At this time of Mr. Donne's and his wife's living in Sir Robert's house, the Lord Hay was, by King James, sent upon a glorious embassy to the then French King, Henry the Fourth; and Sir Robert put on a sudden resolution to accompany him to the French Court, and to be present at his audience there.
And Sir Robert put on a sudden resolution to solicit Mr. Donne to be his companion in that journey. And this desire was suddenly made known to his wife, who was then with child, and otherwise under so dangerous a habit of body as to her health, that she professed an unwillingness to allow him any absence from her; saying, "Her divining soul boded her some ill in his absence;" and therefore desired him not to leave her.
This made Mr. Donne lay aside all thoughts of the journey, and really to resolve against it. But Sir Robert became restless in his persuasions for it, and Mr.
Donne was so generous as to think he had sold his liberty when he received so many charitable kindnesses from him, and told his wife so; who did therefore, with an unwilling willingness, give a faint consent to the journey, which was proposed to be but for two months; for about that time they determined their return. Within a few days after this resolve, the Ambassador, Sir Robert, and Mr. Donne, left London; and were the twelfth day got all safe to Paris.
Two days after their arrival there, Mr. Donne was left alone in that room in which Sir Robert, and he, and some other friends had dined together. To this place Sir Robert returned within half an hour; and as he [Pg xvi] left, so he found, Mr. Donne alone; but in such an ecstasy, and so altered as to his looks, as amazed Sir Robert to behold him; insomuch that he earnestly desired Mr. Donne to declare what had befallen him in the short time of his absence.
To which Mr. Donne was not able to make a present answer; but, after a long and perplexed pause, did at last say, "I have seen a dreadful vision since I saw you: I have seen my dear wife pass twice by me through this room, with her hair hanging about her shoulders, and a dead child in her arms: this I have seen since I saw you. Donne's reply was: "I cannot be surer that I now live than that I have not slept since I saw you: and am as sure that at her second appearing she stopped and looked me in the face, and vanished.
Donne's opinion the next day: for he then affirmed this vision with a more deliberate, and so confirmed a confidence, that he inclined Sir Robert to a faint belief that the vision was true.
It is truly said that desire and doubt have no rest; and it proved so with Sir Robert; for he immediately sent a servant to Drewry House, with a charge to hasten back and bring him word whether Mrs. Donne were alive; and, if alive, in what condition she was as to her health. The twelfth day the messenger returned with this account:—That he found and left Mrs.
Donne very sad and sick in her bed; and that, after a long and dangerous labour, she had been delivered of a dead child. And, upon examination, the abortion proved to be the same day, and about [Pg xvii] the very hour, that Mr. Donne affirmed he saw her pass by him in his chamber. This is a relation that will beget some wonder, and it well may; for most of our world are at present possessed with an opinion that visions and miracles are ceased.
And, though it is most certain that two lutes, being both strung and tuned to an equal pitch, and then one played upon, the other that is not touched, being laid upon a table at a fit distance, will—like an echo to a trumpet—warble a faint audible harmony in answer to the same tune; yet many will not believe there is any such thing as a sympathy of souls; and I am well pleased that every reader do enjoy his own opinion.
Austin, and Monica his mother, had visions in order to his conversion. And though these and many others—too many to name—have but the authority of human story, yet the incredible reader may find in the sacred story 1 Sam.
And Bildad, in the Book of Job, says these words iv. And the opinion that every man hath his particular angel may gain some authority by the relation of St. Peter's miraculous deliverance out of prison Acts xii. And this belief may yet gain more credit by the reader's considering, that when Peter after his enlargement knocked at the door of Mary the mother of John, and Rhode, the maidservant, being surprised with joy that Peter was there, did not let him in, but ran in haste and told the disciples, who were then and there met together, that Peter was at the door; and they, not believing it, said she was mad: yet, when she again affirmed it, though they then believed it not, yet they concluded, and said, "It is his angel.
More observations of this nature, and inferences from them, might be made to gain the relation a firmer belief; but I forbear, lest I, that intended to be but a relator, may be thought to be an engaged person for the proving what was related to me; and yet I think myself bound to declare that, though it was not told me by Mr.
Donne himself, it was told me—now long since—by a person of honour, and of such intimacy with him, that he knew more of the secrets of his soul than any person then living: and I think he told me the truth; for it was told with such circumstances, and such asseveration, that—to say nothing of my own thoughts—I verily believe he that told it me did himself believe it to be true. I return from my account of the vision, to tell the reader, that both before Mr. Donne's going into France, at his being there, and after his return, many of the nobility and others that were powerful at court, [Pg xix] were watchful and solicitous to the King for some secular employment for him.
The King had formerly both known and put a value upon his company, and had also given him some hopes of a state-employment; being always much pleased when Mr. Donne attended him, especially at his meals, where there were usually many deep discourses of general learning, and very often friendly disputes, or debates of religion, betwixt his Majesty and those divines, whose places required their attendance on him at those times: particularly the Dean of the Chapel, who then was Bishop Montague—the publisher of the learned and eloquent Works of his Majesty—and the most Reverend Doctor Andrews the late learned Bishop of Winchester, who was then the King's Almoner.
About this time there grew many disputes, that concerned the Oath of Supremacy and Allegiance, in which the King had appeared, and engaged himself by his public writings now extant: and his Majesty discoursing with Mr. Donne, concerning many of the reasons which are usually urged against the taking of those Oaths, apprehended such a validity and clearness in his stating the questions, and his answers to them, that his Majesty commanded him to bestow some time in drawing the arguments into a method, and then to write his answers to them; and, having done that, not to send, but be his own messenger, and bring them to him.
To this he presently and diligently applied himself, and within six weeks brought them to him under his own handwriting, as they be now printed; the book bearing the name of "Pseudo-Martyr," printed anno When the King had read and considered that book, he persuaded Mr. Donne to enter into the Ministry; [Pg xx] to which, at that time, he was, and appeared, very unwilling, apprehending it—such was his mistaken modesty—to be too weighty for his abilities. Such strifes St. Austin had, when St.
Ambrose endeavoured his conversion to Christianity; with which he confesseth he acquainted his friend Alipius. Our learned author—a man fit to write after no mean copy—did the like. And declaring his intentions to his dear friend Dr. King, then Bishop of London, a man famous in his generation, and no stranger to Mr. Donne's abilities—for he had been Chaplain to the Lord Chancellor, at the time of Mr.
Donne's being his Lordship's Secretary—that reverend man did receive the news with much gladness; and, after some expressions of joy, and a persuasion to be constant in his pious purpose, he proceeded with all convenient speed to ordain him first Deacon, and then Priest not long after. Presently after he entered into his holy profession, the King sent for him, and made him his Chaplain in Ordinary, and promised to take a particular care for his preferment.
And, though his long familiarity with scholars and persons of greatest quality was such, as might have given some men boldness enough to have preached to any eminent auditory; yet his modesty in this employment was such, that he could not be persuaded to it, but went usually accompanied with some one friend to preach privately in some village, not far from London; his first sermon being preached at Paddington.
This he did, till his Majesty sent and appointed him a day to preach to him at Whitehall; and, though much were expected from him, both by his Majesty and others, yet he was so happy—which few are [Pg xxi] —as to satisfy and exceed their expectations: preaching the Word so, as shewed his own heart was possessed with those very thoughts and joys that he laboured to distil into others: a preacher in earnest; weeping sometimes for his auditory, sometimes with them; always preaching to himself like an angel from a cloud, but in none; carrying some, as St.
Paul was, to Heaven in holy raptures, and enticing others by a sacred art and courtship to amend their lives: here picturing a vice so as to make it ugly to those that practised it; and a virtue so as to make it beloved, even by those that loved it not; and all this with a most particular grace and an unexpressible addition of comeliness.
That summer, in the very same month in which he entered into sacred Orders, and was made the King's Chaplain, his Majesty then going his progress, was entreated to receive an entertainment in the University of Cambridge: and Mr.
Donne attending his Majesty at that time, his Majesty was pleased to recommend him to the University, to be made Doctor in Divinity; Doctor Harsnett, after Archbishop of York, was then Vice-Chancellor, who, knowing him to be the author of that learned book the "Pseudo-Martyr," required no other proof of his abilities, but proposed it to the University, who presently assented, and expressed a gladness that they had such an occasion to entitle him to be theirs.
His abilities and industry in his profession were so eminent, and he so known and so beloved by persons of quality, that within the first year of his entering into sacred Orders, he had fourteen advowsons of several benefices presented to him: but they were in the country, and he could not leave his beloved London, [Pg xxii] to which place he had a natural inclination, having received both his birth and education in it, and there contracted a friendship with many, whose conversation multiplied the joys of his life; but an employment that might affix him to that place would be welcome, for he needed it.
Immediately after his return from Cambridge his wife died, leaving him a man of a narrow, unsettled estate, and—having buried five—the careful father of seven children then living, to whom he gave a voluntary assurance never to bring them under the subjection of a step-mother; which promise he kept most faithfully, burying with his tears all his earthly joys in his most dear and deserving wife's grave, and betook himself to a most retired and solitary life.
In this retiredness, which was often from the sight of his dearest friends, he became crucified to the world, and all those vanities, those imaginary pleasures, that are daily acted on that restless stage, and they were as perfectly crucified to him. His first motion from his house was to preach where his beloved wife lay buried—in St. In this time of sadness he was importuned by the grave Benchers of Lincoln's Inn—who were once the companions and friends of his youth—to accept of their Lecture, which, by reason of Dr.
Gataker's removal from thence, was then void; of which he accepted, being most glad to renew his intermitted friendship with those whom he so much loved, and where he had been a Saul,—though not to persecute Christianity, or to deride it, yet in his irregular youth [Pg xxiii] to neglect the visible practice of it,—there to become a Paul, and preach salvation to his beloved brethren.
About which time the Emperor of Germany died, and the Palsgrave, who had lately married the Lady Elizabeth, the King's only daughter, was elected and crowned King of Bohemia, the unhappy beginning of many miseries in that nation. King James, whose motto— Beati pacifici —did truly speak the very thoughts of his heart, endeavoured first to prevent, and after to compose, the discords of that discomposed State; and, amongst other his endeavours, did then send the Lord Hay, Earl of Doncaster, his Ambassador to those unsettled Princes; and, by a special command from his Majesty, Dr.
Donne was appointed to assist and attend that employment to the Princes of the Union, for which the Earl was most glad, who had always put a great value on him, and taken a great pleasure in his conversation and discourse: and his friends at Lincoln's Inn were as glad; for they feared that his immoderate study, and sadness for his wife's death, would, as Jacob said, "make his days few," and, respecting his bodily health, "evil" too: and of this there were many visible signs.
About fourteen months after his departure out of England, he returned to his friends of Lincoln's Inn, with his sorrows moderated, and his health improved; and there betook himself to his constant course of preaching. About a year after his return out of Germany, Dr. Carey was made Bishop of Exeter, and by his removal, the Deanery of St. Paul's being vacant, the King sent to Dr. Donne, and appointed him to attend him at dinner the next day.
When his Majesty was sat down, before he had eat any meat, he said after his pleasant manner, [Pg xxiv] "Dr. Donne, I have invited you to dinner; and, though you sit not down with me, yet I will carve to you of a dish that I know you love well; for, knowing you love London, I do therefore make you Dean of St.
Paul's; and, when I have dined, then do you take your beloved dish home to your study, say grace there to yourself, and much good may it do you. Immediately after he came to his Deanery, he employed workmen to repair and beautify the Chapel; suffering as holy David once vowed, "his eyes and temples to take no rest till he had first beautified the house of God.
The next quarter following when his father-in-law, Sir George More,—whom time had made a lover and admirer of him—came to pay to him the conditioned sum of twenty pounds, he refused to receive it; and said—as good Jacob did, when he heard his beloved son Joseph was alive—"'It is enough;' you have been kind to me and mine: I know your present condition is such as not to abound, and I hope mine is, or will be such as not to need it: I will therefore receive no more from you upon that contract," and in testimony of it freely gave him up his bond.
Immediately after his admission into his Deanery the Vicarage of St. Dunstan in the West, London, fell to him by the death of Dr. White, the advowson of it having been given to him long before by his honourable friend Richard Earl of Dorset, then the patron, and confirmed by his brother the late deceased Edward, both of them men of much honour. By these, and another ecclesiastical endowment which fell to him about the same time, given to him formerly by the Earl of Kent, he was enabled to become charitable to the poor, and kind to his friends, and to make such [Pg xxv] provision for his children, that they were not left scandalous as relating to their or his profession and quality.
The next Parliament, which was within that present year, he was chosen Prolocutor to the Convocation, and about that time was appointed by his Majesty, his most gracious master, to preach very many occasional sermons, as at St. Paul's Cross, and other places. All which employments he performed to the admiration of the representative body of the whole Clergy of this nation. He was once, and but once, clouded with the King's displeasure, and it was about this time; which was occasioned by some malicious whisperer, who had told his Majesty that Dr.
Donne had put on the general humour of the pulpits, and was become busy in insinuating a fear of the King's inclining to popery, and a dislike of his government; and particularly for the King's then turning the evening lectures into catechising, and expounding the Prayer of our Lord, and of the Belief, and Commandments.
His Majesty was the more inclinable to believe this, for that a person of nobility and great note, betwixt whom and Dr. Donne there had been a great friendship, was at this very time discarded the court—I shall forbear his name, unless I had a fairer occasion—and justly committed to prison; which begot many rumours in the common people, who in this nation think they are not wise unless they be busy about what they understand not, and especially about religion.
The King received this news with so much discontent and restlessness that he would not suffer the sun to set and leave him under this doubt; but sent for Dr. Donne, and required his answer to the accusation; which was so clear and satisfactory that the King said, "he was right glad he rested no longer under the suspicion.
Donne kneeled down, and thanked his Majesty, and protested his answer was faithful, and free from all collusion, and therefore "desired that he might not rise till, as in like cases, he always had from God, so he might have from his Majesty, some assurance that he stood clear and fair in his opinion.
He was made Dean in the fiftieth year of his age, and in his fifty-fourth year a dangerous sickness seized him, which inclined him to a consumption; but God, as Job thankfully acknowledged, preserved his spirit, and kept his intellectuals as clear and perfect as when that sickness first seized his body; but it continued long, and threatened him with death, which he dreaded not.
Within a few days his distempers abated; and as his strength increased so did his thankfulness to Almighty God, testified in his most excellent "Book of Devotions," which he published at his recovery; in which the reader may see the most secret thoughts that then possessed his soul, paraphrased and made public: a book that may not unfitly be called a Sacred Picture of Spiritual Ecstasies, occasioned and applicable to the emergencies of that sickness; which book, being a composition of meditations, disquisitions, and prayers, he writ on his sick-bed; herein imitating the holy Patriarchs, who were wont to build [Pg xxvii] their altars in that place where they had received their blessings.
This sickness brought him so near to the gates of death, and he saw the grave so ready to devour him, that he would often say his recovery was supernatural: but that God that then restored his health continued it to him till the fifty-ninth year of his life: and then, in August , being with his eldest daughter, Mrs.
Harvey, at Abury Hatch, in Essex, he there fell into a fever, which, with the help of his constant infirmity—vapours from the spleen—hastened him into so visible a consumption that his beholders might say, as St. Paul of himself, "He dies daily;" and he might say with Job, "My welfare passeth away as a cloud, the days of my affliction have taken hold of me, and weary nights are appointed for me. Reader, this sickness continued long, not only weakening, but wearying him so much, that my desire is he may now take some rest; and that before I speak of his death thou wilt not think it an impertinent digression to look back with me upon some observations of his life, which, whilst a gentle slumber gives rest to his spirits, may, I hope, not unfitly, exercise thy consideration.
His marriage was the remarkable error of his life; an error which, though he had a wit able and very apt to maintain paradoxes, yet he was very far from justifying it: and though his wife's competent years, and other reasons, might be justly urged to moderate severe censures, yet he would occasionally condemn himself for it: and doubtless it had been attended with an heavy repentance, if God had not blessed them with so mutual and cordial affections, as in the midst of their sufferings made their bread of sorrow taste more pleasantly than the banquets of dull and low-spirited people.
The recreations of his youth were poetry, in which he was so happy as if nature and all her varieties had been made only to exercise his sharp wit and high fancy; and in those pieces which were facetiously composed and carelessly scattered,—most of them being written before the twentieth year of his age—it may appear by his choice metaphors that both nature and all the arts joined to assist him with their utmost skill. It is a truth, that in his penitential years, viewing some of those pieces that had been loosely—God knows, too loosely—scattered in his youth, he wished they had been abortive, or so short-lived that his own eyes had witnessed their funerals; but, though he was no friend to them, he was not so fallen out with heavenly poetry, as to forsake that; no, not in his declining age; witnessed then by many divine sonnets, and other high, holy, and harmonious composures.
Yea, even on his former sick-bed he wrote this heavenly hymn, expressing the great joy that then possessed his soul, in the assurance of God's favour to him when he composed it:—. I have the rather mentioned this hymn, for that he caused it to be set to a most grave and solemn tune, and to be often sung to the organ by the choiristers of St.
Paul's Church, in his own hearing; especially at the Evening Service; and at his return from his customary devotions in that place, did occasionally say to a friend, "the words of this hymn have restored to me the same thoughts of joy that possessed my soul in my sickness, when I composed it.
And, O the power of church-music! After this manner did the disciples of our Saviour, and the best of Christians in those ages of the Church nearest to His time, offer their praises to Almighty God. And the reader of St. Augustine's life may there find, that towards his dissolution he wept abundantly, that the enemies of Christianity had broke in upon them, and profaned and ruined their sanctuaries, and because their public hymns and lauds were lost out of their Churches.
And after this manner have many devout souls lifted up their hands and offered acceptable sacrifices unto Almighty God, where Dr. Donne offered his, and now lies buried. But now [], Oh Lord! Before I proceed further, I think fit to inform the reader, that not long before his death he caused to be drawn a figure of the Body of Christ extended upon an anchor, like those which painters draw, when they would present us with the picture of Christ crucified on the cross: his varying no otherwise than to affix Him not to a cross, but to an anchor—the emblem of Hope;—this he caused to be drawn in little, and then many of those figures thus drawn to be engraven very small in Heliotropium stones, and set in gold; and of these he sent to many of his dearest friends, to be used as seals, or rings, and kept as memorials of him, and of his affection to them.
His dear friends and benefactors, Sir Henry Goodier and Sir Robert Drewry, could not be of that number; nor could the Lady Magdalen Herbert, the mother of George Herbert, for they had put off mortality, and taken possession of the grave before him; but Sir Henry Wotton, and Dr. Hall, the then—late deceased—Bishop of Norwich, were; and so were Dr. Duppa, Bishop of Salisbury, and Dr. Books Video icon An illustration of two cells of a film strip. Video Audio icon An illustration of an audio speaker.
Audio Software icon An illustration of a 3. Software Images icon An illustration of two photographs. Images Donate icon An illustration of a heart shape Donate Ellipses icon An illustration of text ellipses. It appears your browser does not have it turned on. Please see your browser settings for this feature. Furthemore, Donne's tangible physicality is compromised.
As Walton relates, Donne delivered Death's Duel visibly "marked,' not with the "infallibility" of Scripture and doctrine, but with his with own impending dissolution in death.
Thus, in offering his embodied self as evidence of God's existence, Donne presents instead "rnortality by a decayed body, and a dying face" Walton xlii. The "nullificationn of thanatos, however, is precisely what Donne is attempting to render comprehensible through his interpretation of the divine text. After death, Donne's visible "markes" that denote God's existence will disappear along with his physical body. The cornplete absence attendant on death problematizes both the identification of his body as a suw sign of God's existence, and the conceptualization of death, since, as Donne insists, one must "seen permanent signs in order to "know" divine mysteries.
Because the body becomes invisible in death, it provides no "notesnthrough which the mind can apprehend the reality of rnortality or what follows, salvation and resurrection.
Donne argues that God's miraculous reanimation of Ezekiel is comprehensible because there rernained sensible signs of Ezekiel's previous presence: God seems to have carried the declaration of his power to a great height, when he sets the prophet Ezekiel in the valley of dry bones, and says, 'Son of man, can these bones live? If we Say, Can this dust live? Perchance it cannot; it rnay be the mere dust of the earth, which never did live, never shall. It may be the dust of that man's won, which did live, but shall no more.
It rnay be the dust of another man, that concems not hirn of whorn it was asked. In Devotions upon Emergent Occasions, Donne identifies the living body as semiotically disruptive because it constitutes an undifferentiated, unsignifiable presence.
Donne here suggests that the body in death also threatens the order of representation in 1s absolute absence. Because the body disappears, "[p]erchancen the textual narrative of the resurrection has no relation to the corpo-real.
Donne attempts to address the cognitive problem engendered by death's absence through language that gives imaginative presence to the material signs or traces that signify, not the complete absence of thanatos, but rather the becoming- nothing of death.
Like Nesson, Donne identifies the female body as a "body of deathn Material existence, paradoxically, is an entrance from the "body of death" into the "manifold deathsnof physicality, and ultimately, non-existence: this issue, this deliverance, from that death, the death of the womb, is an entrance, a delivering over to another death, the manifold deaths of this world; we have a winding-sheet in Our mothefs womb which grows with us from Our conception, and we come into the worid wound up in that winding-sheet, for we corne to seek a grave.
Donne, too, focuses on the decomposing corpse, descnbing death, not as a singular, terminal event, but as a gradua1 dissolution, a serial, sensible transmutation from materiai presence to complete obliteration and "dispersionn: for us that die now and sleep in the state of the dead, we must al1 pass this posthume death, this death after death, nay this death after burial, this dissolution after dissolution, this death of corruption and putrefactim, and vemiculation, and incineration, and dispersion in and from the grave [.
Donne here calls on his listeners both to visualize and identify with the rotting corpse, to utilize what William Engels tems "projective memory" 67 and imagine their own future death and decomposition. Donne's primary signifier for bodily dissolution is the agent of 'teniculation," the worm: Miserable riddle, when the same worm must be my mother, and my sister and myself!
Miserable incest, when I must be mamed to my mother and my sister, and bs both father and mother to my own mother and sister, beget and bear that worm which is al1 that miserable penury. In naming the w o m "mother," Donne once more refers to the materna1 body as the source of fleshly life and death. Moreover, the worm is Donne himself, as worms were also believed to be engendered by the rotting human body they devour.
Donne at last visualizes himself as joined with, and incorporating the feminine "body of death," as "begeting and bearingnhis "own mother and sister" w o n. In so doing he symbolically presents to his listeners his own absence in death. Donne's "miserable riddlen of the wom, however, also reveals the lirnited effectiveness of his memento mon.
Donne's strategy of symbolizing thanatos fails because his signs actually denote the past presence of the living body, not the future coniplete absence of death. Thanatos can only be represented as a present body, however compted. When the living, speaking Donne describes himself as the wom, silenced by death, the gap between the words he speaks and the reality they are supposed to represent is tangible. To render death intelligible requires the representation of "that which grounds and precedes al1 images, fons, and perceptionsn Creswell : the absolute absence of death which is also the absolute presence of God.
Thus, Donne must emulate John, and "hm to see the voice" Rev. This paradoxical event can only be realized through the contemplation of Christ. The embodiment of God, Christ is the confluence of "the Essentiall Word" and "the very written word," as both speaker and referent of the biblical text: "Christ spoke Scripture; Christ was [. The trace of Christ's physicality, Donne emphasises, remains in the linguistic signs of the biblical text, thus ensuring that they too are materializations of the Word: therefore, when he refers them to himselfe, he refers them to the Scriptures, for though here he seem onely, to cal1 upon them, to hearken to that which he spoke, yet it is in a word, of a deeper impression; for it is Videte; See what you hear.
Before you preach any thing for my word. Therefore, Donne seeks to re-construct Christ's presence in language. Drawing on the form of the medieval imitatio Christiwherein one is asked to identify dramatically with the life of Christ, Donne exhorts his listeners to remember their recent past in relation to the narrative of Christ's last day as described in Scripture, and imaginatively witness and participate in the passion itself.
The procedure of remembering the two histories, personal and Ilurgical, as one, conflates the sacred and the profane, at once sacralizing mundane events, and transposing the 4csupermiraculousn events of Scripture into a familiar conlext: Take in the whole day from the hour that Christ received the passover upon Thursday unto the hour in which he died the next day.
Make this present day that day in thy devotion, and consider what he did, and remember what you have done. That is time spent like thy Saviours.
To "[mlake this present day [truly] that day," Donne argues, his listeners must not only imaginatively imitate Christ, but also mirror Christ's physical actions. For a tnie "conformance" to the Saviour, the congregation must "literally" and "exactlS substitute their own bodies for Christ's absent one: At night he went into the garden to pray [. I will hope that thou didst pray; but not every ordinary and customary prayer, but prayer actually accompanied with shedding of tears and dispositively in a readiness to shed blood for his gloiy in necessary cases, puts thee into conformity with him.
Through the contemplation of the imitatio Christi mnemonic, the description of Christ's death in Scripture will be conjoined with the individual's actual memories of "thing[s] alwady done. The matching of recent and historical past also facilitates the idealization of Christ's crucifixion in the present moment.
Switching from past to present tense, Donne constructs before his listeners the emblem of Christ on the cross, utilizing the rhetorical strategy of enargeia, which Erasmus defines as "when we do not explain a thing simply, but display it to be looked at as if it were expressed in colour in a picture, so that it may seem that we have painted, not narrated, and that the reader has seen, not read" qtd.
The grammatical change and the use of enargeia affects a transformation in the experience of the listeners, who move from the recollection in memory of Scriptural events to the immediate, material apprehension, through a linguistic, specular image, of Christ's death: Towards noon Pilate gave judgement, and they made such haste to execution as that by noon he was upori the cross.
There now hangs that sacred body upon the cross, rebaptized in his 3wn tears, and sweat, and embalmed in his own blood alive. There are those bowels of compassion which are so conspicuous, so manifested, as that you may see them through his wounds. In dying with Christ, Donne's listeners experience a termination of physical life that is not a comp!
On the cross, Christ gives "up the ghost" to God, not because of the ephernerality of his human body, but because of his "contracf' with the Father: And then that Son of God, who was never from us, and yet had now corne a new way unto us in assuming our nature, delivers ihat sou1 which was never out of his Fathets hands by a new way, a voluntary emission of it into his Fathets hands; for though to this God our Lord belonged these issues of death, so that considered in his own contract, he must necessarily die, yet at no breach or battery which they had made upon his sacred body issued his soul; but emisit, he gave up the ghost; and as God breathed a sou1 into the first Adam, so this second Adam breathed his sou1 into God, into the hands of God.
Through enabling his listeners to unite holy image and felt presence, and "hang upon him that hangs upon the cross," that is, project their experiential physicality ont0 the events described in the words of the New Testament, Donne recreates the crucifixion in the materiality of the present moment.
In life Christ was irnmortal Word, mortal flesh, and linguistic text. Re-presented in Donne's words, Christ unites once more ''Spirit" and "Lettet' of Scripture, and gives assurance that the absence of death leads to presence in God.
The positive power of Donne's holy emblem assumes language operates in a mode different from both the semantic theory of referentiality and of immanent correspondence. Donne's words nelher signrfy beyond themselves to God, nor are they the "reflected beames" of the divine. Here the meaning of the word is the affect it has on the listener.
Philip Sidney's description of the potency of poetry applies equally to Donne's devotional language: both "yeeldeth to the powers of the minde an image" that is "not wholly imaginative," but also "substr.
Donne's Christ is not a mimetic reproduction in that there is no extant original he copies. And Our Englifh name wsll conformes with the Greeke word [. Such as by way of refemblance and reuerently we may fay of God: who without any trauell to his diuine imagination, made al1 the worid of nought, nor alfo by any paterne or rnould. Although he leads his listenersthrough the imitatio Christi to the experience of the crucifixion, Donne himself does not participate.
By reanimating Christ and impersonating God, Donne's constructs for himself a ground that infuses his own discourse with divine presence, thus assuring the meaning of Scripture and legitimating his hermeneutic activity. As Maurice Blanchot points out, however, to assign to language complete presence is to "undermineO and overtumu everythingnbecause "there are no longer any ternis, there is no longer a relation, no longer a beyondn In both the notion of referentiality and ontological participation the sign theoretically exists in relation to a transcendantal Other.
Thus, paradoxically, by reinstating the sacred significance of Scripture, Donne destroys the possibility of 1 constituting the "declared and manifestedmevidence of God's being. The disjunction Donne identifies in Devotions upon Emergent Occasions between the rnaterial signifiers of church doctrine and their transcendental referents was noted by other Protestant divines, and the hemeneutic impasse engendered by the fissure between words and "thinges" prornpted contemporary debate regardingthe "perplexed and difficult" Whitaker relationship between Scripture and the holy Word.
Attempting to understand mortality within the Christian narrative of salvation and resunection, Donne addresses the interpretive instability of the biblical text through presenting his rnaterial being as the sensible referent denoted by the signifiers of Scripture. As the ephemerality of his failing body actually only serves to foreground the difference between the textuality of Scripture and the corpo-real, Donne re-animates the materiality of Christ, re-presents the "Essential Wordnthat grounds the signification of the biblical signs, thus ensuring the always already fraught "meaning" of his own discourse.
As the "maket' of the imitatio Christi, Donne effectively is what James I aspires to becorne: a mortal "little GODn James, Works 12 "Who without any trauall to his diuine imagination, made al1 the world of nought, nor alfo by any paterne or mouldn Puttenham To enforce his theory and practice of royal absolutism James attempts to present himself as a sign with an essential.
In Death's Duel, Donne legaimates his discursive power, and ensures the meaning of his Scriptural exegesis, not by claiming to be a sign of God's absolute "Essence," but rather through becoming a producer of signs that are both signifier and substantive referent.
Donne's union of image and Logos in the sensible emblem of the passion displaces God entirely from the economy of representation, thus allowing Donne to appropriate the Word to stabilize and sacralize his own profane discourse.
Notes Richard Waswo notes that Luther distinguished between the signifying mode of words and that of sacraments. The word, for Luther, has immanent meaning or divine essence, while the sacraments signify beyond themselves to divine mysteries Sixteenth century English Protestants, following Erasmus and Calvin, assumed that 'bords 'signify' just as signs and figures don Thus assumptions regarding the workings of linguistic representation were also made about sacramental signs.
As noted in chapter one, King James names himself the reflected "Imagen of God to both describe and legitimate his putative inherited absolute power Works In both uses of the trope, James assumes the "reflected beamesntheory of the mirror, in that the theory and practice of royal absolutism necessitates the king constitute an ontologically CO-extensivesign of the divine.
The sovereign becornes a particular incamation of God on earth, and invested with secular powers proportionate to God's absolute power, through genealogical succession: divinity is immanent in the king's body proper. James is a "brittle," and thus inadequate "glassn Devotions 51 , because he cannot constitute a reflection, in the sense of representation as essence, of the immortality of God. As well, Donne identifies James's textual "mirrot' as "representation onely," subject to hermeneutic instability and thus unable to sufficiently supplement the problematic organic body of the king.
Although Donne's use of corpse imagery does inevitably suggest the vanrty of earthly life, my foremost interest here is his use of the transit0 render visible the invisibility of death. Dublin: GiII and Macmillan, The Hour of Our Death. Helen Weaver. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, Arshagouni, Mary. Bacon, Francis. The Advancement of Leaming. Bald, R. John Donne: A Life. New York: Oxford UP, Barkan, Leonard. New Haven: Yale UP, Bath, Michael. London: Longman, Blanchot, Maurice. The WntKlg of the Disaster.
Ann Smock. Lincoln: U of Nebraska P, Browne, Robert. Treatise upon the Of Matthewe. London, STC Browne, Sir Thomas. The Major Works. Burke, Kenneth. A Grammar of Motives. New York: Prentice Hall, Carey, John. Oxford English Dictionary. Cooper, Robert M. Gary A. Elizabethan and Renaissance Studies Creswell, Catherine. Raymond-Jean Frontain and Frances M. Conway: UCA Press. Derrida, Jacques. Ken Frieden. Derrida and Negative Theolugy. Harold Coward and Toby Foshay. Donne, John.
Ann Arbor: Michigan UP. The Elegies and The Songs and Sonnets. Helen Gardner. Oxford: Clarendon Press, Anthony Raspa. The Sermons of John Donne. George R. Potter and Evelyn M. Berkeley: U of Califomia P. Dupont, Florence. New York: Urzone, Engel, William E. Amherst: U of Massachusetts P, The English Bible: translated out of the original tongues by the commandment of King James the First. Edinburgh: T. Constable, Everard, John. The Gospel Treasury Opened. Parker, All Rights Reserved.
Created by Anniina Jokinen on November 16, Last updated November 4, Background by the kind permission of Stormi Wallpaper Boutique. Now this bell tolling softly for another, says to me, Thou must die.
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