A Selection of John Donne's Holy Sonnets

All text quoted from The Variorum Edition of the Poetry of John Donne, v.7, pt. 1.
The Holy Sonnets
Gary Stringer, Gen. Ed.

HS V: "I am a little world made cunningly"

General Commentary

Gosse (1899, 2:107-08) finds that, as Donne “reflects upon his frailty” in HSLittle, his “old intellectual ingenuity” returns, and he “calls on the discoverers of America to lend him their new seas to add to the old,” wishes to make a “flood deep enough to quench the fires of lust and envy before they have consumed his soul away,” and hopes “to save as much of that soul as possible to be the prey of a very different conflagration, the zeal of the Lord and of His house burning him up” (108). HSBatter and HSLittle are, Altizer (1973, 86-87) says, “the only two examples of Donne's plea for personal apocalypse” (86). There is violent imagery in both, but it is more subdued in HSLittle, Altizer argues, residing neither in accumulation of paradox nor in erotic imagery, but in the symbolic force of the reiterated verbs “drowne” and “burne.” Altizer contends that both HSLittle and HSBatter, as “semi-apocalyptic” poems, tend to be self-conscious and logical, their plea for the overthrow of reason and selfhood answered in part by the very image of the Holy Spirit that the poems create. Altizer states, however, that there is little reason to suppose that when these two poems were written Donne was on the verge of discovering the Adam and the Christ within himself (87). See also HSBatter: Themes.

Blanch (1974, 480) writes that HSLittle contains “an interesting mélange of astronomical and religious imagery to underscore the internal conflict in the poet’s ‘little world.’”

Carleton (1977, 64) supposes that in HSLittle Donne “speaks of body and soul united in human love, or gives voice to his spiritual struggles and yearnings.” Partridge (1978 134—35) thinks that HSLittle is unusually structured “because the plaint about sin overflows the limits of the octave by a line” (134). He notes that the first quatrain presents man as a microcosm and that there are two biblical references in the poem: one to 2 Pet. 3.7 and another to Ps. 69.9-10. Partridge rejects Empson's reading (1935-see HSLittle: Themes) for not being “based on a close reading of the text” (135).

Aers and Kress (1981, 66-68) note that, given Donne’s emphasis in the sonnets on the instability of the self, his desire, as expressed in HSLittle and HSBatter, “is an idiosyncratic and violently assertive demand to be raped, overwhelmed and drowned” (66). See more under General Commentary on HSBatter.

Ray (1990b, 174-75) points to the “central analogy” of the microcosm at the opening of the sonnet, observing that the speaker “is made of the elements (i.e. his body) and a spirit (i.e. his soul),” but because of sin, the body and soul will die and be condemned to everlasting damnation unless the speaker can find a remedy that will redeem him. The speaker turns to the astronomers and discoverers who are finding “new facets of creation that before seemed nonexistent,” Ray notes, with the speaker hoping for a similar experience in the “parallel universe / earth of himself” (174). According to Ray, the speaker considers “seas” of tears to wash him clean as well as God's purifying “fires,” recalling Ps. 69.9, the fire that “will burn up the old charred world of his sinful self: paradoxically, it is an ‘eating’ up that will ‘heal’ him spiritually by making him a ‘new earth,’ a new world” (174-75).

Low (1993, 69) states that the view of God in the sonnet is that of “lord of a ‘house,’ which the poet wants to join, that is, he is head of a family, tribe, or nation.”

Variorum 333-4

HS VI: “This is my play’s last scene”

General Commentary

Gransden (1954, 128) describes HSBlack, HSMade, and HSScene as “rather sombre” sonnets that present a poet seeking “strength, grace, and forgiveness from Christ.”

Bellette (1975, 334-41) writes that the idea of Christ on the cross affects the form of HSMade, HSScene and HSRound, and notes that these three sonnets may be read as forming a sequence “depicting . . . the transition from this world to the next” (334). See fuller commentary under HSMade: General Commentary.

Partridge (1978, 132) writes that HSScene has a “less explosive opening” than most of Donne's poetry, arguing further that because Donne finds at the end of HSScene and HSRound that “consolation is in vain,” one may appropriately read the two poems together.

HSScene, Rollin (1986, 141) says, is an example of “Christian ‘comedy’” as identified by Robert Burton in The Anatomy of Melancholy, that is, “a miniature religious drama with a happy ending.”

Shawcross (1988, 301-10) analyzes the text and textual variants of HSScene, citing it as a poem that, though “seemingly simple textually” (306), confirms in fact that for Donne there appear to be “no uncomplicated texts, only deceptive pitfalls” (310).

Ray (1990b, 321-22) notes the speaker’s emphasis on the “very end of several things” and describes the speaker's state of mind as “a complex combination of anticipation and fear,” including the “Christian fear of the Last Judgment” (321). But the sestet, according to Ray, resolves the issue for the speaker as he “imagines his soul ascending to heaven,” thereby assuring himself that “his sins that came of the body will fall with the body and leave his repentant soul [“imputed righteous by Christ himself”] free” (322).

Albrecht (1992, 24-30) offers an extended comparison of HSScene and HSBatter as part of her argument that the twelve sonnets from 1633 are formed into two groups of six, with each poem in the first group having a counterpart in the second group. See more under HSBatter: General Commentary.

Oliveros (1992, 143-65) includes HSScene among four English Baroque poems he translates and comments on, analyzing the meditative and Ignatian elements in the sonnet and citing it as a prime example of the Baroque in English.

Shullenberger (1993, 55) notes that the “ocular motif,” which dominates the religious poems, is present in HSScene, where “the gaze of God” “whose feare already shakes my every joynt” (1.8) is “omniscient and threatening.”

Variorum 416-17

HS VII: “At the round earth’s imagined corners”

General Commentary

Richards (1929, 4, 42-50, 365) includes the responses to HSRound of a number of readers who commented upon it without knowing its title or author. Richards identifies the majority of them as “undergraduates reading English with a view to an Honours Degree,” though some were reading in other subjects and there was a “sprinkling” of non-academics (4). Richards, in classifying responses, characterizes them as the consequence of “doctrinal grudge” (44), “anti-religious prejudice” (45), “moral objection to the poet’s attitude” (45), “ignorance of Christian cosmology” (47), “inexperience” or “lack of familiarity” with even “simple verse movements” (49), and “frustrated visualization” (49). In reporting the relative popularity of the thirteen anonymous poems examined, Richards lists the responses to HSRound as 30 “favourable” (11th of 13), 42 “unfavourable” (tie for 5th of 13), and 28 “non-committed” (13th of 13) (365).

Eliot (1930, 552-53) distinguishes between religious and devotional poetry, the former arising from a religious feeling, the latter from something connected with revealed religion; and he quotes HSRound in full as an example of Donne's best “religious poetry.”

Bush (1945, 134) cites the poem as an example of Donne’s “medieval learning.”

Brooke (1948, 635) says of HSRound that it “rises easily above all the rest” of the Holy Sonnets.

Turnell (1950, 273) identifies HSRound as one of Donne’s “greatest poems and one of the greatest sonnets in the language.”

Gransden (1954, 135) cites HSRound as a “fine example” of Donne’s use of “traditional medieval material.”

Sanders (1971, 132) says that HSRound does not offer much for our understanding of what it means to “behold God.”

Bellette (1975, 334-41) writes that the idea of Christ on the cross affects the form of HSMade, HSScene and HSRound, and notes that these three sonnets may be read as forming a sequence “depicting . . . the transition from this world to the next” (334). See fuller commentary under HSMade: General Commentary.

Skelton (1978, 67-68), writing about the relationship between a poet’s beliefs and those of his readers, observes that in a poem like HSRound it is important for a reader to know about the intense feelings involved in the Last Judgment, not necessarily to endorse those beliefs but to appreciate the anguish of the speaker. HSRound, he suggests, like the other Holy Sonnets, “relies upon expressed beliefs only to the extent that these are symptomatic of all beliefs of a certain kind” (68).

Wellek (1986, 227) cites Richards’s critical study (1929), noting that Richards views HSRound as a poem that may evoke the “fullest emotional belief while withholding intellectual belief,” but Wellek understands this to be an “inferior” response, since Richards goes on to contend that HSRound “requires actual belief in the doctrine for its full and perfect imaginative realization.”

Zemplényi (1986, 157-58), noting that both Gardner (1952-see Holy Sonnets: Dating and Order) and Martz (1954-see HSRound: Genre and Traditions and Holy Sonnets: Genre and Traditions) analyze HSRound as “a poetic meditation,” finds another interpretation of the poem possible: “while the theology represented in the sonnet is absolutely orthodox, both from Catholic and Anglican sides, the poem’s whole structure is ironic,” with the greatest irony in the beginning and the ending, giving “an ironic frame to the work,” which is directed in part “against poetic tradition” (158). See also Notes and Glosses to lines 1-2.

Ray (1990b, 39-40) identifies the speaker of HSRound as “a Christian ready for the end of the world and the Last Judgment,” waiting “to see the four angels standing on the four corners of the earth blowing their trumpets” (Rev. 7. 1) and the resurrection and reunion of souls to bodies in anticipation of Final Judgment (39-40). Ray notes that Donne “conveys the drama and grandeur of the unfathomable massiveness in such an assembly by the inclusive listings and by repetition and heavy stresses on ‘all.’” But the sestet, according to Ray, presents the speaker as “suddenly fearful and having misgivings,” a change “evident in the word ‘But’ that begins the sestet.” Perceiving the need for more time to pray and repent, the speaker, Ray argues, “reverses himself by asking God to, after all, wait a bit longer before he causes the end of the world and the resurrection of the dead ('let them sleep').” The speaker wants God to teach him how to repent in the “‘here’ and now,” which, for Ray, is an “important” initial step “to assure his salvation” (40).

Levi (1991, 93-94) finds “visionary passages” in Donne’s poetry, much as there are “visionary sentences” in his sermons, and yet, he thinks, Donne “never maintains visionary intensity throughout an entire secular poem.” But Levi finds Donne “capable of unearthly visions,” such as those present in HSRound (93). Levi maintains that Donne’s “constant urge is to outsoar his own mind’s boundaries, to race towards a receding horizon, to come close to saying what cannot be said,” but he also finds Donne “too passionate for innocent visions, and too thoughtful for simple ones” and thus “his greatness lies elsewhere.” In Levi's view, HSRound “droops away into religious melancholy about sin, as so many of Donne's religious poems do” (94).

Ellrodt (1995, 21-22) notes that Donne wrote in one of his letters (Letters 70-72) that “since men have various affections, therefore various minds,” and therefore, “out of this variety of minds it proceeds, that though our souls would go to one end, heaven, and all our bodies must go to one end, the earth; yet our third part, the mind, which is our natural guide here, chooses to every man a several way” (21-22).

Ellrodt comments that an “unorthodox theologian” might think that the soul “only survives as an impersonal spiritual principle in the period between death and the resurrection,” but he adds that Donne does not explicitly state this view, though it would be “consonant with his dallying with the mortalist heresy” in HSRound (22).

Variorum 388-90

HS IX: “If poisonous minerals”

General Commentary

Potter (1934, 18-19) writes about Donne's "search for himself" that pointed him eventually towards religion. Noting that Donne's religious writings reveal his continuing quest and show that "he was not always satisfied to wait patiently till death should open wide the gates and let him in" (18), Potter cites HSMin as a poem that results from "such impatience," adding that few churchmen went as far as Donne does in this poem "in questioning the justice of God's ways to man" (18-19).

Ansari (1974, 143) writes that there is "a sharp and strong protest against the inscrutable cosmic order" in HSMin.

Roston (1974, 58-59) argues that in HSMin Donne achieves an "inversion of the familiar" by placing the "hyperbolic vocabulary of the Counter Reformation" in a "new setting."

Sellin (1974, 192-96), noting that with the Reformation, God became less a benevolent deity and more a God who lay beyond the scope of human reason, thinks that HSMin dramatizes the position of Luther and Calvin on man's relation to God and God's will (192). Sellin states that Protestants lost the psychological comfort of being able to discern with certainty the Lord's intentions and that with the emphasis on predestination one was unable to know for certain whether one was elect because God's ways were unsearchable. This perception of God, Sellin says, is discernible in the drama and the lyric poetry of the Renaissance, and it is evident in the Holy Sonnets, specifically HSDue and HSMin. In HSMin, says Sellin, the octave raises Luther's question, namely, "why does God lay our destruction to the charge of human will, when man cannot avoid it?" (193). Sellin states that in the sestet Donne answers the question the way that Luther answered it: "though you should ask much, you never find out" (193). See also Sellin under Holy Sonnets: General Commentary.

Miller (1982, 836) finds that the sonnet opens "audaciously by accusing God of unfairness in the consequences He has decreed for original sin," but in the sestet the persona recognizes his unworthiness to dispute with God, begging that his "tears of guilt" might bring God "to overlook his sins rather than actually forgiving them." Although this sonnet, unlike HSBatter, "does not turn on a sexual image," Miller notes, it nonetheless contrasts "the lot of fallen man unfavorably with that of lecherous goats, who have no decree of damnation over them."

Sherwood (1984, 154) contends that the Holy Sonnets do not affirm rational skepticism, but instead "portray reason's share in the debility from sin while granting its essential contribution in erecting the soul through repentance," for "it is sin that makes reason 'untrue."' For example, in HSMin, according to Sherwood, the argument of the octave "ignores the difference between man and lower creatures until reason itself in the sestet, by ensuring such misguided 'dispute' and demolishing its own untrue constructs, ironically dramatizes that difference."

Schoenfeldt (1994, 82) observes that although the sonnet "begins with a brazen interrogation of divine justice," it turns to "an interrogation of the speaker's own identity and status in discourse with God," as in line g. The ending, Schoenfeldt notes, "equivocally prais[es] God's mercy."

Variorum 367-8

HS X: “Death be not proud”

General Commentary

De Quincey (1818 [1890, 70-71]), explaining some of the reasons Donne "is now almost forgotten," nonetheless says that fuller attention to his verse is warranted and quotes in full HSDeath, to which, he says, "high place is due."

Dyce (1833, 214) observes that HSDeath is "[d]eep-thoughted; and forcible."

Wordsworth (1833 [1979, 5:604]) responds to Alexander Dyce's request for advice about selections for his Specimens of English Sonnets (1833), commenting that HSDeath should be included because it is "so eminently characteristic" of Donne's "manner," as well as "so weighty in thought, and vigorous in expression." Wordsworth also admits that "to modern taste it may be repulsive, quaint, and labored."

The unnamed editor ("H.E.M.") of Dies Consecrati: or, A New Christian Year with the Old Poets (1855, 294) prints HSDeath as a poem appropriate for the Burial of the Dead.

An anonymous author writing in QR (1862-63,43-90) prints HSBlack as a poem illustrating the struggle between doubt and faith, and then HSDeath, remarking that the second poem "was composed when the victory had been achieved, and, in imagination, the last enemy was already trodden under foot" (86).

Hunt (1867, 78), though expressing general disappointment about Donne's "sincere" but "not healthy" piety, acknowledges HSDeath to be "the best sonnet he wrote." Written on a subject with which, Hunt thinks, Donne "was in more than one sense of the word least happy," the poem is in his judgment "equally unexceptionable and noble."

MacDonald (1868, 121-23), both praising and criticizing the Holy Sonnets, quotes in full HSMade, HSSouls, and HSDeath, describing them as "very fine" (121).

Deshler (1879, 125-26) writes about Donne in the form of a dialogue between a professor and a student. The "professor" comments negatively about Donne's poetry and cites as characteristic of Donne's verse HSRound and HSDeath. The "student" is initially more positive, observing that "[tlhere is something delightfully impudent in Donne's contemptuous banter of Death" in HSDeath and also commenting that the final couplet "in a measure redeems the extravagant braggadocio that precedes it" (126). Nonetheless, the student acknowledges that Donne's response is "inferior in true grandeur" to St. Paul's words in I Cor. 15.55 ("0 death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory?") and to Raleigh's apostrophe to Death at the close of History of the World.

Noble (1880, 456-57), though hinting that most of Donne's sonnets are "chaff," says that one of the "wheat-grains" is HSDeath. Noting that, other than the topic of love, death "has been the most favoured motive of lyrical poets," Noble doubts that there is in English "any invocation to Death which, for manliness, weight, and dignity, deserves a place beside this high utterance of the first of our miscalled 'metaphysical poets"' (456). After printing the poem, Noble affirms that there is "nothing of the same kind in English poetry more impressive than this solemnly triumphant close" (457).

Caine (1882, 276) calls HSDeath "magnificent" and a "masterpiece" and observes that "there can hardly be a doubt that it is the weightiest, most forceful and ful-thoughted of all the many English sonnets written on the subject."

Pollitt (1890, 70-71) explains generally why Donne, though with a "splendid reputation" in his own time, is now largely neglected because of such qualities as "the extreme harshness of his metre, and the obscurity of much that he wrote" (70). He says, furthermore, that a "just expression of respect for the memory of this distinguished man" would be to print a representative selection of his verse, and he chooses HSDeath with the belief that readers will think "that a high place is due" to that sonnet.

An anonymous author in Ac (1900, 609) quotes the poem in full to illustrate that Donne's Divine Poems "have the same intensity of imagination, the same fine exordia" as his secular verse.

Grierson (1909, 248) notes that in a manuscript collection made between 1619 and 1623 BoulRec and an "Elegie" beginning "Death be not proud" (not HSDeath—ed.) appear together, the latter seemingly in answer to the former. Despite this coincidence, he suggests that "Elegie" was not composed by Donne but possibly by the Countess of Bedford. Grierson later (1912, 2:cxliii-cxlv) identifies two manuscripts, H6 and 021, in which the "Elegie" appears as a continuation of BoulRec, but again argues, on the basis of style and content, that the former is not Donne's, adding that the poem may or may not be by the Countess of Bedford.

Schelling (1910, 133), discussing the composers of religious sonnets in Shakespeare's time, cites Corona and the Holy Sonnets, "both of questionable date," as collections that contain poems "worthy of Donne's great repute." He quotes HSDeath in full as an example.

Hillyer (1941, xxxiv) praises HSDeath as "one of the triumphs of the sonnet form in English."

Garrod (1946, x) singles out HSDeath and HSWilt from among the Divine Poems as works "men will not willingly let die."

Brooke (1948, 635-36) is of the opinion that among the Holy Sonnets HSDeath ranks second only to HSRound.

Buckley (1965, 29), though identifying HSDeath as "histrionic," also finds that it has "magnificent moments."

Bush (1965, 75) refers to HSDeath as a poem "in which the poet challenges the great enemy in the strength of Christian faith."

Sanders (1967, 353) writes that, in HSDeath, Donne "apostrophizes from an imperative opening into a series of arguments and refutations, developing his statement much as an accomplished debater might." He argues that Donne minimizes death by quickly taking the reader past "fearful spots."

Dickinson (1967, 6) notes that this poem is concerned with "immortality of the soul, a concept made immediate and real by means of the argument the poet advances in an implied debate with personified Death."

Mulder (1969, 63-64) believes that while HSDeath is sometimes cited as an example of confident hope in eternal life, it would have been read by Donne's contemporaries as a cry of anguish. He says that its logic is a series of false syllogisms, a "hopeless argument from a helpless voice" (63). "Sheer animal fear" of losing his body in death causes the speaker to cast about for arguments against death, Mulder says. Contending that the speaker's "specious reasoning" shows his anxiety, Mulder finds the speaker's one-sided debate as he attempts to silence death to be a desperate effort to silence his own anguish. This sophistry, he argues, proves the impotence of human reason in the face of death and points to the Christian's only recourse: the hope of heaven founded on faith (64).

Had he feared death, Roy and Kapoor (1969, 121) write, Donne would not have been able to defy death as he does in HSDeath. Further, they argue, Donne focuses on death because "it brings to the fore his consciousness of his sins."

French (1970, 113-14) claims that this sonnet reveals a fear of death despite the assurances in the poem. Furthermore, he states, Donne's analogies are "so desperately evasive that we can only conclude he must have had something considerable to evade." French calls the poem a "sustained piece of bluff."

Smith (1970, 161) declares that the "hammering grandeur" of such poems as HSDeath reveals the "momentousness" of the subject matter. Donne's writing, Smith contends, "invests our human affairs with a dignity that befits man's standing, at the centre of a cosmic drama." There is, he says, no inward conflict or personal anguish.

According to Sanders (I 97 I, I 14-1 5), this sonnet displays a "bland superficiality" and a "triumphal brassiness." See more from Sanders in the General Commentary on the Holy Sonnets above.

Willy (1971, 80) thinks that Donne is proclaiming the "ultimate invincibility of man's immortal soul" by "defiantlyn challenging what in a 1621 sermon he calls "the last and in that respect the worst enemy" (Sermons, 4:55).

Granqvist (1975, 126-28) notes that HSDeath is "[b]y far the most popular" of the Holy Sonnets in the anthologies he surveyed from the 1830s to 1860s, followed by HSDue and HSRound (128).

Jones (1978, 38-40) writes that Donne "could not conceivably have been aware of how bad his arguments are" in HSDeath, suggesting that the "badness" of these arguments "must be taken as part of the meaning of the poem" (38). He observes that what is admired in Donne's poems of faith "is his refusal to be intimidated by reasons" (39) and that in HSDeath there is enacted "an encounter between man and more-than-man" (40).

Low (1978~66) argues that this sonnet, the best known of all Donne's devotional poems, is not a traditional devotion because "it balances indirect meditation on death with vocal thanksgiving for salvation."

Manlove (1978, 11-12) describes HSDeath as a "striking demonstration of Donne's commitment to mind in opposition to external phenomena," as in this poem "wit takes on death itself." He notes that, until the final couplet, Donne "proposes to devalue death by purely human intelligence and argument," but in that effort Manlove finds Donne largely unsuccessful. The arguments, he says, "do not convince" (11). The final two lines, he thinks, make a point that might have formed the basis for the argument of the poem as a whole and thus have "saved" it, but, "thrown in" at the end, it "seems one more in a list of self-delusions," for, indeed, it "glosses over the possibility that eternal waking might be in fields not Elysian." Finally, Manlove asserts, "to say that death will die is to give back to the notion of dying all the weight and meaning that the poem has tried to remove from it" (12).

Carey (1981, 199) finds that "part of the strength of this poem is that its argument is so weak." As Carey explains, even though the speaker claims that death is nothing to fear, "the speaker can hardly, at the end, use death as a threat . . . without ludicrously betraying himself." Donne's "ill-assorted reasons tumble out in no recognizable order, reflecting inner disarray," in Carey's view, presenting us with a speaker who is "plainly trying to convince himself, and failing so badly that he cannot even decide whether he wants to say sleep is better than death or vice versa."

Hyman (1982,49-50) considers HSDeath in the context of the larger question of how "humanists and other non-believers" can appreciate religious works and focuses on the poem as "experience" rather than a series of statements providing simple answers. Hyman finds the claims of the sonnet "unambiguous" and set out in three arguments: "we should not fear death because the image of death ('sleepe') gives pleasure, because death is itself subject to 'Fate,' and, finally, because we are promised eternal life." Since the first two arguments are "specious," according to Hyman, but "are presented with so much more vigor and wit than the third," one finds it difficult "to decide which reason is more effective within the poem." And Hyman adds that "there is nothing in the poem to indicate that the third reason, the belief in the immortality of the soul, is of a different order of seriousness than the obviously specious reasons that precede it" (49). Hyman indicates that he is not "suggesting that the poem does not mean what it says," but rather that, at the end, "we should respond to the entire poem and not just to the conclusion." Doing so, he believes, will allow us to read the poem not as a "statement" but as an "experience," that is, the experience of "the extreme difficulty, logically and emotionally, of the speaker's overcoming his fear of death as well as the courageous resolution to do so" (50).

Gill (1990, 103) finds the repeated change of moods in the sonnet a product of "a kind of poetic duel with death." Gill sees the falsity of the argument itself as posing an interpretive problem, but he offers two defenses of this approach: I) because the poem is about "the language we use to speak of death," then "what the poet does is playfully exploit some of the ways in which people speak of death in order to belittle the kind of talk that calls it mighty and dreadful"; and 2) "what matters is not the argument itself but the creation of an anxious mind that seeks to control the terrible threat of death by bracing itself with as many images as it can." Gill also observes that God is not mentioned in the poem, and he wonders if the speaker "feels death to be more immediate than God" or if there is a "quiet confidence in the restraint of the language" that makes it "more appealing and religiously profound" than the more direct language of a poem like HSBatter.

Ray (1990b, 86-87) points to the speaker's "absolute confidence in his eternal salvation and triumph over physical death" (86), finding as well a "grimly humorous pun" in the image of Death as a "corpse that is swollen: the speaker sees the effect of physical death on a dead body as exemplifying the pride in Death personified," and yet, "it is pride without justification," as he shows (87).

To González and de Sevilla (1991, 552-53) HSDeath offers a blunt demystification of death. The poem begins, they observe, by recognizing that to some, death is great and powerful but proceeds to show that its influence and action are limited and very much earthbound.

Handley (1991, 43) calls HSDeath a "finely economical" poem that is "rich in single word effects" and that features a "sustained personification of 'Death' throughout giving it a curiously triumphant tone."

Singh (1992, 99) states that the sonnet "affirms the Christian belief that the death of Christ on the cross has freed mankind from the fear of death."

Variorum 293 – 7

HS XI: “Spit in my face ye Jews”

General Commentary

In an eighteenth-century Moravian Brethren's hymn-book (A  Collection of Hymns) (1754 [1966, 19-20]), four Holy Sonnets-HSMade, HSDue, HSSpit, and HSWhat—are used, slightly altered, and combined to make up hymn number 383.

Herbold (1965, 279-81), reading HSSpit against the backdrop of a study of dialectics, refers to the poem as a "single dialectical syllogism" (279), holds that "the keynote of Donne's dialectics is his search for an equilibrium between balanced polarities" (280), and generalizes that Donne's dialectics in the Holy Sonnets is "chiefly between Faith and Doubt" (281 ).

 

Carey (1981, 48) interprets Donne's attempt at identification with Christ on the cross as a sign of his "hunger for pain." Even though Donne "flings himself on the nails and the sword," nothing happens, Carey says, for "he is not fit, he realizes, for those bloody joys." The poem reflects, in Carey's opinion, Donne's "spiritual paralysis, which signals God's desertion."

Grant (1983, 115-17, 166) analyzes the sonnet in the context of his view of the cross as that which "remains with us, as Thomas à Kempis says, calling for our constant self-correction and vigilant discrimination." In Grant's view, HSSpit "expresses the turbulence of a man coming to realise the paradox . . .  of God's redemptive action, his 'strange love"' (115). Grant finds that the sonnet can be divided according to the Ignatian meditative model, "adapted by Donne for his Protestant purposes." Grant cites Lewalski's study of Protestant poetics (1979) in relation to Martz's study (1954, 1962) of what Grant describes as the "older 'Ignatian' view" (166n16). Grant divides the three quatrains according to the Ignatian process and the three faculties of the mind: "the first, evoking the scene of crucifixion," which "uses especially the power of memory," with Donne's speaker seeing himself "actually on the cross." The second quatrain, Grant observes, "brings understanding to bear on what memory has presented as phantasm," while the sestet "resolves the poem in a traditional colloquy or prayer, representing will," thus showing forth the Trinity (116). But at the end of the poem, according to Grant, the "strange love" is not available to the speaker and he is therefore "left waiting on it." For Grant, "the imagery rather presents the tension of faith that precedes contemplation" (117). Grant notes further that the poem "especially dramatises the 'I' in process of discovering, before the cross, the central importance of mortification, and its own radical impotence to overcome separation from God" (116).

Sherwood (1984, I 17-18, 213) sees in the Holy Sonnets the soul's straining "toward conformity with the crucified Christ, while recognizing in its own spiritual tautness the measure of unlikeness," a dual perspective found in HSSpit. What Sherwood describes as the "self-idolatrous gesture to become Christ on the Cross" has the effect, he thinks, of aborting the "necessary humility of conformity" (117). Sherwood emphasizes Donne's "Augustinian dispositionn here, that is, in "his notion of conformity [as] a matter of the will, turned away from God by sin, returned through love of the crucified Christ" (118). Sherwood notes that "Augustinian psychology, in emphasizing sin as a condition of the will, finds the basis of conformity in the turning of the will to God" (213n12).

Di Nola (1993, 113-14), stressing Donne's concept of sin as reflected in HSSpit, argues that the sincerity and straightforwardness of the poem confirm that Donne's mystical-metaphysical theology assumes the characteristics of an incarnational theology that finds the purity of its expression in a fluid, quiet and contemporary lyrical breath. Di Nola believes that Donne's theology is an authentic and genuine theology of the cross and of suffering.

Schoenfeldt (1994, 82-83) calls attention to the sonnet's distinction between "mortal monarchs [who] merely suspend sentence, [and] the speaker's heavenly monarch [who] actually condescended to suffer the punishment his subject deserves (I. 10)" (82-83). Similarly, Schoenfeldt observes, "mortal submission to God is revealed to be a kind of disguised aggression in comparison to Christ's submission to the flesh," as seen in lines 11-14. Schoenfeldt adds, therefore, that Christ, who disguises himself in "vile man's flesh" (I. 13), "descends the hierarchy not to receive an unwarranted blessing but to earn an unmerited blessing for his inferiors" (83).

Variorum 498 – 9

HS XII: “Why are we by all creatures waited on”

General Commentary

Korninger (1956, 210) observes that Donne finds it inexplicable that God should place sinful humanity in charge of his Creation, a mystery surpassed only by the sacrificial death of Christ.

Raspa (1983, 46-47, 107) reads HSWhy through the lenses of "the ideal Renaissance man" in Ignatius of Loyola's Spiritual Exercises. Humankind, Raspa argues, is viewed as a "meditator on the self" and dominates over other creatures because of the capacity for meditation, not because of "his place as an actor in a worldly ladder of being" (46). In HSWhy, Raspa says, all creatures are subject to humankind, not because they rule, but because they meditate (46-47). Moreover, according to Raspa, "the subjection of all things to man's dominion was of a startling indifference," and nature, once imitated in verse, was a picture of the ultimate significance of time. Therefore, in Raspa's view, "Christ was not 'tied' to nature but followed its course to give it meaning elsewhere than in time (11. 12-13)," So that in Donne's effort to order nature in verse, "the imitation of things in verse expressed this meaning momentarily" (107).

Variorum 543

HS XIII: “What if this present”

General Commentary

In an eighteenth-century Moravian Brethren's hymn-book (A Collection of Hymns) (1754 [1966, 19-20]), four Holy Sonnets-HSMade, HSDue, HSSpit, and HSWhat—are used, slightly altered, and combined to make up hymn number 383.

Gosse (1899, 2:109) cites HSWhat as "[olne of the most remarkable" of the Holy Sonnets and finds in it a "memorable instance" of Donne's "clairvoyance" in reviewing his "profane past" after his conversion. To Gosse, Donne's reference to his earlier erotic poetry is "singularly characteristic" and "helps to explain why he preserved so carefully, to the very last, though he never would publish, the evidences of his early enslavement to the flesh." Gosse identifies the sonnet as Donne's "dialogue with his soul."

French (1970, 112-13), recalling Empson (1930-see HSWhat: Themes), says that there is in HSWhat a fallacy, for "a person who is being executed by slow torture is not really very beautiful" (112). The Christ presented in the poem is not a "beauteous forme," he maintains, but "something more like a 'horrid shape."' Possibly, French continues, there is "an element of bargaining in Donne's logicn-that is, he may be saying, "I've given the reader every opportunity to conclude that You are a wicked spirit, so You can only prove Your beauty by not adjudging me to hell" (113). Donne is making Christ appear wicked so that he has to prove his beauty by not adjudging Donne to hell (113).

Altizer (1973, 85) suggests that HSWhat presents clearly the split between Christ as Judge and Christ as suffering, all-merciful Redeemer. The poem's central question, she contends, is "can the Christ who agonized on the cross and yet forgave his murderers condemn someone who loves Him 'unto hell?"' The answer is presented in a conceit based on paradox, she notes, but since the terms of the conceit are drawn from secular love poetry, the concluding paradox of God's mercy seems "somewhat contrived and banal."

Bellette (1975, 339) argues that in HSWhat "no possibility of divine indifference" is expressed. This sonnet, according to Bellette, is "carefully controlled" and "demonstrates a like congruence between thought and form."

Raspa (1983, 91) associates HSWhat with a "meditation directly on the self," noting that it is intended "to separate the poet from the world and force him to consider it correctly in terms of the spiritual universe." Donne accomplishes this, in Raspa's view, by portraying the darkness of the world in order "to bring into relief the inherent moral realities of the poet's and reader's lives," so that in the end, Donne's "black world was a provocative imitation of a desired inner state rather than its fair copy."

To Ray (1990b, 356-58) the speaker of HSWhat is asking his soul "to ponder intently the image of the crucified Christ who, through love, sacrificed himself for humanity," thus denoting a "loving God, not one that is wrathful, angry, and frightening" (356). Ray argues that the sestet reinforces this view of God by drawing a comparison of Christ to a lover. The worship of profane mistresses was motivated by his desire to get a woman "to yield to him," but now, Ray notes, the speaker "has turned away from his frivolous period of idolizing secular lovers and has chosen God as his true lover," yet he "strangely applies the same argument to convince his soul of the compassion of Christ and the consequent salvation of the soul that is the recipient of Christ's pity" (357). The speaker concludes, according to Ray, that the "'beauteous form' of the crucified Christ" just visualized is the "external manifestation of that internal goodness in Christ's pitying nature" (357-58).

Variorum 525-6

HS XIV: “Batter my heart, three-person'd God”

General Commentary

Gosse (1899, 2:109) paraphrases the poem thus: Donne "conceives himself a helpless, beleaguered city held by a hateful and tyrannic foe. The city, unarmed, cannot resist, cannot even make a sign, but with all its heart it yearns after its besieger; and so the soul, bound and betrothed to Satan, and occupied by his armed forces, dearly loves God, and would fain see His victorious army enter its gates and drive out the abhorred usurper."

Hooper and Harvey (1958, 13-15) explicate the sonnet to illustrate methods of discussing poetry, commenting on its tone, prosody, vigorous imagery, biblical echoes, dramatic form, and its reflection of personal experience.

Pointing to HSBatter, Banzer (1961,418) suggests that Donne's orthodoxy is hard-won; as a middle-aged man, he demanded of God both intellectual rest and emotional satisfaction.

Adams (1962, 784n1) argues that in HSBatter Donne's faith "rises to a series of 'knotted paradoxes' involving coercion and submission." These paradoxes would be "revolting," he suggests, "were it not for the full and evident sincerity of the mind to which they were inevitable."

Cohen (1963, 166) identifies HSBatter as an example of the "intense" drama of the Holy Sonnets.

Buckley (1965, 29), though finding HSBatter, like many of the Holy Sonnets, "histrionic," also notes that it is "distinctive in its erotic analogies."

Wanninger (1969, 37) states that "a majority of recent criticism" oversimplifies the interpretation of this sonnet by ignoring its "essential duality." She argues that the dual nature of the poem is revealed not only by a paradoxical theme and two kinds of metaphor, but also by elements of structure and concept, such as the differing rhyme schemes of the octave and sestet, and the imagery of war opposed to that of love. To the "obvious oppositions of war and love, holy love and profane love," Wanninger observes, may be added "the counteractions of good and evil, natural and counter-natural forces, illegality and legality, reason and passion, captivity and freedom, active love and passive love, prebaptismal sin and postbaptismal sin, and the opposite boundaries of time."

French (1970, 121-23) claims that the "confusion of thought and feeling" that seems to him characteristic of the Holy Sonnets is most pronounced in HSBatter (121). The main difficulty, he says, is to decide what part or faculty in the writer is attracted to God and what faculty is attracted to the devil. While admitting that he might be guilty of "logic-chopping," French states that the poem "tries to realize a state of anguished doubt about the writer's ability to communicate with and belong to God" and is therefore in one sense "about confusion" (122). Donne is not clear whether he is really committed to God, and is trying to decide what part in him is resisting commitment. The poem, French says, is "an attempt to unload the whole mess of feelings onto God and leave Him to sort them out" and is perhaps "a means of getting God's attention" (123).

There is in this sonnet, Halewood states (1970, 80-81), a "rising rhythm," or an "ascent to reconciliation," which is consistent with the "rhythm of meditation." See more under Holy Sonnets: General Commentary.

Stampfer (1970, 258-65) states that the speaker in HSBatter suffers depravity, and that only utter violence will penetrate his heart. Therefore, "a rape is called for, not a seduction." The "three person'd God" is not a theological construction, he argues, but an "exasperated summons that all the parts of God slam into his stony heart." The speaker "slams" verb after verb at God, Stampfer writes, "taunting, confronting, demanding a reply." In the middle of the sonnet, at the octave break, Stampfer says, something crumbles inside the speaker: "Where before he would admire, now he suddenly loves God, and dearly." Stampfer finds that the speaker then takes the female role, but Donne's "urgent" language betrays a "strident, awkward, masculine spirit, clumsy with anxiety and articulating too brazenly the call for rape to fit congenially the female role" (258). Stampfer states further that Donne struggled all his life to clarify his ego and arrive at utter intimacy of spirit. The "romantic metaphor" in the closing couplet, he finds, "reads as a gesture of radical self-effacement" and is "simply appalling" in its desperation (264). Stampfer contends that since a strong ego was a male characteristic to the Elizabethans, Donne, by subduing his ego and absorbing the spirit of God, would eliminate his very sexuality (265).

Winny (1970, 141-43) contends that Donne is at first so hopelessly subjugated to sin that gentle inducements cannot persuade him to reform. As a result he cries out to be overwhelmed by the power of God (141). However, by the second line of the poem, Winny states, Donne has passed from "rushing haste" to "something near immobility," first breaking down the natural stops in verse rhythm, and then setting harshly unnatural barriers across it (141-42). Winny observes that Donne "seems to be straining sonnet form to the point of breakdown" and that "the impression that the lines can barely contain all that he crams into them is chiefly responsible for the explosive effect of the poem" (142). The ideas of siege and warfare in the poem "follow naturally" from the context of violent physical effort in the opening lines, Winny says. And, he states, just as Donne eschewed convention in his love poetry, so he avoids custom in his devotional poetry. The prayers of the Holy Sonnets are not respectful and submissive, he argues; rather, they go "straight to the crucial point" (142). HSBatter is, he believes, a good example of this kind of approach. With the sestet, Winny notes, the idiom of the poem changes radically: the speaker, "[nlo longer in the thick of a spiritual battle," assumes the stance of a woman "forced into a marriage contract against her will, who looks despairingly towards the man she loves, hoping that he may still claim her" (143). The image of sexual violation in the closing four lines might at first be thought "grotesquely inappropriate," but in fact it "reflects a mode of apprehension natural to Donne, and not a deliberate attempt to be sensational" (143). Winny argues that for Donne to feel secure, God must take him with the "sudden ferocity of possession" that the metaphor implies; the metaphor of rape, he states, ties together the diverse elements of love and violence in a "firmly unified conclusion" (143). By the end of the poem, Winny concludes, Donne has worked out an answer to his distracting spiritual problem.

Kerrigan (1974, 351-56) argues that the rape described in HSBatter should be read as "implicit in the ancient theological conceit of the righteous soul's marriage to God" (351). He writes that given Donne's view of "sacred metaphor," the "accommodated marriage" would "compress all the things that attend earthly marriages" (352). He notes that at the time he wrote HSBatter Donne was "imprisoned by the father of the bride," and thus the poem recalls the "drama of his own marriage" (352). He argues that HSBatter evolves towards a single metaphor, noting that the text's subsidiary conceits have primary reference to the love relationship, itself "an accommodated vehicle for the spiritual life of the soul" (353). Kerrigan argues that though we realize that "sexual rape" is in the poem a "metaphor for the forcible entrance of the deity into an otherwise impenetrable soul," there remains an "extraordinary emphasis" on the "penetration of a tight body," since "insofar as the tropes reach out of local context to describe the climactic invitation, that sexual event acquires the force of a tenor" (354). Kerrigan argues that "the commands of the poem proceed through a series of transformations in assaulter and thing assaulted," with the "vehicles of her wish" flowing together: the "battered heart" changes to the "attacked city" which then becomes the "ravished vagina"; the "tinker's tools" are transformed into the "monarch's engines which become, indeed, the penis of God" (354-55). Kerrigan notes that in the closing paradox "the equation of ravishment and chastity deflects the perilous situation reached through the unraveling of accommodated love," and that, "having painted himself into a corner, Donne proceeds to extricate himself "by switching colors" (355). He writes that faced with the threat of a God who appears to be "irregular" or imperfect, Donne "introduces a 'complete and excellent' anthropomorphism, equating the imputed human vice to the appropriate and opposite human virtue" (356).

Cathcart (1975, 161-63) discusses the casuistry of HSBatter, as in this sonnet Donne deals with a "double truth, arriving in the end at a paradoxical conclusion" (161). For Cathcart, the poem tries to reconcile resistance and attraction and the conflicting claims of reason and body.

Fowler (1975, 105) notes that HSBatter exhibits "a combination of siege and marriage metaphors."

Stringer (1976, 193) remarks that the climax of the Holy Sonnets is HSBatter, where the speaker's prior, apparently ineffectual efforts to assure his election through various meditative gestures are swept away in an anguished call for "forcible rape."

Aers and Kress (1981, 66-68) note that, given Donne's emphasis in the sonnets on the instability of the self, his desire, as expressed in HSLittle and HSBatter, "is an idiosyncratic and violently assertive demand to be raped, overwhelmed and drowned," to be denied "all vestiges of the responsibility that might be part of a version of a self which attributed some powers of conscious agency to the individual, however 'fallen"' (66). According to Aers and Kress, God is seen as a "terrorising and brutal force uninterested in personhood or individual nuances and developments of awareness and love in his creatures" (67). Thus, Aers and Kress argue, Donne "begs this power to fix his identity in the most absolute way," even to "imprison" him, thus "virtually renouncing the fundamental idea of Christian Liberty so important to the history of Protestant thought" (67). The sexual imagery that Donne employs, they say, is linked to his "prophane Love" and gives rise to "desperate, contradictory [experiences] fusing massive self-assertiveness with self-annihilation" (67). Aers and Kress call attention to a significant problem in Donne's desire for this "coveted state," namely, the absence of an "identity to whom the achieved stability could be attributed," as well as the lack of "any specifiable moral commitment or framework" to this state (68).

Carey (1981, 53, 57) claims that in HSBatter Donne expresses his love for God, but "it does no good," for "he feels no reciprocal love from God" since "the devil has him" (53). The sonnet affirms that "assurance must come from outside," but, says Carey, "as a Protestant," Donne has "cut himself off from that outside assurance which, for the Catholic, the Church and the sacraments supplied" (57).

Miller (1982, 836) cites Clements (1961) and others (see HSBatter: Themes) who have viewed the sonnet "as hieroglyphically illustrating the Trinity in its three-part structure." The persona's soul is described by Miller as "the beloved of God though betrothed to his enemy and longing for divorce." Miller finds the resolution of the sonnet in the way that it "turns on a paradoxical sexual image as the persona says that his soul will never be chaste unless God ravishes him." Miller finds a "similar complex of imagery," although "in a less startling fashion, in HSDue."

Yearwood (1982, 210, 217-18) finds that the conversion process in Donne's first twelve Holy Sonnets (following Gardner's 1952 ordering) "begins in pride, proceeds to confession and despair, and culminates in a humble joy and confidence" (210). The tenth sonnet in the sequence, HSBatter, records, in Yearwood's view, "the ultimate expression "of fear and despair as the speaker fails to attain a conversion through his own efforts, but the sonnet does culminate in the speaker's resignation, or "indication of dependence which is necessary for complete acceptance of absolution'' (217-18). Yearwood contends that the speaker, because of his "inordinate despair" at this point, "throws the responsibility for his salvation too completely on God" (218).

Hamburger (1985, 17) observes that the speaker's conversation with God in HSBatter is dramatic and pushes towards action, adding that for such exchanges Donne develops his own dramatically-shaped poetry, but poetry that is also conscious of form and genre.

Veith (1985, 119, 121) finds that here as well as in his sermons, Donne "often sounds Calvinist or Lutheran," yet in Donne the "tightly knit structure of Reformation theology, as articulated by Luther and systematized by Calvin, begins to unravel" (I 19). Although he acknowledges that it may oversimplify Donne's religious position to call him an Arminian, Veith nonetheless argues that with regard to a number of issues, and "especially on the question of whether salvation can be lost," Donne tended to be "in the Arminian camp, with Herbert in the Calvinist" (119). Veith points out that the sonnet "seems a celebration of irresistible grace, of the Calvinist God who breaks strongholds and ravishes," but the sonnet's conception of the human will is "essentially Arminian," in that "the speaker's will is directed to God, but it is hemmed in by sin"; by contrast, according to the Calvinist view, "the will is rebellious, but is hemmed in by God" (121). In Donne's sonnet, Veith observes, the speaker is "frustrated" by his sinfulness, "which he feels excludes him from God's presence" (121). Veith suggests that part of the strength and richness of Donne's religious poetry derives "from his standing at a transition point between Calvinism and Arminianism," positioning himself "between the view that God accomplishes everything for salvation and the view that the burden lies essentially on the self" (121).

Booty (1990,39) briefly discusses individual sonnets, focusing on HSBatter, which for Booty is an expression of the "frustration of the penitent soul" and a "fervent confession of sin, an expression of sincere contrition, an admission that he is totally reliant upon God." Although the speaker "rails at God" in the octave, he finds the answer "is in acceptance of God as God is-God the Father who knocks, God the Spirit who breathes, God the Son who shines-and in adoration, with contrition, to live in the knowledge of God's love day by day."

Coiro (1990, 86) sees Donne as a poet who "draws clear sexual lines and usually talks to his God as one aggressive guy to another." She finds that "the most complete self-abnegation that he can imagine" is, in HSBatter, to "place himself before God as a woman, a woman begging to be raped."

Martin (1990, 60) says that HSBatter is "antithetical, paradoxical and violent" but that the "basic plan" of the sonnet is "quite simple": the speaker "urgently wants God to possess him and show him grace."

Ray (1990b, 46-48) points to the sonnet's use of the conceit of "the military analogy of the sinner to a fortified city," usurped by Satan, which "pervades the octave" (46). The speaker contends that what is needed, according to Ray, is a total destruction of the "old man" so that "a completely new, regenerated town / man can be constructed from the foundation up," for "destruction of the sinful generates the pure, in Christian terms" (46). Ray finds that the sestet introduces another conceit ("God as a lover") and the speaker's "wish to be reconquered by Him in terms of love, sexuality, and marriage" (47). The feminine soul, Ray states, "feels that she has been forced into a marriage with the conqueror and usurper Satan (i.e., sin)," feels, in other words, "betrothed unto Your enemy" (1.10) (47). Thus, "spiritual purity comes to an individual soul when God takes it completely," a paradox which Ray regards as "the high point of the love motif in the sestet" (47-48). Ray concludes that the conceits of "military and sexual conquest" express the speaker's "senses of deep entrapment by sin and the necessity for God's power and love to rescue him" (48).

As illustration for her argument that the twelve sonnets from 1633 are formed into two groups of six, with each poem in the first group having a counterpart in the second group, Albrecht (1992, 24-30) focuses on HSScene and HSBatter. In HSScene, she says, we find "the creature seeking purgation from world/flesh/devil," and in HSBatter, "the creature seeking purgation and divorce from Satan's bond" (24), adding that in the latter poem the actor / speaker "is desperate for a quick escape, or at least closure" (27). The "theology" of HSScene is, she argues, replaced by "military science" in HSBatter (27). Given the failure of the male speaker of HSWhat (which immediately precedes HSBatter in 1633) in his attempt to "woo Christ," the speaker / actor in HSBatter, Albrecht suggests, "tries to 'play it again,"' but this time by assuming a female voice which is also "a failure, because the actor is unable to strike the right tone" (28). Albrecht finds that the "barrage of b's" in the opening four lines of HSBatter betrays the male voice that "lurks behind the ventriloquized female voice, creating a form of linguistic rape" (29). Albrecht concludes that "this woman cannot control either of the masculine forces pinning (penning?) her down," for as Satan has "enthralled her," so has "the masculine discourse of the transvestite ventriloquist," and thus "God does not answer the speaker's prayer because it is the wrong prayer," that is, "it is a masculine prayer, demanding ravishment" (30).

Low (1993, 69, 79-81) observes that the view of God in HSBatter is that of "a king who has left a deputy to command his city" (69). He also regards HSBatter as "the only divine poem in which Donne assumes the female part unequivocally to the end" (79). Low acknowledges that many studies have argued the sonnet's "three-part development of the imagery": namely, "the prayer for destruction and remaking, the prayer for relief of the besieged town usurped by Satan, and the prayer for a forcible divorce from Satan and a divine ravishment." Once again, Low claims, Donne's poetry indicates that "Donne cannot surrender himself to God," that is, "he must be forced, broken, burned, entirely remade," and, ultimately, "raped" by God. Low observes that the ending of the poem "casts its influence backward," so that with a second reading the sexual implications are present from the beginning. Low does not find adequate the recurring explanation that the speaker cannot submit to God because of "the Calvinist strain in Donne's thinking" (80). Most theological explanations, in Low's view, do not explain why Donne cannot surrender himself to the "terms of the biblical marriage trope." Low offers what he regards a "simpler explanation," that is, "unless forced," Donne "simply cannot submit to the woman's passive role" (81).

Variorum 221-26