, and pleasing to thee, then When she'ia embrac'd and open to most men.
Perhaps Gardner's reasons for fa~llng to see the
structural aimllarities between this sonnet and the others
already discussed has somethlng to do with the closure,
31
which lS Burely a colloquy of a most unusual klnd. There is
more than a hint of cynlcal rhetoric in this passage, which,
playing on the word "trew," on notlons of marital fidelity,
and on prevailing standards of sexual mores appropriate to
women, conflatea partial images of the two churches
mentioned in the first quatrain, and glories neither and
both slmultaneously. Of aIl the sonnets, this one is most
surely meant to be overheard by members of Christendom. Its
highly politlcized content makes it more than a performance,
and almost a tract.
Many of Donne's "Holy Sonnets" not mentioned thus far
diaplay partlal structural similarities to Ignatius'
exerclses. The purpose of this chapter, however, was to
lilustrate the existence of both a conscious and an
unconscious influence at work, what Gardner referred to as
"a way of thlnklng" and, 1 shall argue, a way of knowing.
Donne's engagement of the memory, the understanding,
and the wlii in the "Holy Sonnets" is indisputable. But his
achievement is far more than a collection of unusual
( devotional sonnets which somehow effectively appropriated a
•
32
structure of thinking developed by a Jesuit. In the two
chapters that follow, 1 argue that Donne's -Boly Sonnets"
must be recognized for what they are: a series of
provocative, and sometimes mischievous, utterances whose
primary object was to to be heard above the sound and fury
of the poetic. political, religious and social conventions.
His was a rhetorically conceived world, as l stated earlier,
a world one uttered and cajoled lnto existence, one that was
shared with others by sheer force of rhetorical skil1.
Donne needed to give forrn and expression to the llved
experiences that arose from the anxieties that attended
living in such a cunningly created world. We know, too,
from biographical evidence, that he was very much a
melancholique nightwalker, a coin upon which the altempt to
perform a second starnping left distorted images. And we can
safely assume that traditional genres and rhetorical
practices of the Elizabethdn age, like sorne of the
traditions of the Roman Catholic Church, would necessarl)y
limit attempts at self-expression.
It seems to me that Donne was aiming to express a new
and modern state of splrltual uncertainty in such ViVld,
real and rare terms as would match the texture of his
condition. He brought forth a pattern of communlcation, 1
suggest, that was meant to liberate him from the confining
dimensions of didactic, referential language. Prayer had to
evolve from its traditional function as praise and petition,
33
( into something at once private and creative, let us say
poetic, that addressed early-modern anxieties.
Demonstrating the presence of an Ignatian influence in the
sonnets is a first step toward fully witnessing Donne's
radically new poetic technique. In the chapter that
follows, l will be examining sorne of the rhetorical
practlces and strateg1es in Donne's "Roly Sonnets" and
indicate their origins in the Psalms and in Lamentations.
The confluence of the Ignatian influence and the rhetorical
practlces of the psalmists lS what gives rise to Donne's
unique VOlce and suggests to me the reason for his ongoing
popularity as a subject of study and debate.
(
ESTRAGON: VLADIMIR:
ESTRAGON: VLADIMIR:
ESTRAGON:
VLADIMIR:
ESTRAGON: VLADIMIR:
Chapter Two
(stoppingJ. That's enough. l'm tired. (stoppingJ. We're not in forme What about a little deep breathing? l'm tired breathing. You're right. (Pause.) Let's just do the tree, for the balance. The tree? Vladimir does the tree, staggering about on one leg. (stoppingJ. Your turne Estragon does the tree, staggers. Do you think God sees me? You must close you~ eyes.
34
ESTRAGON: Estragon closes his eyes, staggers worse. (stopping, brandishing his fists, at the top of his voiceJ. God have pit Y on me!
VLADIMIR: (vexed). And me? ESTRAGON: On me! On me! Pityl On me!
Samuel Beckett, Waiting for Godot
At the close of Chapter One, 1 suggest that Donne's
"Holy Sonnets" are a series of provocative and sometimes
mischievous utterances. 1 also argue throughout and
demonstrated--albeit with the briefest of textual
references--that they are structurally, and to a lesser
extent, thematically influenced by the 19natian meditative
tradition with which Donne had more than a passing
familiarity. In this chapter, 1 shall substantiate the
claim of provocation. And 1 shall go so far as to add that
the God to whom Donne's speaker dramatically addresses
himself with such violence and urgency manifestB HimBelf aB
,
1
35
an unresponsive and potentially indifferent audience,
notwithstanding the variety and arrangement of techniques
used to claim Hia attention. 1 suspect that as a
consequence of God's silence, Donne's speaker never seems to
attaln the kind of theological reassurances that we find in
the works of other devotionai poets, such as those of
Herbert in The Temple. Yet, by attempting to account for
the voice and tone of the speaker in the "Holy Sonnets," and
by coming to terms with the SIlence of Donne's God, we can
learn somethlng of what Donne thought devotlonal poems
should be and could achieve. We May aiso be able to come to
terms with the level of discomfort that attends so Many of
Donne's closures.
Two of the Important, though subtIe, influences we find
in the "Holy Sonnets" are the Biblical Psalrns and the Book
of Lamentations. It is these influences that constitute the
key pOInt of discussion in this chapter. Admittedly, church
liturgies, the function of the sonnet form, and classical
rhetorical structures also sculpted these poems. But it is
important to bear in rnind that Donne's speaker--like that of
the Biblical Psalmist's--had an audience whose presence was
invoked in a highly ritualized fashion which must be
understood before we can ascertain or conjecture why Donne
chose the sonnet form, or why he selected certain rhetorical
schernes to present his lines of discourse. Donne could not
treat his primary audience as a typically deceivable or
1
36
malleable one; hence, the rhetorical strategies he employs
in the "Holy Sonnets" are radically different from those we
find in his sermons or in his politically and soclally
motivated worka. Rather, Donne seems to have adopted and
adapted a strategy whose roots sink deep into the Biblical
tradition of poetry we find in the Psalms.
It is not ù~fficult to see why Donne was influenced by
the Psalms. They were everywhere, as Roland Greene suggests
in his article on the sixteenth-century Psalter and the
nature of lyric:
• • • the Book of Psalms is central to the development of the age's religious lyric. It belongs with petrarch's Rime sparse as a master text through which the writers of the age tested their capacities ••• not only as worshippers and theologians but as poets and critics. (Greene 19)
Both eminent and long-forgotten poets of the late
Elizabethan and Jacobean ages undertook to render the Psalms
into metric verse. Lewalski notes that by 1640, there
existed more than three hundred editions of the complete
Psalter in English verse translated by nurnerous poets and
writers (39). The poetic significance of the Psalms for
Donne's age lay, in part, in their lyric quality. Editions
of the Psalms and psalm commentary inevitably and invariably
spoke of their universal expression of the human condition.
Luther described the Book of Psalms as "a little Bible" and
said that in it could be found "the feelings and experiences
of aIl the faithful, both under their Borrows and under
their joys ••• " (Lewalski 42). Calvin termed the Psalms
37
( "the Anatomy of aIl the partes of the Soule" (Lewalski 43).
structurally, the Book of Psalms was interpreted in one of
two ways: as representing the progress of the human spirit
through three stages of spiritual development, as St.
Augustine suggested; or, alternatively, as a collection of
five separate books, probably intended to match the five
books of the Law with five of praise. As ëi primary model
for devotional writing, the Book of PS1lms presented the
poet with a seemingly endless variety of manners and voices
with which one could approach God in acts of piety.
Lewalski refers to the range of forms within the Book of
Psalms as "staggering" and enumerates them as follows:
meditations, soliloquies, complaints, laments for tribulations, prayers for benefits, petitions against adversities, psalms of instruction, consolations, rejoicings, praise of God for his glory and goodness, thanksgivlngs to God for benefits received, triumphs celebrating God's victories over his enemies, artful acrostlc poems, ballads, pastoral eclogues, pastoral songs, satires, elegies, love songs, an epithalamium, dramatic poems, tragical odes, heroic odes. Lewalski 50-51
Protestant exegetes, like the patristic writers who
preceded them, believed that David had authored Most ol the
Psalms. Regardless of the voices and personae he adopted in
individual psalms, he was the archetypal Christian poet
expressing the sentiment of the whole of Christendom as
inspired by the Holy Spirit. If we look at the issues which
begat and exacerbated the Reformation, however, it is not
hard to understand why Christians--particularly those
( looking for a new and unmediated relationship with their
, 38
God--might have looked to the Psalms to see and hear their
own predicaments expressed in such variety, From
identification, it is an easy step to emulation of
expression such as was admittedly attempted by Theodore Beza
and Henry Hammond and Many others (Lewalski 234-35).
Although John Donne was not among the Many who
attempted a metrical rendering of the Psalms, he undoubtedly
shared with his age a profound regard for their beauty and
theological significance and he admired those who did
attempt translations of the Psalms. His praise of the Psalm
translations undertaken by Sir Philip Sidney and his siater,
the Countess of Pembroke,5 attests to his belief that the
artistry with which the Psalms are translated should attempt
to match--and in this instdnce did match--the magnificence
of their divinely inspired source. This encomiast1c poem,
however, was not written until at least 1621. And it ia
wrong to conclude that Donne's mature admiration of the
Psalms was characteristic of his more youthful appreciation,
of which we have no direct record. Indeed, 1 would argue
that the man who declared that "The Psalmes are the Manna of
the Church. As Manna tasted to every man like that he liked
best, so doe the Psalmes minister Instruction, and
satisfaction, to every man, in every emergency and occasion"
(Car~ithers 231) is a far, far different man, emotionally
and spiritually speaking, from the speaker of Donne's "Holy
Sonnets." What Donne seems to have absorbed from the Psalma
39
( between the years 1607 and 1609 and what he wove into the
fabric of hi.s devotional poems, is but one type of voice and
posture of the many available for emulation. Donne's choice
was not made, 1 ~uggest, on the basis of his Christian
regard for David as the paradigmatic penitent poet. Far
from it. As 1 shall demonstrate in the balance of this
chapter, the 1nfluence of the Psalms to be found in the
(
"Holy Sonnets," contrary to Lewalski's assertions, is wholly
uncharacterist1c of the age's "Protestant" appropriation
(read penitent postur1ng> of the Psalms. It has more to do
with rhetorical experimentation and voice techn1que than
with theolog1cal matters; it suggests a 10nging to enter
into a reciprocal and mutually fructi!ying fellowsh1p with
God but from a novel locale.
In order to understand the radical difference between
Donne's appropriation of the Psalms in his "Holy Sonnets"
and that of other devotional poets, it is helpful to
conceive of the Psalms as a biblical and literary genre,
just as, for example, we can consider the parable to be a
biblical and literary genre. Conceived as such, the Psalms
constitute a corpus of devotional poetry that provides for
interpretive work by virtue of the fact that its
constitutuent or "family" members shêl.re a number of critical
common elements.' To begin with, they are aIl prayers
either petitions or songs of praise offered to a specific
God, by an individual viC on behalf of a believing nation.
40
Secondly, they exhibit a similarity of organization with
respect to the presentation of ideas which suggests that
meaning is encoded within the Psalms in a similar fashion.
Finally, as prayers and as poems they are performative texts
and are thus important elements of ritual in a culture's
public religious tradition.
A "generic" study is a helpful approach in this
instance because it allows the critic to analvse one Psalm
and its unique character in the context of its fellow-Psalms
and their similar characteristics. By preserving the
autonomy of the form, but allowing for uniqueness of
individual messages within individual psalms, we are able to
examine "developments," "permutations" and "1nterpretive
uses" of the genre whether within the confines of the
Psalter or in later writings such as those of the sixteenth
and seventeenth century devotional poets. l probably risk,
here, the accusation of too radical an identification of the
Psalter with devotional poetry of Donne's age. Though it is
not unusual for critics (includ1ng Lewalski) to argue that
Herbert's The Temple cornes close to constituting a Psalter
(Lewalski 51,52), it is not my purpose to argue that Donne
and his contemporaries and near-contemporariea were writing
in the same genre. l wish only to suggeat that the
Psalter'a lnfluence in Donne's "Holy Sonnets" (as in other
devotional poetry) is deeply though uniquely embedded, and
to understand this ia to broaden the field of each sonnet's
41
( possible meanings far beyond the potential Lewalski's
theological analyses allow (265). Donne's appropriation of
sorne of the Psalms' generic characteristics should not be
simply imputed to sorne nebulous "Protestant" impulse, but
examined as poetic, aesthetic, cultural and hermeneutic
ones. John N. Wall Jr.'s article, "Donne's Wit of
Redemption: The Drama of prayer" attempts to establish an
(
affinity between the Psalms and Donne's "Holy Sonnets" on
the grounds that both exhibit "shifting patterns of tone and
dramatic movement" and "uncertainty about the state of an
individual soul's relationship with God" (198-09). l am not
convinced, however, that the dramatic contentiousness within
the "Holy Sonnets" is solely a reflect10n of Donne's
insecurity with respect to salvation. Rather, we can
concelve of the drama as largely an expression of Donne's
frustration with the fact that he cannot consumate his
relationship with God in a manner that alleviates the
tensions and anxieties that it (the relationship) has
engendered. Here, we might say, is a love-affair denied its
ultimate expression because of the coyness of one partner.
The kind of affinity 1 suspect W~ ,n find between the
sonnets of Donne and the Psalms lies in their rhetorical
similarities, and not solely 1n their spiritual
preoccupations, which are, in fact, very different.
The rather general statement that the Psalms constitute
a genre by virtue of their similar objectives, organization
1
42
of ideas, and cultural context takes on significance when we
look at how the individual psalrns function to meet these
three objectives. Typically, biblical scholars discuss the
acrostic form, the use of verbal or phrasaI repetition at
the beginnlng and ending of a distich. Or they refer to the
fact that there is a plot structure of significance in sorne
Psalms. They point out how there are shifts of perspective
-often within a single psalm--or changes of personae and
voice, and they examine the use of paradox, antlthesis and
merismus. Biblical parallelism attracts the most discussion
because it is potencially the most hermeneutically versatile
of aIl the structures in the Psalms. Traditionally, the
Book of Psalms, together wlth Job, the Song of Solomon and
Lamentations are considered the sites of Old Testament
poetry because they aIl exhibit this last dlstinctive poetic
feature. 7 Unlike the typical poetry of Renaissance England,
which depends on a combination of regular and patterned
stressed and non-stressed syllables and a formaI rhyme
scheme, biblical poetry depends only marginally on a regular
pattern of accented syllables, but absolutely on what is
frequently referred to as parallelism, or sense-rhythm.
There are four types of complete parallelism common to Old
Testament Poetry and several types of incomplete or partial
parallelisme The most basic parallel structure in the Oid
Testament is a couplet or distich made up of two separate
lines or stichoi which balance cne another perfectIy in
43
( thought, for example, Psalm 22:12: "Many bulls have
compassed me: strong bulls of Bashan have beset me round."
The meaning of the firet line is seemingly synonymous with
that of the second, lending a strength and urgency to the
image projected by the speaker. Antithet1c parallelism
(
describes a distich in which one stichos expresses the
obverse 1dea of the other. Proverbs is a common site of
such parallelism, as this example from 15:20 illustrates:
"A wise son makes a glad father but a foolish man despises
his mother." A second example, less forthright in
structure, i8 Psalm 32:10: "Mdny are the pangs of the
wicked; but steadfast love surrounds him who trusts in the
Lord." Emblenlatic parallelism occurs when one stichos
states something Jiterally and the second stichos expresses
the same idea only figuratively, as in Psalm 32:1: "Blessed
ie he whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is
covered." Eerdmans cites Psalm 103:13 as an example of
emblematic parallelism: "Like as a father pitieth his
children, so the Lord pitieth them that fear him." We can
argue that Donne employs a similar strucutre when he
constructs a metaphor of proportion.
Chiastic parallelism occurs when the two halves of a
unified thought are separated, as in Psalm 30:8-10: "To
thee, 0 Lord, 1 cried; and to the Lord 1 made supplication;
What profit is there in my death, if 1 go down to the Pit? /
Will the dust praise thee? Will it tell of thy
44
faithfulness? Hear, 0 Lord, and be gracious to me! 0 Lord,
be thou my helper." A cross pattern, as illustrated below,
is created.
1.) Ii~t:, 0 L..:,~ .i" cr,ed, tIA{ ,b -tKe ~"'" 1 n12J~ ~ "1'1" /'CiJ I,c/?
f)),fl flot! .{vrt ~'~"f'è. Ikt! (
w." dlell cl' IJy 1~.~f,.111~.1 7
wW jO~/:1 1 f fI.~ ..... ". '"'t clttt«. II' l 'ID .I.:w,., 10 1Ir! 1',1·"'
!I~.: ,', (}~ • ...:I 12"'/ Il,,. frlf;' , ,..i ,""', " (1 ~c,·." /Je..;Iofe", ""Y /'t~,· r.
Partial parallelism does not exhib1t the same unit y of
thought between the stichoi of a dlstich, but there remains
a more subtle kind of balancing feat in Many instances, such
as in Psalm 63:1: "0 God, thou art my God, 1 seek thee, my
soul thirsts for thee; / my flesh faints for thee, as 1n a
dry and weary land where no water is." The image of the
speaker as a travel-worn pilgrim ln the desert, desparately
seeking refreshment and life-givlng water (the dominating
emblem of God's nourishing and succouring nature here), ia
created with the briefest of pen strokes in these few linea.
At first glance, this parallelism seewp not to interest
Donne as a model for emulation. It is impossible to find an
instance of complete parallellsm in any of the nineteen
"Holy Sonnets," although the analogy one can draw between
the function of parallelism and that of a metaphor of
proportion i5 substantial. The Bible, however, i8 clearly
not the source of Donne's inspiration with respect to thia
type of structure. It might even be convincingly argued
r
45
that Donne's interest in the Psaims almost seems to have
been Iimited to voice technique (the other rhetorical
schemes be~ng available for emulation in ciassicai
literature). But if we conclude this, we are in danger of
falling into the same trap in which we find Lewaiski when
she argues that because "Donne's poems make little overt use
of the genre theory of psalms" (re: her list) they therefore
are not shaped or influenced to any significant degree by
the Psalms.
The type and degree of influence will be shown in two
ways: first, l shall demonstrate that both the psalmist and
Donne achieve hermeneutic compression, the Psalmist within
the paraI leI structure, Donne within the Meditative
structure and through the use of metaphors of proportion. 1
hope to illustrate that it ia the Psalms that are Donne's
model in this instance. It is from the Psalms that Donne
learned to employ this hermeneutic compression (which is a
rhetorical strategy) and that for Donne and Psalmist alike,
lt is an achievement of prayer. The second factor
sU9gesting that the Psalms' influences are strong indeed is
the use of the interrogative structure we find at work in
similar ways in the Psalms and in Donne's "Holy Sonnets."
This factor is particularly important because it points to
the presence and posture of the lyrical "1" and defines the
I-Thou relationship so dear to psalmist and Donne alike.
This location of the "1" also inadvertently commenta on the
speaker's relation to the imputed textual objective, that
is, the praising of God.
46
To illustrate these two points by way of examples, 1
shall work first with the texts of Psalm 30 (Psalm 29 in the
Vulgate version) and two of Donne's "Holy Sonnets": 'As due
by many titles' and 'If poysonous mineralls.' Other
examples will follow.
My reasons for using st. Jerome's Latin version of the
psalms are two-fold. There is no absolute and irrefutable
evidence of Donne's preference for one Engl1sh version of
the Bible over another for use 1n private worship at the
time the bulk of the "Boly Sonnets" were being composed.
But we know indisputably that he was familiar w1th the Latin
text and had been from his earliest youth. In moments of
anguish and doubt, I would suspect Donne would have turned
to the most familiar of versions for succour. My second
reason for referring to the Vulgate has to do with the
number of allusions to the Catholic Latin versions of the
Psalms that one can find in the "Holy Sonnets." These
allusions have not been thoroughly explicated by critics
because English translations of the Bible have been uaed
instead of the Vulgate when Donne's poetry ia diacllssed.
Donne's familiarity with and allusions to the Latin text,
presents itself immediately when we look at two words Donne
seems to alliteratively associate: lacus and lacrima.
Lacus is traditionally translated as a place of despair,
47 , t literally as "the pit" or "the place of the dead" when taken
(
from the Vulgate's Psalms. But in classical Latin, and in
the Book of Daniel, it refera to a large body of water, such
as a lake, or a large vat. Lacrima means tears, in Latin,
but its roots extend back to the Greek ward d~kP~ which
means, ln the language of love, ta be stung or vexed at
heart. Donne enjoyed playing with alliteration and sound in
his poems. For example, in the sonnet "Thou has made me,"
when Donne writes "1 dare not move my dimme eyes any way,"
the words "dirnme eyes" beg to be read as demise. Similarly,
In the "Holy Sonnets" we encounter Latin play. Donne's
speakers in Sonnets V and IX referring to tears (lacrima, in
Lat1n) in the same breath that he speaks of drowning and
despair (the locus of both being lacus). Donne is happily
aware of the potential effect of conflating the English
words' meanings just for effect. Donne's speakers
frequently wanted to drown in tears of remorse, or be
cleansed by such tears. Such imagery ia in fact a figure or
trope, for Donne. Of course, this type of word-play demands
an appropriately educated readership, but this, we are sure,
he had. 8 whether or not Donne was sufficiently aware of
Latin etymology to appreciate ward origins and associations,
he certainly made use of associative imagery.
The first of the three texts to be considered in detail
is Psalm XXIX:
Exaltabo te, Domine.
1. Exaltabo te, Domine, quoniam 9u9cepisti me; nec delectasti inimicos meos super me.
2. Domine, Deus meus, clamaui ad te, et sanasti me. 3. Domine, eduxisti ab inferno animam meam; saluasti
me a descendentIbus in lacum. 4. Psallite Domino, sanct~ eius, et confitemini
memoriae sanctitatis eius. 5. Quoniam ira in indignatione eiusi et u1ta in
uoluntate eius. Ad uesperum demorabitur fletus, et ad matutinum laetitia.
6. Ego autem dixi in abundantia mea: Non mouebor in aeternum.
7. Domine, in uoluntate tua praestltisti decori meo uirtutem;
48
3. Ad te, Domine, clamabo; et ad Deum meum deprecabor. 9. Quae utilitas in sanguIne meo, dum descendo in
corruptionem? Numquid confitebitur tibi puluis, aut annuntiabit ueritatem tuam?
10. Audiuit Dominus, et misertus est mei; Domlnus factus est adiutor meus.
11. Conuertisti planctum meum in gaudium mihi; consc1dist~ saccum meum et circumdedisti me laetitia;
12. ut cantet tibi gloria mea, et non compungar. Domine, Deus meus, in aeternum confitebor tibi.
Psalm XXIX is a story, "literally" a first-person
narration, of how God delivered the speaker's body from
illness and his sou] from the pit of death, thus frustrating
the speaker's enemies' causes for rejoicing. The speaker
seems compelled to remind even God's angels of lhelr debt of
gratitude for His holiness, so great is his joy with his
salvation. Verse six is a confidential aside, a carefully
worded confession the speaker offers, suggesting that once
he had had the temerity to say he could not be moved from
his throne of material comforts and plenty. But even at
this height of luxury, the story tells us, God in his
infinitely perfect wisdom can and did avert his face, and
the speaker, bereft of God's presence, found himself
49
( confused, distracted and disordered. These first seven
verses function as a preface to the real action of this
Psalm, which occurs ln verses eight through ten and which 1
envisage as a "dialogic node" (site of hermeneutic activity)
such as we find in 80 many Psalms and in Donne's sonnets.
Bearlng in mind that in this chiastic parallel structure the
verbal action is ernbedded in a "flashback" technique (a
then-and-now-story), we find that this allows the speaker to
play with tenses 1n a more subtle and yielding fashion.
Using the future active (clamabo), the speaker claims the
following verbal action: "1 will cry out to thee, God, and
to thee 1 shall plead (as for interecession1." But he does
not enter his plea rlght away. Instead, the speaker embarks
on a completely different tack, accosting his primary
audience in an aggressive fashion: "What use is there in my
blood; what use am 1 as 1 descend to a state of corruption?
/ Does the dust admit of you; or proclaim your truth?" As
Buddenly as the speaker ventured into this verbal action, he
withdraws from any potential fray, and closes the
hermeneutic structure within the chiastic parallel in a rnood
of suppl1cation. He asks God to hear him, have pit Y on him
and be his helper.
(
Verse eleven has us switching back into the present
time of the narrative where we are implicitly urged by the
speaker to infer that the negotiations with God and the
rhetorical questions have effected the positive outcome for
• 50
the speaker. Addressing God, the speaker gives thank& • •
saying "Thou hast turned for me my mourning into danclng;
thou has loosed my sackcloth and girded me with gladness, 1
that my soul may praise thee and not be silent." The
closing salutation to God speaks confldently, and ln tones
of celebration, as one might close a letter of thanks with
the phrase "eternally grateful and ever yours."
To understand the Psalm to any significant degree, it
is important to note how the speaker has successfully
employed specific rhetorical structures to achieve his goal.
We know that the task of the psalmist, here, is ta convince
us, the impliclt audience, that ~e has been moved to praise
God, and that his strategy is explained and manifested in
the logic within the Psalm itself. In this psalm, the
primary locus of the verbal action lS in the chiastic
construct of verses eight through ten and everything else
contextualizes the speaker's initiative in these verses, or
applauds its outcome. The speaker suggests that his
redemption from Illness and the pIt is due to his verbal
action in this chiastic parallel, which, in this instance
employs a form of subjectio in WhlCh the speaker proposes
the answers to his questions by literall~ allowlng the
silence to speak for the dust. And how do we hear God's
. ? VOlee. of course the sceptical reader perceives the silence
elicited by the rhetorical strategy; the believer "he~rs the
silence" and perceives the work of Gad's hand in the outcome
1
\ of the psalmist's narrative.
{
Donne's use of the interrogative forro parodies the
style of the psalmist's9 (which i8 a way of extending a
generic form). The outcome is therefore shockingly
different, as is illustrated in the two brie! analyses of
Sonnets II and IX that follow:
As due by many titles 1 resigne My selfe to thee, 0 God, first 1 was made By thee, and for thee, and when 1 was decay'd Thy blood bought that, the which before was thine, 1 am thy sonne, made with thy selfe to shine, Thy servant, whose paines th ou hast still repaid, Thy sheepe, thine Image~ and till 1 betray'd My selfe, a temple of thy Spirit divine; Why doth the devill then usurpe in mee? Why doth he steale, nay ravish that's thy right? Except thou rise and for thine owne worke f~ght, Oh 1 shall soone despaire, when 1 doe see That thou lov'et mankincl weIl, yet wilt'not chuse me, And Satan hatee Mee, yet is loth to lose mee.
If poysonous mineraI le, and if that tree, Whose fruit threw death on eise immortal us, If lecherous goats, if serpents envious Cannot be damn'd, Alas; why should 1 bee? Why should intent or reason, borne in Mee, Make sinnes, else equall, in mee, more heinous? And Mercy belng easie, and glorious To God, in hiS sterne wrath, why threatens hee? But who am l, that dare dispute with thee? o Gad, Oh1 of thine onely worthy blood, And my teares, make a heavenly Lethean flood, And drowne in it my sinnes blacke mernorie. That thou remember them, sorne claime as debt, 1 thinke it Mercy, if thou wilt forget.
If the speaker in Psalm 30 seems confident that his
rhetorlcal and logical skills moved God and effected his
salvation, Donne's confidence is Iess marked,
notwithstanding the fact that his efforts are considerably
more sophisticated and extended than the psalmist's.
51
52
Addressing God directly, the speaker in Sonnet II
establishes what he perceives to be his rightful
relationship to God by virtue of traditional "typological"
readings and exegetic principles. Lewalski argues that the
speaker "evokes a long series of blblical metaphors which
establish the various titles by which God could claim
ownership of hirn (266)," and many of these are Images found
in the psalms. But she overlooks the fact that this i8 a
self-willed resignation, not a claim of ownership. In
addition, she seems to take Donne's speaker as a truly naive
narrator, as someone who belleves what he ulters. No one
should trust Donne's speakers so implicitly, for in the next
breath he demands to know why the dev!l "steales" what i8
God's rightful property: "Why," he asks, "doth the devill
then usurpe in me? / Why doth he steale, nay ravish thatls
thy right?" An honest reader must, at this point, stand
beside Donne as he queries how anyone Cdn take anything frorn
God unless permitted to do so. The degree of herrneneutic
compression, here, is even greater than ln the Psalm with
which we are comparing verbal actions. In effect, God has
been called to account for aIl that has been promi8ed and
revealed in the Bible about man's relationship with God; he
i8 confronted with the accusation that Christianity i8
irrational in character and fundamentally unreasonable, and
that it gives no comfort and no hope. Unlike the speaker in
4"'\1< psalm 30, however, Donne's speakel" fails to keep his peace
,
53
t long enough for the silence of God to defend those titI es of
ownership, or to otherwise respond to his complaints.
Instead, the speaker assumes another tack. He postures
himself aB one who throws his arms up in despair and sets
responsibility for his salvation squarely and solely on
God's shoulders. The reader will Burel y shy away from the
petulent tone of Donne's speaker: for who can honestly be
happy wi th this "Protestant" or "Cal vinist" paradigm for
salvation with its strong flavour of despair.
The net effect of the verbal action in this sonnet is
discomforting. At first glance it has the appearance of a
speaker truly concerned with hlS salvation and earnestly
questioning how it can be obtained withln the "Protestant"
or "typological" paradigme But a closer look reveals that
here is no psalmist· here is no praiser of God; here is no
broken and contrite heart. Rather, beneath the "form" and
appearance of the orthodox penitent, we flnd a too-skillful
rhetor1cian squaring Protestant hermeneutics off against the
dizzying effect of the closing paradoxe This is the first
example of Donne's heterodox theology, the first of many
instances where he, like our psalmist, attempts a dialogue
with Gad but rudely forecloses on the action before the
transaction is completed. Why this foreclosure? Why ask
God questions to which (apparently~ there can be no
reasonable anBwer? Why embarrass God's earthly theologians?
( Why not clairn to hear an answer in God' s silence, as the .
, 1
Sf
Psalmists do? No obvious answer to this line of question
cornes forth. By comparing these earlier Sonnets with ones
written after his ord1nation, we can see that there is a
strategie purpose to Donne's verbal aggressiveness that does
not fly in the face of rel iglOUS tradition. The concluding
paragraphs of this chapter consider this issue and offer one
interpretation for consideration.
Sonnet IX was examlned briefly in the previous chapter
where 1 suggested that the composition of place evoked a
scene we can characterlze as the speaker's conscience. It
is a secular court, and here we find the speaker's intellect
parodying the procedures associated with a catechism
examination: admitting of only one "correct" answer;
knowing it, yet refusing to permit the uttering of a
response. It is worth noting that in the first two
quatrains, the speaker is not even addressing God directly,
but seems to prefer having his self-examination "overheard"
rather than heard. This is another type of foreclosure, we
can ar9ue, in which the dramatically conceived other voice--
the voice of the one being tried--is denied expression. But
why? Because we might hear heresy, not just the voice of
penitent pain? Or does Donne want and expect us to "hear"
the heresy of Donne's silent alter-ego? What are we to make
of the silence of the unanswered questions? When the
speaker opens the sestet with the subm1ssive cry "But who am
l, that dare dispute with thee?" the "who am 1" becomes a
1
55
l watershed directing emotion downstream in search of the
calm, Lethean pool. lt is because he does not want to know
who he lS in relation to this God, or perhaps because he
knows too weIl, that the speaker e~fects a decisive
separation of the profane court and God's version of
jud9ment. Agaln, we see the interrogative used not as a
tool of enquiry, but as a rhetorical strategy--a type of
verbal action used to pre-empt and foreclose on further
enquiry.
(
In Psalm 29, the God evoked is the God whom we are
promised at the outset of the psalm, a responsive and
compassionate God whose relationship with the speaker is
mutually fructlfying. praise and prayer, here, is
recognition of this relationship. Donne's speaker, however,
has great difficulty evoking an image of God, so he chooses
to enumerate the many representations he finds in the Bible
that portray Him in his varied relations with man. The
problem wiLh this strategy, however, is that it serves ta
illustrate how tenuous a hold the speaker has on his own
identity in relation to this God--is he a servant, son, or
temple of God's spirt? ls he, by virtue of his intellectual
powers, more like God, yet more damnable on that account?
In each sonnet, Donne's speaker is unable to present a clear
and unblurred vision of God because he cannot first see
himself clearly in relation to his God. Even supplication
does not come easily, but only in a mood of despair. The
S6
interrogative structure, that "dialogic node" as 1 refer to
it, (the locus of the hermeneutic struggle) serves to show
that the relationship which ought to be, even must be,
mutually supportive for God to claim his rightful ownership
to Donne's speaker and for the speaker to claim his rightful
heritage, is damaged and malfunctions. Dialogue with God is
not properly achieved in either sonnet: only the form lS
parodied.
With this first example, 1 have tried to demonstrate
that the purpose of the interrogative form in the psalm
genre, as we have seen it thus far, is to establlsh a mutual
regard between the speaker and his God, WhlCh is a
precondition of prayer. Our flrst psalmist lS successful;
Donne's speakers fail, but not without intente If we
examine a broader selection of interrogative structures in
the Psalms and compare their rhetorical strategies with
those of Donne's interrogative forms, it becomes evident
that Donne's speaker is not really looklng for the
traditional pre-condition of prayer, but wishes to surpass
the spiritual achievements of the psalmist's genre. In
effect, he attempts to transcend this prayerful aspect of
devotion (perhaps because he experiences a weakness of faith
or mistrust of doctrine). He seeks God in efforts to
submerge himself, physically (through textual play in a
manner suggested earlier), as weIl as mentally and
spiritually in the sacred experience he evokes in his
57
( imagistic texts (achelved by employing meditative
techniques). Donne's poems are emotive texts torn, not
drawn, from a rhetorically conceived world.
The interrogative form is similarly employed in a great
number of the Psalms, although their subject matter is
radically dlfferent. One example is Psalm XXXVIII (Psalm 39
in English editions), which is another narratlve, wherein
the speaker explalns how he tried to keep counsel of his
sorrows within himself and f1nally failed. He cries out to
God that he would like to know how his days are numbered
that he might know how frail he is. This petition is made
in full recognition that regardless of the number of days
left in his life, they are as nocning to the Lord, just as a
man's efforts and achievements are nothing in the infinite
scheme of things, and what one sews one can never fully
harvest. Having thus prefaced his formaI plea, the speaker
then says "Et nunc quae est expectatio mea? nonne Dominus?
et subslantia mea apud te est" (Now Lord, what am 1 waiting
for? My very being is in thee). The speaker then petitions
God to forgive him his trespasses, protect him from his
enemies, spare the rod, and look away from him that he can
be calm before he departs and is no more (Remitte mihi, ut
refrigerer priusquam abeam, et amplius non ero). The
ambivalence of the speaker in this Psalm--his desire to be
laken at once by God, and yet also to tarry awhile outside
( the punishing presence of God--is echoed in Donne's sonnets.
58
And just as the interrogative here is mere rhetoric--he
knows he is not "waiting" for God but ia existent in or
"being" in God--he nevertheless wants God to "wait" while he
readies himself for his end. How like Donne's speaker in
Sonnet VII when he petit10ns God for time to "mourne a
space"; and remin1scent of the mood evoked 1n Sonnet XIII
'What if this present were the worlds last nlght?' in which
Donne's speaker, like the Psalmist, wreatles with his soul,
seeklng to be overheard by a compassionate God while
posturing as a penitent. The lnterrogatlve signaIs God to
overhear, but not to respond, whereas ln the Psalmist's
question, there is no need of an answer, only a wa1ting, or
a withdrawl, while the speaker prepares himself for death.
As "dialogic nodes," Donne's questlons are parodies of
the sincere suppI1cant's. He knowq full-weIl that the age
of God's immanence on earth is pasto Donne wants to
caricaturize God, force h1m to assume certain rhelorical
postures from which meaning and purpose can be adduced. But
this is not dialogue, th1s is manipulation. Donne's
strategy is to move the reader to impute to God certain
characteristics and attiLudes that serve Donne's needs and
lines of enquiry. Fundamentally, the Psalmist has
successfully 'interiorized' God, hence the nature of his
questions--as often posed to himself or his souI as they are
to God--are probes of his own interior state. When, for
example, in Psalm 22, the speaker cries out "My God, My God,
59
4( why have you foresaken me?" -- it is understood, by the end
of the Psalm, that the speaker slmply wants to understand
why he feels foresaken. He knows God has not, in fact,
deserted him, as i8 evidenced by the balance of the Psalm's
narrative. But Donne can only try to "lnteriorize" his God
and his poor attempts bear the appearance of parody: he
begs to be ravlshed in sonnet XIV: "Take mee to you,
imprlson rnee, for 1 1 Except you'enthrall mee, never shall
be free, / Nor ever chast, except you ravish mee." In
Sonnet XV he seems simultaneously to ask and order an
interiorization of God, saylng "Wilt thou love God, as he
theel then digest, / My Soule, this wholsome meditation."
"Spit in rny face yee Jewes, and pierce roy side" he cries out
in Sonnet XI, and in this instance exeeed& interiorization
(
and becomes a parodie impersonation. Another fundarnental
difference between the Old Testament Psalms and Donne's
sonnets lies in the effects of their verbal actions and
their use of "time-lines" to contextualize the verbal
actions. The Psalms are teleological: they maintain the
reality of a past, a present and a future, and the psalmist
makes use of the potential time offers as an element both of
his falth and his strategies with God. For example, Psalm
76, WhlCh employs the interrogative forro, seeks no direct
answers to the questions posed. We find no promise of God's
grace being restored. Yet this Psalm nevertheless exudes a
sense that order, meaning and hope, through time, are being
60
maintained. And when the psalmist begins his questions, he
does so in piety, saying: "Et meditatus sum nocte cum corde
meo, et exercitabar, et scopebam spiritum meum" (1 commune
in the night with my heart 1 1 meditate and 1 search my
spirit); when the querying ends--the seeking of God's love
and graclousness--the psalmist says "Et dixi: Nunc coepi;
haec mutatio dextenae Excelsi" (and 1 said: lt is my grief
the right hand of the Most Hlgh has changed. [yetI 1 will
calI to mind the deeds of the Lord; yea, 1 will remember thy
wonders of old. 1 will meditate on aIl thy work ••• ).
We almost see a hermenutic clrcle in this Psalm and
certainly the time and duration of separation from God that
the psalmist experiences is historlcally, as weIl as
personally contextualized. Not so in Donne's poetry,
however, where the hermeneutic compression is so great, so
urgent, that aIl Christian theology is placed under
incredible pressure to yield its comforts once and for aIl
time at the speaker's calI. In fact, Donne's speakers work
with shocking immediacy, maintainlng the argument of the
poems only in the present tense. As a consequence, the
issues of sin and salvation rlse like spectres, haunting us
aIl the more on account of their immediacy. And anxiety
results. In a sense, this immediacy or urgency is part of
the emotional response we share with Donne's speakers as we
respond to their rhetorically constructed worlds.
What Donne found in the Psalms and emulated, perhapa
61
( above aIl of their other characteristics, was the unique
interrogative form which assumed immense rhetorical
(
,proportions and importance within the paraI leI structure of
the biblical Psalms and which Donne found and employed in
his three-part devotional structure. The difference i8 that
while the psalmist was able to cast the lilusion of a
response from God because hlS questions were posed within
the paradigm of prayer offered by a confident believer,
Donne had to discover, or expose hirnself, as an lndividual
in the throes of a crlsis of faith. This crlsis, 1 suggest,
is deeper than any biographer or critic has sU9gested. Not
only did then-prevalling (and permissible) Christian
theologies leave him wlth no sense of his own worthiness or
potential as an object for salvation, but the manner in
which God was approached by Protestants of aIl colours
evidently left Donne uneasy. The Ignatian system of
meditation opened the door to prayer, for Donne, but it
seerns he could not summon the conviction he needed to place
hirnself truly ln the scene his imaginative faculties
constructed any more than he could place himself under
Rorne's authority.
From the fo~egoing discussion it may appear that 1 find
Donne stretchlng the Christian paradigm of sin and salvation
to a point of extreme and derisive distortion. But that is
not so. 1 write with the belief that Donne trusted his God
to withstand the kind of mischievous pressures and cajoling
62
we find in the sonnets, and that a rneasure of Donne's faith
is the degree to which he was able to joust with theology
but never, in fact, tilt with its Godhead. Yet, If there 18
a serious weakness to the relationship Donne's speakers
establish with God as the primary audience of their verbal
actions, we rnight characterize It as a tendency to resort to
despair ln default of finding comfort. But then, is that
not the ultirnate paradox Christianity offers: belleve and
be comforted; doubt and despair? And does Donne not, in
sorne perverse way, suggest that the contrary should hold:
that those who belleve should despalr of thelr worthiness,
while those who doubt should be comforted by God's Mercy?
The "Holy Sonnets" give evidence of how mlstrustful
Donne was of theology during the years surrounding his
converSIon. We see hirn searchlng through the Psalms for
sorne clue, sorne key to a direct dialogue wlth God. Even
Christ, and his human sacrifice, seems to unnerve the young
Donne. So he turns to rheLoric, seeking through it, to make
his poems function as enabling devices as he set out to
discover God's will. By asking unanswerable questions,
Donne exposes the weaknesses of ChristIan theology; exposes
their contingent characters. But he also exposes himself as
a man deeply in need of God, even if he could live without
the church and church doctrine. His comforts at this time,
it seems, were derived from his own ability to seek God and
to exert authority over his own will. His pain and
63
( discomfort it seems, must have been a paradoxical source of
comfort: he knew he was seeking God just as the psalmist,
David, had done.
(
The last three Sonnets in the sequence established by
Helen Gardner tend to support such an hypothesls, because
they introduce a new Donne to the reader, one who (after his
ordinatlon) has come to terms with the contingency of much
theology. The Davidic influence recedes, in these Sonnets,
and the eharacter of Jeremlah, the doct 'lnaJly "correct"
flgure, emerges as an important influence.
The lnfluence of The Lamentations of Jeremiah, with the
exception of Sonnet XVIII, "Show me deare Christ," is not so
much a stylistlC or structural one as a psychological one,
and in that Sonnet, its influence must really be discussed
in the context of Donne's at~empt to use the devotional
sonnet form to express a concern with the historical
setbacks the Protestant Church experienced in Germany
between the years 1620 and 1622. Helen Gardner suggests
that Donne's rendering of Lamentations was probably
undertaken as late as 1621 or 1622 (104).
If in fact It is fair to suggest that Donne wanted to
write his own 'Lamentation' in "Show me deare Christ" (and
this lS what 1 propose), we have to be prepared to consider
that Donne, a seant number of years after his ordination,
was only beginning to understand that appropriating a God
for nationalist or communal purposes had its dangers, and
that no nation or community was immune to them. Salvation
was a private matter, now, and the Church was an enabling
institution.
64
standing in the wake of Jerusalem's destruction ln 587
BC, the narrator of Lamentations pours out hlS sorrows and
his bitterness. He presents us with what is probably an
eye-witness account of the destruction of Jerusalem and the
downfall of Judah. The book contalns five chapters or
dirges, the first four of which were written as acrostics,
while the fifth is often likened to à lament Psalm. In the
first dirge, the author reflects on the causes of
Jerusalem's destruction and likens the misery he witnesses
to that of a widow grieving for the loss of her husband,
children, and social prestige. In the second dirge, the
author examines more closely the causes of Jerusalem's
destruction, the nature of national sin, and again, employs
the image of a woman, this time defiled by sin. Jerusalem's
sin was the breaking of the Sinai covenant, and like any
woman of that day who had broken a covenant, she was to be
disowned, dishonoured and left to be ravaged by predators
and conquerers. Jerusalem compounded her sins, prior to the
city's collapse, when the people of the city ransacked the
Holy Temple and stripped it of its treasures in order to buy
food and provisions against the collapse of the City. These
acts alone would give rise to grievous regret, as aIl but
_ the High Priests were forbidden entrance to the Sanctuary,
,
1
C5
and now, it too, had been pillaged by unclean hands. Proud
Jerusalem, who considered herself inviolable, had fallen.
The speaker of Donne's Holy Sonnet XVIII is in many
respects a Renaissance Jeremiah. He, too, has seen the
destruction of Jerusalem (the One Holy [Roman] Catholic
Church WhlCh we might consider the guardian of the New
Covenant). He seeks the restoration of God's people to a
state of hollnesB, and llkewise wants to see the city of God
established anew, although withln the context of the New
Covenant. The Church, in aIl her various metamorphoses and
ln aIl her dlsguises, llke Jerusalem, is likened to a woman
whose condition and characteristics are variously described:
she is a whore, a widow, a mild Dove, a willing lover.
Donne's speaker, however, faces one specifie problem that
Jeremlah dld not face. The true Church in world history,
Donne says, is "most trew" when open to most men. At one
time this Church had been the Holy Roman Catholic Church.
But that empire had, in sorne sense, toppled, and now, a
"trew" church would have to be founded on the rock of
contingency. Did Donne in fact want to suggest what has
today become "Protestant liberalism?"
Variety and contingency must figure in Donne's account
if we are to read this sonnet as a sincere search for unit y
-as opposed to homogeneity--within the Christian community.
1 olfer this interpretation of Sonnet XVIII for a variety of
r rea8ons: his letters to Goodyer, his sermons, and not least
1
66
of aIl, the variety of pronouns in the last four lines of
the Sonnet. When Donne's speaker asks Christ to "Betray"
his spouse, he asks that it be done to "our sights," not ta
one collective "sight." Donne is known to have chosen his
words most carefully, and the decision to seek the Church's
betrayal to "our slghts" speaks of a yearning for plurality
within the Christian paradigme
There are other, very telling things we should notice
in this Sonnet, includlng the appearance of "real time" and
history, the fact that the verbal action here Îs muted and
that Donne's speaker lS satisfied with Christ's silence-
aknowledging as it does that the consolations and pleasures
of the Church (like those of a woman) are of this earth and
therefore acceptable, even if provisional, frail and flawed.
Furthermore, there i8 no parody present ln this sonnet, no
despair, and no foreclosure. We find, instead, only
emulation of biblical figures and a faint suggestion that
Donne's world, still rhetorically conceived, still
provisionally based on language and image, can be perceived
with gentle emotions, now, because contingency has been
accommodated. If we can account for the change of tone by
observing the fact that this is the voice of a more mature
Donne, I would counter that such an explanatlon is but part
of a much greater change in his circumstances. Donne had
now to come to terms with the public aspect of devotion •
. ~ Wish fulfillment and desire had to take a place of lesser
67
( prominence in Donne's psychic economy, and despair, and
those foreclosed-upon dialogues with his soul and with God
that went nowhere, gave way ta a 10ngin9 for communion
through social structures and convention. Deeds and works,
once agaln, found a legltlmate place in Donne's religious
life. But how unllke the more dramatic blblical Psalms this
sonnet 18; how lacklng ln vitality, urgency and spontanaity
-as though lts subject-matter were not quite the stuff of
devotlonal poetry. If, in this sonnet, we see Donne coming
to terms wlth salvation and its fundamentally private nature
that must nevertheless be worked out on earth, we also see
him distancing himself from Gad and moving more toward a
dialogue wlth Christ as he becomes pre-occupied with
temporal issues. If the questioning and compression is
lacking in this sonnet, thls only serves ta illustrate that
the rhetorical strategies Donne employed in his efforts to
engage God's attention are fundamentally different, and more
akin to those oi the psalmist, from those strategies he uses
to soliclt the attention of a readership.
..
VLADIMIR:
ESTRAGON: POZZO: VLADIMIR:
Godot
68
Chapter Three
Let us not waste our time in idle discoursel (Pause. Vehemently.) Let us do something, while we have the chancel It is not every day that we are needed. Not indeed that we personally areneeded. Others would meet the case equally weIl, if not better. To aIl mankind they were addressed, those cries for help still ringing in our ears! But at this place, at this moment of time, aIl mankind is us, whether we like it or note Let us make the most of it, before it i9 too latel Let us represent worthily for once the fouI brood to WhlCh a cruel fate consigned us! What do you say? (Estragon says nothing.) It is true that when with folded arms we weigh the pros and cons we are no less a credit to our species. The tiger bounds to the help of his congeners withoul the least reflexion, or else slinks away into the depths of the thickets. But that is not the question. What are we doing here, that is the question. And we are blessed in thlS, that we happen to know the answer. Yes, in this immense confusion one thing alone is clear. We are waiting for Godot to come--Ah! Helpl Or for night to fall. (Pause.) We have kept our appointment and thatle an end to that. We are not saints, but we have kept our appointment. How many people can boast as much?
--Samuel Beckett, Waiting for
As demonstrated in the first and second chapters,
Donnels "Holy Sonnets" rely on two distinctly different
structural strategies: the Ignatian meditative tradition
with its highly structured use of the memory, intellect and
will, on the one hand, and on the other, a rhetorical
• technique peculiar to the Old Testament wherein we find the
(
(
69
speaker addresslng God with an interrogative structure for
purposes suspiciously other than gaining a direct response.
The result is a kind of hermeneutic compression--an intense
and context-oriented defining of the terms under which
interpretatlon and assignment of meaning is possible,
although, lronically, it lS ln sIlence that meaning can be
evinced. Donne's speakers subvert this biblical strategy by
forcing their silent God into a seemingly indifferent,
posslbly cruel audience. The silence of this God terrorizes
the speakers, and we, the reader or secondary audience which
is meant to "overhear" the verbal action, are necessarily
moved to a state of anxiety because we cannot fix meaning in
a textual structure dependent on silence. Furthermore,
Donne never uses time or contextuality to relieve that
anxiety for us, save in the last three sonnets of the
series. The silence of a God must be read "contextually" as
the Old Testament psalmists taught: we learned that we had
to plug ourselves into the psalms' dialogic nodes in order
to partlcipate in the hermeneutic struggle for meaning and
coherence.
The confluence of the meditational and conversational
strategies in Donne's poetry has produced a unique
rhetorical strategy 1 have not found in any work of his
contemporaries. In this last chapter, 1 want to pull
together the many threads and thoughts left unfinished in
the first two chapters within the context of a discussion
70
about the potential of Donne's new rhetorical strategy,
especially why he chose to subvert the b1blical paradigm of
the penitent devote. But for the sake of clarity, 1 find
rnyself in need of a highly specifie lexicon--one unsullied
by overuse and 1rnprecision. Hence, the necessity of a
prelirninary discussion about rhetor1c. rhetor1city and their
relationsh1p in literature.
ln 1970, Paul Ricoeur gave a lecture at the Institut
des Hautes Etudes in Belgiurn out of which evolved an article
entitled "Rhetoric--Poetics--Hermeneutics." His subject was
the tendency of the three d1sc1plines to overlap and
endeavour to "totalize" the terrain of discourse. In his
efforts to situate the se disciplines in relation to one
another and to discourse as a whole, Ricoeur undertook first
to discuss each discipline in its own right. H1s discussion
of rhetoric constitutes the starting-point of rny analysis of
Donne's rhetorical strategies.
"Rhetoric," Ricour begins, His the oldest discipline of
the discursive usage of language" (Ricoeur 138). He
identifies four features that specifically characterise or
define rhetoric. The first of these is the "typical
situations of discourse" which Aristotle defined as the
deliberative, the judicial and the epideictic. Situating
discourse assigns sorne prorninence to the function of the
addressee and the circurnstances of such an address. The
second characteristic is the role of argumentation which
71
( Ricoeur describes as "a mode of demonstration situated half
way between the constraint of the necessary and the
arbitrariness of contingency" (RIcoeur 138). The third
feature of rhetoric is its "orientatIon toward the
listener," the fact that the rhetor is in sorne sense obliged
to establlsh a common ground or point of reference with his
audience in order to persuade. Finally, Ricoeur says, one
cannot ignore the issues of elocution and style, that is,
the tendency of rhetoric to function as both an art of
legitimate persuaSion and the art of deceit. To this last
point 1 would add that the elements of classical rhetoric
Ricoeur precluded from his discussion, namely invention,
disposition and memory, must also he recuperated and woven
into the discussion if the physiognomy of Donne's rhetorical
strategIes is to be understood as rooted in both the
Ignatian meditative tradition and the psalm genre.
(
Strictly speaking, then, 1 contend that rhetoric is a
contextualized effort to persuade or deceive an audience
through a process of argumentatIon that employs an arsenal
of figures, tropes and ornaments. Given such a definition,
it is arguable that most of Donne's poetry has been
suhjected to some Bort of rhetorical analysis, although the
issue of deception has not heen explored to any degree.
Rosemund Tuve discusses Donne's work in the context of
rhetoric in Elizabethan and Metaphvsical ImagerYi Thomas o.
Sloan writes a brief article entitled -The Rhetoric in the
Poetry of John Donne" in which the Ramist influence is
examined; and more recently Anthony Raspa and Arthur F.
Marotti have produced varied analyses of Donne's "Holy
Sonnets" based on very different concepti,)ns of rhetoric.
72
In The Emotive Image, Raspa argues strongly for a
reading of Donne's devotional poems in the context of a
Jesuit or Counter-Reformation aesthetIc, and he argues that
meditative verse in this traditIon was marked by three
characteristics: the use of enthymeme, frequent appearance
of metaphor of proportIon, and paradoxe Raspa recollects
how Aristotle proposed that an orator (as opposed to a
logician) should sometimes presume--rather than prove by
syllogism--the truth of his statements. He argues that by
employing enthymeme to this end, which uses only the second
and third premises, an orator could persuade hlS audience by
conjoining his own emotional commitment to the argument with
the emotional receptivity of his audience. Once the two
were inseparably intertwined, they became one in result.
Metaphor of proportion, says Raspa, tended to become the
devotional poems' "exclusive source of imagery" (Raspa 146),
although it did more than merely of fer an alternatIve to
practical logic. He argues that "by its emphasis on the
comparison of the relationship between objects, the metaphor
of proportion released the poet to conceive of metaphor as a
typological reflection of his baroque universe" (157).
Thua, we see the evolution of the rhetorically conceived
73
( world; or, as Raspa suggests, the metaphor of proportion and
enthymeme "rested on like rhetorical and grammatical values
(
as opposed to logic." Of paradox in the meditative
traditIon, Raspa offers this insight: "Paradox did not grow
out of the rearrangement of the roles of things, which is
our usual way of creatlng lt ••• Rather, paradox in the
style was made to emerge more intricately both out of the
forced contrasts between things and out of the likeness of
their relatIons" <151-2).
Whlle Raspa's analysls of Donne's rhetoric in the "Holy
Sonnets" is really restrlcted to a discussion of dispositio
and elocutio <the second and third elements of rhetoric),
Marotti explores the "situatIon" of Donne's poetic discourse
and characterizes it as "coterie social transactions"
(Marotti 19). Marotti even speaks of "rhetorlcal
circumstances" in which Donne knew his poetry was read and
appreciated:
To understand Donne's context-bound verse historically, it is important to recognize its place in the dominant system of manuscript transmission of literature to which the poetry of courtly and satellite courtly authors belonged. In the Tudor and eacly Stuart periods, lyrIc poetry was basically a genre for gentleman-amateurs who regarded their llterary "toys" as ephemeral works that were part of a social life that also included dancing, singing, gaming, and civilized conversation. Socially prominent courtiers like the Earl of Oxford, Sir Edward Dyer, and Sir Walter Ralegh, like Sir Thomas Wyatt and the Earl of Surrey earlier, as weIl as other less-important figures like George Gascoigne, essentially thought of poems as trifles to be transmitted in manuscript within a limited social world and not as literary monuments to be preserved in printed editions for posterity. Marotti 3.
74
Along w1th Donne's secular poetry, Marotti analyzes
Donne's sacred verse in this contexte He attempts to
explain how friends and potential patrons who comprised
the coterie group would have understood the encoded
messages dealing with career and politically oriented
issues and upsets. of the "Holy Sonnets" in
particular, Marotti argues that
"Donne relocated in a religious framework the conflict between authority and ùependence he expressed in his encomiastic verse. ~~ese emotionally charged and 1ntellectually tortuous poems enact personally and socially the contradictory attitudes of assertion and subm1ssion that were intrinsic to Donne's temperament, but that were heightened by the desperateness of his ambition 1n the early Jacobean period." Marotti 253
In a sense, then, we can conceive of the Inns of
Court and its enV1rons as a stage upon Wh1Ch Donne
"performed." This was the site of his "indecorous"
dramatizations of internaI turmoils. Ted-Larry
Pebworth, in a recent article entitled "John Donne,
Coterie Poetry, and the Text as Performance" ex tends
Marotti's thesis further, arguing that Donne no doubt
conceived of his poetry as occasional pieces, as one-
time performances which he controlled by virtue of the
context within which they were issued. Evidence of
this, he contends, arises from the fact that in 161~,
Donne did not have copies of his own poems and had to
seek them from recipients.
Such analyses as Marroti's and, to a lesser
i
75
extent, Pehworth's, do contextualize the production of
the poems and help us enviSlon how they were received
and read. Carey convincingly records in his biography
how Donne clearly did have difficulty submitting to
arbitrary authority, whether temporal or dIvine.
Donne's style and manner of writing are designed to
show with what flair he could envIsage himself flouting
authority (and Indeed did flout authority), especially
over his potential patrons and employers toward whom he
held only a falnt and highly resentful respect.
Granting that Marotti is correct, then, in arguing that
these sonnets are highly public dramatizatiofis of
private issues whose circulation was meant to draw the
eye and ear of his audience into participatlng in a
naughty, mlschievous ano probably somewhat subversive
activity, we must akno~J ·jge that by reading and
appreciating the Wit Oi 1on r e's poems, his audience was
implicitly participating 1 .. a form of legitimizing the
pass-time of thlS type of sonnet-writing. We can
speculate forever as to what drove Donne to expose his
festering wounds so thoroughly to coterie eyes--eyes he
did not really respect or revere. Was the act one of a
sado-masochist? Did John Donne really wield the craft
of rhetoric (the art and craft of persuasion and
deception) for the purpose of securing employment or
preferment, despite the poor results? Lines of enquiry
76
such as these inevitably devolve into forms of prurient
speculation that do little to enhance our appreciation
or undcrstandlng of the "Holy Sonnets." But 1 beleive
it ia legitimate to seek out the moments in the poems
where we see Donne-as-craftsman, persuader and
deceiver, yield control of his text graciously to the
reader and InvIte that audlence to partlclpate in the
hermeneutic struggle. This IS the site of
rhetoricity,lO the potential for the recontextualizing
of the poems that glves signlflcance to both our
reading, and the poems' posterlty.
Donne's poems invite such participatIon thro~gh
the use of the three-part meditative slructure, with
its reliance on the composltion of place which forces
the reader to evoke an interior lmage of what Donne
verbalizes. Thus, Donne's world is interiorized in the
reader's mind. This is a critically important aspect
of what 1 calI the rhetoricity of the poem. It is only
in being capable of evoking that interior image that
the reader truly participates in the hermeneutic
struggle and thus interprets the text as a devotionai
poem.
The issue of whether or not Donne's devotionai
poems can only be appreciated by a "Believer" remains
one that 1 strongly feel must be addressed in Donne
scholarship. Someone well-schooled in and accepting
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( of Christian doctrine is far more capable than others
of evoking a composition of place within his or her
mind that incorpora tes so many of the Christian
paradigms Donne assumed his reader would have at hand.
While J belleve that a reader whose faith in the
christ-story IS untouched or unshaken by Donne's
experlences of doubt is precluded from jOlnlng in the
hermeneutlc struggle, l belleve equally that the reader
who eschews the value of falth in the ChrIst story (and
it is not Important whether thlS occurs at a
mythological level or theological level) lS equally
denied the prlvl1ege of particlpating in that struggle.
As l suggested earlier, the sceptical reader of Donne's
devotional sonnets can only perceive the cruelty of
silence and witness the despair of one man.
Donne lived during a period in which the English
church was in the process of being established. Its
roots sought nourishment in the Old Testament figure of
David, in the teachings and letters of Paul, and in the
testimonies of Augustine, to name but a few sources of
its generation. But theological issues were hotly
debated in many forums outside of Parliament, including
the literary circle to which Donne belonged. Donne's
"Holy Sonnets" are both public and private documents
that testify to his participation in the debates and
discussions regarding the formation of an English
78
Church. Of course, in order to leg1timize his
participation, he had to overcome doctrinal hurdles
arising from his Roman Catholic upbringing that other
Englishmen did not, and we see evidence of ltS
influence. But of greater slgnificance la how the
fragility of the Church durlng this period seemed to
galvanize that clrcle 1nto focuslng ltS creatlve and
emotional energies on devotlonal issues. Donne ia a
partlcularly intrigulng subject of study ln this vein
because he had to construct for himself a process or
route through which he could traverse frorn Roman
(international) Catholicism to a national church. He
used every rhetorical device and sklll he had to
explore theological and doctrinal issues, aa weIl as
his inner fears and anxieties. At first he approached
God directly as the old Testament Psalmists had do ne
and found silence His only response. The more Donne
sought attention, through heterodoxy and mischief, the
more resounding seemed the silence. Dialogue with God
was no longer possible because the conditions of faith
were tenuous: the catholic church had collapsed and
Protestantisrn had pronounced that salvation was the
responsibility of the individual. Donne, as one who
had to convert to Protestantism, took thio matter very
seriously, and his "Holy Sonnets" attest to thia point.
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By the time Donne came to write ~Show me deare
Christ', his mode of address and his concerna had
shifted from Issues of the final hour to those of how
best to establish a true Church that would truly be an
enabllng Institution for those seeking salvatl0n.
Literally, we can say tha~ Donne had learned how to
live in peace wlth the concepts of time and
contingency. His repatriatI0n into the British fold no
doubt alleviated much of th~ anxiety that characterized
hIS youthful years. Of his devotional achieve~ents, we
can say that the earlier "Roly Sonnets" are an
expression of diffIdence, spirItual misery and
alienation. If he lashes out at God in these sonnets,
it is because he felt God's lash upon himself but knew
not in which direction he was being guided doctrinal1y.
But surely the mature Donne, who had achieved an
accommodation with his silent God, must have ~~rmitted
himself a smile suggesting reminiscence, as he
translated the followlng passage from Lamentations:
1 am the mat • .Ihich have aff 1 iction seene, Under the rod of Gods wrath having beene, He hath led mee to darknesse, not to 1lght, And against mee aIl day, his hand doth fight.
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NOTES
1. Specifie reference, here, is being made to the following three volumes: The Divine Poems, edited by Helen Gardner;The Poetry of Meditation by Louis Martz, and Barbara Kiefer Lewalski's book entitled Protestant Poetics and the Seventeenth Century Religious Lyric. The discussions within these texts, and the debates they have engendered, are the core from which 1 have pursued my own course of study.
2. Lewalsk1's assertions regardlng the Protestant influence we find in Donne's "Holy Sonnets" WIll be addressed primarily in the second chapter of this work.
3. In The Origin of the Jesuits, James Brodwick, S.J.,chronicles the Spanish Inquisltion's investigations of st. Ignatlus' activities in Spain, and his SpirItual Exercises. Of particular concern, apparently, were the number and variety of Protestdnt missionaries and Christian cuIts whose teachings diverged from those of Rome. (33-35)
4. Helen Gardner offers an interpretation of the sonnet in which she suggest that it was authored by Donne two to three years after his ordination, and that it reflects the dominant doctrines of the Anglican Church Fathers who perceived themselves as Protestants but who did not deny that other Churches were capable of administering valid Sacraments. 122-7
5. Gardner conjectures that the poem "Upon the translation of the Psalmes by Sir Philip Sydney, and the Countesse of Pembroke his Sister" was written sorne time after 1621. Its unapologetic concern for beauty in their rendering tells us that even in his later years, Donne sought both beauty and lyric individuality in devotional poetry. His reference to the Psalms being "So weIl attyr'd abroad, so ill at home" ia an explicit criticism of the pedantic ugliness with wh1ch many English translations were marked, compared wIth the French and German versions he found beautiful and moving.
6. Alastair Fowler's Kinds of Literature: An Introduction to the Theory of Genres and Modes was particularly helpful in assisting me with my theory of how Donne borrowed from the Psalms without consciously
----------------------------------------------.... ~--
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8.
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undertaking to do so. Although 1 have not attempted to employ Fowler's terminology and theory with the kind of persistence that may have been possible, his work is a considerable force behind my arguments regarding the Psalms and their influence on Donne's "801y Sonnets."
Thought-rhythme also existed in the poetry of early Egypt, Mesopotamia and in Canaanite poetry.
Arthur F. Marotti's introduction to John Donne, Coterie Poetglves us a Ilvely and persuaSIve look at the context within WhlCh Donne's poetry was "read," and his researched account of the Inns-Qf-Court enVlronment suggest that It was a well-educated, WItt Y group of Individuals that enjoyed the sport of poetry with Donne.
9. The parody, however, is Beareely intentional. Donne does not consciously mock elther the purpose or the effect of the forme Rather, the act of appropriation seems to create the parody, seemlngly from nowhere. As an audience, we bec orne aware that the parody lS a perversely expressed lament for the loss of devotional innocence. The onset of devotional anxiety, which is the cornerstone of much doctrinal dispute between Roman CathollcS and Protestants, is deflnitely a product of the ReformatIon. Donne, however, ia not necessarily aware of the degree to which he is afflicted by this anxiety, or why.
10. charlles Aitieri (see Blbliography) distinguishes between rhetoric and rhetoricity as follows: rhetoric ia "the study of how language ia controlled for specifie ends" while rhetorieity is na reflective attitude toward what persons reveal about their nature and thelr culture from changing and fairly permanent characteristlcs of how rhetoric is used." Clearly he and l differ dramatically with respect to our use and understanding of the term rhetoric. What distinguishes his use of the term rhetoricity from mine is that 1 do not see the text as a fixed historical item that can be plac~d into a passive role (like sorne aetherized patient!) while an exploratory ia performed to determine how an author uses rhetoric in traditional and non-traditional modes. My definition of rhetoric is much more socially and culturally oriented than his, and involves the classical elements Aristotle imputed to it. As a result, my use of the term rhetoricity ia equally complex and is meant to allow us to examine Donne's use of rhetoric not simply as a measuring system of his "metacommunicative devices n which is
essentially how Altieri uses the term, but also aB a road-map of our own readings of Donne.
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