The Poetry of John Donne Presents Unexpected Perspectives on the Human Experience

TOPIC: “The poetry of John Donne presents unexpected perspectives on human experience.” Discuss with reference to at least three poems.
The use of unorthodox poetic imagery conveys equally unconventional notions of the human experience in Donne’s poetry. Through static images and exaggerated similes, satirical or humorous effects are expressed as each poem provides an insight into divergent facets of human existence. Established ideas are challenged by largely innocuous lines of reasoning, as Donne employs spurious syllogisms to highlight the transcendental nature of religious faith and physical love, the meaningless nature of virginity and the notion of death as a transitory stage between the physical world and “paradise”. In his portrayal of the deep romantic love, Donne also develops the humanist notion of physical love as a microcosm, in which all the affairs of the external world, indeed even the Sun become meaningless. Conversely, the nature of conquest and discovery also become significant metaphors for love. Through the use of unusual symbols and motifs, Donne presents perspectives on humanity that challenge accepted norms. [How very metaphysical.]
The notion of love is presented as both a sensory experience of the body and a religious understanding of the soul, a distinction represented through the Aristotelian delineation between the worldly imperfection of the sublunary and the binary opposite perfection of the transcendental, that marks the inherent conflict between the physical and the spiritual. Indeed, the force of physical love and sexual desire, for Donne, is innately subordinate to divine love, or spiritual beauty. A Valediction Forbidding Mourning, along with The Sun Rising, identifies this binary opposition between the banal, sublunary love of existence and the sacred love of the speakers. However, contrary to this reverence, the speaker in To His Mistress Going to Bed, claims that his love for a woman, as she undresses, surpasses all Biblical representations, highlighting the often conflicting messages of each poem. The Sun Rising and The Good-Morrow envision a lover or pair of lovers as being islands entire of themselves [see what I did there?]; relationships that transcend worldly banalities. In both poems, the speaker suggests that the lovers become so enamoured with each other that to them, they are the only beings in existence. In The Sun Rising, the speaker suggests that the sun should “shine here to us [the lovers], and thou art everywhere,” evidently, concluding that in doing so, the sun will be shining on the entire world; that “this bed thy centre is,” the sun is told, and “these walls, thy sphere.”
Significantly, fallacious syllogisms become a recurring motif within Donne’s poetry, as is evidenced in The Flea, in which the image of a flea that has just bitten the speaker and his lover, an unconventional metaphor for a love poem, becomes the premise of a largely vacuous debate over whether the two will have sex. In an attempt to woo his as yet unconvinced lover, the speaker uses the flea, in whose body his blood is “mingled” with hers, to highlight the irrelevance of her “maidenhead”. He reasons that if their blood mingles in the flea so readily, their sexual mingling could only be equally sinful; that they are essentially the same thing. In the second stanza, the speaker suggests that to kill the flea would be tantamount to killing themselves; that “three lives in one flea spare”. Holy Sonnet X also employs such casuistry to reason that Death is not all-powerful; that death is not an end to life, but rather acts as an intermediary between physical life and ‘new’ life after death, which Donne suggests is akin to falling asleep. Fundamental faith in rebirth in the face of adversity becomes a form of source of physical satisfaction, in Donne’s poetry, as the sense of fulfilment derived from religious worship is juxtaposed with the pleasure derived from carnal embrace [couldn’t stop myself]. In Holy Sonnet XIV however, this syllogistic belief is overturned as the speaker asks God to “batter [my] heart”, thereby freeing him from worldly concerns. The poem appeals to God however, rather than pleading for mercy, the speaker seeks brutality. The use of powerful verbs engenders the image of God as a brutal and violent force. The speaker can only overcome sin and achieve spiritual purity if he is compelled by God; that through the act of rape, paradoxically, the speaker will be rendered chaste.
The depiction of contemporary voyages of discovery and imperial conquest is employed in distinct and often conflicting ways. Donne uses the voyages as a metaphor for the lovers’ affairs, as in To His Mistress Going to Bed, the speaker, referring to his mistress’ body as “[my] America, [my] Newfoundland”, creates a link between the conquest of foreign lands and the conquest of sex, in a vain attempt to convince his lover to have sex, he compares the sexual act to a voyage of discovery. This comparison also serves to convince her that, like the Americas, it is only inevitable that she too will eventually be discovered and conquered. However, in The Good-Morrow and The Sun Rising, the speakers express their insouciance toward these voyages, preferring to seek adventure and conquests in bed with their lovers [all very Blackadder-esque]. Indeed, in these poems, the outside world becomes a source of distraction for the lovers; an interruption for their sex. Each of these assertions describes a conflicting perspective on familiar imagery, as in The Sun Rising, to the wakeful lover; the rising sun seems an intruder, as in the bedroom “all the world’s contracted thus”. Likewise, the voyages of discovery are shunned, and labelled as meaningless. The speaker claims to have all the world’s riches in his bed, “whether both th’Indias of spice and mine/Be where thou left’st them, or lie here with me”. For the speaker, his thoughts transcend the physical world; that the microcosm he has created could even “eclipse and cloud them [beams of sunlight] with a wink.”
In employing unorthodox metaphors and motifs, Donne conveys the fundamental desires and fears of humanity. Sexual attraction and religious faith is justified by spurious reasoning, which in turn, elevates faith to a position that supersedes romantic love in a geocentric universe of spheres. In doing so, the contemporary symbols of discovery and conquest substantiate the speakers’ claims, as physical love is compared to the New World. However, contrary to this, Donne also creates the belief that physical love and belief in God renders the external world, indeed even the Sun and Death, irrelevant. Fallacious reasoning becomes a recurring arbiter that allows the speakers to in the case of The Flea, justify having sex, or in Holy Sonnet X, to prove the banality of death. Thus, it is through the integration of unconventional imagery, symbols and motifs that Donne emphasises perspectives on humanity that are often at odds with poetic orthodoxy.