John Donne's Holy Sonnet 18: Critical Analysis

What are poems made from?—Discuss making in the work of any poet of your choice.

John Donne is considered today to be the founder of metaphysical poetry, a term created by Samuel Johnson, but being the Dean of St Paul’s Cathedral in London from 1621 until his death in 1631, he was most famous in his life for the powerful oratory of his sermons. Critics such as Neil King and Isaak Walton have attributed to him and his poetry a colloquial diction, familiar tone, and dramatic directness, the value of which may be explored through his many works, from The Flea to his Holy Sonnets, these three qualities being what makes Donne’s poetry.

In fact, The Flea embodies the element of dramatic directness perfectly. The speaker, attempting to make the woman feel guilty, adopts a theatrical tone, embodying the nature of stage directions; “alas”-he puts his hand to his forehead, sadly- “O stay”-he lunges to block her rising hand- “cruel and sudden” -he backs away from her, horrified. By inserting such drama directly into the speaker’s address of the woman Donne demonstrates the aforementioned quality, having “a habit of grabbing your lapels and demanding the reader’s attention” according to Neil King. Donne’s use of the term “sacrilege” to describe killing the flea inserts drama of biblical proportions into the potential (soon realized) killing of an insect, furthering this sense of drama directed at the woman by attaching the magnitude of a higher power to it, “sacrilege” and “sins” alluding to offending God, which for Donne, a devout Christian, as well as for his readers, many of whom were, as was common of the era, pious Christians also, would carry great weight.

The Flea also possesses a familiar tone- the speaker talking rather informally as he petitions the woman, directly addressing her with his remarks, “thou”- developed largely through the overtly sexual implications made throughout. The metaphysical conceit at work is that of the flea sucking their blood and the union of the blood of the speaker and woman within it as a metaphor for them having sex. In his typical vulgar sense of humor, Donne used the word “suck’d” in reference to the metaphorical flea- in 17th-century printing, “s” looked like “f,” so this looked like the explicit and sexual ‘fuck’d,’ making the meaning of the conceit less implicit and more explicit, exhibiting the type of crude humor one would not share with that one is not familiar with as a general rule, developing this familiar tone. Furthermore, though “pampered swells” conveys the image of the flea being engorged with blood, this may be interpreted as a metaphor for an erection, the poem quite typically of Donne peppered throughout with explicit subtext, reinforcing the previous point. The familiar tone, therefore, enables the ready to feel that they are ‘in on the joke’ and for Donne and his audience to connect through his work.

Additionally, The Good Morrow is quintessential of Donne’s work in that it too possesses this familiar tone. Here we open in the middle of the action, or in medias res-Helen Gardner describing Donne’s openings as “abrupt…like the lump of gold flung down on the table”-given immediate access to wandering ‘pillow talk’ between partners, as if intruding on an intimate moment, the tone familiar. The speaker boldly asks several rather personal questions in the first stanza, establishing the tone further- “I wonder by my troth, what thou and I

Did, till we loved?” The image of weaning is introduced here, alluding to an intimate experience of how a mother changes the way in which she sustains her child, attaching this intimacy to the poem, creating a familiar tone that thereby better reflects the nature of the subject at hand: love, intimate and enduring, shared between two people. According to Izaak Walton said of the narrative voice of Donne’s work that “there are two Donnes: Jack Donne; and Dr. John Donne,” noting the duality of it- how his work contains sophisticated metaphysical conceits alongside a familiar tone, complex literary devices alongside humor, the different aspects of his work contradictory yet cohesive, as if by two different versions of Donne. Alongside quite serious ideas of “souls,” Donne’s typically vulgar and overtly familiar humor remains, Donne, punning on the word “country”, alluding to the obscene syllable ‘'cunt’, meaning female genitals, the familiar tone quite established.

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In his Valediction: Forbidding Mourning Donne writes again with his characteristically dramatic directness. The speaker directly compares his journey to that of death- “as virtuous men pass mildly away”- attaching the rather theatre of meeting your creator and entering unto an experience and plane of existence in which you have never existed before to the speaker's own experience, tackling the subject of love with a dramatic directness. This continues throughout, Donne describing love through the metaphysical conceit of death, of the journey of the soul, and as a Catholic, of meeting your maker, imbuing the poem with the gravity and indeed drama of this. Indeed, Donne’s relationship with faith and theological matters carried with it a sense of drama, John Carey stated “the first thing to remember about Donne is that he was a Catholic; the second, that he betrayed his faith.” Donne was born Catholic at a place and point in history where Catholics were persecuted, his own uncle was condemned to death for being a Catholic priest. The drama and indeed tragedy of this stayed with him. Indeed, he betrayed his background and converted to Anglicanism, though had been previously denied degrees from both Oxford and Cambridge despite his studying at each due to his being Catholic. It is likely Donne saw drama in the matters of faith in his day, and in faith-motivated acts, and that his readers saw this too, making it rather effective to allude to the theological to infuse the piece with a dramatic directness of sorts.

Similarly, in The Sun Rising, there is a dramatic directness in the speaker’s direct address of the sun- “busy old fool, unruly Sun.” The speaker asks the sun “You think your beams are strong? why do you labor under this misapprehension?” The narrator is suggesting that the sun is misguided in thinking its beams are powerful when the lovers have more strength. As Donne says in the next line, ‘I could eclipse … with a wink.’ This direct address and irreverent questioning and personification of a heavenly body- the “sun”- develops the dramatic directness quintessential of Donne’s works within this particular poem. Donne seems to be saying here that the love he speaks of is greater than that of the sun, and can “eclipse” it easily, this overinflating of the importance of the speaker’s emotion and existence overall adding to the drama. The final stanza describes The lovers as a world unto themselves, there is “nothing else”; she’s like the countries, and he’s like their rulers. In a pre-feminist age, it seems only natural for the male protagonist to be at the head of a relationship. The reversal of the usual word order in “Nothing else is” and “all princes I,” is an example of anastrophe, adding further weight. It is this idea that, stated rather directly, the lovers in their love are greater than everything else, are their own universe, the world “contracted” and shrunk while they are everything that imbues the poem with such drama, this sense that the sun shines just for them conveying a real dramatic directness.

Furthermore, the tone of The Sun Rising can certainly be described as familiar, as can that of The Anniversary. Many of the rhyming couplets in The Anniversary attest to this- a year after first meeting his mistress, the speaker assesses their relationship and believes “all other things to their destruction draw, only our love hath no decay.” The largely monosyllabic diction and the generalizing approach, evident in the opening term “all,” as well as the metrical ‘neatness’ combine to create a clear statement about the endurance of love; one that requires little linguistic ornamentation therefore. The phrase’s minimalism makes it undeniably conclusive, like some of the constructions in The Sun Rising: “she's all states, and all princes I, nothing else is.” The unfussy quality of the writing gives a conversational directness – the feeling of a voice emboldened by love to speak confidently, clearly, and in a familiar fashion – and results in lines that are immensely quotable. The conversational nature of the poems is what makes the tone of each, typically of Donne’s work as aforementioned- so familiar in nature. The Good-morrow starts with casual jauntiness- you can hear the pose in the tone of voice- It is a love poem, both dismissing and celebrating the world of maps, of chemistry (“whatever dies was not mixed equally”), and of exploration, in which the speaker seduces by delighting in the intricacy of his ideas. We see a similar tone in the opening of The Sun Rising, though with a note of mock frustration too. The lovers are woken by the sun whom the speaker tells to get lost, to return to the workaday world. However, that is to put it far too simple; the complexity of the poem is that the world of court huntsmen, of kings, of exploration, has its attractions even as it is being shoved roughly aside; Donne was an ambitious man. The ending brings unexpected tenderness: the lovers need warming, so the sun has a job to do after all, a familiarity found in this vulnerability.

The Sun Rising also embodies the colloquial diction for which Donne is so well known. He calls the sun a “saucy…wretch,” the informal colloquial language assisting in the development of the idea the speaker in his love is more than the sun, humanizing the sun, making it seem small. The sexual and humorous implications of “saucy” in particular make the work seem less formal, and therefore more genuine, human emotion more believable and relatable when expressed through casual colloquial language, unfiltered by the conscious mind, through which language becomes more sophisticated and less instinctive and true to innate emotion therefore. The abbreviated “prentices” furthers this so-called colloquial diction, adding to the overall theme of irreverence. The expletive humor/pun of The Flea- “suck’d”- and The God Morrow- “country”- are similarly colloquial; in the words of Samuel Johnson, who himself coined the term ‘metaphysical,’ “genuine wit and useful knowledge may be sometimes found, buried in the grossness of expression.” He said this of Donne’s work, conveying how Donne in his works maintains his colloquial diction whilst writing sophisticated matters, maintaining humor throughout also.

Both Holy Sonnet XIV and Holy Sonnet XVIII embody the dramatic directness John exhibits in many of his works. The opening of Holy Sonnet XIV is abrupt- “batter my heart” -a trochee, with the emphasis on the opening syllable, pulling the reader in. The speaker wants God in his heart and invites God to enter violently, as with a battering ram. The idea is powerful and shocking, certainly dramatic in the speaker’s direct address of his creator, the imperative highlighting this dramatically irreverent directness. Donne begins Holy Sonnet XVIII similarly, with the directness of a question and the drama of addressing one’s creator, highlighted by the irreverence of the imperative-“show me deare Christ…which on the other shore goes richly painted?. “Rob’d and tore” is likely a reference to the Thirty Year’s war, quite possibly the most severe conflict to happen in Europe before the 20th century (an estimated 8,000,000 died) Donne attaches the weight and drama of this to his words. “Germany” especially, was devastated, hence its mention, Donne was unafraid to directly tackle tragedy. The boldly irreverent reference to Christ as a pimp of sorts certainly reinforces the attribute of Donne’s work at hand- “and let myne amorous Soule court thy mild Dove.”

The rather familiar language used in Holy Sonnet XIV, “ravish” meaning rape, is an intense and delicate subject indeed to be spoken of so directly. Regardless of the irreverence this shows, the entity whom Donne addresses is his creator, an omniscient being who knows all of you- despite us understanding very little about His complex nature- so a certain level of familiarity perhaps has some logic to it ( however this would have been shocking for the pious audience at the time, the risqué nature requiring familiarity perhaps.) This is true of Holy Sonnet XVIII too, in that it addresses God. Holy Sonnet XVIII similarly has a familiar tone, in the irreverent way in which the speaker addresses God- describing Jesus as some sort of pimp as previously discussed- and in irreverence to the Church, describing the Church as the wife of Christ to be promiscuous- the idea of the Christian faith being impure quite controversial at the time, and to be shared with those one trusts, one’s friends, furthering the development of a familiar tone- as a woman “open to most men.” Furthermore, though the word “embraced” -rather informal in its contraction- refers to a hug in English (still rather familiar) in France- on the “other shore” as Donne puts it- this would describe kissing, salacious undertones, and double-meanings in a fashion typical of Donne setting a familiar tone.

In conclusion, it’s Donne’s individual style of poetry, poetry composed of colloquial diction, familiar tone, and dramatic directness, which makes him such an important literary figure, and as such he is considered the father of metaphysical poetry, being such a pioneer for a less formal traditional approach to poetry in the 17th century, his work studied widely even today.